Tagged: Blog Hop
My Achy Breaky Heart
This is one of my favorite book blog follow alongs to participate in. They usually have really provoking questions, and I’ve been racking my brains, and shedding a few tears coming up with this weeks list.
Question: Top 10 books that broke my heart.
Answer: I am only going to include books that made me cry, which is a rarity.
1.My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
We’re talking sobbing, gut wrenching slobbery, red-faced, snotty nose sobbing. Oh and I was on a plane, and the adorable little old lady beside me kept patting me on the arm and offering me a tissue. I’m not even exaggerating.
2. The Street Lawyer – John Grisham
I can’t explain why, or how it happened. It was in the first couple chapters and I just broke down. I saw humanity and all its evils, I decided I wanted to help the homeless, and I did for a while.
3. Beatrice & Virgil – Yan Martel
I just finished this book about a week ago. I’m going to do a post on it when I’ve finally calmed down. I was un-prepared for my reaction to “Games for Gustav”. It was unbearably sad, but this is the most beautiful book I have read in over a year.
4. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irvine
I loved him, and he was so smart and funny and brave. I cried at the end.
5. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
They say unrequited love is the most painful thing on earth. He loved best.
6. A Fine Ballance – Rohniton Mistry
This book was an ache that lasted a long time after I closed the back cover. How can mankind treat itself that way? How can goodness and simple happiness survive?
7. 1984 – George Orwell
You know when you’re so angry, and you’re trying to make a valid point, and explain your reasoning/view/why you’re right, and all you can do is feel your face grow redder, and hotter, and your vocal cords squeeze tight and you feel hot, angry, shameful tears leak out of your eyes? Ya. This book.
8. The Shack – William P. Young
I can’t even get into it.
9. The Subtle Knife – Phillip Pullman
*SPOILER*
I don’t think I have ever cried quite so hard at the death of a character ever, (except maybe in number 1.) than at the death of Hester. I still tear up, sniff, (no joke), when I think about it. Then I get mad. I’m not a weepy person!
10. The Crucible – Arthur Miller
Angry tears, sad tears, defeated tears, and hopeful triumphant tears. All in one play.
_____________________________________________________________
I almost forgot! The REAL number 1. The ULTIMATE book that caused me to cry, and feel loss even to today is…..
A book I have already talked about and will likely talk about again.
Fool’s Fate – Robin Hobb
The ultimate love story, the ultimate character development. You really have to read the whole 9 books to understand why this is as great as I say it is. Or trust me.
“Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more.”
Hey! It’s Friday, and I got featured!
Well imagine my surprise, when my little blog jumped from a 21 visit average to 92 in one day. I was flabbergasted! (I love that I get to use that word in context, never give up the right to go all vocab when you can.) So today is feature friday! Hosted by Parajunkee over here and I am the featured book blogger! This weeks question:
Q: Define what characteristics your favorite books share. Do they all have a kick ass heroine or is the hot love interest the Alpha Male?
Most of my books are wildly different from each other. However, the ones that I get lost in most easily all have a varied and rich universe. It may sound confusing but shouldn’t be. Think Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia… and before you think I’m just a fantasy lover this also pertains to the awesome universes of John Grisham and Dick Francis novels. Basically when an author “creates” their worlds with passion and detail I can’t help but escape into them time and time again. Stories aren’t just about characters for me, the more real the world, the easier to get lost in it.
Thanks to everyone for stopping by! Feel free to look around, it’s not all books here as I recently got engaged, and can’t stop blabbing about it. Books are one of the most constant things I turn to, so there’s a lot on them, but there’s also Life The Universe and Everything… which you should know, comes from a book 
Peace out and Happy Friday!
Moi
xo
I’ve got my hippy hoppy
So Allison Can REad and Crazy for Books have new questions! I feel boring today, how awful is that…full of awe. Ok so here’s my answers.
FF today is actually a great question
What book that hasn’t been turned into a movie (yet) would you most like to see make it to the big screen, and who would you like cast as your favorite character?
So my answer is …(da dun dahn daaa)…. The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I really enjoyed reading it, even though I kept thinking it could be much better. I feel that someone who takes it on as a film could possibly make it a better movie than the book(!) shocking I know. As for actors, I’d really like to see Robin Williams as Julian, Paul Danno as Bunny, Jamie Bell as Charles, with either Mia Wasikowska or Carey Mulligan as Camila, I have no idea for anyone else… maybe Daniel Radcliffe could be Richard? I’m seriously just pulling names out of the air now. I’ll stop.
And for the Blog Hop!
“In honor of Banned Books Week, what is your favorite “banned or frequently challenged book”?”
I saw PUSH on the list and it was my favorite one that I’ve read. I know this may offend some of you but, if a book wasn’t actually banned banned. Like removed from the country and burned in piles, I tend to think it’s not really been banned. I think we have it relatively easy here as opposed to other Nations. This doesn’t mean I don’t think you should fight for the right to (party) read free press etc. I just think maybe we should recognize the degrees. Wich probably totally contradicts my post on censorship from yesterday. HEY! Maybe that’s what I’m getting at. I guess I think if a book is ‘banned’ from a school or organisation as opposed to a State, Province, or Country it’s more like censorship (wich is bad and I think it’s terrible and should be stopped).I’m done now.
Moi
To Be Or Not To Be…evil
This weeks FF asks an interesting question, one I had to pause and think over for a whole night. I opened this new post up and was about to write down “Mrs. Coulter” as my answer when out of the blue the real answer hit me between the eyes.
Q. Have you ever wanted a villain to win at the end of a story? If so, which one??
Well my top two are: Shylock and Lady Macbeth. I know right? First of all, I will always remember the awe in which I read every word that came from the great Lady. She was strong, smart, she knew what she wanted and she took it. If her husband hadn’t been such a bumbling moron she may have gotten all she wanted! And Shylock, I don’t know, I always thought he was sort of the underdog. He was a Jew in Italy for crying out loud. The Christians had it out for him in his mind, and he was just trying to get by… sort-of.
So that’s it. Now I’m thinking I should really read more Shakespeare this year, despite my earlier intentions of canning him till the end of this NYR list. Ah conundrums eh? You know by definition, conundrum implies there is a solution? Ya, I’m smart like that.
Moi xoxo
[Now I have to clean my whole house...out out damn spot!]
If you couldn’t, what would you?
I read fiction. I get lost in fiction, I dive, sink, soak up and in to fiction. What if I couldn’t? I suppose the obvious answer would be ‘Non-Fiction’… duh; but let’s break it down a little shall we?
This weeks blog hop asks: “Many of us primarily read one genre of books, with others sprinkled in. If authors stopped writing that genre, what genre would you start reading? Or would you give up reading completely if you couldn’t read that genre anymore?” So I thought about it and came up with Real Life Drama.
Oh I’m not talking about Big Brother or Survivor reality t.v. shows turned into books; ho ho ho no! I’m talking about Alive, Into Thin Air, or 127 Hours. I used to read The Reader’s Digest as a child when I would visit my grandparents house. My favorite parts were always the I Survived! Unfortunately I can’t remember exactly what the article was titled, but I do remember reading about ship wreaks, shark attacks, and a dude who fell into a construction site and had rebar poking straight through him. They all survived.
[Two rabbit trail/side notes:
1) On The Goodwife, during the last of Peter Florick's campaign his publicity manager asked his mother "Why do senior citizen's read Reader's Digest?" She didn't even bat an eye when she answered "Why it's the large print."
2) Three words - Cordelia "I fell".]
Any way, basically I like when people tell me about their wicked survival stories. I loved Into Thin Air and I grimaced through Alive. Into the Great Solitude is another good true adventure type book, albeit a little quieter paced. So, this is how I would spend my days between the covers. This is actually how I should spend more now come to think of it.
Over and Out
Moi xoxo
Skip to the end
I remember a time when I was young my mom went out to the movies. Her and a friend went to see Backdraft. I recall playing with wooden toys on the floor and looking up when she came in, as she was taking off her coat she told my dad something that since then she has often repeated.
Ugh! That’s it, I’m NOT going to sleep until I can re-write the ending in my head. That was just too sad.
It was done, I had been given full licence to re-write, edit, cut and past stories that were told to me, in a way that would make them perfect in my eyes. I had been given ultimate power. {Muah ha HA HAAA!}
This weeks Follow Friday hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read asks me this omnipotent question, and I find myself stumped. I want to make a really good answer. I want to impress the socks off you and show you how I make stories better than their authors ever intended. Yet, I’ve realized something. I’m only making the story better for me, you probably have a totally different set up in your brain chemistry.
So now I feel free and light and spry! And will answer with no fear! (Too many exclamation points, sorry.) Also, check out Lisa Loves Literature, she is this weeks featured follower. Her answer had me hating the Twilight series less, it was pretty ingenious 
Now without further adieu :
Q. If you could change the ending of any book (or series), which book would you choose? Why and to what?
This is going to be a spoiler fest so try to write the title of the book as a dominant feature – and warn people about spoilers.
FOOL’S FATE: The Tawney Man Trilogy by Robin Hobb
Okay so when I first grabbed The Assassin’s Apprentice I did so under false pretenses. It was a complete series and was only three books long. Yay. False. It is a four-part (three books to each part) fantasy epic. Great. In fact, when I was “finished” it was only a three-part, nine book epic. Now I find out today TODAY!!!! that is got three more books, two written, one on the way. So my answer might be fixed, I’ll find out next year.
At the end (not really) of this series, which has been my favorite fantasy series hands down, I was crushed. A love that grew so beautifully through nine books was absolutely ill-treated. The Fool and Fitz were children together, discovered lovely and un-lovely things about each other while growing up, went through hell and heaven, and then at the end – parted ways forever. It was so painful, so unfulfilled, that I couldn’t forgive it.
So instead of Fitz going to Molly, who was like wrung out and not in love with him any more AND had 7 kids! I would simply have Fitz and the Fool ride into the sunset. No I don’t have a detailed description of their lives, I don’t even want to specify if the Fool is male or female, I just want them to be together forever.
So maybe they are! Now I’m going to edit my 2012 page and add The Rain Wild Chronicles to it.
Moi xoxo
Fun Friday Facts
There’s some fun and interesting stuff happening.
- I bottled my wine yesterday.
- I had to try a white to see if I would consider making it as a kit, I will not.
- GermanG is home so I drank more wine last night. Oh well.
- GermanG and I have started P90X today therefore I think my drinking alcohol again is totally fine. Bring it!
- Ben has decided that when he gets into trouble the appropriate thing to do is run away. Therefore this morning when he was caught eating the cat’s food while standing on my table he jumped down, ran out the front door, down the street, and kept running. Bad dog.
- I rode my bike to work today, TBF and I are going to go to Telegraph Cove for lunch, I’m excited. I’m also hungry now, and it’s only 11.
“Non-book-related this week!! Do you have pets?”
Well, as you just read I do indeed have a bad dog. (I love him.) Ben is a 11 year old Australian Shepherd. Brewdis is my 10 year old fat, fluffy, grey and white cat who never lives with me as he prefers old men. He used to stay with Herman and after Herman moved into assisted living Brew moved next door to Joe. I’m sure he loves me – it’s the others he can’t stand. Peach is my 2 year old, 4 lives left, cat; I will do a whole cat related post one day, but not today. And finally, Dexter. He’s TBF’s 3 year old Lab. He will always be a puppy.
Well, N and I are going to try to watch The Color Purple tomorrow night. Wish us luck! T-dog’s away on a male bonding, beer and canoe adventure. We will be on a couch, in blankets, drinking wine and watching T.V. adventure.
Peace!
Growing Up
Follow Friday question:
Q. How has your reading habits changed since you were a teen? or If you are still a teen what new genres are you in love with currently?
When I was a child I read anything my mother would let me, and some things she didn’t. I remember hiding my very first harlequin romance, (and pretty much my last), under my mattress every night until my aunt came to visit… she changed the sheets, I changed the hiding place. I used to stay up way late into the night; first with a flash light, then later, when my room was re-located to the one at the back of the house, I’d burn incense and read by my bedside lamp. I probably read more in terms of volume as a child then I do now. The uncomplicated life of youth was not wasted on my being young.
I read Archie Comics, The Boxcar Children, The Babysitters Club, The Pony Club, everything by James Harriot, Rascal, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, The Hardy Boys, Beatrix Potter, Dick Francis, Caroline B. Coony, Tom Sawyer, The Hobbit, Huckleberry Fin, The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, The Left Behind Series, Francine Rivers, any many, many more. Way too many to count. Now, it’s pretty much the same. Oh I’ve tried to ‘grow up’ in my reading. I’ve started reading all the classic books everyone always talks about, always writes about.
I would say the thing that has changed the most in my reading now than when I was a child is consciousness. Now I read with a purpose, even a sense of status. As a child I’d read what I wanted, when I wanted, and was never embarrassed by what I was or was not reading. Now I’m burning through all the classics I can think of so that will some how validate me as a lover of books. It’s not all bad, nothing that drives to you read and discover can be, but it’s less innocent, and less free. I used to just read for myself, and the world got in the way.
Moi xoxo
Lost & Found
Crazy for books Blog Hop, this weeks question is great:
“Let’s talk crazy book titles! Highlight one or two (or as many as you like!) titles in your personal collection that have the most interesting titles! If you can’t find any, feel free to find one on the internet!”
I’m going to give you the story that led up to how I obtained my craziest titled book. I feel the whole experience is tied to the book so completely that it’s impossible for me to separate them. Enjoy my own personal twilight zone experience.
First week of August, 2010 – TBF and I do a quick trip to Powel River and back to pick up some required helicopter parts. To get there we need to take a ferry, not just any ferry either, the world’s oldest and therefore most dangerous ferry. This fact is discovered when much to our dismay the traffic controller person tells us we are in fact not allowed to stay below on the car deck to catch up on some much needed sleep, we must go up to the passenger deck. Why? Because this is a single hulled vessel, and in the event that an iceberg were to pop up outta no where, we would sink.
I slammed my door shut and trudged up the stairwell onto a highly populated late ferry. There were at least four teen sport groups, a bunch of hun-gover adults, no open kitchen, and you had to sit beside a stranger if you wanted to sit at all. I was disgruntled, TBF was awesome. He was more than gracious about my terrible mood, and told me he’d buy me a book from the gift shop. [I love him.] We skirted around smelly tired people and squeezed into the tiny little excuse for a gift shop. There was a poor and predictable selection of the top 100 best sellers, some local authors, and one strange looking book that was shoved upside down and backwards onto a shelf; I grabbed it.
The book had a totally white cover; I turned it over in my hands and discovered its title was on the front and the back but flipped upside down like a choose-your-own-adventure. I leafed through the pages before realizing it wasn’t, and this was some strange perhaps arty statement that was over my head? I told TBF I wanted it, I had to have it, in fact this was already mine. He shouldered his way through the people to the front desk with me hanging onto his jacket so I didn’t get left behind and swallowed by the humanity packed into the shop. The lady rang in his chocolate bar, bottle of water, and motorcycle magazine; she tried to scan my mystery book but couldn’t. She searched her inventory sheet and shrugged her shoulders before passing it to me directly.
“It’s not in my system, someone probably left it; looks like it’s yours kid.”
I judge a book by three important factors before committing to buy:
1) Cover
2) Opening Sentence
3) Title
In the event that they pass the initial tests I move onto the slightly less important checks; reading the synopsis, reading the first paragraph, checking my bank balance – those kinds of tests. The book I had picked up had completely intrigued me with its strange and un-conventional cover, it’s opening sentence was good, “I’m Jared, a ghost.” and its title? Girlfriend in a Coma, by Douglas Coupland. SOLD.
The series of events that led up to my procurement of Girlfriend in a Coma have caused it to be a very special book in my library. I read the whole thing that night, (it was a long trip), and I enjoyed it; I re-read it slowly over the next week - it was a strange read. The scenery and descriptions of the world post-whatever it was that happened have stuck in my mind, but it wasn’t the best piece of literature I’ve ever read. It’s not even one of my favorite reads from last year. This book has remained special simply because of my three tests: Cover, Line, Title, and the strange and uncomfortable circumstances that led to me owning it.
Girlfriend in a Coma almost scares me. It’s a book that seemed to pick me instead of the other way around. I’m always sort of drawn to apocalypse type stories any way, but this one went out of its way to find me. I can’t shake this book no matter how hard I try; I’ve googled the cover art for the novel many times and haven’t found anything like my copy. Was it an ARC? Was it a mistake? Was it Destiny?
Moi xoxo
“there are three things we cry for in life: things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent.”
What ONE Book Did it for You?
Ah, a new ‘blog hop’ to join this week. I’d go over to http://www.crazy-for-books.com like usual but I had no idea what an ARC was so I had to google it. Then I was like “ooooh advanced reader copies riiight. Ya I don’t have any of those.” So I jumped on over to another book blog follower thingy I’ve seen floating around the netherwebs. Meet Parajunkee.
So this here blog follower was totally hands on. Like, I had to follow four different blogs! Sheesh, you’d think I had time on my hands for goodness sake. You’d think I had nothing better to do at 11pm on a Thursday night then to blog… except that’s exactly what I do at 11pm on a Thursday night, and these people – are my kind of people.
This weeks question is right up my alley. So far up my alley its like I’ve heard it before. Wait, I have heard it before. Don’t all us book nuts ask each other this question like it’s on the list of things we immediately need to know about a person to see if they pass the ‘it’ test? You know:
“What’s your favorite color, number, movie. How many kids do you have/want. Are you single? Will you go to dinner with me – but wait, WHAT’S THE ONE BOOK THAT CHANGED YOUR LIFE?“
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not mocking the question, or even poking fun, this is serious stuff. I have a whole post on it somewhere around here…. ah here it is; only it’s like twenty books. I do that a lot you know, cheat, take the liberty, whatever. So I figured this time, this ONE time I’d follow the rules. [I mean come on, I even really followed all four of those lovely ladies blogs.]
Q. Talk about the book that most changed or influenced your life (was it a book that turned you from an average to avid reader, did it help you deal with a particularly difficult situation, does it bring you comfort every time you read it?).
My mom wrote a book. I love books, I got it from my mother. Being an avid reader I always toyed with the idea of writing; but it seems so huge that I never even thought it could be a possibility. My mom has four kids. She home schooled us for most of our learnin’ years. She helped run a kids camp, she has a barn full of horses, and very little time to herself. The year I moved home from England my mom had just brought her mom to come live with us. My grandmother has full-blown Parkinson’s disease and lets just say, this was a very trying time.
For some reason my mother decided this was the time to join nanowrimo. She plunked herself down in front of her laptop that November and poof. Out came a book. This book shows me that dreams come true. That hard work pays off. That you can do all things, through The One who gives you strength. I’ll tell you what, here’s the link to read up on and purchase the book if that’s your style. Or, I’ll give you one. Comment before Monday morning telling me you want one, and I’ll throw you in a giveaway generator and send one out to one lucky person. Let it tell you that you can do what you set your mind to. It’s more than inspiring, it’s real and corporeal, it’s evidence to victory.
Well that’s all for tonight folks, I believe it’s almost midnight, which means hey! Follow Friday is on! See you all on the flip side.
Moi xoxo
