Hi, I'm Mrs. F-B!
Showing posts with label Shannon Hale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shannon Hale. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

some grown-up books reviewed (finally!)





I am way behind on my reviewing, so I'm going to try and catch up by doing shorter reviews of a bunch of books at once. today, the grown up books, tomorrow the kid books. Here are four grown up books I've read lately.

The Game on Diet by Krista Vernoff and Az Ferguson, The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale, Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigiani, and Await Your Reply by Michael Chaon.

The Game on Diet
is my current obsession. I'm playing this fitness challenge with 16 friends, and it is a LOT of fun. the focus is on creating good habits, about eating, exercise, sleeping, drinking water and life habits, like trying to stop procrastinating. You eat 5 small meals a day which have to include a carb, a protein, and a fat, and then you also eat veggies twice a day. I am loving it and hoping I'll be more fit when the four weeks ends!

The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale was not my favorite Shanon Hale - I mean how can you beat Princess Academy and Book of a Thousand Days, but it was a fun story to read. Required a bit of suspension of disbelief, but it worked. I laughed and cried both in this book. Good beach read!

Lucia, Lucia is by Adriana Trigiani, an author I saw reviewed by Mrs. Yingling and She Who is Too Fond of Books both (see links to their blogs on the right!). I trust both those ladies, and they were spot on with this author. Great character development and loved the focus on fashion. It was so fun. I've started another by her now. Both on audio.

Await Your Reply is a strange one. It's on the best Books for Young Adults list, but you'd really have to be someone who's willing to persevere to stick with this one! It's a mystery that has three individual stories being told, but somehow the author manages to wrap them all together, and the reader's job is to try and figure out how. I sort of figured out how two of the stories were connected before I finished, but I never would have guessed the other. That's my adult book group choice for this month, so I'll be interested to see how others liked it.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale

Oh my goodness this is one of the best, best, best books I have read in a long while. I adored Princess Academy, and I think this one is even better. I can't believe its only awards are Best Book of the Year lists. Those are nothing to sneeze at, mind you, but still, no Newbery honor even? Of course I haven't read all of this year's honorees, so I suppose they could be better, but I'm highly doubting it. And oh, happy day, she didn't name this one something with "Princess" in the title, because this book will appeal to boys and girls. The main characters are girls, but they find themselves in a pretty ugly situation, being imprisoned in a tower for seven years and hounded by horrific Khasar. It's quite dramatic and suspenseful, and a totally terrific read. One of those books I'm sad I've read because now it's not out there for me to find anymore. It's amazing!

I've ordered it for the library, but in the meantime you can find it at Multnomah County Libraries.