Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson

Jenny Lawson is best known as The Bloggess, a super funny, pretty inappropriate blog writer. I love her style and how she writes about her health struggles, both mentally and physically. I use to love to read biographies and I thought hers would be a good one to read. Let me say it is a hilarious read and I loved it. A lot of her childhood explains her love of taxidermy animals and also her sense of humor. Because when you grow up with a dad whose idea of funny is a dead squirrel puppet, yeah, that's going to leave a mark. Luckily she grew up to use her sense of humor for good.  She tells a few anecdotal stories about her upbringing and then talks about meeting her husband and having their daughter. She also talks about her anxiety disorders and her battle with rheumatoid arthritis, some of which I already knew from reading her blog.

I read this book at the reference desk during my shift and let me tell you that was a mistake because I kept laughing out loud. I also kept hoping someone would recognize the book and then want to talk about it. But no one did. And that was pretty much the most disappointing aspect of this book. I can only blame the youth of today. If you haven't read The Bloggess, I suggest that you do. But only if you have a healthy sense of humor.

Weekly Round-Up 3/25

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week, reviews I've posted, books in the mail and anything else of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I am reading Let's Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) by Jenny Lawson and listening to The Diviners by Libba Brady, read by January LaVoy.

Last week I reviewed The Madness Underneath (Johnson), Three Times Lucky (Turnage) and Out of Sight, Out of Time (Carter).

Out of Sight, Out of Time by Ally Carter (Gallagher Girls #5)

SPOILERS for the series so far.
Cammie wakes up in the Swiss Alps with no memory of the summer but badly injured and with short black hair. Brought back to the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, she has to face her mother and her friends who are angry at her for leaving them behind. But Cammie just wants to remember the summer and if she managed to find the information on the Circle of Cavan that her father left behind. But some things are not worth remembering and something is wrong with Cammie. And now it seems that Circle has no use for her any longer.


Now we are cooking with gas as they say (Do they say that?). Anyway, here is the penultimate book to the Gallagher Girls series and it just moves the story right along. It was easy to feel Cammie's frustrations with her memory loss and her bewilderment at some of the things she now knows. And the music that she hears constantly. Why does no one think to mention that? But I guess that is explained at the end of the book sort of. I love how her friends love her and want to protect her but are also angry that she left them and left them behind.

I'm looking forward to the conclusion of this series. It has had its up and downs but I think it is going to end on a strong note. Cammie is very different from the girl the series started with and she has been through a lot for someone so young. That kind of character growth is wonderful to see in a series that started out about a boy crazy spy-in-training.

Gallagher Girls series
I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy
Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover
Only the Good Spy Young

Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage (audio)

To say this book is quirky and folksy doesn't actually cover just how quirky and folksy this book is. No wonder it is a Newbery Honor book. It is a chockablock full of cute similes and metaphors. And the main character is the most precocious girl in the town.  Mo (Moses) LoBeau was found by the Colonel during a hurricane when she was a baby floating on a billboard sign. Raised by him and Miss Lana, Mo grows up writing to her Upstream Mother and putting messages in bottles in the hopes that she will find her. Mo is a feisty girl and when someone in town is murdered and the Colonel starts acting suspicious, Mo and her best friend Dale start a detective agency to figure out who done it and protect her family.

I actually enjoyed this book a lot. Like I said it is very quirky and folksy but once you get past that it is a great book. I think it helps that listened to it on audio. Michal Friedman does a great job of bringing Mo to life. She does a great North Carolina accent and I found myself struggling not to pronounce words like she does while listening to this book.

It's hard to classify this one. It's set up like a mystery but at the same time it's definitely a coming-of-age story. By trying to solve the mystery, Mo learns a lot about families and sometimes it's not about the family you have, but the family you make.

8 hours

The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson (Shades of London #2)

Rory is recovering slowly from her encounter with the Ripper and she is bored stuck with her parents in Bristol while undergoing therapy after her traumatic experience. But she is finally allowed to return to London and to Wexford. There she begins to explore her newfound power, acquired after she vanquished the Ripper and to search for something to help her feel right again.

I was excited to learn what happened next to Rory. The Name of the Star ended in such a great place and Rory is a great character. She is very funny and talkative. I wasn't disappointed. Rory is still great, dealing with being stabbed and with trying to get her life back. I'm glad that Stephen, Boo, and Callum make a return appearance along with Rory's roommate.

The plot, though, well, overall I'm not sure what the plot was. Rory came back to London, there were ghosts and a therapist. I felt like this book was the end of the first one and the beginning of the second. It was a middle book that did not overcome being a middle book. I mean, it was a good book. Don't get me wrong. It's just the ghosts aren't there for any real reason. The villain is a little bit of surprise. The ending, though, that's the pay-off. It's pretty shocking and the next book should be pretty awesome. I'm curious to see how all of that will be resolved. So I guess this book did its job after all.

Shades of London
The Name of the Star

Weekly Round-Up 3/18

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week, reviews I've posted, books in the mail and anything else of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I'm reading of Out of Sight, Out of Time by Ally Carter. And listening to Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, read by  Martin Jarvis. I may start The Diviners by Libba Bray on audio soon though because I've read Good Omens before.

I finished The Madness Underneath (Johnson) and Three Times Lucky (Turnage) so look for those reviews this week.

Weekly Round-Up 3/11

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week, reviews I've posted, books in the mail and anything else of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I'm reading The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson and listening to Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage, read by Michal Friedman.

Last week I reviewed The Fox Inheritance.

The Fox Inheritance by Mary E. Pearson (audio) (Jenna Fox Chronicles #2)

Locke and Kara have been revived after their minds have spend 260 years locked away in a box. The world is a different place now but people like them are still not legal. Gone is everyone they ever knew except Jenna Fox. Escaping from the scientist who bought them back, both on on the run toward Jenna. One is bend on revenge though for being left for so long.

I didn't really feel like The Adoration of Jenna Fox needed a sequel. But when I found out there was one I figured why not? This time focusing on Locke and Kara. At the end of Adoration, Jenna destroys the black cubes that house Kara and Locke to spare them the pain and torture of being in that dark place. So how are they here? Copies. And that makes me wonder how you can multi-copy someone's mind but that issue is never really explored.Instead the big moral issue is what makes a person a person? What makes someone human? There is no real answer but Locke contemplates this for much of the book, almost endlessly.

The bulk of the action revolves first on escaping the doctor and then on finding Jenna and then on dealing with Kara. I use the word action loosely because this is not an action packed book despite the theme of running and hiding. There is never really much danger and then the problem of the bad guy(s) fixes itself fairly neatly. It's like an idea was started but wasn't explored to its fullest potential. I'm a little sorry about that because I think it could have been more. Still it was a decent read and it was nice to see Jenna again and get more about her life than the epilogue at the end of her book. I'm sure she will show up in the next book, Forever Forever, but that is another Locke-centric book so she will still only be a side character.

Some audio book narrators perform their books (Jim Dale, Katharine Kellgren, Tim Curry to name a few) and some just read. Matthew Brown is a reader. He has a nice soothing voice and is very clear, but there is no hurry, nothing to suggest motion or aggression or urgency. So while I enjoyed his voice, I can't say he is the best narrator I've ever heard (see above).

9 hours, 30 mintues

Weekly Round-Up 3/4

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week, reviews I've posted, books in the mail and anything else of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

Last week I reviewed Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis (both audio) and Size 12 and Ready to Rock by Meg Cabot.

This week I'm reading The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson and I'm listening to The Fox Inheritance by Mary E. Pearson, read by Matthew Brown.

Out of Sight, Out of Time by Ally Carter

The last thing Cammie Morgan remembers is leaving the Gallagher Academy to protect her friends and family from the Circle of Cavan--an ancient terrorist organization that has been hunting her for over a year. But when Cammie wakes up in an alpine convent and discovers that months have passed, she must face the fact that her memory is now a black hole. The only traces left of Cammie's summer vacation are the bruises on her body and the dirt under her nails, and all she wants is to go home.

Once she returns to school, however, Cammie realizes that even the Gallagher Academy now holds more questions than answers. Cammie, her friends, and mysterious spy-guy Zach must face their most difficult challenge yet as they travel to the other side of the world, hoping to piece together the clues that Cammie left behind. It's a race against time. The Circle is hot on their trail and willing stop at nothing to prevent Cammie from remembering what she did last summer.

Reached by Ally Condie

After leaving Society to desperately seek The Rising, and each other, Cassia and Ky have found what they were looking for, but at the cost of losing each other yet again. Cassia is assigned undercover in Central city, Ky outside the borders, an airship pilot with Indie. Xander is a medic, with a secret. All too soon, everything shifts again.

Send Me a Sign by Tiffany Schmidt

Mia is always looking for signs. A sign that she should get serious with her soccer-captain boyfriend. A sign that she’ll get the grades to make it into an Ivy-league school. One sign she didn’t expect to look for was: “Will I survive cancer?” It’s a question her friends would never understand, prompting Mia to keep her illness a secret. The only one who knows is her lifelong best friend, Gyver, who is poised to be so much more. Mia is determined to survive, but when you have so much going your way, there is so much more to lose. From debut author Tiffany Schmidt comes a heart-wrenching and ultimately uplifting story of one girl’s search for signs of life in the face of death.