My Book Retreat

I want to start today by honoring all of the servicemen and women who have given their lives for their country, and thank you to those who continue to put their lives in danger to protect ours. I hope all of my readers are spending time with loved ones this weekend. My daughter and I have had a very lazy weekend reading and watching all eight Harry Potter movies. We were supposed to be in Tennessee with my husband and son, but M has been sick and so we stayed home. Thankfully, her fever is finally gone, after five full days of temps in the 102-104 range. She'll be heading back to school tomorrow; she hasn't been since last Tuesday! What I'm reading I finished the middle-grade book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. I then read Mystic Summer by Hannah McKinnon and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Seltzner. Now I am reading The Red Tent by Anita Diamant at the recommendation of Andrea from Good Girl Gone Redneck . The K

It's time once again for the Big Book Summer Reading Challenge hosted by Sue at Book By Book. I love this challenge because I honestly tend to avoid big books (over 400 pages) so this gives me a little extra motivation to read a couple each year. The rules are pretty easy. You need to read at least one book that's over 400 pages from the US Memorial Day weekend (starting May 27 this year) through Labor Day weekend (Labor Day is September 5 this year). That's about it. I have two big books planned so far. First is The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, mostly because my daughter has it out from the library right now and it will be a bit of a cheat since half the book is pictures! I figure that's a nice way to ease into this challenge! I also plan to read The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey. I'll read this one during the Sci-Fi Summer Read-a-Thon the first week of June. After that, I'm not sure. But I do plan to read at least one or two othe

It's been another two weeks. These weekly posts are tough to keep going lately. And I have not been writing reviews. I love to write reviews and share my thoughts about books so I need to get back into the groove soon! Work has been crazy busy and at the end of the day, I just can't bring myself to turn my personal computer on and start typing. I have been keeping up with reading though, and lots of wasted time perusing Facebook... And at some point I really will sit down and write some reviews! I truly appreciate all of you who are continuing to read my posts when I get around to writing them. What I'm reading It took me two weeks, but I finished The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton. I loved it. Definitely a 5 star book for me (in case you're wondering and it takes me a month to write the review!). Now I'm reading a middle-grade book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. It's very different than I expected but I'm e

It's Monday again. Boy are the weeks flying by now! My kids only have a few more weeks of school left. It's hard to believe that summer will be here soon. We have trips books to Tennessee and New York City these next couple months. It should be fun! My kids haven't been to NYC yet so I'm excited to finally take them. We're going to see Phantom of the Opera and Wicked on Broadway. And we're planning a trip to the Statue of Liberty, which my husband and I have never done despite many trips to the city. What I'm reading I'm still reading Secret Keeper by Kate Morton. I thought I'd get further in it but ended up having a more active Mother's Day weekend rather than sitting around reading the whole time! I plan to finish it this week and move on to a middle-grade book The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. My son read it a while ago and I've been wanting to get to it. It's based on an adult memoir but

Mike Dormer leaves London for Australia to secure a location for his company's next big hotel development. Silver Bay is the perfect place to build the high-end resort, since the only other accommodation in the area is the old ramshackle Silver Bay Hotel. But after spending a little time at this quiet hotel, getting to know the natives and learning about the wildlife in the area, Mike begins to wonder if this really is the best place for the larger-than-life resort. He also begins to question if the life he's living in London is really what he wants. Silver Bay by Jojo Moyes is a character-driven story that drops Mike right into the lives of the hotel's owner, Kathleen, her niece Liza and Liza's daughter, who all live in the hotel. The others who live in the area and run the dolphin and whale watching boats add to the intriguing cast of characters. All of their lives are entwined with the bay and they are all passionate about protecting the whales as they migrate

Good evening. I decided it was time for another reading update. I didn't post last week because I hadn't made much progress with reading, but this past week was a much better one for me. I have actually gotten a good deal of reading done in that time. Aside from reading, work has been taking up a lot of time. I took on a new role about a year ago and many of you will have noticed that my blogging and reading slowed down significantly over time. It's hard to sit down at a computer and type blog posts after sitting at a computer all day. But I do still take plenty of time for reading. It just takes me a few days to write a single post now (as in the case of this one that I started 48 hours ago). What I'm reading Since my last update, I finished The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. I skipped a few chapters in the middle because that's the only way I could bring myself to finish it. I'm not going to write a full review for this, but I will say that I