Tuesday Teaser

Tuesday Teaser is hosted by Should Be Reading and asks you to...
1. Grab your current read.
2. Let the book fall open to a random page.
3. Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page. You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
4. Please avoid spoilers!

They stared at each other with mounting frustration, each feeling righteous, misunderstood, resentful.

Todd slammed the spoon he had been holding down. "I've had it," he said, and stormed out.

--Waiting to Surface by Emily Listfield.

I am enjoying the book but it hasn't grabbed me like my last read and listen. The Help and Thirteen Reasons Why were both wonderful, and sometimes its hard to find a book to follow up great reads.

Review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

Wow! I flew through this book. It is a large book, over 450 pages, but it flows so well, and I was so engrossed in the story, that I read it in three days. The characters aren't only well written, they are all the type of character that linger with you after the end of the story. Once I finished The Help I actually waited until the next day to start another book because I wasn't ready to walk away from them quite yet.

One thing that I couldn't decide if I liked or not was that the book was written in first person, but the narrator changed every few chapters. In one way, I really liked it because it gave you more insight into each of the characters. On the other hand, it always took me a little while to get into the rhythm of the new narrator. The maid's portions are also written as they would speak, and at times I found this to be a little overdone.

All in all, I thought this was a very impressive debut. The characters emotions really came through, and I felt their anger, fear and hope right along with them. 4.5 stars

Order The Help

Winners Choice Giveaway

I have a backlog of ARCs that I've finished and want to share with others. So, it's time for another giveaway!

The winner will get to choose from the following list of ARCs:

--The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson (review)

--Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (review)

--The Help by Kathryn Stockett (review)

--Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell (review)

--One More Year by Sana Krasikov (review)

--Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein (review)

This list might grow a little bit as I look around. I thought I had a few more stored up...

Now for the rules:

--Leave a comment here for one entry

--Blog about the giveaway and link back here for a second entry

--Follow me or add me to your Google Reader for a third entry. Current subscribers are eligible for this too.

Please make sure you have a email address listed in your comment or on your profile. If I can't reach you, your entry won't count.

This contest will run until midnight Feb 22 and the winner will be chosen by random and posted on Feb 23. This contest is open worldwide for all books except The Help as it is quite large.

This Week in Books...

My book week started out a little slow, but I ended the week with some good ones in my mailbox!

Tuesday:
--The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner. This audiobook was a giveaway win from Rhapsody in Books

Wednesday:
--Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson from Borders
--Tomato Girl by Jane Pupek from Borders
--The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano from Hachette Books

Friday:
--The Last Time I Was Me by Cathy Lamb from Paperback Swap

This week I traveled a bit for work and was able to finish Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and The Survivor's Club by Ben Sherwood on audio. Those reviews will be up soon. I also really enjoyed The Help by Kathryn Stockett and will have its review up soon too.

Booking Through Thursday...Too Much Information?

Have you ever been put off an author’s books after reading a biography of them? Or the reverse - a biography has made you love an author more?

I won't usually read an author bio until after I've read a book. There isn't any real reason for this, except that I just don't think to read them. Usually what makes me flip to the back cover and read the blurb is something in the book that makes me wonder...where are they from? Have they always been an author, or did they have another career?

So, to actually answer the question, no I can't think of a specific instance that an author bio has turned me off or made me want to read everything they've written.

Do you have author's whose bios have turned you off on their books?

Review: The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson

Amy Dickinson has made a career out of helping others, through her internationally syndicated advice column "Ask Amy." Readers love her for her honesty, her small-town values, and for the fact that her motto is "I make the mistakes so you don't have to." In The Mighty Queens of Freeville, Amy Dickinson shares those mistakes and her remarkable story.

This is the tale of Amy and her daughter and the people who helped raise them after Amy found herself a reluctant single parent. Though divorce runs through her family like an aggressive chromosome, the women of her family taught her what family is about. They helped her to pick up the pieces when her life fell apart and to reassemble them into something new.

It is a story of frequent failures and surprising successes, as Amy starts and loses careers, bumbles through blind dates and adult education classes, travels across the country with her daughter and their giant tabby cat, and tries to come to terms with the family's aptitude for "dorkitude." Though they live in London, D.C., and Chicago, all roads lead them back to her hometown of Freeville (pop. 458), a tiny village where Amy's family has tilled and cultivated the land, tended chickens and Holsteins, and built houses and backyard sheds for more than 200 years.

Most important, though, her family members all still live within a ten-house radius of each other. With kindness and razor-sharp wit, they welcome Amy and her daughter back weekend after weekend, summer after summer, offering a moving testament to the many women who have led small lives of great consequence in a tiny place.

Amy Dickinson's memoir is a heartwarming story of family. While there are some tough times, like Amy's divorce and single parenthood, this upbeat book celebrates the love of family, particularly the special bond between female family members.

I found the writing in the book comfortable. It was like sitting down with a friend you haven't seen in a while and catching up. The writing was smooth and often had me chuckling at the small town antics and Amy's witty phrasing.

Growing up I didn't have the extended family that Amy had. It was wonderful to share her experience of walking a few blocks and visiting many family members. The small town atmosphere was charming and I highly recommend this memoir as a nice change of pace from the negativity of some memoirs. 4 stars

Order The Mighty Queens of Freeville: A Mother, a Daughter, and the Town That Raised Them

Review: Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster

Jen Lancaster was living the sweet life-until real life kicked her to the curb.

She had the perfect man, the perfect job-hell, she had the perfect life-and there was no reason to think it wouldn't last. Or maybe there was, but Jen Lancaster was too busy being manicured, pedicured, highlighted, and generally adored to notice.

This is the smart-mouthed, soul-searching story of a woman trying to figure out what happens next when she's gone from six figures to unemployment checks and she stops to reconsider some of the less-than-rosy attitudes and values she thought she'd never have to answer for when times were good.

Filled with caustic wit and unusual insight, it's a rollicking read as speedy and unpredictable as the trajectory of a burst balloon.

One of my (unofficial) goals this year is to finally read some books which have been buried on my TBR shelves. If I had know how funny this one was, I wouldn't have waited so long to read it.

Lancaster is (admittedly) quite nasty at times. But even with her foul mouth and self-centered attitude I still found myself laughing out loud more than once. This story isn't all about her nastiness though and I found myself rooting for her too!

This memoir is a fun, fast read and is a nice change from some of the heavier memoirs I usually read. 4 stars

Order Bitter is the New Black : Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass,Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office