Showing posts with label JK Rowling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JK Rowling. Show all posts

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Summer Reading



Hello friends.

Are you staying cool?
It is hot here in Pennsylvania. 
I took a picture of the temperature in my car which I will use to remind myself every time I complain its too cold this coming winter.
This heat is made worse by the fact that I am pretty sure I am pre menopausal because I have been having terrible hot flashes.
But thats not what I want to talk about because I do have at least one male loyal reader Andrew and I am certain he has no interest in talking about hot flashes. 

I have been keeping a list of books that I would like to read this summer.
Some of the books are books I meant to read in the winter but never got to.
I am a little disappointed in how short my list is.
Usually by this time I have a whole pile of books that I plan to read but sadly this year I have no pile and only a few titles written on a scrap of paper.
I thought I would maybe share with you my list and hopefully you can give me a few to add.




Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Barnes and Noble Overview:
 On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? 




Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand 
(she is my summer reading staple)

Barnes and Noble Overview:
 A warm June evening, a local tradition: the students of Nantucket High have gathered for a bonfire on the beach. But what begins as a graduation night celebration ends in tragedy after a horrible car crash leaves the driver of the car, Penny Alistair, dead, and her twin brother in a coma. The other passengers, Penny's boyfriend Jake and her friend Demeter, are physically unhurt - but the emotional damage is overwhelming, and questions linger about what happened before Penny took the wheel.
As summer unfolds, startling truths are revealed about the survivors and their parents - secrets kept, promises broken, hearts betrayed. Elin Hilderbrand explores the power of community, family, and honesty, and proves that even from the ashes of sorrow, new love can still take flight.



She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb 
(one of my hold overs from the winter)

Barnes and Noble Overview:
In this extraordinary coming-of-age odyssey, Wally Lamb invites us to hitch a wild ride on a journey of love, pain, and renewal with the most heartbreakingly comical heroine to come along in years. Meet Dolores Price. She's 13, wise-mouthed but wounded, having bid her childhood goodbye. Stranded in front of her bedroom TV, she spends the next few years nourishing herself with the Mallomars, potato chips, and Pepsi that her anxious mother supplies. When she finally orbits into young womanhood at 257 pounds, Dolores is no stronger and life is no kinder. But this time she's determined to rise to the occasion and give herself one more chance before she really goes under.


I also preordered Jennifer Hillier's new book 
Freak
which I am excited to read. It somes out 8/7

Barnes and Noble Overview: 

Sitting alone in a maximum-security prison cell, Abby Maddox is a celebrity. Her claim to fame is the envy of every freak on the outside: she’s the former lover of Ethan Wolfe, the killer who left more than a dozen dead women in his wake and nearly added Puget Sound State professor Sheila Tao to the tally. Now Abby, serving a nine-year sentence for slashing a police officer’s throat in a moment of rage, has little human contact—save for the letters that pour in from demented fans, lunatics, and creeps. But a new wave of murders has given Abby a possible chance for a plea bargain—because this killer has been sending her love letters, and carving a message on the bodies of the victims: Free Abby Maddox.



Odd Apocalypse by Dead Koontz comes out 7/30
I love the Odd Thomas series so I am very excited for this book.

Barnes and Noble Overview:

In advance of the much-buzzed Odd Thomas major motion picture, Odd Apocalypse chronicles Odd Thomas’s most riveting adventure to date, as his mysterious journey of suspense and discovery moves to a dangerous new level. The Odd Thomas series is kicked into overdrive as Odd confronts deadly adversaries in a decaying estate straight out of Sunset Boulevard.


And another preorder but it doesn't come out until 9/27 so its not really a summer read is the much anticipated JK Rowling release
The Casual Vacancy

Barnes and Noble Overview: 

When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock
Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.
Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils...Pagford is not what it first seems.
And the empty seat left by Barry on the town's council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?


And that is it.
Not much of a long list this summer.

Do you have any you would like to recommend?


I am reading: The Breath of God by Jeffrey Small


Thursday, July 14, 2011

Harry Potter and the WHAT DO I HAVE TO LIVE FOR NOW?!

Heeeeeeelllllllooooooo people of the internet! TODAY, my friends, today is the day. The day of excitement and tears. Laughs....and wanting to rip my heart out. Heart warming overwhelming happiness...and then a never ending spiral of depression into a black abyss. In case you haven't figured this out yet, I am of course talking about the premiere to the final Harry Potter movie.

And in case you haven't figured this out yet either, this is not the woman that you know and love, this is her daughter, Amber. I don't know if you've heard of me because she rarely ever mentions me, her favorite child, on her blog. All joking aside, my loving and caring mother decided that she wanted to surround herself in Harry Potter books, clothes, and movies today and allow the nostalgia to overcome her. So because of this, her blogging duties got passed down to me, her totally awesome daughter.

Anyway, back to business. The premiere's of the movie in NYC and London legitimately made me cry. I was watching them on a livestream and completely bawling my eyes out, as my brother watched and looked at me like I lost my mind. But the argument that I am a bigger Harry Potter fan then either my mom or my brother is a story for another day, today I just wanted to call out a few random things I was thinking about as I remember my entire childhood before midnight tonight when it ends:

1. At the London premiere when Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) came out and walked the red carpet THE ENTIRE CROWD started singing "Snape, Snape, Severus Snape" from the Potter Puppet Pals. (If you haven't watched "The Mysterious Ticking Noise" please promptly go to YouTube and check it out. I'll wait........finished? Good. Moving On). It was probably the funniest thing I have ever seen, and then he told the interviewer that he indeed knew the song and thought that the writers should be millionaires. Which was very nice of him, if I say so myself.

2. MATTHEW LEWIS. Oh My Rowling, Neville Longbottom you looked so so soooo perfect. This man deserves an award for Most Triumphant Emergence Through Puberty, I...I have no more words. I'm taking the next plane to London to marry him.


3. Moving on from the premiere's I just want to say that I think that Draco Malfoy's character is brillant in the books and movies. And Yes, I know that this is the unpopular opinion but I think that Malfoy is in the end the most complex character in the series. Where Harry has no other choice but to be good all the time because of the people he surrounds himself with. Malfoy, one the other hand, is just a misunderstood kid with a father that didn't really care for him and on top of that they are in the circle with the Dark Lord. He had no choice but to be bad. You feel so bad for him because you can tell that it's not what he wants, he so conflicted because of what he knows is right and how he knows he is supposed to act. You see this more towards the end of the series, and it absolutely just breaks your heart. You wanna just give the boy a hug to make everything all better.

4. Oliver Wood. I need more Oliver Wood, all the time. He should be in all the movies and books. AND NO! This is not biased because of my infatuation with Sean Biggerstaff and how I imagine him whisking me away to his home in Scotland and having beautiful little babies with him. He is so determined with his quidditch playing and he thinks the best out of people, which is something that you really look for in a decent person...or a husband.

5. WHERE IS PEEVES?!? The poltergeist, Peeves, is for some unknown reason missing from the movies. Why you may ask? I have absolutely no idea, they have all of those other useless ghosts there but they don't have the trouble-making, hysterical Peeves? For shame, for shame.

6.  The fact that they wear muggle clothes practically the entire time in the movies makes me really irritated. If i ever meet Alfonso Cuaron (the director who made it that they don't have to wear their robes) I will punch him straight in the nose. They are not supposed to do that! They don't even know how to dress like normal muggles in the book, whenever the Weasley's go out in public they look disheveled and terrible because they're no supposed to know how to properly dress. WHY WHY WHY.

But I digress, I will not go on a rant about what I would change and what I would keep about the movies in relation to the books. And you do not want to hear my rant about what a terrible actress Bonnie Wright (Ginny Weasley) is. So I will leave you here, to go about your day as you will, I will take no more of your time.

Tonight at midnight, my entire childhood will end and my skeleton will lie in the cinema forever. Just kidding, but really my mom will most likely have to drag me out of the theater because I will be clinging to my chair refusing to believe that it is all over.


Amber
 
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