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July 10
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Holly
gave
 
to:
Princess Bubble (Hardcover)
by Kimberly Webb, Susan Johnston
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Holly said:
"Parents read to their children all the time; in fact, some expectant mothers read to their children while they are still in utero and one of the most popular things that parents read to their children are fairy tales.
One thing you will be slapped...more
Parents read to their children all the time; in fact, some expectant mothers read to their children while they are still in utero and one of the most popular things that parents read to their children are fairy tales.
One thing you will be slapped in the face with repeatedly while reading any fairy tale is that all fairy princesses find their prince and then live happily ever after. Of course most fairy tales were written so long ago that sure, finding a man and living your life together was the standard; but what you can absorb through watching just one episode of Sex and the City is that finding a man and living “happily ever after” is no longer the standard. Now, women can be without a man and still go on to pursue their careers, own their own home and most of all, be happy with who they are without needing the validation of having a man–And now there’s a fairy tale for the modern day life.
Princess Bubble is the fairy tale story of a princess who sees her friends find their princes, get married and live happily ever after all the while being told that she too must go out and find her prince charming. After searching high and low for the man of her dreams, she finds that she is happy just how she is–She has a career as a flight attendant, she has her very own castle (that is decorated just the way she likes it and she didn’t have to give up an entire room in that castle for her prince to make into a den or a rec room, by the way,) and best of all, she is happy with herself and her life without needing to find a prince.
This story is a must-read for both children and for adult women, in my opinion. It is a cute story and it validates women for the wonderful people that they are–And not because they attracted the attention of the right man. What I also liked about this story is that it did not mention that in order for Princess Bubble to be happy living her life without a man, she had to go out and get a lot of cats. The crazy cat lady stereotype may now be put to rest!...less
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Holly
gave
to:
All About Vee (Paperback)
by C. Leigh Purtill
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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read in May, 2008
Holly said:
"Veronica May is a pretty standard teenager. At eighteen years old, she is bubbly, caring and has a few great friends known as ‘The Vees,’ named simply after the first letter in all of their first names. She is a confident actress, star of her sch...more
Veronica May is a pretty standard teenager. At eighteen years old, she is bubbly, caring and has a few great friends known as ‘The Vees,’ named simply after the first letter in all of their first names. She is a confident actress, star of her school and city theater in her hometown of Chester, Arizona and she is absolutely gorgeous–All 217 pounds of her.
While Veronica loves her life in Chester, she loves the spotlight even more and craves the success that as a big city actor, she knows she could achieve.
Once her father, a widower librarian, decides to finally marry his girlfriend of ten years and the city theater casting a play in which there are no female lead roles, Veronica feels as if she is being replaced not only in her household, but in her whole city. With her father’s reluctance to talk to Veronica about her deceased mother and provide his child with any closure, she decides to make her dream of being a successful actress a reality after finding some old letters that her mother had written her father in the attic. Veronica learns that her mother was also an aspiring actress who left her life in a little city in pursuit of becoming successful in LA–And that is just where Veronica heads to start her big city life.
Veronica drives to LA and stays with one of her childhood friends and fellow Vee and soon learns that life in LA is nothing like she had imagined and that in order to be a successful actress, you don’t merely have to be good at acting. While learning the ropes of this new city and spending her life savings on head shots and a myriad of acting, yoga and movement classes, Veronica realizes that being confident and talented are the least sought after attributes when it comes to being an actress.
Struggling with sending head shots, waiting for call backs and going on cattle calls and auditions, Veronica starts working as a barista and makes friends with two other fellow actors. She loves her job at the coffee shop and her new friends, but her attraction to the manager is also weighing down hard on her path to stardom.
All About Vee is a must-read book for all young teenage girls, in my opinion, for the simple fact that Purtill illustrates how women who aren’t a size 0 are treated not only in LA and not only because they are striving to become actresses, but all across this country. She gives the weight epidemic that plagues so many young girls a story and luckily, Veronica does not change a thing about her weight throughout the book, which I was impressed with.
Through her time in LA, Veronica learns that those who you think are your friends can change and become people you don’t want to associate yourself with, that people can be brutal and backstabbing and to always remember who the people that love you are because those will be the people who want and help you to succeed in life....less
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Holly
gave
to:
Please Excuse My Daughter: A Memoir (Hardcover)
by Julie Klam (Goodreads author!)
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in July, 2008
Holly said:
"Allow me to preface this review by stating the fact that typically, I enjoy memoirs. Memoirs, in my opinion, mark the struggles, triumphs, courage and stamina of a person. They signify a life that has truly been lived and allow a person to share thei...more
Allow me to preface this review by stating the fact that typically, I enjoy memoirs. Memoirs, in my opinion, mark the struggles, triumphs, courage and stamina of a person. They signify a life that has truly been lived and allow a person to share their lives with others who may benefit from reading their story.
Julie Klam was born and raised in a Jewish family where her mother and many other Jewish wives and women in general believed that women did not work. Instead, they married rich men, spent their husband’s money on luxuries that purely benefit the way they look and eat and nothing else and have a few children before they are expected to get a job and contribute to their families. Julie was not only raised in this lifestyle, she inhabited this lifestyle and truly made it her own.
Her mother frequently took her out of school so she could go shopping and wear the best clothes out of all of the girls she went to school with because she was raised thinking that that was the important part of life–The best clothes, the best hair, the best nails and so on. Because of her upbringing, Julie did not receive the education that she deserved as a young child growing up.
As every adult knows, there comes a time when you need to become an adult; to grow up and take responsibility for your life and eventually, for your family. Sadly, Julie Klam never did break away from the way she was raised and instead, formed a lifestyle around fear and laziness.
On the back cover of Julie Klam’s memoir, Please Excuse My Daughter, you will see a laundry list of pseudo-accomplishments. She had attended NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where it was a requirement of hers to watch a countless number of movies. She was an intern at Late Night with David Letterman, she landed her first “real” job at VH1 on the popular music video show, Pop Up Video, where she met and later married the show’s producer, Paul Leo. It was for Pop Up Video that she received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Special Class Writing; however, as good as “Emmy Nominated Writer” looks by your name, she simply received that nomination in conjunction with the rest of the writing staff of the show. Since then, she was also published in O: The Oprah Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour and Rolling Stone, although you learn in her book that her close friend works for Rolling Stone, so it is obvious to see how she landed that gig.
Julie Klam’s life has been a series of excuses. Excuses as to why she had never had a real job that she could stick with and not because she simply enjoys the life of freelancing, but because she is simply incapable of being an adult. Throughout her memoir, where at 257 pages, was 256 pages too long, Julie whines, complains and feels sorry for herself for not being able to highlight her hair or go to Saks; she is truly her mother’s daughter.
Julie Klam simply wrote an entire memoir based upon what most “mommy bloggers” are writing about now, yet most mommy bloggers are far more entertaining and don’t lose their reader after a few posts. As a matter of a fact, Heather Armstrong of Dooce did write a book and from what I have been hearing, it’s a hell of a lot more interesting to a broader range of people than what the reviews of Please Excuse My Daughter are receiving across the board.
While Please Excuse My Daughter is written very well and some of the times is absolutely hilarious, Julie Klam’s memoir is long, dry and sticks to your throat as you try to swallow it. In my (most humble) opinion, I believe that the next time Julie Klam finds herself in another slump and needs money desperately, instead of writing a memoir (because this one surely is not going to make her the millions she lies awake dreaming of at night) she should opt for children’s books. She has a wonderful sense of humor and a talent for writing humor and should apply her talents to something not so involved; something that will not let her drag out a story and pretend it is epic when it simply falls flat.
Taken from Julie’s own blog, in a post written about Goodreads, a site where people are able to keep track of the books they want to read, have read and write reviews, you can tell what a self-assured woman Klam is when she responds to those who do not enjoy her book and agree with her that she is brilliant by saying, “…I’m thinking of leaving the Author Program, too, because I want to write nasty things to people who give my book low ratings and I don’t want them to know it’s me. (Like “Sorry, I didn’t write the book for half-wits.”)
You know?”...less
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May 29
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Holly
gave
to:
A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids (Hardcover)
by Margot Datz
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in May, 2008
Holly said:
"Margot Datz is a self-taught painter, sculptor, interior designer and prolific writer whose imagery and beautifully crafted metaphors whisk those who read her words away, almost immediately.
As a woman who lives by the sea and spends her life crea...more
Margot Datz is a self-taught painter, sculptor, interior designer and prolific writer whose imagery and beautifully crafted metaphors whisk those who read her words away, almost immediately.
As a woman who lives by the sea and spends her life creating genius pieces of art, including a spectacular eighty-five-foot mural and bas-relief installation for the Arkansas Children’s Hospital and illustrations for four children’s books for friend Carly Simon, her talent is apparent and defined in her book, A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids.
Her book, while it may first look like a typical children’s book, is filled with the wisdom a woman learns through years of life experience. She advises that in order to even think about a man in your life, you must first not only accept, but truly love yourself, faults and all. She also goes through the types and behaviors of men and reminds us all that love is a luxury to have in one’s life.
While Datz advises us women on all of life’s little setbacks and luxuries, she also reminds us that it’s important to also focus on the fun stuff, like accessories and sexy lingerie that makes a woman feel her absolute best and it’s always important to be a little naughty.
I really enjoyed reading A Survival Guide for Landlocked Mermaids. It’s a cute and quick read, while also being inspirational and eye-opening for all women who have the pleasure of picking up this book....less
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May 11
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Holly
added:
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Paperback)
by Gregory Maguire
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my rating:
Added to my books!
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May 05
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Holly
marked as to-read:
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Paperback)
by Elizabeth Gilbert
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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May 04
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Holly
marked as to-read:
Change of Heart (Hardcover)
by Jodi Picoult
bookshelves:
to-read
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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May 03
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Holly
gave
to:
Heart-Shaped Box: A Novel (Hardcover)
by Joe Hill
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in May, 2008
Holly said:
" I had never heard of Joe Hill, the offspring of Stephen King who wrote this novel under a pen name because he did not want to gain attention to his work for the sole reason that he is Stephen King’s son, until my grandmother, a Stephen King fanati...more
I had never heard of Joe Hill, the offspring of Stephen King who wrote this novel under a pen name because he did not want to gain attention to his work for the sole reason that he is Stephen King’s son, until my grandmother, a Stephen King fanatic, told me a little about the book when she was a quarter of the way through it. After she had finished she lent me the book and I wearily took it and began my journey into the life of Judas Coyne, an ex-rocker with a wicked taste for paranormal items and much younger women.
Heart-Shaped Box opens with a run of the mill, usual day of a retired rock star, Judas Coyne, his clerk and annoying friend by business-association and his goth fan-girl girlfriend whom he refers to as Georgia, that being the state in which he picked her up in while on tour with his band. The only thing remotely intriguing about this washed up rocker living in a desolate section of the United States in a farm house is his collection of occult and otherwise eerie knick knacks that fans had sent him over the years.
Judas’ attraction to so-called haunted objects has over the years evolved into an entire room full of random junk that most likely isn’t worth keeping around, but who he had built himself into being over the years on the road with his band is a man in which the goth lifestyle flocked to–And it had obviously stuck with him years after the other members of his band died off and disappeared. When his clerk sees a haunted suit online, Judas doesn’t think twice before telling him to get it. Days later, the suit arrives in a heart-shaped box and the horror, ghost-chasing story unravels.
Heart-Shaped Box is not the great horror story in which people have been claiming; it is however, a horror story that is about the same caliber of a Stephen King novel–And not his early work, which was what had built King to be known as a great horror story teller. This novel, while interesting and captivating at first, begins to drag on by the time you reach the middle of the story. While Hill is describing light, smells, temperature and feelings, you start to think to yourself “Yeah, I get it, now on with it!” This feeling is nothing short of what is felt while reading a recently published King novel.
Hill’s attention to detail is either an attribute beloved by readers or an attribute that can be seen as nothing but a writer wanting to write a novel instead of a novella. While his detailed explanations and back story of the characters is thorough, I found myself more interested in the story of Coyne’s girlfriend, Georgia; or Marybeth as we later begin to refer to her as, while my interest in the main character simply went stale, leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
While I can respect that Hill used a pen name in order to separate himself from his father and publish his novel by himself, this story runs dry way too early in order to be called a great horror story and it can easily be seen that the majority of Hill’s interest in horror stories and writing them came from his father. This novel reads as if Hill simply read Stephen King’s instructional writing book, On Writing, and decided to try on the novelist’s suit for a while....less
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Holly made a comment on Ally's profile:
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The Rory Gilmore Book Club
— 1195 members
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