Fruitcake Reads: I am Number Four

The first time I heard mention of I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore was by Miss Zoot.  She was talking about wanting to hurry up and finish reading it so she could see the movie when it came out.  I looked the book up and put it on my soon to read list in my head and then forgot about it.  Then I saw the movie trailer and remembered I wanted to read it, put it on my to read list in my head and forgot about it again.

I finally picked it up to read a couple weeks ago and promptly devoured it in a couple days.  It isn't a completely original idea and at some points it definitely feels like you have already read it, but still a good summer read.

I Am Number Four centers around a 15 year old boy, John Smith, who just wants to fit in and have a regular high school life.  But he is an alien and is developing special super powers so he is also having to hide all of that from his peers, friends, and girlfriend.  Oh and he is being hunted by another set of aliens who want to kill him.

This is apparently part of a developing series of books, centering around these teenage aliens with superpowers. I didn't love the ending of the book; it felt rather contrived and used, but I think if the series was read together, it would probably be better.

What are you reading?  Read anything good lately?

Fruitcake Reads: Heaven is for Real

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There tends to be very little rhyme or reason to the books I pick up to read.  I like Young Adult, Children's, Adult, fiction, non-fiction.  I like to read and chances are, if a book is recommended to me, I will eventually read it.  A month or so ago, I saw/ heard no less than five people recommend Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo in one week.  I immediately put it on reserve at the library and waited.

Basic premise of the book is that Burpo's son had a near-death experience when he was three or four years old and slowly reveals details to his parents about who and what he saw in heaven.  Hey, you know what?  I like reading about near-death experiences, I like reading things kids say, I'm curious about heaven.  All that should make for a definite "I recommend this book.  Run, buy, and read this! I'm buying 20 copies and giving it as a gift to everyone I know."  But it didn't.

The meat of the story had a lot of potential, but I felt like I was listening to the longest sermon/ homily in the world.  Burpo is a preacher though and not an author, so I understand why it sounded like that.  I just think having someone else help them tell their story and make it more of a story, with details and feeling, would have made for a better book.  The book got 4.5 stars on Amazon right now though so I may be the only one thinking that.  

The breakdown, I wouldn't not recommend Heaven is for Real, but I won't be purchasing my own copy.  I think I had just set too high of expectations for it.

Fruitcake Reads: Still Alice

I'm constantly on the look out for new things to read. Often times when I run across blogs in my reader talking about books, I immediately read the description and if it sounds like something I would  enjoy, I have an ongoing note in my phone that I add it to.  Then when my stack on my nightstand dwindles down, I check out the next couple books on my note.

I must have added Still Alice to my note months ago because I had no idea what I was getting into when I started reading it.  Honestly, I thought it something about Alice in Wonderland or I probably wouldn't have picked it up to read at this moment in my life.  It struck just a bit too close to home with everything going on with Grandy right now.  With that being said though, it was still a good book and I enjoyed it.

Lisa Genova, noted neuroscientist and Alzheimer's researcher, writes a very accurate portrayal of what is like to have Alzheimer's.  Still Alice is about an esteemed psychologist from Harvard named Alice who starts experiencing bits of memory loss that we all do- can't find her phone, inability to find her words, forgets to have certain converasations with her husband .  Then she realizes it is something much bigger when she forgets to go on a business trip.  You follow along with her from the little mind slips to the diagnosis to see how her family learns the diagnosis and prognosis and how they deal and try to handle it to her memory loss becoming more severe and eventually her not remembering who her family is.

A very good book, albeit scary and heartbreaking.

Fruitcake Reads: The Next Queen of Heaven and a couple others

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Keary got me this book for Christmas because he knows how much I love Gregory Maguire's books.  Wicked is one of my my all-time favorite books, and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister ranks pretty highly too.  So, even though I had not heard of The Next Queen of Heaven, I was excited to read it.

The previous books of Maguire's that I have read were fantasy-based.  The Next Queen of Heaven was based in reality and centers around several people living in a small town in New York who don't really fit in and are anticipating Y2K and changes in their lives.  This was a good book, but I think I prefer his fantasy books.  The characters and plot just felt a little lacking: the characters were normal, regular people like you and me, and the plot and actions seemed that way too.  Some people may love a story like that, but I prefer to escape the regular and normal when I read.

Would I recommend it?  If you are a fan of Maguire's, sure, just be prepared that it isn't fantasy based.  If you   read the back cover and are intrigued, do read.  It delivers just what the back cover indicates it will.  

I've read four more books over the past couple months.  The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins was fantastic and I can't even come up with fitting enough words for a review.  I went into reading them not thinking I would like it, but since it was so highly recommended, I wanted to try it.  Oh my!  Loved it!  The writing style wasn't my favorite not was the subject matter, but it all fit so well together and worked out.  Read them.

Another highly recommended book was The Book Thief.  I wanted to like it, but I couldn't get into it.  I read about half of it, but reading started feeling like a chore and I stopped.  Maybe I will come back to it in a few months, maybe it just wasn't for me. 

Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

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Knowing I am a fan of the pioneer woman, Keary surprised me with this book for valentine's day. Honestly, I had planned on waiting until I was able to check it out from the library to read it, particularly since she already posted about she and the Marlboro Man met, their courtship, and wedding, but I was still tickled to get it.

Ree's writing and storytelling makes the reader feel and experience the story as she tells it. She comes across as very genuine and personable so much so that when she writes about sweating buckets and having to strip naked to cool off in the bathroom at the marlboro man's cousin's wedding, you both feel for her and feel like it is happening to you.  I'll venture to guess that she isn't just coming across that way either, and she truly is that way.

Black Heels to Tractor Wheels is a lovely story, and I can only guess how special it will be to their children and grandchildren later on to be able to read their parents' love story.  I'd like to be able to tell a story like that later on, but I don't think Keary and my story is nearly as interesting or swoon-worthy.

The one thing I missed in the book was Ree's pictures and photography.  I know pictures aren't generally included in novels, but I think an insert in the middle would have been fantastic.

Overall, a great story I would recommend to others.

Infinite Days

I never had much of a problem with not being able to sleep before I had kids.  Very occasionally I might have trouble falling asleep if I had watched a scary movie that night or overindulged in caffeine.  But generally, I could wake up a few minutes before time to go to work, work 8 hours, come home and nap, and still be in bed asleep by 11pm.  And then I had kids and they forever changed my body chemistry, making me an insomniac more nights than I care to be.

There are lots of things that change when you have kids.  People just do not share all the details about all the changes that occur when you become a parent.  I don't know entirely why, but I expect I'll get a reprimanded for even sharing that tiny bit.

Lately I regularly have nights of insomnia.  A breastfeeding toddler who wakes up with teething pains and anxiety about things going on in our family add to it greatly.  There is not much I can do when I can't sleep either because I need to let the rest of the family sleep, so I can't do anything useful like clean, craft, or work out.  That pretty much leaves me with a) watching tv or b) reading.  I do my fair share of watching television.  I am probably one of the few who likes infomercials, but watching infomercials leads to buying, ie spending money I shouldn't so I try not to do that too much.  (I am going to order this someday though.  Unless you have recommendations for a different steamer/ know a vac won't work on a house with a dog.)

The other night I read Infinite Days by Rebecca Maizel.  It was another book my sister-in-law got me, and I'll be honest, I did not have high hopes of it.  I was pleasantly surprised by it though and enjoyed reading it.  It is yet another young adult, vampire-centric book, but unlike the many books before it, it didn't rave on the glories of being a vampire and no werewolves made any debuts.  (Another surprise, I totally expected the love interest to end up being a werewolf or supernatural being of some sort.  The main character went on and on about how beautiful and Adonis-like he was, so I figured he'd transform sooner or later.)  And **SPOILER*** I didn't get from the ending of the book, that the main character lived and would have thought she died had the beginning of the sequel not spelled out that she had lived.  In the end though, I still enjoyed the book and will check out it's sequel from the library when it is released in June-ish.

Matched

I'm a reader. I have been an avid reader since first grade when everything clicked and I figured out how.  I don't get to read quite as much now because the girls seem to see my sitting down with a book as time to a) need something only I can get them, b) try to steal said book, c) time to tell me a story.  And really it isn't just the girls who do it, Keary and Waylon are guilty too.  But I read as often as I can.

My sister-in-law is a reader too and has taken to getting me books for Christmas and my birthday.  I think she generally gets a book that she has heard good things about and would like to read.  She got me The Time Traveler's Wife, which I absolutely loved and boo-hooed through.  I borrowed the Twilight Series from her and enjoyed reading and snarking them.  (Except for Breaking Dawn, that... was not good.  And I will forever be irked by the whole Bella-birth scene.)  We both loved Harry Potter.  This year she got me Matched.

Matched is the first book is a series or trilogy.  It is set around a teenage girl in a post-modern society where very little is left up for a person to decide.  She is given a card with the information regarding who her mate is going to be and it is her best friend or it seems maybe she would have been matched with someone else she knows if he had been supposed to match.  I wanted to like this book.  It had an okay premise, but it just felt like the ideas weren't fully developed or explained well.  I did appreciate that at least Cassia (the main character) wasn't a weakling and letting things happen around her.  In that respect, she reminded me some of Katniss from the Hunger Games trilogy (I'm still reading this series, I'm about halfway through Catching Fire right now. Please don't spoil me.) It just felt like I knew were the story was going from the beginning.  Since it is a series though, things may be better explained and developed in the coming book.

The breakdown- Matched isn't awful, but feels like there is a lot of wasted potential in the story.  I probably would not recommend it to a friend, but I also wouldn't warn them to not read it either (a la Breaking Dawn).