FRANK!
Title: Frank
Author/Illustrator: Connah Brecon
Publisher: Running Press Kids
Available for Purchase: October 2014
“Frank was late. Frank was always late,” Brecon’s book begins.
Frank! is full of dance parties, lizard king invasions, and a school teacher that won’t quit. It’s a lot of fun and a great way to discuss timeliness, pocket watches, and working together with your kiddo.
We read this over the summer for kid’s story time at Half Price Books Humble and one of our favorite features of the story are the three pigeons who follow Frank the Bear everywhere. We enjoying scoping them out and finding them napping against a tree trunk on one page and lurking on a fence board on another.
Brecon has other picture books, but this is his first to be published in the United States. He lives in Australia, and we were pretty excited to get a chance to review his debut book. Kiddo thought Frank! was pretty exciting and she can be seen “reading” the book here on the left (she’s not yet four in this picture). The other kiddo at story time that day was looking through another title we received earlier that month. We’re pleased with our first experience with Running Press Kids and look forward to more of their publications in the future.
Things That Burn Me ‘Bout My Kindle
I love reading on my kindle. I wasn’t sure that I would, but I do. Somehow, once you get the darn thing to work, it goes a little faster. Since acquiring my own, I’ve already read 7 titles. There’s a reason that statistically kindle users read more than non-kindle users. There’s more access, they’re conveniently portable, and there’s lots of free stuff to download so it’s poor people friendly. (Trips to the library use gas.)
But that’s IF you can stay connected to the wifi. Clearly, I’m on my wifi now – typing this onto my online blog. My kindle, however, can’t find the connection. Can’t make the connection. When I do have a connection I download everything I can as fast as I can because there’s no telling when it will disappear. I CAN guarantee that it will disappear if I plug my device into my computer to manage documents or to charge it. As soon as I unplug, I have to set it all back up again.
When I have a connection, it loves to download things I didn’t ask for. Those pages at the end of books that invite you to read other stuff the author has written? Yeah, avoid them like the plague unless you have plenty of money and really love the author. You even blink at that page and it will download the book. I called customer service and the very helpful people un-downloaded it for me and returned my money… for the book I had already read instead of the one I didn’t want. I had to call back and say, “Nope, you got the wrong one. I need that book, I should be charged for that book as I already read it… it’s the OTHER one I don’t want.” Currently I don’t have either. Despite their speediness in answering phones (no lengthy wait times for these awesome people), I am not looking forward to calling yet again.
You would think this is user error. I thought so too. Clearly, it’s me we’re talking about here. Technology is not my strong point. However, I can read directions. I can navigate myself around websites, and I READ. (Also, there are tons of online complaints about the same issues I’m having.) More and more I’m finding that technology is not my strong suit because there always seems to be something wrong with it. Computers always get viruses. Phones drop calls. The electronic features in your car leave you trapped inside after a car accident because the door won’t open and the paramedics have to pull you through a window (true story); the electronics features in your (different) car stop working and the window just FALLS down while you’re driving down the highway. Kindles forget how to find their wifi. It’s not so much that I’m ANTI-tech… it’s that it is only worth it to me when the tech is actually making my life easier, not more difficult. Yay! I read 7 books on my kindle. They were great books! I enjoyed my time with them. But were it not for my extensive physical library, I’d be out of reading material before bed tonight.
If YOU have a kindle, or are thinking about getting one, you might want to write this stuff down:
online:www.amazon.com/kindlesupport
e-mail:kindle-cs-support@amazon.com
phone: 1-866-321-8851 or 1-206-266-0927
There’s Something About Bungalows
Title:The Last Beach Bungalow
Author: Jennie Nash
Genre: Fiction
Length: 271 pages
I love beaches, and despite my father’s distaste for them, bungalows as well. So naturally, the cover of the book moved me the instant I saw it. But it took me awhile to sit down to read it. I was saving it. I was saving it for when I needed to lose myself in a fictional bungalow romance. The romance, of course, being with the house, not between people.
This is a beautiful story that Nash has written. All that is within is conveyed on the front cover except for the holiday aspect – the story revolves around Christmas time. But maybe that’s what Christmas looks like in California. I don’t know. I’ve never been there.
The story is about April Newton, a cancer survivor, who is building her dream home with her husband. Except she has an impression of her McMansion that stems from the state of her lackluster life, and instead she seeks wisdom and warmth from a beach bungalow.
The owner of this 1928 original bungalow is seeking a buyer with heart. What would you give – besides money – to live here? Bring your offers, your stories, and a promise to preserve and protect. Winner will pay $300,000.
The story is lovely. Lines like, “I wanted to hear the sadness out loud that I felt so silently in my bones,” trickle through and keep you turning the page. It’s about coldness and warmth, on a level beyond the skin, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But my favorite part was at the end, in the reader’s guide, when the publisher thought to ask teary eyed book clubbers: “Have you ever fallen in love at first sight with anything or anyone – a person, a dress, a dog, or a house?”
Yes. Several times over, yes. With a dog (a beagle, Geoffrey Chaucer), with a bike (a 1960’s Sears Cruiser), with two of my previous homes, and finally – the most appropriate answer – a bungalow.
Recently, we’ve been home hunting. We’ve been redefining our dreams, our lives, our priorities. Is it stuff? Is it land? Is it the right neighborhood or is it being debt free? I’ve dreamed of beaches in Georgia, of hole in the wall houses in Galveston, of land in the country, of many places… but briefly, I was madly in love with a bungalow being sold by a widow – just like in the story, but there was no contest.
It had teal trim, just down the road from a university I once planned on attending. It was for auction as is for $55k. There were fig and citrus trees in the back, just behind a box garden that was just beyond a patio I could have lounged on for hours. There was a lean-to that had been enclosed to make a faux laundry room and I nearly cried with glee when I walked into it, because I’d been having discussions all year with my editor as to whether the general public these days would know what a lean-to was. The walls in the lean-to weren’t finished and I dreamed of finishing them myself and painting them sunshine yellow. I could see myself folding laundry with my dogs at my feet, my husband’s tools in the corner.
Just inside the back door was kitchen with custom made cabinets, floor to low ceiling. They had been made by the man who had lived there. Like Nash’s story, the daughter was the one showing the house. She had tales about her father and uncle making those cabinets. I envisioned a vintage style refrigerator where the appliance should go.
Hardwood floors, a cast iron stairway her father had welded himself. The living room was my least favorite, but it would do, I didn’t plan on spending much time there. The downstairs bedrooms were cozy and the attic was built out with two more – one large and strangely shaped with nooks and cranies to tuck oddly built shelves. I wanted to hide my library there and create a writer’s nook – or make it my daughter’s bedroom. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like a nerdy-princess’s dream tower. Also upstairs was a much newer restroom than was down below and a tiny bedroom fit for a doll – or a cool playroom nook.
My best friend drove me there to look. My daughter twirled around the rooms telling me she’d live there (which was a big deal since we were leaving the only house she’d ever known). We walked the property, me saying awkward and possibly inappropriate things in my distraction and awe while my best friend asked the real questions. I kept going in and out. I mentally filled the house with my own things and started visualizing what didn’t fit going into the trash can. Outside there was a garage clearly meant for a carpenter. The yard clearly meant for dogs and a garden. I was dying to show my husband. The neighborhood wasn’t quite right, but the house was a dream. Small and quaint and restful.
Like April Newton, I wanted to rest there. I could see myself there for years to come, if only it would offer me the peace and coziness away from the outside world that I desire most. Like April Newton, it was not meant for me. I can’t find any photos of it online, which must mean it’s off the market. I only hope that whoever finally found it is treating it well.
There’s just something about bungalows.
Alone
Title:Alone
Author: Robert J. Crane
Genre: Thriller
Format: Kindle Ebook
Alone is the first of a three part series called The Girl in the Box. I found the whole series as a free Kindle download on twitter. (You can find some amazing deals through twitter.)
Having now read the first of what seems to be a pretty bold series, I can whole-heartedly say that this is a title worthy of purchasing the paperback. It’s all action and go from the first page to the last, and Crane’s plot points are well calculated and paced perfectly.
I’m pretty excited about reading the whole series and can’t wait to review the box set as a whole. Fans of the TV Shows Alias and Lost Girl will find themselves completely engrossed by this first book. There’s plenty of action, moderate gore, and a good amount of mysterious story reveals to keep any reader on edge and holding their breath for the next scene.
Other reviewers seem to find a lack of character development and interesting storytelling, but I think those people are missing the book’s purpose. It isn’t about character development – it’s not meant to be the latest story of the ages (read here: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or The Matrix). Instead, this is an entertaining action story, worthy of a blockbuster movie (read here: Die Hard, Mission Impossible, Resident Evil, etc).
Give it a try – you can download the ebook for free. See what you think.
Doubles Match Before Bed
Title:Doubles Match
Author: Meb Bryant
Genre: Suspense / Short Stories
Format: Kindle Ebook
Doubles Match KILLED me! It’s so good! I have to warn mothers, however, that little Emma reminds me so much of my kiddo that the kidnapping was a rip through my gut.
Spoiler: It works out in the end – read the whole story!
Definitely worth the 99 cents as a nightcap, although I admit I received mine as a gift from the author. I’m enjoying my kindle specifically for these short gems that I’d otherwise miss.
Unholy Hell
Title:Angelbound
Author: Christina Bauer
Genre: Paranormal/ Action Romance
Format: Kindle Ebook
Unholy Moley! (as Myla Lewis likes to say) That was cool.
Life in Purgatory, post Armageddon (the demon, not the event), fighting other demons in an arena gladiator style has 18 year old Myla Lewis pretty busy. She’s part demon, among other things, and can do some serious damage with her tail. But as with any fantasy adventure, things are about to get more complicated…
This was a pretty fun (older) teen romantic adventure. You’ve got all your key elements: a pretty stellar and unique world, a kick-ass heroine, and a hot prince. Fans of the TV Show Supernatural, The Mortal Instruments series (books and movie), as well as Buffy and Lost Girl, will get a kick out of this fast paced read. It helps that the first in the series is a free kindle download, but it’s definitely worth the extra bucks to find out what happens next.
Although I definitely get the teen fantasy vibe from it, I’d only recommend it for 17-19 year old teenagers, not younger ones. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but there’s a few too many f-bombs and sexual angst for me to hand it over to my younger nieces and nephews, even if I was reading John Grisham at 12 that doesn’t mean I’m going to push that language and sexual energy into their lives with purpose. If a 14 to 16 year old picked it up on their own, I wouldn’t stop them though.
All in all, it’s fun zipping around killing things as a chosen one for a few hours. Fun story, can’t wait to read the rest of Bauer’s work on a rainy weekend.
Guns and Roses (and E-readers)
This post has nothing to do with Guns and Roses the band. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to tease you that way. Actually I did. This is about my new book-gal-crush Rose Gardner, brain child of author Denise Grover Swank.
Title: Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes
Author: Denise Grover Swank
Genre: Mystery (Romantic Suspense)
Format: Kindle
I downloaded Twenty-Eight and a Half Wishes solely because it was free and on kindle. I just recently got a kindle for the first time, because my home library is primarily in storage for the moment, and as a reviewer I couldn’t stomach adding more physical copies to a collection I couldn’t even access. So e-reader it is for now, aside from the stash of books I toted to my temporary digs with me, and if I’m going to be reviewing ebooks, I need to know how to read them.
So Denise Grover Swank’s free ebook was my guinea pig, my learning curve, my book to help me decipher buttons and technology, my reminder that I really am 105 at heart.
The first twenty “pages” (I don’t know how to quantify without page numbers) or so I HATED IT. “This is so lame!” I kept shouting at the screen. I was mostly talking to the kindle, but I took it out on the heroine Rose Gardner. Not that she needed anything else being taken out on her… her mother thinks she’s demonic and ends up dead, naturally the whole (small) town wants to pin Rose for the murder while Rose finds herself in a world where her mother is no longer telling her how to live. Insert sexy next door neighbor who might be a potential boyfriend, or… of course… the actual murderer!
I loved it. It’s gloriously cozy with less cheese than the average cozy mystery, placing it more in the romantic suspense category than the cozy realm.
By the time Rose is burying a gun under a rose bush in her backyard I was completely hooked and had mastered the art of turning the kindle page. That is a bigger feat than it might seem, as I don’t always maintain feeling in my fingertips and I kept inadvertently hitting the next button too many times. Without page numbers is was pretty difficult to find my way back. So it took DAYS for me to get to Rose burying that gun, but less than an hour to wrap up the book.
So thank you Rose (and Swank) for teaching me to read (on an e-reader). I’m looking forward to reading the next installment in the Rose Gardner Mystery series.
The Secret Life of Captain X
Title:The Secret Life of Captain X
Author: Mrs X Nomore
Genre: Memoir
Length: 232 pages
If the title isn’t ominous enough, what comes after it tells you all you need to know: “My Life with a Psychopath Pilot.”
I was on the fence about this book. It sounded so intriguing, but psychopaths (as the author mentions) are often described in ways that don’t address the mundane in them – it’s always some fantastical Hollywood version, involving axes and whatnot, rather than the every day drama a psychopath will stir up.
Part One is well written (well, the whole book is well written) although a tad whiny. It’s hard to read the first half of the book and not think, “Ok, the guy is a manipulative turd, but a person doesn’t have to dwell on everything that sucks for so long. People, especially in relationships, have shitty years… but to be victimized for twenty-two years, there has to be more than this one sided ‘I was always lonely’ business.” She sounds miserable from the start. But hang in with Mrs X Nomore and her story – she’s letting you know what makes you a target. She’s identifying the reasons why she was blinded by the love bombing and the falsehoods… she WAS lonely and unhappy, she was seeking love, she did not have many solid relationships with people nearby. As someone already feeling isolated, she was in the perfect position to be duped.
Despite my annoyances at all the red flags (that though I may not have identified as psychopath behavior would have turned me off real quick, now, not necessarily a year or two ago), the story propelled me rather rapidly into the graphic details of Mrs X’s discoveries during the divorce. The man really was a sick freak, trolling the internet for prostitutes, girlfriends, and more victims all during their marriage. I could have done without some of the descriptions and skimmed over a lot of Captain X’s sex site postings that are quoted in the book.
This book is not for the feint of heart. Well done, Mrs X Nomore, for getting out of there and finding your therapy in writing. I think it’s obvious that writing the book was healing for you and your purpose of raising awareness about psychopathy is succeeding.
This book makes you realize how easy it is to want to judge and say decisively what you would or wouldn’t do in a similar situation – but no matter how hard I try to put myself in the same situation in my mind’s eye, there’s really no telling. Although I may have crossed paths with psychopaths and sociopaths over the years, I was never married to one, and a marriage bond makes all the difference. How do you try to be “one” with someone who has no conscience, no empathy, no remorse? You don’t. As soon as you find out, you run for the hills.
Despite her age, Mrs X Nomore has a young writing voice. She seems pretty hip for someone with arthritis, replaced hips, and a grown daughter. I giggled when she called her new apartment her new “digs.” It was hard to reconcile the age she kept telling me she was with her writing and her story. Mostly because of social constraints, I think. It’s easier to envision a nineteen year old being duped in such a fashion – much harder to know she married him at thirty-nine and she was getting divorced during her “golden years.” It’s just another point she has to prove to the public: It doesn’t take a young girl to get suckered by a man like this – just a woman looking for a relationship.
I both love and hate the way this book is structured, mostly because it presents some very specific implications:
Psychopaths exist.
This level of deception happens….
and the deceiver is not who you’d expect.
Psychopathy (/saɪˈkɒpəθi/) (or sociopathy /ˈsoʊsiəˌpæθi/) is traditionally defined as a personality disorder characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited or bold behavior. It may also be defined as a continuous aspect of personality, representing scores on different personality dimensions found throughout the population in varying combinations. The definition of psychopathy has varied significantly throughout the history of the concept; different definitions continue to be used that are only partly overlapping and sometimes appear contradictory. – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
In the epilogue, Mrs X Nomore concludes:
I didn’t move to Costa Rica to escape psychopaths. They are everywhere, easily blending into a crowd. We shouldn’t live in fear, but we must be aware that up to four percent of our population is made up of these social predators, and we should avoid them at all costs.
She also lists a plethora of additional resources for continuing your education on the topic, as well as finding healing if you have been a victim.
Afternoon Tea Part One
Title: Gunpowder Green
Author:Laura Childs
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Length: 244 pages
With autumn in the air, it’s back to hot afternoon tea (as opposed to iced sweet tea) and my dive into cozy mysteries. Even though in Texas, fall tends to be more of a state of mind than an actual weather change. Post Labor Day it’s still in the nineties, but there’s rain and I made a trip to the grocery store just for tea bags.
Many of my afternoon teas happen on the back deck. My backyard table is actually newer and nicer than my kitchen table and it’s where I prefer to take my meals and spend time journaling and reading, if the weather allows. It’s nice to spend time, even if it’s in a book, with people who feel the same way:
“I think it’s time we thought about lunch. Margaret Rose baked cranberry bread yesterday, and I threw together some chicken salad earlier. Why not fix trays and eat out here where we can enjoy the view? It’ll be ever so much nicer.” – pg. 149
Laura Childs, The Indigo Tea Shop, and Theodosia Browning aren’t just about tea though. There are gardening elements, I am finding, in each of her tea shop mysteries. (Apparently, the gardeners in town tend to be a murderous bunch, and the tea shop sorts the sleuthing kind.) I love hanging out in small towns with historic districts, antique dealers, garden extraordinaire, and party goers.
“Timothy Neville adored giving parties. Holiday parties, charity galas, music recitals. And his enormous Georgian mansion, a glittering showpiece perched on Archdale Street, war, for many guests, a peek into the kind of gilded luxury that hadn’t been witnessed in Charleston since earlier times.” – pg. 212
Reading this inspired me. I am an event coordinator and I adore bookish parties, cozy festivals, people gathering in gardens, and atmospheres that allow for coffee, wine, or cups of tea, and quiet conversation or a people reading books. Fall is a good time for these sort of events, and though my Fall is already planned, not everyone’s is.
A lovely lady at Fuller’s Country Store has agreed to guest blog for me soon about tea parties she’s hosts. I don’t know the details, but I’m pretty excited to find out and scroll through photographs of the upcoming event. Stay tuned for “Afternoon Tea Part Two” for the details, the pictures, and a review of Laura Childs’ third Tea Shop Mystery: Shades of Earl Grey.
Singing Kiddo
A Weekly Low Down on Kids Books
I remember singing a lot as a kid. I was a choir girl. I loved the oldies, I loved the nursery rhymes, I loved hearing my voice, I loved making noise, I loved it all. I also loved books.
Kiddo is very much the same. Instead of oldies, though, she listens to a lot of Michael Jackson. I’m terrible about remembering old nursery rhymes, but we sing a lot of Disney music. She adores a good book.
So when I found Sing With Me, I grabbed it on the spot. I didn’t want kiddo to miss out on the childish songs. The “Ants Go Marching” is fun! “Down by the Bay” = Awesome! “Skinamarinky Dinky Dink” is also a fantastic favorite. But when I was faced with singing them with my kid, I couldn’t really remember them. And apparently I’ve been singing all the wrong words to “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Kiddo loves this book. It came with a cd and we play it in our radio in the library of our house. Sometimes we take it on car rides. She likes flipping through the pages and following along with the lyrics. The audio and visual word recognition at the same time (that I don’t have to do) is a nice break from reading all day. We love it and I highly recommend it to other moms and teachers for their preschoolers.
Anakalian Whims 