Henry and Beezus by Beverly Cleary

Overview from Barnes and Noble:

Henry Huggins is saving up for the bicycle of his dreams, but his plans to earn money don't work out quite as planned. From selling bubble gum on the playground to helping out with his friend Scooter's paper route, everything Henry tries seems to lead to trouble. Luckily, Henry's neighborhood friend Beezus Quimby is ready to step in and lend a hand.

The laughs continue as Henry attempts to raise money to buy a bicycle. Aiding him, to his great surprise, is none other than a girl! Beezus is different from most girls Henry knows, and readers will come to recognize her special appeal.

My thoughts:

This was our latest audio book in the car and everyone, including me, enjoyed it.  It is the first time we've read a book about Beverly Cleary's Henry, we've read a number of books about Ramona so we've met Henry but this was our first one with him as the main character.  My children are always asking about ways to make money so it was funny to listen to each of Henry's attempts and what happens to foil each one. 

I liked the innocence of the time, how kids could go walking for blocks to go to a police bicycle auction by themselves and no one thought anything of it.  I don't know if times really were safer or if people thought they were safer, but even I can recall being able to walk to friends houses and ride my bike without adult supervision.  My children don't have anywhere near as much freedom now.  If it were just me I would say it was possible I was being overprotective, but it seems to be pretty universal.  They play outside all the time, but they stay in the backyard and the ones of their friends who are nearby and I sit outside with them or step inside the kitchen and watch from the window while I get something done.  I don't want to make them afraid, but even our bus driver won't allow the children off the bus if someone isn't there to pick them up whereas I used to walk home from school alone.  Time have changed, so it is nice to read about a time when we weren't as cautious or afraid.

Some of Henry's comments and thoughts about Beezus and being a girl rubbed me the wrong way sometimes, but then she almost always proved him wrong so maybe that wasn't such a big deal.  The narrator's voice for Ramona was very whiny and annoying, I am not sure if that was on purpose or just the voice he was using, but it made her a not very appealing character.  Since we really liked Ramona in the other books we read I was disappointed by that.  All in all though, this was very enjoyable to listen to and even my two year old seemed to get it.

Details

•Pub. Date: March 1990

•Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
•Format: Paperback , 208pp
•Age Range: 6 to 9

•Series: Henry Huggins Series

•ISBN-13: 9780380709144

•ISBN: 0380709147

A Creed in Stone Creek (Colorado Creeds Series) by Linda Lael Miller

Overview

When single attorney Steven Creed becomes guardian of an orphaned five-year-old boy, he trades his big-city law firm for a ranch near his McKettrick kin in the close-knit community of Stone Creek, Arizona. Taking care of little Matt and fixing up his run-down ranch house with its old barn loosens something tightly wound inside him. But when Steven takes on the pro bono defense of a local teen, he meets his match in the opposing counsel—beautiful, by-the-book county prosecutor Melissa O'Ballivan. It'll take one grieving little boy, a sweet adopted dog and a woman who never expected to win any man's heart to make this Creed in Stone Creek know he's truly found home. .

My thoughts:

I enjoy settling into Linda Lael Miller's series.  Spending sometime with cowboys and ranchers and small towns is relaxing and and welcome break.  I recall Melissa O'Ballivan from the other Stone Creek books where her brother and two sisters both found their respective spouses.  I always had the feeling that Melissa might leave town, that things were just a little too small and too safe for her.

Steven Creed added the elements missing from Stone Creek for Melissa.  Seeing them get to know each other and get over the emotional baggage they both had from past relationships it felt like we were really seeing them grow as people.

While I enjoyed the book there were a number of inconsistencies and mistakes in the time line and story.  One was pretty minor, the couple has dinner together on Saturday night and then on Monday everyone, including the couple themselves, is talking about how they had dinner last night.  For some reason this bugged me, I even flipped back to make sure I hadn't made the mistake, but it clearly says Saturday is the day of the dinner.  Next, Stephen serves as an advisor or counsel to two different boys in town.  Later when one of them pops up again Miller says how Stephen doesn't know Nathan as he has never met him before, but he did at the jail.  Once again I flipped back thinking maybe I had it wrong.  The mix-up with the day of the dinner doesn't really get anything out of whack, but not knowing a character that he agreed to advise in person on a legal matter got to me. 

That said, I really did enjoy t he book and stayed up too late last night to finish it.  I waited to read this first book in the Colorado Creeds series until I had the next two so I could read them back to back, or as close to back to back as I can with other review books and library books waiting for my attention!

Details

•Pub. Date: February 2011

•Publisher: Harlequin
•Format: Mass Market Paperback , 384pp
•Series: Colorado Creeds Series

•ISBN-13: 9780373775552

•ISBN: 0373775555

Wonder Woman Retroactive 1980s

Overview:

When Wonder Woman discovers that someone has stolen her identity and is using her name to commit acts of evil, she’ll have no choice but to confront her in battle. But can she stop this criminal look-a-like before her name is completely slandered?

DC RETROACTIVE: WONDER WOMAN – THE ’80s is written by Roy Thomas and features art by Rich Buckler, Tim Smith, Carlos Rodriguez, Joe Rubinstein, Jack Purcell and Norman Lee. And don’t miss a classic ‘80s Wonder Woman story also written by Roy Thomas with accompanying art by the legendary Gene Colan. This special one-shot goes on sale August 3.

Product Details

Story by Roy Thomas
Art by Rich Buckler, Tim Smith, Carlos Rodriguez, Joe Rubinstein , Jack Purcell , Norman Lee , Gene Colan

Cover by Rich Buckler

Publisher DC Comics

Cover Price :$4.99

Release Date Wed, August 3rd, 2011

My thoughts:

I think the first Wonder Woman I ever read was in the 1980s.  I saw a cover for one of the two I recall getting for a birthday present on another blog today.  Neither of them were part of this retroactive set, but the art and story lines were similar.  I like that two whole story lines were told in this one shot book.  Rather than having to grab another comic to continue with the story, it is all there and with very few advertisements.  Not that all ads are bad, but sometimes they seem a bit distracting. 

Both stories have to do with the Silver Swan who, I am a bit embarrassed to say, I had never heard of before,  same for Doctor Psycho.  I don't know if these characters have appeared in a lot of other comics, but they were new to me.  I think the two story lines should have been reversed in the book because to me they would have made more sense the other way around.  Maybe there is a reason for the order or perhaps it is just because the cover art goes with the first story, I'm really not sure.

This is the way I remember Wonder Woman from the very brief period of time that I read her.  I don't dislike the new series at all so far (I haven't gotten around to finishing all the ones I have because I either misplaced or never got one of the issues) I like the new gritty elements and more contemporary feel, but these are a more comfortable fit.  She is similar to how she appeared on the TV series, fighting crime while hiding behind her other identity and flying around in her invisible plane.  It was a very nice way to revisit the time and made me want to look through the box of comics I have to see how many I have from the 1980s. 

Too Blessed to Be Stressed by Debra Coty -Review

About the book:

Do your to do lists have footnotes? Has your fam suggested a rabies shot because your bite has surpassed Rover’s?

Maybe it’s time for a healthy dose of truth gift-wrapped in humor. With her own offbeat brand of wit and near-wisdom, inspirational humorist Debora Coty addresses the heart-needs of desperate women drowning in the churning everyday stress-pool of busyness.

In Too Blessed to Be Stressed, you’ll find simple, practical steps for attaining the peace that you crave as you struggle with the stresses of finances, health, career, relationships, self-image and family. You’ll discover healing, refreshment, and revitalization for your own spirit, body and mind through heart-changing real life stories, biblically based insights, and short chapters for on-the-run convenience.

My thoughts:

I enjoyed reading Too Blessed to Be Stressed and I think I will be looking back at some of the chapters and questions in the future.  As I was reading this for a Litfuse Blog tour I felt like I needed to read it in its entirety to be able to give a review I would be pleased with.  I liked how it was broken down into four sections focusing on different areas we could all use help.  The book is broken down into time management, developing a sense of humor, relationships and faith.  Within each of those the topics are broken down into ten manageable chunks.  Each of the idea is sprinkled with humor and faith.  Funny quotes are interspersed throughout and each smaller section is ended with three reflection questions that go back to faith.

A lot of how we view life come from our own attitudes and the way we shape our reality.  If we are always bemoaning how hard things are and how they will never be better, then that is what we get, but if you turn the same situation around and look at it from a different perspective attitude can be changed and we can move forewords.  Children are a blessing from God, but they also try our patience in new and varied ways on a daily, hourly or even more often basis.  It is so hard to keep in perspective that they will only be little once.  One of the women Cory uses as an example is a mother of 11, with seven currently still living at home while the others have grown up and now reside on their own.  It takes so much more management to coordinate more people.  There are times when I admit that I envy friends who have only one or two children.  It is summer and I am blessed to be home with all four of my children until they return to school and I return to work in the fall, but when I have a chance to go somewhere with just one of two of them it is like a vacation.  Meanwhile I hear people with one or two complaining about how hard it is to go places and do things.  It is all perspective.  I'm sure the mom of eleven would think my four were a walk in the part compared to her outings with seven.

A quote that really stuck home with me was, "I'm not saying we should wallow in pigsties, but when we are shackled by perfectionism and controlled by pride, we become slaves to our homes.  They own us instead of us owning them.  Not good.  Not wise.  Not pleasing to God."  I struggle so much to keep my house in order, think four small kids and a lack of the organization gene, and it can feel like chaos.  It is hard to accept less than perfection, but if we waste too much time trying to attain it we are missing out on the purpose of life.

There are so many nuggets of wisdom in this book that I really don't feel like I am doing it justice.  My plan is to put this on my nightstand and go back to the beginning and do one section at a time and really reflect and try to put some of it to work in my own life.  I can't remember where I read this phrase, I think in a book I reviewed somewhere in the past, but each day one of my aims is to start with an attitude of gratitude and look for why God put a certain situation there.  Maybe the disagreeable person is to teach you patience, or the four yer old who is dragging his feet is to show me to slow down and stop rushing and enjoy each minute of the day, if there is a purpose to the traffic jam and the rainbow, the opportunity and the disappointment, then we can continue to grow and change and find our faith.

Link to buy the book: http://www.amazon.com/Too-Blessed-Stressed-Inspiration-Stress-Pool/dp/1616263466?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969

Litfuse and Debora Coty are holding some giveaways that are listed in the post right after this one.

Blog tour schedule:  http://litfusegroup.com/blogtours/text/13418047

Too Blessed to be Stressed by Debora Coty

About the book:

Do your to do lists have footnotes? Has your fam suggested a rabies shot because your bite has surpassed Rover’s?

Maybe it’s time for a healthy dose of truth gift-wrapped in humor. With her own offbeat brand of wit and near-wisdom, inspirational humorist Debora Coty addresses the heart-needs of desperate women drowning in the churning everyday stress-pool of busyness.

To celebrate the release of her latest laugh-out-loud book, Too Blessed to Be Stressed, Debora Coty is hosting the Too Blessed to Be Stressed KINDLE Giveaway!


Too Blessed to be Stressed is a fun-filled read overflowing with insights and practical tips. Perfectly delicious for living happily ever after! 

-Rhonda Rhea, best-selling author of Whatsoever Things Are Lovely

Read what the reviewers are saying here.

Debora has created a “Too Blessed” prize package worth over $150! One grand prize winner will receive:

* A brand new Latest Generation KINDLE with Wi-Fi and Pearl Screen

* Too Blessed to Be Stressed by Debora Coty (for KINDLE)

To enter just click one of the icons below. Hurry! The giveaway ends August 25th. Winner will be announced on the evening of the 18th during Debora's De-Stress Facebook Party! Debora will be hosting a "life-preserver" chat (it’s okay if you haven’t read the book – who knows, you might WIN a copy!), testing trivia skills, swapping funny stories, handing out some decom-stress tips, and giving away tons of great stuff! (Chocolate, books, and more!) Hope to see you there. Bring your friends and join the fun on August 25th at 5:00 PM PST (6 PM MDT, 7 PM CDT, & 8 PM EDT).

Also - be sure to check out Debora's series of Stress-Buster videos at her website: http://www.deboracoty.com/. She’s also hosting a photo caption contest on her blog for a chance to win a copy of Too Blessed to Be Stressed.

 
In Too Blessed to Be Stressed, you’ll find simple, practical steps for attaining the peace that you crave as you struggle with the stresses of finances, health, career, relationships, self-image and family. You’ll discover healing, refreshment, and revitalization for your own spirit, body and mind through heart-changing real life stories, biblically based insights, and short chapters for on-the-run convenience.

About Josh and Bob:

Debora M. Coty is a humorist, columnist, speaker, writing workshop instructor and award-winning author of over 100 internationally published articles and ten inspirational books. She has also contributed short stories and devotionals to numerous anthologies. Debora's passion is sharing her offbeat blend of humor and hope, wit and near-wisdom with women of all ages. As a piano teacher for twenty years, she acquired the skill of auditory long-suffering and has helped countless people as an occupational therapist specializing in orthopedics for over three decades. Mother of two grown children, Debora currently lives and loves in central Florida with her husband and desperately wicked pooch, Fenway.

Link to buy the book: http://www.amazon.com/Too-Blessed-Stressed-Inspiration-Stress-Pool/dp/1616263466?ie=UTF8&tag=widgetsamazon-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969

Blog tour schedule: http://litfusegroup.com/blogtours/text/13418047

Giveaway: The Memoir of Marilyn Monroe by Sandi Gelles-Cole

I have a copy of this book as an ARC that has been on my shelf for a while.  I thought about donating it at the library but something keeps stopping me.  It has been a very long time since I did any kind of giveaway so I decided to have one for this book.  The Memoir of Marilyn Monroe is a book I reviewed back in May for Pump Up Your Books Blog Tours.  I saw recently that they are doing another tour and thought there might be reader interest in the book again.  If you are interested in being entered in the giveaway please:

1.  Become a follower.

2.  Have a US address

3.  Leave a comment with an email address

4.  In your comment share your thoughts on Marilyn Monroe and her place in history.

I am excited to try a giveaway again.  The contest will go until Sunday, August 14.

Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain by Portia de Rossi

Overview from Barnes and Nobel:

“I didn’t decide to become anorexic. It snuck up on me disguised as a healthy diet, a professional attitude. Being as thin as possible was a way to make the job of being an actress easier . . .”

Portia de Rossi weighed only 82 pounds when she collapsed on the set of the Hollywood film in which she was playing her first leading role. This should have been the culmination of all her years of hard work—first as a child model in Australia, then as a cast member of one of the hottest shows on American television. On the outside she was thin and blond, glamorous and successful. On the inside, she was literally dying.

In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, Portia de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action. She recounts the elaborate rituals around eating that came to dominate hours of every day, from keeping her daily calorie intake below 300 to eating precisely measured amounts of food out of specific bowls and only with certain utensils. When this wasn’t enough, she resorted to purging and compulsive physical exercise, driving her body and spirit to the breaking point.

Even as she rose to fame as a cast member of the hit television shows Ally McBeal and Arrested Development, Portia alternately starved herself and binged, all the while terrified that the truth of her sexuality would be exposed in the tabloids. She reveals the heartache and fear that accompany a life lived in the closet, a sense of isolation that was only magnified by her unrelenting desire to be ever thinner. With the storytelling skills of a great novelist and the eye for detail of a poet, Portia makes transparent as never before the behaviors and emotions of someone living with an eating disorder.

From her lowest point, Portia began the painful climb back to a life of health and honesty, falling in love with and eventually marrying Ellen DeGeneres, and emerging as an outspoken and articulate advocate for gay rights and women’s health issues.

In this remarkable and beautifully written work, Portia shines a bright light on a dark subject. A crucial book for all those who might sometimes feel at war with themselves or their bodies, Unbearable Lightness is a story that inspires hope and nourishes the spirit.

My thoughts:

Because celebrities are in the spotlight and act confident in public, the rest of society seems to buy into the act and feel like insecurity belongs to those who haven't attained fame and money, but the thing is we are all insecure about something.  For a lot of us it is how we look and who we really are.  If people really knew us would they still like or love us?  If every single bite of food isn't calorie counted will we weigh a pound more tomorrow?  What exactly is a healthy relationship with food?

 

Portia became a model as a child after her father died in her quest to find validation that she was pretty, but found that in modeling she was considered a bit too heavy so she started a cycle of binging and purging to self mediate with food and then throw it up before it could be used by her body.  At a weight group meeting when she was fifteen each of the women were asked to tell some part of their body that they liked and she, as the smallest and youngest one in the group, couldn't come up with anything.  She spent years feeling that she didn't deserve to be where she was or that she wasn't getting more lines because she was too heavy.  After seeing a nutritionist she modified the eating plan and eventually ended up eating 300 calories or less a day and working out for hours a day.

 

Most of us never get to this extreme, but it is easy to let thoughts of food, what to eat and what not to eat, how many calories something has and how long it will take to burn them off, become a big part of our day.  For some reason we seem to have unlearned knowing when our bodies are full or maybe fast easy food is just too prevalent.  Maybe it is fast food or being more sedentary, but when I look around I see a lot more people who are at unhealthy weights.  I know in the past year I gained weight from a combination of factors.  It seems so much easier to gain than to lose.

 

I could feel Portia's pain in her writing.  When her joints started to hurt just from moving to when she passed out on the set, she just couldn't shut down her internal critic.  There is someone in my life who I feel has lost too much weight, who exercises to an extreme and I have mentioned it too her but not in a confrontational way.  I was hoping that through reading this I might find out how Portia came to see that she needed help, but she only recognized she needed help after she passed out and was treated by a doctor who told her the results to the test that were done that showed that she was going to die if she kept going like she was.  When Portia's mother and brother both told her she was too thin and cried that they were afraid she was going to die, she just told them what she thought they wanted to hear but didn't follow through on it.  I'm not sure what I am going to do because with issues like this it is hard to change someone else's mind and if I am too confrontational it may be more detrimental. 

 

Details

•Pub. Date: November 2010

•Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group

•Format: Hardcover , 308pp

•ISBN-13: 9781451328776

•ISBN: 145132877X