Musing Monday #11


Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about boys and reading…

Have you ever finished a book, then turned around and immediately re-read it? Why? What book(s)? (question courtesy of MizB)

Yes I have. When I was a teenager I read The Black Stallion by Walter Farley, the problem is I read it very slowly because for some reason I had trouble getting into it. I think it took like 4 months to read. By the end of the book I was completely hooked so I turned right around and re-read it. I don’t think I have done that since however.

Quotable Sunday #8

Welcome to Quotable Sunday! I can’t wait to get around and read your quotes today. The rules of course are never changing but in case this is your first time joining in, I would like to welcome you and let you know the basics:~Post one or more of your favorite quotes on your blog in a post.~Come back here and link your post in the mister linky below(on http://www.juststopscreaming.com/ ).~Check back throughout the day and go read some awesome comments and leave some luv!
In honor of today being Mother’s Day I chose some Quote’s for the occasion.

There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a dove and brave as a lioness… The memory of my mother and her teachings were, after all, the only capital I had to start life with, and on that capital I have made my way.
– Andrew Jackson, U.S. President

My mother was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. All I am I owe to my mother. I attribute all my success in life to the moral, intellectual and physical education I received from her.
– George Washington, U.S. President

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.
– Sophia Loren, Women and Beauty

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.
– Aristotle


Book Review: The Perfect Rake by Anne Gracie

Book Description:
She ran from a brute…
Fleeing the harsh guardianship of her grandfather, Prudence Merridew escapes with her beautiful younger sisters to London. One of them must marry—and fast. To act as her sisters’ chaperone, Prudence invents a secret engagement to a reclusive duke… But when the duke arrives unexpectedly in London, she needs his help to avert disaster.

…into the arms of a rake
Aristocratic Gideon, handsome, rakish and with a strong frivolous streak, casually hijacks Prudence’s game, awarding himself a stolen kiss or three along the way. Used to managing sisters and elderly men, Prudence is completely out of her depth with a charming, devious and utterly irresistible rake. And her plot goes terribly—if deliciously—awry…

The Perfect Rake started out as a fantastic novel, it is a fun and light hearted romance that fits perfectly in the genre. I don’t mind saying that I am a little bit addicted to your bodice rippers, while I try to go with some that go against the grain lightly I still love the formula and the happily ever after. Which with The Perfect Rake you do get. However, the story ends up being a little lack luster.

About midway through this book it drags, and you will get a little tired of the Hero and Heroine. It becomes a point where the hero is just TO perfect, to sweet. He sets himself up like a martyr and it gets a little bit old. Over all the characters are likeable, and they aren’t absolutely horrible. But I think around page 180 or so I wanted to club our hero Gideon over the head with a cup of raffia. I mean is supposed to be a rake, it would have been a bit nicer if he acted a little bit more like a rake.

But all is not lost, the book may not be perfect but it’s not a failure either. Over all the characters are likeable, and there are some rather amusing moments between Gideon and Prudence. So if you don’t mind a little bit of melodrama, and a slight drag in the center, you will enjoy the book. And for me while it wasn’t perfect, It did make me want to continue on and read the next book in the series.

Friday Finds #10

My Friday Find for today is, Made in the U.S.A by Billie Letts. And wonder if all Wonders, I am doing a give away for it if you want to sign up! Just got to the Giveaway Post.

Some info:

The bestselling author of WHERE THE HEART IS returns with a heartrending tale of two children in search of a place to call home.

Lutie McFee’s history has taught her to avoid attachments…to people, to places, and to almost everything. With her mother long dead and her father long gone to find his fortune in Las Vegas, 15-year-old Lutie lives in the god-forsaken town of Spearfish, South Dakota with her twelve-year-old brother, Fate, and Floy Satterfield, the 300-pound ex-girlfriend of her father.

While Lutie shoplifts for kicks, Fate spends most of his time reading, watching weird TV shows and worrying about global warming and the endangerment of pandas. As if their life is not dismal enough, one day, while shopping in their local Wal-Mart, Floy keels over and the two motherless kids are suddenly faced with the choice of becoming wards of the state or hightailing it out of town in Floy’s old Pontiac. Choosing the latter, they head off to Las Vegas in search of a father who has no known address, no phone number and, clearly, no interest in the kids he left behind.

MADE IN THE U.S.A. is the alternately heartbreaking and life-affirming story of two gutsy children who must discover how cruel, unfair and frightening the world is before they come to a place they can finally call home.

* Includes a Reading Group Guide


Book Review: The Apothecary’s Daughter by Julie Klassen


Lillian Haswell, brilliant daughter of the local apothecary, yearns for more adventure and experience than life in her father’s shop and their small village provides. She also longs to know the truth behind her mother’s disappearance, which villagers whisper about but her father refuses to discuss. Opportunity comes when a distant aunt offers to educate her as a lady in London. Exposed to fashionable society and romance–as well as clues about her mother–Lilly is torn when she is summoned back to her ailing father’s bedside. Women are forbidden to work as apothecaries, so to save the family legacy, Lilly will have to make it appear as if her father is still making all the diagnoses and decisions. But the suspicious eyes of a scholarly physician and a competing apothecary are upon her. As they vie for village prominence, three men also vie for Lilly’s heart.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of this book is wow. The imagery set forth is beautiful and the prose is profound. Julie Klassen weaves a story of emotion, and beauty. Of a young woman just trying to find her way in the world. When we first come upon Lillian Haswell (Lilly) she is a daughter who wishes to do what most daughters do at some time in their life, flee home. But as the daughter of an Apothecary she isn’t sure how she will be able to do so. Enter the brother of her long missing mother Rosamond.

Lilly is given the chance to go to London and experience a season by her aunt and uncle. They will sponsor her and dress her, and al of the other wonderful things of a fine lady in London. The offer she was waiting for! Lilly takes it and spends two happy years in London, she is flirted with, courted and almost makes several matches. Until that is of course the men find out what her father does. At the end of two years however Lilly is called home to tend to her ill father.

We find a great many up’s and downs in the story of Lillian and her family. Her father Charles is a kind hearted man with some secrets in his passed, who is ailing and desperately trying to be well enough so he can continue the business. Her brother Charlie is such a loveable character, he is a bit simple, but loving and he tries hard. He finds his love in gardening.

While the story has many tender moments that will make you cry I also enjoy some of the funnier. Lily has so many suitors she doesn’t know what to do with them. Roger Bromley from London, the next baronet of her town, Roderick Marlow, Mr. Shuttelsworth, Dr.Graves and her father’s old apprentice Francis Baylor OH MY! You will not be left bored when reading this book. If you’re a woman you will feel Lilly’s plight, living in a world where she knows the knowledge, enjoys the work and is good at it. But because she is a woman she is not allowed to practice openly. Because she is a woman she is supposed to rely on men, but they are all leaning on her!

The Apothecary’s daughter is a coming of age story. You will follow the stories of everyone in the book, but mostly you stay with Lillian. She has heart ache, and confusion and happy moments too. This is a real story, and it sucks you in. You care about the characters, you love them. You begin to wish Lilly could go back to London, or should she stay home? You never know which would be better, not until the very end.


Booking Through Thursday: Graphic

Suggested by Vega:

Last Saturday (May 2nd) is Free Comic Book Day! In celebration of comics and graphic novels, some suggestions:

– Do you read graphic novels/comics? Why do/don’t you enjoy them?
– How would you describe the difference between “graphic novel” and “comic”? Is there a difference at all?
– Say you have a friend who’s never encountered graphic novels. Recommend some titles you consider landmark/”canonical”.

Sadly, I don’t have much to say to this weeks BTT. I don’t read graphic novels. I did used to read comics but that was a very long time ago. I mostly read the X-men comics. But once it branched into so many diffrent kinds of X-men I gave up trying to follow.

Wicked Wednesday #4


Wicked Wednesday a place to be wicked to other book readers and make them get those TBR piles growing. The concept is simple. Pick a book or two and tell s about them. If its one you read tell us what you liked. If its one you found tell us about that to. Than leave a comment to let us know where to find your Wicked Wednesday titles. Make sure to link back in your posts for other people to follow Wicked Wednesday.

My selection for this week is a book I wouldn’t have picked up myself. But it was suggested to me, and I will be reading it at some point. I hope you might as well.

He had drawn the curtains tightly around his soul…
could he trust that glimmer of hope quietly beckoning to him?

Ben Buckley has never gotten over the loss of his wife. More bewildering than the mystery surrounding her death is the radical change that occurred in her shortly beforehand–a “conversion,” she had called it. Baffled, angry, and still feeling guilty for the way he’d withdrawn from her during those final weeks, Ben now lives behind the protective walls of severed relationships and rigid routines.

An unlikely young woman knocks on the door of his narrow world. Her simple honesty and childlike faith are incomprehensible to him, but in spite of his misgivings Ben finds himself on a journey he never would have begun on his own.

May Madness Book Giveaway #1: Made in the U.S.A by Billie Letts

Alright reader’s I am getting started with Hatchette and I am *hope* I am doing their giveaway Guidelines correctly. They are VERY generous with giveaway’s and thanks to them I will be able to bring you some wonderful titles. So first up..

The bestselling author of WHERE THE HEART IS returns with a heartrending tale of two children in search of a place to call home.

Lutie McFee’s history has taught her to avoid attachments…to people, to places, and to almost everything. With her mother long dead and her father long gone to find his fortune in Las Vegas, 15-year-old Lutie lives in the god-forsaken town of Spearfish, South Dakota with her twelve-year-old brother, Fate, and Floy Satterfield, the 300-pound ex-girlfriend of her father.

While Lutie shoplifts for kicks, Fate spends most of his time reading, watching weird TV shows and worrying about global warming and the endangerment of pandas. As if their life is not dismal enough, one day, while shopping in their local Wal-Mart, Floy keels over and the two motherless kids are suddenly faced with the choice of becoming wards of the state or hightailing it out of town in Floy’s old Pontiac. Choosing the latter, they head off to Las Vegas in search of a father who has no known address, no phone number and, clearly, no interest in the kids he left behind.

MADE IN THE U.S.A. is the alternately heartbreaking and life-affirming story of two gutsy children who must discover how cruel, unfair and frightening the world is before they come to a place they can finally call home.

* Includes a Reading Group Guide

Thanks to Hatchette book Group we have 5, yes 5 copies to giveaway. So we will have 5 winners for this great book! Do not miss out on this one!

*US and CANADA ENTRIES ONLY please*

So here is how to Win this book. The first thing you need to do. And this is required to particpate.Is Comment! This give away will be open til the 15th of May.

And some other ways to get entries:
Follow this blog (1 entry)
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Put is in your blog roll (1 entry)
Join the feeder service (1 entry)
Follow me on facebook (1 entry follow the FB link on the sidebar)
Follow me on Twitter (1 entry Follow twitter link on sidebar)

Create a post on your blog advertising the contest and linking back to us here at Fire & Ice for the contest. make sure you post the link to your post in the comments. (1 entry)

Teaser Tuesday #11

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to: Grab your current read.Let the book fall open to a random page.Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!Please avoid spoilers!

Dipping her head politely, she walked across the green, passed the coal merchant, and rounded the butchers shop. Behind it, she turned down narrow Milk Lane, which housed the old haberdashery-and stopped midstride. ~ pg 151 The Apothecary’s Daughter by Julie Klassen

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