Teaser Tuesday 1/23/18

- Ambrosia 23 Comments

Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, the weekly Meme that wants you to add books to your TBR, or just share what you are currently reading. It is very easy to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! Everyone loves Teaser Tuesday.

This one is part of my read it before I see it challenge that I committed to several years ago. They are making so many movies and shows from books these days, more then usual or maybe it’s just me?

“Who would have thought at this time in our lives that we’d still have something like this. That it turns out we’re not finished with changes and excitements. And not all dried up in body and spirit.”
― Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night

Musing Monday 1/22/18

- Ambrosia 2 Comments

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

I’m currently reading…
Up next I think I’ll read…
I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
I can’t wait to get a copy of…
I wish I could read ___, but…
I blogged about ____ this past week…

Edited cause I made a boo boo on the date, lol sorry about that.

Random Question: Do you prefer true Biographies or fiction that tells the life of someone?

This question was inspired by a conversation about a movie, but it can be applied to books as well. I know I have read my fair share of historical fiction after all, but I also read biographies. This question came to mind during a conversation where someone was having a hissy fit about The Greatest Showman not being historically correct. That P.T Barnum wasn’t a super fantastic guy ect. Fair enough a little research shows that yes indeed he did some questionable things, like many people of the age. The movie does give a little look of that through the eyes of the critic and even P.T himself, saying he hoodwinked people,but yes, it is a very tamped down version because the movie isn’t meant to be a bio pic. I got some compliments from others in the conversation for explaining how I saw it. The greatest showman is P.T Barnum’s basic life story if P.T was telling it. No one is the villain of their own story and say what you will about some of what he did, he did create something that was special and was a place for the outcasts of the world to feel like they had some family.

I digress, I got to thinking about all the historical fiction I have read and how often there are plenty of facts but there is more that could be fact and might not be. Honestly, I think I prefer the fiction because life is tough enough sometimes. I like the escape. Now granted my curious brain will often dive into research on a new topic once I see it in the fiction, but it is often the fiction that get’s me curious in the first place. I like the combination of knowing the players involved along with the entertainment of the fiction. So which do you prefer?

Teaser Tuesday 1/16/17

- Ambrosia 22 Comments

Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, the weekly Meme that wants you to add books to your TBR, or just share what you are currently reading. It is very easy to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! Everyone loves Teaser Tuesday.

“People who claim that they’re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us… It’s people who claim that they’re good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Musing Monday 1/15/18

- Ambrosia 1 Comment

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

I’m currently reading…
Up next I think I’ll read…
I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
I can’t wait to get a copy of…
I wish I could read ___, but…
I blogged about ____ this past week…

Random Question: Have you ever stolen insults from books and used them in real life situations?

This seemed like a fun and different muse to try out this week. I get a lot of very amusing insults in the historical fictions I read and The Dresden files tend to have ones that make me laugh out loud. The other day I found myself actually using one from the Dresden files so I had to ask if anyone else ever used a book insult. I don’t insult people often, really it isn’t polite but sometimes when you are joking around or maybe working out at a Renaissance fair….can always use a good insult to banter with there! I hope I am not he only one who has done this lol, but I accept that I am a bit weird haha.

Book Review: NW by Zadie Smith

- Ambrosia Leave a comment

Set in northwest London, Zadie Smith’s brilliant tragicomic novel follows four locals—Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan—as they try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. In private houses and public parks, at work and at play, these Londoners inhabit a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end. Depicting the modern urban zone—familiar to city-dwellers everywhere—NW is a quietly devastating novel of encounters, mercurial and vital, like the city itself

Going in I really wanted to like this book more than I ended up liking it. I knew it would be edgy and I knew it would be uncomfortable and it was all of those things, but man oh man this book is just, yikes. It is hard to come up with the right words to say about this one but yikes is. The style of this book is impossible, I have not seen it before and I really hope I don’t see it again because it is really hard to deal with. There are so many characters, so many situations and really nothing gets resolved. This book just leaves you (well me for sure) feeling very just empty and confused. Books should have a beginning, a middle and an end and for me this book really doesn’t.

There are some moments that made it interesting and that is why there are two gems (stars) rewarded. The moment when a character is knifed (I won’t say who so I don’t spoil it too much) is shocking, and it is supposed to be. Watching it unfold in the movie that was made based on the book as well made it even more shocking and jaw dropping. Of course it is supposed to be, the image of someone dying at all but especially for such a pointless reason is not comfortable and never should be.

I guess I can understand why some people love this book, but I just couldn’t really connect at all with it. I might try another book by this author, but if it is the same style I will probably have to give it a pass. Bottom line I really wouldn’t recommend this one.

My Gemstone Rating:

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Teaser Tuesday 1/9/18

- Ambrosia 20 Comments

Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, the weekly Meme that wants you to add books to your TBR, or just share what you are currently reading. It is very easy to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! Everyone loves Teaser Tuesday.

“Alors, Bess you know very well–”
“No, I don’t know, ” she says icily, “I don’t know anything about his feelings for you, or yours for him, or your so-called magic, your so-called charm, your famous beauty. I don’t know why he cannot say no to you, why he squanders his wealth on you, even my own fortune on you. I don’t know why he has risked everything to try to set you free. Why he has not guarded you more closely, kept you to your rooms, cut down your court. But he cannot do it anymore. You will have to resign yourself. You can try your charms on the Earl of Huntingdon and see how well they work on him.” ~ The Other Queen by Phillipa Gregory

Musing Monday 1/8/18

- Ambrosia 1 Comment

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

I’m currently reading…
Up next I think I’ll read…
I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
I can’t wait to get a copy of…
I wish I could read ___, but…
I blogged about ____ this past week…

Random Question: Have you ever read a book where a character reminds you of yourself? How did that make you feel?

I came across a character not to long ago in a book I was reading that really I felt could have been me. I don’t often think like that but I literally ended up only seeing this character as myself. It was a little surprising but I didn’t mind it really, the character wasn’t perfect but she was pretty cool. I find characters that are like friends and family fairly often and it always makes me smile a little bit. Have you ever had this happen and if you do what do you think when it happens?

Book Review: Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

- Ambrosia Leave a comment

‘Let him feel that he is one of us; once fill his mind with the idea that he has been a thief, and he’s ours, – ours for his life!’

The story of the orphan Oliver, who runs away from the workhouse only to be taken in by a den of thieves, shocked readers when it was first published. Dickens’s tale of childhood innocence beset by evil depicts the dark criminal underworld of a London peopled by vivid and memorable characters — the arch-villain Fagin, the artful Dodger, the menacing Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. Combining elements of Gothic Romance, the Newgate Novel and popular melodrama, in Oliver Twist Dickens created an entirely new kind of fiction, scathing in its indictment of a cruel society, and pervaded by an unforgettable sense of threat and mystery.

This is the first critical edition to use the serial text of 1837-9, presenting Oliver Twist as it appeared to its earliest readers. It includes Dickens’s 1841 introduction and 1850 preface, the original illustrations and a glossary of contemporary slang.

Ah Oliver Twist is truly one of the classics and for me it was a fun re-read. I really enjoyed this book when I read it for school and when I read it a few years ago and I enjoyed it again when I read it this time. It always takes a little bit of time to get into it, classics are written so differently but after the first chapter or 2 I always settle in and really enjoy it.

Dickens wrote so vividly and when you read his work, getting into it you can really get a full sense of what it must have been like to live and be in that time. The conditions were so horrible and what people had to go through just to live. Of course if one looks around society today it is not hard to see a lot of the gaps starting to widen again and we may be headed towards another version of this, that is scary too. All we need is the work houses.

There isn’t much to give away on this one it is a classic and has movies and musicals and all the rest done about it so everyone seems to know about Oliver Twist. If you like classics you will probably like Oliver Twist, if you don’t you probably won’t.

My Gemstone Rating:

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Teaser Tuesday 1/2/18

- Ambrosia 16 Comments

Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, the weekly Meme that wants you to add books to your TBR, or just share what you are currently reading. It is very easy to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! Everyone loves Teaser Tuesday.

Welcome to 2018…

“When a woman thinks her husband is a fool, her marriage is over. They may part in one year or ten; they may live together until death. But if she thinks he is a fool, she will not love him again. ~ The Other Queen by Phillipa Gregory

Book Review: The Child in Time by Ian McEwan

- Ambrosia Leave a comment

Stephen Lewis, a successful writer of children’s books, is confronted with the unthinkable: his only child, three-year-old Kate, is snatched from him in a supermarket. In one horrifying moment that replays itself over the years that follow, Stephen realizes his daughter is gone.With extraordinary tenderness and insight, Booker Prize–winning author Ian McEwan takes us into the dark territory of a marriage devastated by the loss of a child. Kate’s absence sets Stephen and his wife, Julie, on diverging paths as they each struggle with a grief that only seems to intensify with the passage of time. Eloquent and passionate, the novel concludes in a triumphant scene of love and hope that gives full rein to the author’s remarkable gifts. The winner of the Whitbread Prize, The Child in Time is an astonishing novel by one of the finest writers of his generation.

Read this book in preparation for the made for TV movie with Benedict Cumberbatch. It is a great book but it is not one that is going to be for everyone. There are parts of it that are very slow and parts of it that are fast. It is one of those books that you really have to pay attention to while you read it. Also the bottom line of why many people don’t like this book is that you don’t get resolution with what happened to the daughter. The book isn’t meant to be about that, its about what Stephen goes through.

I don’t want to give away the entire book as usual I tend to ramble on a bit to much about complex books like this one and get some stank eye for it (no really I do, lol) but this book really is about the journey and heartache that Stephen takes when his daughter is taken. It is literally every parents worst nightmare and you go along with him through the process. It is a horrible and heart wrenching thing and that makes this book really really uncomfortable and that is also what makes this book really good. If you can handle the heart wrenching nature of the book and don’t mind a book that you really have to pay attention to detail with, this is going to be a read that you enjoy. You will feel like you went through the ringer when you finish, at least I did but it is a really good book.

My Gemstone Rating:

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