Alli Cleaver Cleaver itibaren Texas itibaren Texas

Great book! This is another great addition to Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series. Willig just keeps getting better and better. If you're looking for mystery, intrigue, history and romance rolled into one, then look no further than this author. Her books have it all. This book features the spy, the Silver Orchid, and is set in 1804 Paris. The Silver Orchid, Laura Grey, has the mission to get information to the Pink Carnation who has infiltrated Napoleon's court. The events that follow keep one turning the pages and anxious to read more.

I give Casino Royale a low rating because it wasn't by any stretch of the imagination compulsive. I sort of enjoyed it, but I could live without it. Which doesn't mean I'm not going to read the other Bond books -- I am, at least a few, because Bond is this huge cultural thing that I've absorbed by osmosis, but only to some extent. The books are actually my first direct encounter with Bond. (Yes, I lived to the age of twenty-two years and two days before I ever had a direct encounter with James Bond. Seriously.) It's misogynistic and melodramatic, and the number of monologues is ridiculous, but there's something compelling about Bond and the world he inhabits. Part of it is trying to see what so many have seen before me.

No rating because I only made it 20% of the way in. That 20% was split. First was a long introduction about Chinese and Tibetan governments pretending to be the authority over which magical child is the latest incarnation of whoever -- a subject I would have a hard time taking seriously without personally going to Tibet and having to pass a series of trials to win the Ajanti Dagger. The other half was surprisingly basic, and weak, I thought, for being addressed to a one-dimensional, straw man audience, with passages that resembled, "You cause pain because you chase after wealth and enjoy suing people with lawyers and seeking power in the world." Actually, I'm just trying to finish this burrito and learn something useful, but I'll keep that in mind. It must get more in depth in later chapters, but I also stopped because, unsurprisingly, the language and context stayed strictly within the realm of the religion, and the recommendations that did come spoke of leaving the world for a solitary, ascetic life. I believe that can be a useful path for some people, but I don't believe it is the path, and the condescension to other, 'lesser' options seemed short sighted at best.

Another hit.

an amazing book with a lot of depth in it....

I'm reading this book because my aunt gave it to me as a Christmas present after I placed on my Christmas list, "10) YOUR favorite book." She laughed when I opened it, but I promised to read it, and now I am. I'm halfway through. It's not a bad book; having never read a romance novel, it's definitely a different experience. I find myself alternating between wanting to really meet the characters (and steal the girl from the guy) and rolling my eyes at the really overdone expressions about what the characters are feeling. I have read quotes like, "...but it wasn't just a physical connections, but an emotional connection as well..." I suppose that's for the ladies. I also don't really care to read the phrase "feminine mound" any more either, because it has occurred enough in the first half of the book. I doubt I'll get a reprieve, though. UPDATE: The phrase "feminine mound" did NOT appear again in the book! But... they talked about feelings a lot more. This book reminded me of a Lifetime movie; the first half isn't so bad, but then the second half bogged itself down in cliché realizations of emotional mistakes and blunt statements that can't possibly be true, like "She realized that she would be happy with him forever." The book overall was a nice respite from Anna Karenina, which took me approximately ten times longer to read. I doubt I'll be reading more romance novels in the near future (though the first 20 pages of the third in this Chandler brothers series were enticing) but I'm glad I've been exposed to the genre at least once. NOTE: I give this book three stars for the genre. Romance novels in general are minus two stars from the normal scale.

Miranda is a typical 16 yr old haveing fun and writes in her journal. Until a meteor hits the moon throwing it off its axis and causing tsunami's, floods, earthquakes, and volcano eruptions around the world. All the things Miranda used to take for granted begin to disappear,lack of food, communication, and most of all electricity. When you think about it, we are very dependant on the things we plug in to use in our daily routine. What happens if all of a sudden you don't have it and perhaps never will? Miranda's journal details what she and her family is going through without the daily necessities and problems that go with it.

VERY much enjoyed both the characters and the action in this play.

This is the real life of Malcolm X with heart wrenching morals that can give us all enlightenment. Entertaining yet benificial too!