Skinny Bitch

Title: Skinny Bitch
Author: Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin
Pub Date: 2005
Pages: 224
Genre: Non Fiction, Health & Diet



I'm a little late and behind the times reading Skinny Bitch. Generally, I don't think of myself as one who reads (fad) diet books or even health books outside of the social commentary on health/weight issues. Still, Skinny Bitch kept coming up in from the far back end of my brain that I finally checked it out of the library.


For those of you that are into diet books, what I did immediately notice about this one is the tone. The authors voices are very conversational, which I personally enjoyed. It read as if we were hanging out drinking organic green tea (their suggestion of course, I'm a mad coffee drinker) and they were sharing their health conscious views.


With that being said, I am very much the antithesis of their ideal food muncher. Within the first couple of chapters I kept a nodded list of things that they would chastise me about:


Can't wake up in the morning without your morning coffee? Bad. Very. Bad. No Coffee for you!

Like your diet soda? *cringe*

Take advil or advil for headaches? Uh hello, I work with twelve year olds. A whole bunch of them. Hell to the ya I need an advil every now and again.

And yes, perhaps the worst of them all, every now and again people I admit, I crave steak.

I think the only thing that they would cheer me on about is that I despise milk. Always have, always will.



Freedman & Barnouin do make valid points in most of their arguments. For example, outside of health reasons, their concern about the ill treatment of animals is a large part of their stand for a vegetarian lifestyle. I have to admire that.


I think that Freedman & Barnouin have the right attitude and their book doesn't not suggest a "diet" in the sense of a short period of time to lose a few pounds. This is one of the only books that I've read that truly expect a full lifestyle change. Kudos to all of those who can make such drastic alterations. Me? I think I'll still drink my coffee and pop those advils.

SS - Reflections on Blogging

Hey there Saloners.

I'm still tackling my GReader. I actually went nearly four days without turning on my home computer (this is a rarity, trust me) which led to a shockingly large amount (over the thousands people!) of unread posts that left me boggled, stressed, and overall feeling incapable of keeping up.

What I've realized is there are a lot of blogs that I've added to 'monitor' to see if I'm interested in adding them into my "regular reading" folder. Unfortunately, some of these blogs have not been recent additions. I'm looking at blogs added six months ago. I skim, but trying to figure out what caught my attention in the first place is fairly pointless. So it got me thinking about a couple of things.

(1) I want to make sure that I'm following all of those readers who are following me. I'm all about showing the love here people. If you're taking the time out of your schedule to check me out (even if it's merely skimming to see if the post/book holds your interest) then I want to have you on my radar. So, if you think that maybe I've overlooked you, please comment here - I will make it a priority to add your blog into my regular reading if it's not already there.

(2) Is there some sort of web site that catalogues all of the book bloggers out there? Not just in the "hey, I'm a blogger too" so we should be friends sorta website, but more like "hey I read these kind of books" and we should be friends because you do too website. Have I overlooked it? There are just some genres that I'm not going to find fascinating - historical fiction - for example. So, even if you are an incredibly talented book blogger and your writing rocks, I probably won't be too into commenting or reading your blog. However, I know that there have to be noteworthy blogs out there that I should check out.

I guess my goal over the next couple of weeks is to eliminate the book blogs that are not meaningful to me.

This should be fun. Work is already too stressful.

(Oh and finally, my last side-note: I have been terribly with comments. Even with responding to the comments on my blog! Yikes! Please know that I am still here, reading and thinking. It's the responding that's on hiatus.)

So, if you read and are unsure that I read your blog - comment. :))

And if you know of a website that catalogues book blogs based on genres (eclectic included) then PELASE point me in that direction.

Hope everyone enjoys their Sunday. Football, reading, and Wii will be in my future. I'm looking forward to a restful break. Cheers!

Geography Club

Title: Geography Club
Author: Brent Hartinger
Pub Date: 2003
Pages: 226
Genre: YA, GLBT

Quick Summary

Russell is gay. At least he thinks he is. He hasn't actually kissed a boy yet. But he does like to look at guys. And go to teen gay chat rooms. Russell feels pretty alone in his small town high school of about 800 kids. Which was why it was such a big deal when he finds another boy from his town and his high school in the chat room. And it becomes an even bigger deal when he meets this boy and it's THE popular baseball player, Kevin.

After confiding in his best friend Min, she reveals her own secret - identifying herself as bisexual, she's been dating Terese on the sly for about three yeas. Russell expresses the desire to get everyone together to talk about their experiences. Soon, the Geography Club is born.

My Thoughts

The Geography Club has been on my radar for about a year now (?),but a recommendation from Ready When You Are, C.B. solidified my decision.

I really enjoyed this book. My experiences with YA GLBT list is limited primarily to Julie Anne Peters so I was stoked to find another author. (And seriously check out Brent Hartinger's website: it's one of the coolest home pages ever!)

Russell is a very likable and believable character. He is confronted with teen issues outside of his sexuality, but perhaps are a bit exacerbated because of his sexuality. Does that make sense? Let me give an example: trying so hard to keep being gay on the DL he throws another kid, one that already gets picked on, under the bus.

Sure, Geography Club is about a boy who's gay and trying to figure out what that means, but more importantly it's a book about trying to accept yourself when you're different during an age when being different is the worst thing to be ever.

I absolutely loved it. And it's definitely middle grades friendly. Cute boy on boy kissing but that's pretty much it.

Julie & Julia

Title: Julie & Julia
Author: Julie Powell
Pub Date: 2005
Pages: 307
Genre: Memoir

First, props goes to Sheila for hosting the contest that led me to owning this book!

Okay. I'm going to admit this. This book interested me because the movie trailer caught my attention. There might be a gasp in the audience of book lovers and cooks, but I really didn't have much of an idea or opinion about the great Julia Child. Nope. It was because of the publicity that made me think, "Wow, who'd have thought that a cooking show could have so much personality?"

I'm usually pretty determined to read the book first if I plan to watch the movie. I know in some cases this doesn't prove possible (i.e. watching a film and then having the *aha* moment that it has been adapted...) but in this one, I could control fate.

Score. I had such a good time reading J&J that I didn't (and still don't) feel the urgency to watch the production of it. (Although I hear that it would be a different experience because the film version revolves around more JC rather than JP).

But, I digress. I'm not much of a foodie or a cook. I'll try my hand at new dishes every now and again when the mood strikes; but overall, if I have to cook more than twice a week, I'm put off. So to take upon the challenge of cooking French recipes, all in a year? Uh, no.

So this is how I know Julie Powell's memoir was GOOD. It made me want to run out, buy a JC cookbook, open it up to any given page and COOK. I'll be damned people, we're talking cooking dishes I could probably not pronounce.

JP's portrayal of herself, her friends, her fans, blogging, her husband, her experience - well, it had me rooting for her, yelling at her, cringing, and laughing.

(Most of the cringing went along with some of the items she was eating).

Blog Management

Hey guys! I hope everyone has been enjoying post-BBAW (which was super fun and I only wished my schedule didn't take away my blogging time).

Oh which brings me to the subject matter of this post. Man alive, I haven't been reading. I mean, barely anything.

I've had Boy Meets Boy on my night stand for two weeks now. Amanda, I'm soooo lovin' it. I just wish that I could finish it.

Bottom line is I cannot ask for advice on how to read more. I know that has to be me and the ME right now is just not finding what it takes to read.

So my next important question is, how do you manage your blogroll. I think many of us bookbloggers keep up to 100+ book blogs on our feeder. How do you organize yours? Do you have daily read, weekly read, whenever I can reads? And if so, within those reads, how many bloggers usually fit? Do you only have, say, 25 in the I-read-this-no-matter-what-blog? And if you become uber busy, do you just delete all the others in the whenever I can read? I'm looking for a system that works for me, and figure I should try now while it's still Fall.

Would love to hear various answers. Let 'em roll bloggers!

BBAW: Reading Meme

We encourage you to be creative with this! Please choose one or two questions to answer or try to answer all the questions in five words or less. Or choose a picture to answer a question! Brevity is the goal of today!


Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack? Nope, but I chew gum!

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of
writing in books horrify you? Sometimes, if passage is striking.

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Bookmarks or whatever's around.

Laying the book flat open? *cringe* Bad habit, trying to break.

Fiction, Non-fiction, or both? Both, but hardly ever historical.

Hard copy or audiobooks? Hard copy unless at gym.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of chapters, or are you
able to put a book down at any point? Shhh..until I'm finished.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop to look it up right away? No. As bad as my students.

What are you currently reading? Boy Meets Boy.

What is the last book you bought? Six books. Oh my!

Are you the type of person that only reads one book at a time or can
you read more than one at a time? Remote control my brain.

Do you have a favorite time of day and/or place to read? Always.

Do you prefer series books or stand alone books? Stand alone, subject series.

Is there a specific book or author that you find yourself recommending over and over? Hawt-E Gaiman; Spunky Tom Robbins.

How do you organize your books? (By genre, title, author’s last name, etc.?) Now? In piles. :(

Everything Sucks

Title: Everything Sucks: Losing My Mind and Finding Myself in a High School Quest for Cool
Author: Hannah Friedman
Pub Date:2009
Pages: 256
Genre: Memoir

Family Sucks

Hannah Friedman's life cannot get worse and makes that clear when she opens her memoir with "I am the firstborn human." You see, Amelia, Hannah's older sibling, is also a monkey. Really? Yup. Her classmates, who are hardly her friends, merrily call poor Hannah "Monkey Girl". In between making her school life miserable of course.

Periods Suck

Life does get worse. Imagine Dad going on the road trying to regain rock star status and the whole family tags along. In a bus. With rocker men. And a driver that doesn't talk. Yup, that's Hannah and where she is in life when she starts her period. Seventeen Magazine horror stories eat your heart out.

Everything Sucks

Hannah realizes, after finally getting accepted in a semi-prestigious school, when 'Everything Sucks' there's only one way to go - up.

And so she does. She begins to hang with the right girls. She dresses the right way. She dates the right boys. What's wrong with this though? Oh yeah, Everything Still Sucks.

This is one of those coming of age, self discovery memoirs that immediately captivate. Seriously. I read it as a passenger in the car and was annoyed when we got to where we were going. Needless to say, as soon as I got home, I hopped on the couch and positioned myself in a "Do Not Disturb" position.

Friedman's voice is strong, witty, open...someone who you feel like you're gabbing on the phone with. I wanna have a beer with this girl.

I'm always hesitant on accepting ARCs from authors. Man am I glad that I went with my gut and snatched this one up. Check out her blog here.

And . . . she's so damn cute!

House of Sand and Fog

Title: House of Sand and Fog
Author: Andre Dubus III
Pub Date: 1999
Pages: 365
Genre: Literary Fiction

Wow. I mean, really. Wow. This novel has left such an impression that it sent me into this morose funk after closing the book. I found myself watching these individual lives traveling at a warp speed toward each other, a head on collision of prejudice, judgement, and consequences none could possibly fathom. I chewed on my lip. At times I pushed the book aside, no longer being able to read further because I had emotionally enmeshed myself into these characters souls. And yet, after distraction failed, half reluctantly and half rabidly picking the book up again, racing through pages hoping that there would be a silver lining.

House of Sand and Fog came into my house by mistake. And by that, I mean, it came into my hands with the misconception of being a horror novel. I had a vague recollection of a haunting movie poster with Jennifer Connelly, so when I came across the book (used) and it equally had a spooky cover, I purchased it. It was not until I got home that I read the back only to realize that it was hardly what I expected. So it sat upon my shelves for a year. I finally picked it up and devoured it in a mere couple of days.

The plot is rather simple and although the impetus for bringing the characters together, hardly the reason for reading. Kathy Nicola finds out that the county has evicted her from her home and auctioned off her house over an unpaid tax. Colonel Behrani, an Iranian who has taken asylum in the states, purchases the house at a ridiculously low sum. Homeless and with the help of leal aide and a kind officer, Lester, Kathy finds out that the county made a mistake and tries to regain the title of her home. However, unable to disappoint his family, Colonel Behrani is not about to resell less than market value.

You see? The plot, kind of eh, right? I know. Which caused my reluctance to pick up the book. The richness, however, is in the descriptions, it's in the detail of differences between customs in America and the Middle East. I found myself infuriated with both Kathy and Behrani but for different reasons. I also equally empathized with them as the individuals molded by their traditions and perceptions. House of Sand and Fog weighed me down, but ultimately I feel a better person for having read it.

This is a perfect book club read if you're a part of one. (Once again, can I stress how I am envious of all of you bloggers out there who have monthly gatherings geared toward the discussion of books). I promise you, you will have endless hours of discussion with this one.