You all know I recommend lots and lots of books…and while I love giving you many different book reviews to explore, I also know the archives are large (almost four years of blogging!) SO–I’ve put together new pages listing my favorite, top recommended books. Because I’m sure you all needed new ideas for something to read, right? 🙂
My apologies if I’m expanding an already-long To Be Read list…but hope you will enjoy my new lists of Recommended Reads anyway!
Once I finished reading the complete Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series by Ann Brashares, I thought it would be fun to watch the two movies as well to see how they compared. I thought the first one (mostly) did very well, while the second one was (probably) a good movie, but struggled more with representing the book(s).
Movie #1 is based only on the first book, and follows the same essential plot and pattern: four best friends find a pair of blue jeans that magically fits them all, and they pass the jeans between them when they have to be separated for the summer.
I thought all four girls were portrayed well and accurately to the book, and three out of four plotlines went well too. Carmen struggles to accept her father’s new fiancée and soon-to-be-step-children, and Tibby has a heart-breaking and eye-opening summer when she meets Bailey, a twelve-year-old girl with cancer. Although things have to happen faster on screen than in a book, the emotions and essential ideas of both these plotlines came through. Continue reading “Movie Reviews: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, 1 and 2”
When I was offered a review copy of Brunette Ambition by Lea Michele (of Glee fame), it didn’t look like my type of read…but I knew someone who might like it better! So I did accept the copy, and today I have a guest review from Diane, who you might recognize as a long-time blog reader. 🙂
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If you are a fan of the TV show Glee, about the high school glee club and its various members, then you are well acquainted with Lea Michele. She is one of the stars of that popular series. She has a phenomenal singing voice and flair for the dramatic. She’s now come out with a book called Brunette Ambition. It is aimed squarely at her fan base, young women who are teenagers and in their early 20’s. Part memoir and part beauty/diet/exercise advice book, it takes a very positive outlook and offers background on how she got started in her career plus advice to her fans on how to best move forward on their chosen career paths.
The book can be used as a reference for Michele’s advice on diet, hair, make-up, clothes, etc. Her thoughts on these topics are really rather conservative, suggesting healthy eating, more nights in than heavy partying, exercises to do in your own backyard, beauty tips that rely strongly on common sense, and buying timeless clothing styles for your closet. She also provides step-by-step make-up and hair style tips. These thoughts are useful, I’m sure, for her demographic, who may want to emulate her. Continue reading “(Guest) Book Review: Brunette Ambition”
This week’s Book Blogger Hop question: Do you have a pet peeve about when someone posts a comment on your blog? For example, no link back to their blog.
Aww, I don’t have any pet peeves about commenters. I love comments! Well, if they’re from real people—I do get annoyed by spam comments that sneak past the spam filter, especially the ones that look almost like real comments and are only given away by their general vagueness and poor grammar. That’s my only comment pet peeve.
So I thought I’d flip this around and mention a couple of favorite things about comments. I love it when commenters…
Bloggers out there, do you have pet peeves—or favorite things—about comments? Feel free to write a blog post, answer each other’s questions, or volunteer a book suggestion, but spammers are not welcome. 🙂
I recently rewatched Gone with the Wind, which got me thinking on other Clark Gable movies…and eventually led me to a rewatch of San Francisco, a 1936 movie about the 1906 earthquake, starring Gable, Jeannette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy–and which I probably hadn’t seen in 15 years!
Gable plays Blackie Norton, saloon owner and prominent citizen on the rough and disreputable Barbary Coast of San Francisco. Mary Blake (MacDonald) is a preacher’s daughter and new arrival to San Francisco, hoping to sing at the Tivoli Opera House but only able to find work singing in Blackie’s night club. For the first hour and a half of the movie, Mary is torn between her high principles and her attraction to Blackie, while Father Mullin (Tracy) watches in alarm—until finally the earthquake hits, and tears the city apart.
I found this movie a bit slow in spots…but I was fascinated by Blackie’s character, and it’s all worth it for the last half-hour depicting the earthquake. Continue reading “Movie Review: San Francisco”
Tales of the Marvelous 