Hunger Games Movie Poster

Wicked excited! Don't want to wait a year to see this one but I know it'll definitely be worth it!

In My Mailbox #14

In My Mailbox is hosted every week by Kristi The Story Siren.

This week our IMM post is going Kiddie Style.

As in, we went to the Library for the last Alphabet Soup of the summer and picked up some really cute books for the girls and I wanted to share them with you. Last week was Faerie Tale week so THIS week, all the books from last week were available for check out.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

Originally by The Brothers Grimm

Retold by Marianna Mayer

Illustrated by Kinuko Y. Craft

Beauty and the Beast
Originally by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve
Retold by Jan Brett (author of The Mitten)

Illustrated by Jan Brett

Cinderella

From the version by Charles Perrault
Retold by Barbara McClintock
Illustrated by Barbara McClintock

Hansel & Gretel

Originally by The Brothers Grimm

Retold by Will Moses

Illustrated by Will Moses

Petrosinella

Predates The Brothers Grimm's Rapunzel by 200 years

Retold by Diane Stanley

Illustrated by Diane Stanley

I did get some things of my own this past week, but I'll share those next week. :-) Can't wait to see what you all got! 

Harry Potter in 99 Seconds

Saw this on a journaling website I've been on since 2001. It's freaking awesome. These guys rock.



Go check out their YouTube Channel and subscribe!

So Here's The Thing

Ok, first order of business...

Tomorrow is the last day of Alphabet Soup at the Library for my little one. Alphabet Soup is a half an hour story time where the kids are read different children's books and can watch 10 minute short videos of their favorite stories brought to life. I'm sad. She loves Alphabet Soup. I don't do so well around lots of little kids, but it's her favorite day of the week. I'm not sure what to do with her on Fridays for the next month now. Hmm...

SECOND order of business...

In order to try and kick start my oldest into the book loving world I have given her a ... mission. I've told her that on top of reading Harry Potter for 30 minutes every night before bed, she gets to choose a book that SHE wants to read during the day. She'll read 1 chapter a day and when she's finished with the book I want her to either write up what she did and didn't like about it and give it to me. In exchange, I will put her "review" up on my blog.

Third and last order of business...

I was filling out a form and had to pick a user name... I couldn't use my usual handle of WildIrishRose33 because somehow on that website it had already been taken. SO, instead I chose The Irish Bookworm. And as soon as I saved that I was like "holy cow... maybe I should change my blog name!" Because honestly? I love it. I love my blog the way it is now. I really do. But it's hard to identify with the blog name. It's not an identity, in other words. I want to be able to say "Yep that's me, I'm blahblahblah". So, to change or not to change. That is the question. I'm absolutely horrible with change and sometimes regret the decision as soon as I've done it, but I'm really up in the air with this one.

I need your help. I would like your opinion in the matter. Should I become

The Irish Bookworm

Or should I stick with things the way they are?

Follow Friday #16

So Parajunkee threw out a new kind of question this week. Which I've been thinking about  for a bit and I'm still not sure I've got just ONE answer for it.

Q. Let's step away from books for a second and get personal. What T-Shirt slogan best describes you?

A. Oh boy. A T-shirt slogan. Hmmm.....

Or maybe...

Because I actually am Irish.

I think I'll have to go with this one though...

Body piercing saved my life...

Can't wait to see ya'lls tshirts! 

Jackson Pearce

I just want to say I think she is absolutely hilarious. I've subscribed to her YouTube Channel and have been watching her videos for a few months and I think she's just awesome. Unfortunately, I have not yet had a chance to read her books, I think she is a terrific person and I would read absolutely anything she wrote. Even if it WAS Mark Twain Porn. LoL.



Very few things I see on the internet make me laugh until I cry. One is D*mn You Auto Correct and so far the only others are her videos. Well, no, I take that back... watching Charlie try to teach Michael to speak British was kind of funny. And vice versa. If you wanna check it out go check out charlieissocoollike and watch his videos.



And, come on, Harry Potter pick up lines? Priceless.



Seriously, if you haven't yet, you should go subscribe to her videos!

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Teaser Tuesday #19

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

•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 teaser

I'm going to mix things up a bit. I'm going to post my teaser, but I'm not going to tell you what book it's from. You have to figure that out. :-) To a lot of people it may sound familiar but you can't quite put your finger on it. To a lot of other people, you may have no clue, but you'll look. :-)

"At that very moment such a loud sound of wailing broke out from the servants' quarters that she clutched the young man's arm, and Mary stood shivering from head to foot. The wailing grew wilder and wilder."

Can't wait to see who guesses right!

Looking For Something To Read?

No IMM this week. I'm pretty broke so I don't get books as often as I'd like, although I hear the Borders around here may be liquidating some time soon. If it does... expect a BIG IMM post soon. :-)

On with the reason we all came here today.

Are you looking for something to read? I am. I've got a lot of books that I haven't read yet, but I'm having trouble deciding which one to move on to next. And now that both my girls are here with me I don't have as much time to read as I did before.

Here are some suggestions if you find yourself with "readers' block".

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

Blurb from GoodReads: In this splendid retelling of the biblical story of Hosea, bestselling author Francine Rivers pens a heartbreaking romance between a prostitute and the upright and kind farmer who marries her; the story also functions as a reminder of God's unconditional love for his people. Redeeming Love opens with the Gold Rush of 1850 and its rough-and-tumble atmosphere of greed and desire. Angel, who was sold into prostitution as a child, has learned to distrust all men, who see her only as a way to satisfy their lust. When the virtuous and spiritual-minded Michael Hosea is told by God to marry this "soiled dove," he obeys, despite his misgivings. As Angel learns to love him, she begins to hope again but is soon overwhelmed by fear and returns to her old life. Rivers shines in her ability to weave together spiritual themes and sexual tension in a well-told story, a talent that has propelled her into the spotlight as one of the most popular novelists in the genre of Christian fiction. This is one of her best. - Cindy Crosby

and Falling, fly by Skyler White
Tagline from Goodreads: In a dark and seedy underground of burned-out rock stars and angels-turned- vampires, a revolutionary neuroscientist and a fallen angel must put medicine against mythology in an attempt to erase their tortured pasts...but at what price?

Fire Bringer by David Clement - Davies

The blurb from Goodreads for this one is really long. So I'll give you my take on it. It's kind of like Harry Potter, but for deer. I picked it up from the library before a trip to Maine and ended up really enjoying it. I wasn't sure I would. There's a prophecy that a deer with a mark that looks like an oak leaf will more or less lead their kind to freedom. So Rannoch, "the chosen one", must make the decision whether or not to return home and liberate his herd from Sgorr and the Sgorrla. I highly suggest picking this one up!

There ya go. Three recommendations from moi. All books that I've read and loved. Not exactly mainstream books but still awesome. Doesn't hurt to go outside the box every once in a while right?

Follow Friday #15

  Q. Name 3 authors that you would love to sit down and spend an hour or a meal with just talking about either their books or get advice on writing from?
A. Geez... I don't know if I could pick just 3. I would probably have to go for JK Rowling, CS Lewis, and JRR Tolkien. And for someone who's name isn't on their books as just initials, I'd have to add in Jane Austen as well. And MAAAAAAAAAAYBE Christopher Paolini. I know that's more than 3, but I don't do well having so few favorites.

Covers Around the World

Time for another installment of Covers Around the World!

This week I decided to do Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (gee, I wonder why). :-)

Enjoy!

US Cover

Italian Cover

German Cover

French Cover

Spanish Cover

Persian Cover

Dutch Cover

Danish Cover

This one ^ reminds me of an Indiana Jones movie poster.

Ukranian Cover

It looks like they took the faces of the movie characters and used them in the book illustrations.

Another Dutch Cover

There we go. Lots of cool covers!

Review - Matched by Ally Condie

To be honest with you guys... I never understood what dystopian meant until I read this book. Yeah, I read The Hunger Games trilogy and I've been told that that's dystopian too... but i still didn't get it. Tad slow on the uptake I guess. There's so many genres and sub - genres it's hard to keep track of all of them.

Matched was a birthday gift given to me by my sister. Well, she paid for it, I picked it out. I grabbed it off the shelf not knowing anything about it other than everyone seemed to love it (yes, sometimes I AM a follower... I can't help it).

Without giving away too much, I liked this book. It had a "love triangle" of a different sort. Not the Bella/Edward/Jacob triangle that I can't stand (really though, I did like those books... honest... just hate the geometry). Both male characters were equally likeable it was hard to choose which one to "root for". And Cassia, the main character, seemed helpless to me at first. Always doing what she was told. What was expected of her. I wasn't sure I'd be too fond of her. But she proved herself in the end. She really did. I liked her. She was stronger than she let on in the beginning. And I loved her parents. Absolutely loved them.

I definitely look forward to reading the second installment when it hits shelves in November.

Teaser Tuesday #18

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

•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!

This weeks teaser is from Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan.

"The other ship hung in the sky like a pendant, silver in the ether light cast by the nebula. Waverly and Kieran, lying together on their matress of hay bales, took turns peering at it through a spy glass. They knew it was a companion vessel to theirs, but out here, in the vastness of space, it could have been as tiny as a OneMan or as immense as a star - there were no points of reference." p 3

It All Ends Here

I finally (ok so it's only been out for 3 days) went and saw Harry Potter.

Best movie of the lot.

I didn't make the same mistake I made LAST year. For the first half of the Deathly Hallows I re-read the book. And I PICKED APART the movie. Like seriously. All that was left of it was bones. This time though? I remember the core parts of the book but I don't have all the details fresh in my mind. And it was AMAZING. ONLY Harry Potter movie I've EVER watched without thinking "That didn't happen" or "No one said that in the book" or "They forgot to do THIS".

It was amazing. How many times have I said that so far? It was. A. Maz. Ing. I LOVED Aberforth. Even though his role was minimal. I loved Neville. I LOVED Draco. And McGonagall was awesome as always. And of COURSE Molly's part was great.

BUT. I must say.

The star of my night?

Snape.

I don't think I could have imagined his part even HALF as good as he played it. Oh my gosh he was terrific. The absolute BEST role I have EVER seen him in. He played it beautifully. Hats off to you Alan Rickman.

This was the greatest series I've ever had the pleasure of reading. And the best group of movies I've ever been fortunate enough to watch. I wonder if Ms Rowling knows how many lives she's changed. If she could have envisioned what this would do for so many people when she started writing on that napkin... Yes I'm sad that it's over. That there are no more new books. No more new movies. But these are the ones that I will NEVER tire of.

<3

In My Mailbox #13

In My Mailbox is hosted every week by Kristi The Story Siren.

THIS week, I got an advanced readers' edition of Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan. I won this in a Goodreads giveaway and had forgotten about it until I received it yesterday. It's set to be on shelves September 27, 2011!

I love the cover. It's simpley, but pretty.

Description from Amazon (Goodreads is down right now for some reason):

If a violent battle destroyed the only world you’ve ever known, would you be brave enough to save who was left? Would love be strong enough to survive the fight? Either way, there’s no turning back.


What did you all get in the mail?

Follow Friday #14

Q. What do I do when I are not reading?

When I are not reading I do lots of things. Hehe.
 
But seriously.
 
Umm... I take pictures. I have a photography blog and a photography/design Facebook page (which is updated more than my blog). My camera is really like an extra, freaky appendage. I've been taking photos for as long as I can remember. And I've been actually SERIOUS about photography and editing and design and all that stuff for at least the last 10 years.  I LOVE taking pictures. I love being able to see things through my camera that people don't even see without one.
 

I spend time with my beautiful little girls (both pictured above, 3rd picture is my nephew playing frisbee in the ocean). They are my life. My world. I love them both more than anything else. My ongoing divorce issues have not exactly made things easy for either one of them... me either, but they're more important than I am. Long story short, I am just happy that I have both of them here and together now. They are my sunshine.

Like I said above somewhere, I do design too. Mostly my own but I do stuff for friends every once in a while. I like to make mock covers for up and coming novels too. Those are wicked fun.  

(ps, click on each one of the 3 pictures immediately above and it will take you to their respective pages!)

I really don't know what else I do. Haha. I'm sure there are other things. Like for a while, my mom and I were feeding a starving horse we named Lilly. She's about 30 minutes away and her owner just wasn't feeding her. Wasn't feeding her, she had nails from her shoes coming through her hooves. She was dirty. She was lonely. We fed her hay twice a week for 3 months until my brother in law died. Two days after that happened we went back and filled up her grain bin so that my mom's friend could distribute her food when she fed her own horses (Lilly had jumped the fence to join the other horses in THEIR pasture and has been there ever since). Her "owner" has been buying her grain ever since then with my mom's friend putting it out for her. We haven't been able to make it to see her as much as we'd like since then. But she's beautiful. She always was beautiful but now I look at her and my heart is just filled with so much happiness.

She went from this: 

Skinny and scraggly... to this:

Beautiful creature.

We may have saved her... but she saved me. And I will love her forever for how she saved me.

And I reckon that be it. How about you?

Harry Potter

As it all draws to a close I find myself nostalgic for the days when Harry Potter was still new to me. I regret that I didn't start reading the series until after the 4th book was already published, but it was still wonderful and exciting to me. Entering the world of magic with Harry. It was better, almost, that I didn't have to wait for another book to be published after I'd finished reading the first one. I don't think I could have stood it.

When book number 5 was due to come out, we pre-ordered it from the local Borders store and the night before the release we went and stood in line from 9pm until midnight when they finally started handing out the copies. There were people with bottle cap glasses on and hand drawn lightning bolts on their foreheads. People wearing cloaks and scarves with different house colors on them. And my own mother, dressed up as a witch.

I remember carrying the books around with me, reading while I ate, while I "watched tv", sometimes while I was sitting in traffic, always when I was a passenger in a vehicle and not its driver, while I was supposed to be sleeping... I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next. I loved reading all of the theories online of what the next book would contain. I loved finding the websites with all of the random information about names and people in the books. Like the word Dumbledore means bumblebee. And that the school motto translated to Never Tickle Sleeping Dragons. I loved going in to stores and finding Harry Potter memorabilia, long before the movies were ever thought of. The posters of Harry playing Quidditch. The stuffed dragons named Norbert. The Hagrid statues with pockets full of sausages and other odds and ends. The Jelly Bellies turned in to Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. Finding out that some of those beans really DID taste disgusting. But loving them because they were supposed to.

Harry was the first person to truly pull me into his world and away from my own when I needed to be. I'd read fantasy before, but nothing that really swept me up in its story the way Harry Potter always did. It was with these books that I found my escape when things got too painful to handle. It may not have made them go away completely, but it held them at bay for as long as I had the books open.

I have always been a reader. But for a while... I stopped reading. There weren't really any books that interested me, and being forced to read books for school work turned me off of doing it all together. Harry Potter is what got me reading again. Hard to believe it started out on JK Rowlings napkin.

I love the movies too though. In a different way than I love the books. They leave out so much of the stories, but I understand you can't put all of that wonderful world into a 3 hour movie. I had to learn to look at them objectively, or else I'd do nothing but pick them apart and point out that "this didn't happen" or "that wasn't REALLY what he said" or "they forgot to do that!". It was nice to see the movies, to be able to put faces with the names I was reading. To really feel like I knew them. That they were my friends.

That's what JK Rowling did. She wrote about people who really felt like they were friends when I was reading. And every time a book ended it felt like my friends were leaving for a while. And I was sad. And now? They're gone for good. Or at least... they won't come back the same way they did before. But I'll always be able to remember the way things were. I'll always be able to read the stories again and remember the way I felt the first time I picked up the books. I'll always be able to watch the movies and feel just as excited to finally see Hogwarts and Diagon Alley and Harry and Hermione and  Ron.

This series really was incredibly magical. My 8 year old has just started reading The Sorcerer's Stone. She's a reluctant reader unfortunately. I can only hope Harry opens up a world of reading for her the way it did for me.

Audio Books

I just got back from my trip to the Outer Banks with a few of the members of my family. On the way down and most of the way back up we finished listening to the Full Cast Audio version of Graceling which I thought was awesome. I loved Katsa's voice and Prince Po's. And it was so great to kind of listen to the stories come alive. It will make reading Bitterblue so much easier because I'll be able to hear them as I read.

Once that was over (Booo!!!!) I put in the audio book for Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. I thought that might be a full cast audio, too but apparently I read the cover wrong. It's read by two different narrators instead. I must say, I'm not fond of the guy chosen to read Sam's chapters, but the girl who reads Grace's? Love her. She sounds so incredibly convincing. It's like conversation instead of a manuscript. And she does such a wonderful job. I kind of wish I had another road trip so I could listen more. Hehe. A few minutes here and there when I have to go to the grocery store just isn't enough.

I definitely recommend both of those audio books! Check them out!

Still

I'm still on vacation! But I wanted to check in and see how everyone's week was going!

What are you all reading this week?

Beach Baby

I just wanted to let you all know I may not be here for the next week. I'm headed to the beach in a few hours!! YAY!

Of course, I may fall asleep while I'm driving, but at least it will be on my way to the ocean.

So I hope everyone has a great 4th of July and a beautiful week!