Sick Day Reviews

The last few days I've had that stuffy head, sore throat, coughy, dizzy feeling which has been awful. My house is a mess. However, I allowed myself some reading time yesterday . . . actually several hours worth of reading time, in between sleeping on the couch moments. I still have a pile of books I want to read, but I had a bunch of uninterrupted reading time yesterday. Here are my reviews for some  of those books, plus one movie.

Rising Book 1: Resistance by Larua JosephsenLaura Josephsen made my day yesterday. I stumbled across a recommendation for this at Alex. J. Cavanaugh's blog, and out of idle curiosity and interest I went to take a look at the sample chapters at amazon.com. Hooked from the beginning, I decided to splurge and buy it for my Kindle. I finished it last night. I loved this book, and I'm looking forward to the next in the series. The main character, Alphonse, is a scholar on vacation when he is thrown into intrigue and chased by enemies of his country disguised as soldiers. I'm afraid to say more, because I would probably ruin the plotline. I highly suggest checking out those sample chapters at amazon.com.

Cassafire by Alex J. Cavanaugh is out! I thought I had to wait until the 28th, but I found it yesterday and purchased the Kindle edition. I'm only 40% into this book, and since I am back to health I don't have a good excuse for sitting and reading all day . . .but I am hooked by Alex's imagination, and the relationships of his characters. Byron may attempt to be aloof and alone, but he is drawn into relationship with a challenging female pilot and a very young linguist who needs his brotherly friendship. Alex's joy-filled descriptions of flight are awesome. Since the Catch Fire celebration of CassaFire is coming on the 28th, I suggest being prepared by getting this book today. I know I sound like a bad advertisement on TV, but seriously, it's a good book and Alex is one of the nicest bloggers I know. Here's the link to Cassafire at amazon.com.

"On her seventeenth birthday, Cassia meets her Match. Society dictates he is her perfect partner for life. Except he's not. In Cassia's society, Officials decide who people love. How many children they have. Where they work. When they die. But, as Cassia finds herself falling in love with another boy, she is determined to make some choices of her own. And that's when her whole world begins to unravel..." - Blurb and pic by amazon.com
Matched by Ally Condie is a dystopian romance adventure that my oldest daughter picked up at the library on Tuesday. Romance is usually not the main genre in our household - everyone prefers adventure, scifi and fantasy, but this book caught her eye and now there are three of us reading it at the same time . . .well, there are three bookmarks in it anyway. I haven't had my hands on this book since Tuesday (when we picked it up) and we are all vying for turns with it. Well-written and intense, the part that truly drives the story forward is Cassia, the intelligent, determined protaganist in love with words and saddened by her Grandfather's death.


In movies . . . well, I actually went to see Journey 2 The Mysterious Island with my family.

And we liked it . . . because we were prepared for a departure from reality, for some fun, and for some laughter. I still noticed that the helicopter scenes lacked realism (my dad used to have a pilot's license and trained me to look for details in movies) and the part with the flying bees made my husband groan a little (how did they "pilot" the bees exactly?) but we still enjoyed this romp through Verne book on film, Hollywood style. My daughters mainly noticed that the directors didn't do much to segue from this movie from the first one . . .we would have liked a line or two about his uncle, or something to tie into the first movie. What happened to all those diamonds? Why is his stepdad footing the bill? Anyway, apart from that it was a fun ride 2 The Mysterious Island. BTW, the best actor in this movie is . . .Josh Hutcherson, just like in the first one even with Michael Caine and Dwayne Johnson making quips at each other. One reason my family is looking forward to The Hunger Games movie is that we know at least the actor playing Peeta can act well, so we are hopeful that the movie will be good. 

(photo from IMDB)

So, I know I'm off schedule this week - posting on M, T, and Th instead of M,W,F. I'm not sure what my schedule looks like tomorrow - I may be skiing and going to see Brandon Heath in concert at a local church, or I might be driving to Portland to visit our neice and the biggest bookstore in the world (not that I need any more reading material).

Next week: Evil Genius, and Catch Fire!!!