Shocking Pink - Fun Read Friday Review

Shocking Pink by Erica Spindler Genre: Thriller

     Andie, Raven and Julie had been friends since childhood. Their band of friendship had even survived the traumatic summer of '83 when the girls became material witnesses to a creepy murder.

     A friend of mine had given me this to read, though I'm not entirely sure why as it does not fall within my usual preferred genre.

     Plenty of plot twists to keep you guessing but frankly are fairly predicatble. Racy references to kinky sex lead me to not recommend this book to anyone under 21 even though it isn't horribly graphic or detailed.

I give it 2 stars.

A Modern Utopia - Featured Author Review

A Modern Utopia by H.G. Wells Genre: Classic, Nonfiction

     Wells has addressed quite a few of the problems with Utopia in this book. Some of his ideas have merit. But no matter the era, it is just impossible to make everyone happy all of the time. There will always be somebody somewhere who will find fault with something that another person feels is absolutely perfect.

     In the 19th century man was enthralled with the ideas of Utopia. Many writers theorized about how it could be obtained. Not just writers and philosophers were captivated with the idea of Utopia, architect Le Corbusier even designed buildings for his idea of the perfect Utopian city. At the time many people thought Utopia was attainable.

Laughter Really is the Best Medicine - Pick of the Month Review

Laughter Really is the Best Medicine by the editors of Reader's Digest Genre: Humor

     From my earliest memories the Laughter is the Best Medicine feature has always been my favorite in the Reader's Digest. Even as a little girl before I had found any interest in the rest of the magazine, I can remember grabbing my great-grandmother's latest issue and reading this feature while visiting her.

     I notice that this is not titled The Best of... and rightly so. Some of the jokes contained within are a bit corny, others I had heard before, but there are a few gems included as well that made me chuckle out loud while reading.

     The nice thing about having this on my kindle is that I can open it between books and read just a few stories as time allows. Or even on those days when nothing seems to go right and I could use a little humor to my day, I can easily have a humorous story right at my finger tips to brighten up my day a little bit.

     I hope that you downloaded this when I first posted March's monthly picks as it is no longer free, but even at it's current price of $3.99* it is worth it.

I give it 4 stars!

     *This was the current price on Amazon when I wrote this review, but as with all books on Amazon their prices fluctuate often so please double check the price before downloading the book.

Socs and Greasers - Book Review

Socs and Greasers: Behind The Scenes of The Outsiders from Rob Lowe's Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe Genres: Nonfiction, Autobiography

     This short book actually appears to be an excerpt from Rob Lowe's autobiography and regales us with behind the scene stories from the making of The Outsiders. Even if they hadn't already read and enjoyed S.E. Hinton's book, every red blooded American teenaged girl loved this movie. As yet undiscovered actors: Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez. Add to this list the slightly older but still incredibly hot Patrick Swayze and singing heart throb Leif Garret and even if the movie had had no plot, we wouldn't have noticed while swooning over all the eye candy available.

     I decided to review this book today because it is Rob Lowe's birthday. I still remember this fact from the days that I was an official member of his fan club. The posters that had hung on my wall as a teen are probably still rolled up somewhere in my mother's attic. When I saw this book on amazon it made me feel nostalgic for the days when life's main concern revolved around gossiping with my friends about cute boys and the latest pictures of our favorite heart throbs in Sixteen magazine or Teen Beat.

     Lowe gives very emotional accounts of friendships formed, and situations experienced while filming this classic movie. He seems incredibly down to earth despite the fact that he became a megastar at the age of 18. Definitely some interesting reading and the ebook was still free when I wrote this review.

I give it 3 stars.

The Invisible Man - Flashback Friday

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells Genres: Classic, Science Fiction

     When I announced my featured author picks for the month I bet it seemed strange that I had neglected some of H.G. Wells most popular titles. I knew that I had already reviewed The Invisible Man and that I have also recently read Time Machine though I have not reviewed it on here. Originally I had planned to re-read and review Time Machine but while researching the author biography post I learned of his Anticipations book and decided to read it instead. Ok, so that was a mistake as I had found Anticipations incredibly dull. But to be honest, the whole reason that I started the featured author segment was to motivate myself to read some of the books that have been sitting on my "to-read" list for ages that I would not normally pick to read. So, at any rate, I HAVE reviewed H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man and if you'd like to read my review, you can link to it here.

I gave it 4 stars!

Beware the Ides of March

     Do you ever wonder where certain phrases came from or how exactly they originated? Since a lot of popular phrases come from literature I thought that it might be fun to periodically take a break from reviews and research such phrase origins.

     The Ides of March dates back to the days when the Romans were a powerful empire. The Romans didn't number their days like we do today, instead they based their calendar on the lunar cycle. Kalends usually fell on the 1st day of the month and represented the new moon. Ides was the full moon which generally occurred on the 13th of short months (such as January, April, June, etc.) and 15th of long months (March and October for example). Nones is halfway between the Kalends and the Ides and most probably the day of the half moon, this denotes the 7th or 9th, depending on the length of the month. The Romans would refer to days in a system very similar to their numbering system where October 14th would merely be considered the day before the Ides of October.

Anticipations - Featured Author Review

Anticipations by H.G. Wells Genre: Nonfiction, History

     I like to shake things up and review at least one book by a featured author that is not within the genre that they are best known for. I thought it would be interesting to read this nonfiction novel that was penned by H.G. Wells. This book was published under several titles: Anticipations of the Reactions of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought, Wells' Social Anticipations, and simply Anticipations. In this book Wells gives us his predictions as to where he sees the world headed by the year 2000. Many reviews that I have read for this book proclaim that many of Wells' prophecies were dead on the mark, while some were almost humorous that he was so far off base.