I am almost done with North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley. This is my review in short: “North of Beautiful gets everything that Twilight gets so very wrong- RIGHT!” It is about a teen girl whos home life leaves her empty. Terra tries to make up in every way possible for her port-wine beauty mark. She is dying to fit in- to cover herself up, until she gets to know someone who enjoys being with her without makeup-and who makes her feel, for the first time, free to be herself. I am not done with it so I don’t yet know what else to write…but when I finish I will get my review up. Keep an eye out, I think it will go up on Tuesday.
Currently I am working on the audiobook version of A Passage to India by EM Forester. I have mixed feelings about it so far, but maybe that is because I need to step away from the audiobook and actually read the book. I am getting distracted easily. Anyone care to share some advice? Maybe not listening while driving in rush-hour traffic? Huh, I should consider that!
As for creative outlets I am at the moment loving on Handmade Home- I love it to bits. I will review it soon, I wanted to make something from it first, but since we leave for Spain in 5 days I may have to let that wait! What are your favourite new craft books?
There you have it….that is what I have done this week. Oh, be sure to enter my giveaway for your choice of one of two bookshelves!!! (Today is the LAST DAY to enter)
This Week at Dreadlock Girl:
Flick Review: The Visitor (Awarded My Stellar Five Chicken Flick)
Portland Book Blogger Conference
Book Review: The Photographer (a graphic novel like you have never seen before!)
I suppose it depends on what types of books you read, but since I read novels, mostly I read to live a life other than my own for a while. I read to get away, to dream of somewhere far away, or to understand where someone is coming from better. I love international fiction because I can travel somewhere I have never been, or walk the streets in a well known village 8,000 miles away. I am teleported through reading to a dream or a nightmare, depending on the book. I can live an exciting night, even though I don’t have a million dollars for travel fees and a babysitter that night!!
I guess movies could be the same thing, but they really aren’t, for me at least. Because they don’t allow me to take my time, I am on their schedule and just working on keeping up most of the time with what is being said and the images that flash on screen. In reading, I live longer in the places I want to and skip-run-jump through those that freak me out. I like reading.
I have recently been transported to China while reading The Kitchen God’s Wife (Amy Tan), to a Russian threatened Afghanistan in The Photographer (graphic novel), and through racial and spacial bounds in Zimbabwe in Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight. Where have you been lately? Have your travels taken you pleasant places or nightmareish-ones? Do you read for the same reasons as me or different reasons?
I am currently reading Amy Tan’s, The Kitchen God’s Wife and it is excellent! I love getting the preloaded audio books from my library. Does every one’s library have these? It is the size of a deck of cards and lighter and you just have to plug in your headphones and hit play. No need for an ipod or to put it onto your computer and then transport it into a different format to work on your MP3 player, it fab.This is what they look like:
It really is a great idea. So far I have listened to two of them, last week I listened to Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, before that John Green’s Paper Towns and this week I loving The Kitchen God’s Wife. For my little ones I checked out The Island of Blue Dolphins, and Charlie and the Chocolate factory two books I enjoyed as a kid. Our library gets them through Playaway, and the quality is good, you can even mess with the settings and speed up the reading if you want. They are marketing to the military, schools and libraries, places where more than one person would benefit from the usage of the pre-loads, I tell you….I can’t get enough!
I have enjoyed the online download audiobooks that our library has, but these are even way more fun!
What about your library? Do they embrace new technology or is your library slower to accommodate the changing times? Tell me something you love about your local library, I’d love to hear it!
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