Our Favorite Reads For December

We read a lot of good books in December and it was hard to choose, but we decided on these:

Gerard's Favorite was Promise Me by Richard Paul Evans

Promise Me by Richard Paul Evans is a good Christmas read!  It is a fiction story of Beth Cardall.  Her husband cheats on her, is dying of Cancer and her young daughter has an unexplained illness.  One night she meets a man who knows all about her.  He seems too good to be true.  It has kind of a weird twist, but the ending is very good!  It's a quick read that I liked a lot.  I give it 8+ stars.  You can visit the author’s Facebook page and his website at www.richardpaulevans.com

Karen's review:
Promise Me is a off-the-wall story with a very happy ending that I enjoyed immensely! I’m so glad I read this one because it had believable characters that I cared about in an unrealistic book that kept my interest all through it. I was impressed that the male author told the story primarily from Beth’s point of view and could write about hardship without it being a depressing book. Promise Me deals with loss, marriage, love, hope and is a thought-provoking book. It presents the questions of how would your life be different if only this didn’t happen and what would you do if you only had 10 months to live and money was no object? This is a fun read, in spite of a cheating husband, financial struggles and a mysterious disease that a 6-yr.-old has. It’s a “Christmas Miracle” book about hope and promises, a quick-read that leaves you happy. I promise, you’ll like this one! We highly recommend it for a light, entertaining fun read.

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Our Favorite Reads For June 2010

Gerard's favorite, of course, has to be Abby Finds A Good Home--From Death Row to Adoption. Since he already wrote his review on it, I just included the link.

Karen's favorite and Gerard's second favorite is House Rules by Jodi Picoult. Click on the link to read our review located on our new book blog, "Grab A Book From Our Stack." Take a look around while you are there and let us know what type books you like to read. It will help us know which reviews to post--between the two of us, we read pretty much everything except for fantasy and science fiction.

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7 Things I Learned This Week-Part 19

My Funny Dad, Harry Giveaway

When visiting Mountain Woman's blog at Red Pine Mountain, I saw she's having a book giveaway contest for four copies! All you have to do to enter is leave a comment that you would like to enter. There are some other things you can do to get more chances to win. The drawing will be June 12 for Father's Day. I was glad to see there were some who wanted it! Click here to head on over to enter!

Anti-Monkey Butt Powder

Kathy at "The Junk Drawer" discovered this product at her drug store and actually took several photos of it. This is a new product to me; never knew there was such a thing. Here is the link to her post about it: Do You Have A Monkey Butt?.

Birds & Squirrels

My new animal fact I learned this week is that sometimes birds attack squirrels. You can read all about the bird-squirrel fight at Forest Fight at The Everyday Adventurer.

Self Defense

I found a great post this week about teaching kids self defense at For Your Protection. There is also a link in the post to a whole video series about different ways kids can get away from an abductor here: Expert Village. If I had kids, I'd sure want them to know how to defend themselves.

Coolest Horse

At Just Wondering, I came across this video of the coolest horse ever. I never knew a pony could ride in a car and live inside a house, answer the phone and bring his owner a beer from the refrigerator. It even laid on the bed! I wonder if the horse is happy or if it wouldn't rather be out running. What do you think? Watch this video: The Coolest Horse,

How To Protect Your Address Book

This came from an email sent to me by a friend. I'm not guaranteeing it works, but it's simple enough to give it a shot. This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread further, and it will alert you to the fact that the worm has gotten into your system.

Here's what you do:

First, open your address book and click on 'new contact,' just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of email addresses. In the window where you would type your friend's first name, type in 'A'.

For the screen name or email address, type AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA
(mailto:AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA)

Now, here's what you've done and why it works:
The name 'A' will be placed at the top of your address book as entry.

This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends. When it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA (mailto:AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA), it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered. If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further and none of your friends will be infected. You'll also get an undeliverable message which alerts you that a virus has entered your computer and you can take care of it.

Osteogenesis Imperfecta

From reading "Handle With Care" by Jodi Picoult, I learned Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) is a rare bone disease where a person's bones break very easily--just by getting bumped, falling down, or even sneezing. The person with this disease is generally very short too. Much of their time is spent in the hospital and living with casts which is extremely costly.

Our Best Reads For April

Gerard's Favorite: Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult
Can't Put It Down--Jodi Classic (100 stars!)
First off, for anyone who has Osteogenesis imperfecta (O.I.) and their families and friends, my prayers and thoughts are with you. As for the book, I loved it!! This is a hard-to-put-down book. I went back and forth with how I felt about the people in this book. So many twists and turns and story lines everywhere. It's just awesome!!!! It left me wanting more, and then, if that's not enough, the last 50 or so pages were even better!! I finished it 3 days sooner than I expected I would. Nineteen Minutes is the standard I judge Jodi's books by because I really liked it a lot! That was one awesome book and this matches it. I cried at the end, hated the ending!!! I've read so many good books this year so far--this is one of them for sure. Read this book, you will never forget it!

Karen's Favorite: Has to be The Kanner Lake Series by Brandilyn Collins. I can't pick just one because I liked them all. They are all quick reads:

Violet Dawn
This is the first book in the Kanner Lake series and is splendid! Violet Dawn is a double mystery! It has a murder mystery plot as well as a personal mystery plot. The author builds to a climax and then switches to another story line altogether and leaves the reader hanging. This pattern occurs throughout the book and kept me hanging on--kind of like a soap opera. It has both suspense and action that made me want to keep reading. I was hooked right from the start along with Leslie, the small town reporter looking for her big story. I recommend this to anyone who likes suspense or mysteries.

Gerard read Violet Dawn too and says: Good, quick read (4 stars)

This book is another book in the Kanner Lake Series. This is the second book I've read by this author. Her books are good. They go quick but to me there is not a whole lot of substance. Her books will not stay with you if you know what I mean. This book gives away the killer too early in the story. It does have a nice twist to it concerning the main character though. If you like nice quick reads and a good story, then you will like this. If you want a book with more staying power, pass this by.

Coral Moon is a murder mystery that involves evil spiritual forces and that was a hard one to figure out. It is certainly unusual and spooky. It deals with ghosts, curses, demons and seances. I didn't like the creepiness of this one but it kept my interest to the end.

I liked Crimson Eve because there was excitement and a fight for survival right from the start. It dealt with consequences of sin and showed how our actions can have an impact on others. Carla, the main character, is pursued by a hit man hired by someone in her past and goes on the run. She has kept a lot of secrets but the truth comes out eventually. Fantastic book that I think women would especially enjoy. This was hard to put down.

I loved Amber Morn. It is the first one I ever read by Brandilyn Collins but I will be reading more. "Amber Morn" is filled with action and suspense brought about through a hostage situation in a small town at a café where older people do a blog together. I finished reading this book in just two days. It held my interest and I was anxious to keep on reading. It is the last book in the Kanner Lake Series but I still enjoyed it even though I hadn't read the other three first. It has Christian overtones through it but does not preach at all. I liked the way it ended too.

Gerard Read this too and says: Good Quick Read (5 stars)
You can read Amber Morn in two days. I would have liked the characters to be more developed. I haven't read the other three books in this series yet so maybe the characters were already more expanded. I will probably read the other three at some point.

It was hard to pick just one book for each of us this month, we've read so many good ones. As you can see, I picked the whole series, it was so good. I recommend reading them in order so that by the time you get to the last one, you know the characters. Check out our other book reviews for April at our Zemek's Updates Blog.