I love hearing from authors and publicists who’d like me to read and review their books. If you have a title you think I’d be interested in, please feel free to contact me at ibetnoonehasthisdamnid@yahoo.com .
For more information about what books I like and how I choose which books to review, check out Mt. TBR's review policy.
I look forward to hearing from you!
1. You have a chance to _run away and join the circus, but the kids won’t allow it_.
2. _I wish my kids would STOP FIGHTING_ right now!
3. There is a _paddle somewhere, but the kids keep hiding it from me_.
4. _Hire the Supernanny now_ and pay later.
5. It’s time to _go to the bus stop now, right? Ist it time yet? Please, God, can it be time now! Two-hour delays and school cancellations suck_.
6. _I’d get a rope, take each child to a different room, and suspend them_ up in the air but _that’s just too much work_.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to _watching some Stargate with Mags and working out what Sam wants for her birthday dinner_, tomorrow my plans include _lunch out with the kids, a trip to the library (it’s book sale weekend, WOOT!), and celebrating Sammi’s birthday_ and Sunday, I want to _have a good Sunday at church, the read a little and relax with the kids_!
Oh man… Today our church had services outside and then a picnic and fun and games after. Gwen, my 15-year-old, entered the watermelon eating contest and came in second. She at an entire melon and hasn’t felt up to much eating since.. lol. Cotton candy, snow cones, hillbilly golf (no idea what that is), three-legged races, sack races and so much more. All told, we were out on the blacktop in the unhindered sunshine for about 3 hours, and went home hot, FULL, and ready for fellowshippin’ with Pastor Pillow and Sister Sheets! Not long ago, after scratching my forehead, I f0und my skin to be rather warm and sensitive. My arms are a warm pinky color, but my face is a shiny red sunburn. yay. Guess I’ll be tearing into the aloe plant in a bit 😉
I finally got the bookmarks from my old computer and put them on here. The kids are being good little troupers and not complaining about the lack of internet. Someone suggested I get a router to plug into the modem, and then plug my and their computers into it. I hope it’s not terrible expensive, I’m already a desk and 25-foot cable into it.
Also, since my desk has been covered with stacks of books, which all went onto my bed when I took out the old computer and put in the new one, making sleep nigh impossible that night (especially since Mags had crawled in my bed while I was working), I finally broke down and got a new bookcase… a HALF bookcase, I don’t intend on filling it… nope, no way… nuh uh! But, within 24 hours, it had been claimed by someone else.
Wait, THAT'S not on my TBR pile!
Well, I’m hoping for a better week of reading and looking forward to maybe settling back down into a routine, again. I’m also wondering if maybe I should go through Mt. TBR and being honest with myself, “Am I really ever going to read this?” Especially if it’s something I know a lot of people have wishlisted. I’ve already found a home for The Audacity of Hope, which I got last year along with McCain’s book with the plan of doing a post of opposing candidates. Honestly, I’m not going to read it now, and BM had 199 people wanting it, so it’s going on to a new TBR pile. Maybe they’ll read it, lol.
I’ve come to a point in having too many books *gasp, clutch pearls! That’s blasphemy!* where I’ve bought or mooched books I already had, and, if I never got another book, it’d take me at least 3 or 4 years to get through them all. I should unsubscribe to Shelf-Awareness… lol… but I’d just go to the website. Too many books and NOT ENOUGH TIME!
K, so now I’ve come to the point in the post to announce the winner of the Something Beyond Greatness giveaway 🙂 And that winner is: sdechantal! Congratulations, if you’ll send me your address, I’ll get that out in the mail to you next week 🙂
and now, a video of MY OWN 😀 YaY! I love my computer, I can now share my pics and vids from my new camera! This is my dog, Missy. She’s a Rat Terrier, and her favorite thing in the world is Hardee’s. Can you guess what her LEAST favorite thing is?
and while watching the vid here, Missy started getting excited and prancing around. She thought I was saying these things, NOW, to her… LOL….
1. She had a great uncle who was married to his half-cousin who was the daughter of her uncle who was the brother of her mother until they were divorced, and now the entrance to the family reunions are guarded by a metal detector.
2. My left hip is by my side, always.
3. I know this: Shellacked moose turds are NOT my idea earring and necklace pendants (They really sell them in Alaska, my sister showed me some).
4. I got up to go to the bathroom, stopped to check if the Friday Fill-Ins were up yet, and I have to pee still.
5. These words apply to me: inca, dinka, doo and nee… but I turn down their application because they make absolutely no sense.
6. The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all his might: He did his very best to make the billows smooth and bright– and this was odd, because it was the middle of the night.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to going to the library and watching Inkheart, Sammi getting leaving to spend July with her dad, me going to Maggie’s VBS program, finishing Water for Elephants and writing the review, tomorrow my plans include taking Mags and Gwen out to lunch and finishing reading Something Beyond Greatness and Sunday, I want to go to church (we missed last week) and vegging out in front of the TV… or doing what our Pastor always says, “Fellowshipin’ with Pastor Pillow and Sister Sheets… can I get an ‘Amen!’ 😀 “!
1. Well, we’re moving on up! To the East-side to a dee-luxe apartment in the sky-i-i. come on, sing it with me!
2. If a hotel needs to post the following sign: We guarantee all our rooms are BED BUG free! I don’t recommend staying there 😉
3. My best quality is my sense of humor.
4. The devil is in the details.And he goes to church every Sunday, GUARANTEE he’s in Congress, and I think he works in the kitchen at Wendy’s… which is probably why I get sick every time I eat there.
5. In nearly 10 years, 9 years, 364 days passed.
6. The power to freeze time is what I need right now! Oh, think of all I could get done and all the books I could read if I could stop time! I think that’s how S. Krishna gets so many books read 😉
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to finishing Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman and watching the BBC series on Netflix, tomorrow my plans include finishing The Sandman, volume 1, also by Neil Gaiman, and watching Stargate: SG1 season 2 and Sunday, I want to listen to (and later watch… sux living within 75 miles of the Speedway!) the greatest spectacle in racing, The INDIANAPOLIS 500 (okay, I’m geeked up now 😀 ) !
1. Apples are to oranges as a $1000 gift card to Amazon.com is to a $10 gift certificate to the bait and tackle shop.
2. Sam Winchester (Jared Padalecki) is the hot brother, and that’s all I have to say about that.
3. I think I hear that train a ‘comin’, it’s comin’ round that bend… should I get off this track or lay down and just give in?
4. Grab the checkered flag. (It’s Indy 500 season! Yay!!!)
5. Do what you want to do, but make sure you want to do what I say.
6. The hair-cutting demon was chasing me with ginormous scissors, and behind him was a Radio Flyer wagon; in the wagon was a bucket filled with ooey-gooey ABC chewing gum… then I woke up… and found gum in my hair? AHHHHH!!!!
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to finishing up Hauntedby Chuck Palahniuk, tomorrow my plans include visiting the Presbyterian Church’s annual perennial plant sale, maybe do some garage-saling, grab some breakfast with Mags at the White House, go through all of everyone’s clothes and pack up stuff for Goodwill, and sometime, in all that, finish up Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford and Sunday, I want to go to church in the morning, enjoy a nice, as yet unplanned, Mother’s Day dinner, call my momma to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day, and write the review for Hotel!
Don’t forget! I’m giving away my copy of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford!Click here for all the detailsand make sure to check out my review of Hotel, it’ll be posted on May 11th.
1. The first rule of working in an office and getting along is establish dominance by drinking the last dribble of coffee, eating the food brought in by co-workers and leaving fresh-from-the-litter-pan-presents in the bosses dark-colored chair every morning. Then whenever anyone expresses their displeasure, relay the passage you read in your copy of The Anarchist Cookbook last night while cleaning one of your many assault rifles and planning the next meeting with your lawyer to finalize the settlement with your last employer.
2. I once gave my kids “sea mushrooms” for supper, but really they were canned clams. (It was a punishment, btw, for ditching the school bus and trying to skip school. It worked so well, they’ve never tried to skip since.)
3. When I think of carnivals I think of cotton candy, popcorn, candy apples and crazy-looking, inbred and toothless pedophiles running the controls on the Himalaya and taking tickets at the Fun House.
4. Lilacs are my favorite spring flower.
5. Things on my desk include an open box of Whoppers, a 2 liter of Diet Coke, a new box of Stridex, Maggie’s homework that she’s standing here waiting for help on, Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank (I just finished writing the review for it), a half-empty bag of Cheesy Poofs, and the little fliers about our town that I picked up from the city building (I put them in the books I send out from BookMooch).
6. The gas company and the gov’tal bureaucracy makes me wanna go postal then go survivalist… better yet, let’s go “Fight Club” on them!
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to taking the kids to the new skating rink that’s suppose to be Chuck E. Cheese meets SkateWorld and is probably priced like Disney World, tomorrow my plans include taking Maggie the old skating rink for her friend’s b-day party and trying to get as much of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet read as possible and Sunday, I want to enjoy a nice Sunday Service and grab the Kleenex while Mags and Gwen get baptized at our new church!
Spring is here 😀 and it’s a time for new growth, changes, cleaning, and new beginnings. Today is Easter, as well. one of those two or three days a year the less-than-faithful drag their butts out of bed and into the church to do their duty, please their parents or as part pf their holiday visits with friends and family.
For me, today was the first time I’ve been to a church service in about a year. For five years we went to a church that was within walking distance. We loved everyone there, worked in the children’s church as a teacher, and it was our family and home. Then they moved to the mall and we couldn’t walk their anymore, so they picked us up (I have no car) and we rarely missed a service. Though we had a ride, the move cut us down to in and out on Sundays (only) on someone else’s schedule, and no more mid-weeks or other activities, and we kind of started to feel disconnected from them. Then one day they stopped coming. No phone call, no card, just nothing.
It’s hard, or at least it’s hard for me, to change churches. I want to find one and stay. I don’t like to try this one, then that, and go everywhere… I used to as a kid, though. I don’t want to tell my life story to all new people every other week or month or year. And this particular one hit me hard, as I did nothing to cause them to dump us. And for the last year, I’ve felt as if they abandoned us, and to pick a new church would somehow be disloyal, to say I’ve given up hope on returning there.
But a year is long enough, I guess. It’s time to accept that we’re no longer part of that family. Yesterday, I took Maggie to an Easter party at the Assembly of God church. It was very warm and friendly, and there were several faces I recognized. Also, a very good friend of mine goes to church there, and they have a great youth group, children’s church, and bus ministry. It’s a bigger church than what we’ve been used to, a LOT bigger, but it’s not the first time I’ve been a member of a big church (when I lived in Kokomo, the church we went to was a 500-700 member church, a lot of them were my cousins).
So today, Easter Sunday, was my first day back into a church. The kids are excited and happy, they’ve always loved church. Maggie even wants to be baptized, and, as she’s now 10, I think she’s old enough now.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I picked up a lot of books this week (like I need some more!). Maggie’s school had a book fair, and I grabbed a few there: The Name of This Book Is a Secret Skeleton Creek How to Steal a Dog, and more.
Then, we stopped into the library yesterday to pick up a movie on hold for us there, and left with: Marked: House of Night book 1 Just Ella and its sequel Palace of Mirrors.
Also, I’ll be participating in a few blog tours, among them: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and SweetMay 11th They Plotted Revenge Against AmericaMay 20th The 19th WifeJune 19th
and for The 19th Wife, I’ll be having a give away for a book 😀
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I had my first experience with a a weird show called Happy Tree Friendsthis week. Netflix suggester thought I’d like it, so it arrived on Thursday. Maggie hates it, she hates anything in which animals are hurt… even cartoon ones. Sam, having a weak stomach, also hated it. Gwen, however, found them to be completely hilarious and was the only one to watch them with me. Here’s an episode for ya 😀
Title: Dexter in the Dark Author: Jeff Lindsay Paperback: 302 pages Publisher: First Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Edition (div of Random House) Publish Date: 2007 ISBN: 9780307276735
So what kind of moon can this possibly be, with its near breathless smile and smirking lace around the edges? It batters feebly at the window, but it can’t quite get in past all the sickly-sweet warbling. And what kind of Dark Avenger could simply sit across the room, as poor Dazed Dexter does now, pretending to listen while mooning blearily on his chair?
Why, this must be a honeymoon – unfurling its marital banner across the living-room night, signaling for all to rally round, sound the charge, once more into the church, dear friends – because Dexter of the Deadly Dimples is getting married. Hitched to the wagon of bliss pulled by the lovely Rita, who has turned out to have a lifelong passion to see Paris.
… Can we really see a suddenly sober and simpering slasher at the altar of an actual church, in Fred Astaire tie and tails, slipping the ring onto a white-wrapped finger while the congregation sniffles and beams? And then Demon Dexter in madras shorts, gawking at the Eiffel Tower and snarfing cafe au lait at the Arc de Triomphe? Holding hands and trundling giddily along the Seine, staring vacantly at ever gaudy trinket in the Louvre?
Of course, I suppose I could make a pilgrimage to the Rue Morgue, a sacred site for serial slashers.
But let us be just a tiny bit serious for a moment: Dexter in Paris? For starters, are Americans still allowed to go to France? and for finishers, Dexter in Paris? On a honeymoon? How can someone of Dexter’s midnight persuasions possibly consider anything so ordinary? How can someone who considers sex as interesting as deficit accounting enter into marriage? In short, how by all that is unholy, dark, and deadly can Dexter really mean to do this?
… Dexter can go through with this because he must, in part to maintain and even upgrade his necessary disguise, which prevents the world at large from seeing him for what he is, which is at best not something one would really like to have sitting across the table when the lights go out – especially if there is silverware present. And quite naturally, it takes a great deal of careful work to make sure it is not generally known that Dexter is driven by his Dark Passenger, a whispery-silk voice in the shaded backseat that from time to time climbs into the front seat to take the wheel and drive us to the Theme Park of the Unthinkable. It would never do to have the sheep see that Dexter is the wolf among them.
–Dexter in the Darkby Jeff Lindsay, pages 5-7
Dexter Morgan is an attractive, charming blood spatter expert in the Miami Police forensics department. He is engaged to sweet Rita, soon-to-be-step-dad to her two children Astor and Cody. His sister Don’t-call-me-Debbie-Deborah is a Sergent in homicide, and uses her eldest-sibling status to order and bully Dexter (as much as one could bully him) around crime scenes and investigating the cases. He is the son of legendary Harry, a now-deceased hero of the force, who taught fledgling Dexter all he knows and trained him in the Harry Code. Oh yes… and Dexter is also host to what he calls “The Dark Passenger,” a sibilant voice that drives him in an urgent need to kill; Dexter Morgan is a serial killer.
Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay is the third in the Dexter series. I first found out about the books when I watched Dexter, a television series now in its third season on Showtime. After watching the first couple shows, I caught the book’s title and author in the end credits and ran to my local Waldenbooks… who, unfortunately, only carried Dexter in the Dark, and, even more to my woe, have closed their doors for good, leaving my town bookstore-less.
Scene from Showtime’s Dexter(the show is rated TVMA, and this clip is at least TV-14):
Because I have had the previous experience of the show, starting up with the third book wasn’t too traumatic a beginning. The Dark Passenger isn’t mentioned much, if at all, in the TV show, and there were a few major curves as a result from events unknown to me as a result of lacking the information provided by the first two books… Dexter’s upcoming nuptials being a MAJOR surprise (I’ve only seen the first season thus far). However, Lindsay does a fairly good job of catching the reader up to speed on these occasions, though I would definitely recommend reading them in order, instead, as the “getting-to-know-and-like-the-charming-serial-killer-good-guy” would be found in book one.
As far as writing style goes, I enjoyed Lindsay’s playful alliterations and snarky internal dialogue of the narrator: I headed out the door for my date with Deborah’s paramour.(p. 272) Lindsay also toes the line, and occasionally steps over it, with his near-offensive, non-P.C., perverse and irreverent humor, from the xenophobic, misogynistic rant of an elderly witness, to description of the intense and utter pain and agony felt by Dexter Downtroadden at the altar… awaiting his fate as if he were Dexter on Death Row.
I am looking forward to reading the rest of the Dexters, but I do want Darkly Dreaming Dexter next. I think I’ve missed something by starting in the middle of the series, despite seeing the show. It’s possible I would rate this book higher had I read them in order, as it is I’m going to give Dexter in the Dark by Jeff Lindsay 3 1/2 out of 5 stars. I really did enjoy it, but felt it was lacking something (probably books 1 and 2).
Tainted by Brooke Morgan
The Triumph of Deborah by Eva Etzioni-Halevy
Strange But True America: Weird Tales from All 50 States by John Hafnor
Red Letters by Tom Davis
Dragon House by John Shors
Book reviews, entertaining and humorous posts, as well as memes and giveaways, In the Shadow of Mt. TBR is a fun and informative place to relax in the shade!
In the Shadow of Mt. TBR 