The Five People You Meet in Heaven

I liked this book it wasn't really action packed or anything but it taught a lesson and made you think about life and heaven. It was semi-God related. It talked about Heaven in a different view. That it teaches you what your life was for basically. In the end I actually started to believe that all lives are connected in a way. That when one person dies another person is spared and in turn when that person dies another person will be affected. I recommend it to anyone.

Review/Description
"At the time of his death, Eddie was an old man with a barrel chest and a torso as squat as a soup can," writes Albom, author of the bestselling phenomenon Tuesdays with Morrie, in a brief first novel that is going to make a huge impact on many hearts and minds. Wearing a work shirt with a patch on the chest that reads "Eddie" over "Maintenance," limping around with a cane thanks to an old war injury, Eddie was the kind of guy everybody, including Eddie himself, tended to write off as one of life's minor characters, a gruff bit of background color. He spent most of his life maintaining the rides at Ruby Pier, a seaside amusement park, greasing tracks and tightening bolts and listening for strange sounds, "keeping them safe." The children who visited the pier were drawn to Eddie "like cold hands to a fire." Yet Eddie believed that he lived a "nothing" life-gone nowhere he "wasn't shipped to with a rifle," doing work that "required no more brains than washing a dish." On his 83rd birthday, however, Eddie dies trying to save a little girl. He wakes up in heaven, where a succession of five people are waiting to show him the true meaning and value of his life. One by one, these mostly unexpected characters remind him that we all live in a vast web of interconnection with other lives; that all our stories overlap; that acts of sacrifice seemingly small or fruitless do affect others; and that loyalty and love matter to a degree we can never fathom. Simply told, sentimental and profoundly true, this is a contemporary American fable that will be cherished by a vast readership. Bringing into the spotlight the anonymous Eddies of the world, the men and women who get lost in our cultural obsession with fame and fortune, this slim tale, like Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, reminds us of what really matters here on earth, of what our lives are given to us for.

Crank

This book was pretty good. I like her style of writing and love all her books so far. I still need to read the sequel to this book, but I bet it will be good too. The book mainly focuses on drugs and addiction and a person's life involved with them. The ending I can't say much about because there is a sequel, but it ended well enough there really wasn't a whole lot of need for a sequel. I will say this book is a good read but still not my favorite of hers.

Review/Description
Seventeen-year-old Kristina Snow is introduced to crank on a trip to visit her wayward father. Caught up in a fast-paced, frightening, and unfamiliar world, she morphs into "Bree" after she "shakes hands with the monster." Her fearless, risk-taking alter ego grows stronger, "convincing me to be someone I never dreamed I'd want to be." When Kristina goes home, things don't return to normal. Although she tries to reconnect with her mother and her former life as a good student, her drug use soon takes over, leaving her "starving for speed" and for boys who will soon leave her scarred and pregnant. Hopkins writes in free-verse poems that paint painfully sharp images of Kristina/Bree and those around her, detailing how powerful the "monster" can be. The poems are masterpieces of word, shape, and pacing, compelling readers on to the next chapter in Kristina's spiraling world.

AN ANOTHER TAD UPDATE!

Sorry been busy. Add new books soon. Loved Edward Kayla! Wolf, Kayla, and TAD survived a bus wreck. We can say "I survived State of '08"!
TAD

Poetry Blog

This is the link to my poetry blog:

http://thelanguageofpoetry.blogspot.com/

A sketch of Edward Cullen

Hey you guys! I found this awesome sketch of Edward!


here's the link:


http://testriffic.com/art/smighter2/74116

Covenant Child

Beautiful, three-year-old twins Kara and Lizzie Holbrooke live a charmed life with their widowed but doting father, Jack. When Jack finds love and marries again, it seems all their lives will finally be "happy ever after." That new life shatters when Jack and his wealthy parents are killed in a plane crash. Jack's new wife, Amanda, inherits the family's estate but fails to gain custody of the twins.

Devastated but bound by her covenant to care for the girls, Amanda manages the estate, hopeful she'll be able to return it to Kara and Lizzie one day. Meanwhile, the twins grow up in an abysmal home environment with distant family members and become hard-drinking, shoplifting, promiscuous teenagers.

After years of trying to reach them, Amanda is finally able to offer them love, comfort, wealth--the life they have always wanted. But when all you've known is deprivation, how can you believe a gift of grace? When you've been lied to for so long, how can you ever know the truth?

This book was ok, I thought it was going to be more interesting though. The story is kind of hard to explain without taking up a lot of space. Basically these twins get taken away from their step-mother when they were three and grow up in poverty when they are supposed to be “million dollar babies”. The ending was good, but the story altogether wasn’t that great to me. It was still an ok book to read though.

Review/Description
In a contemporary spin on the concept of biblical "covenant" that also functions as a parable of accepting and rejecting faith, Blackstock offers a smooth though somewhat improbable tale of one woman's promise to her husband to care for her stepchildren. Kara Holbrooke and her twin sister, Lizzie, lived a middle-class existence with their doting father, Jack, who nixed a life of moneyed pleasure despite his father's wealth. Shortly after their birth, the twins' mother, Sherry, died in a car accident. When the girls were three, Jack married Amanda, but six months after the wedding, he and his parents were killed in a plane crash. The twins are easy prey maybe too easy for Sherry's redneck parents, Eloise and Deke Krebbs, who smell money and go to court to claim the girls as their own. Amanda is the beneficiary of her in-laws' billion-dollar-plus estate, but she loses custody of the twins. Bound by her promise to Jack, she manages the estate with an eye to returning it to the girls. But brought up in the ghastly home environment of the Krebbs, the twins grow into hard-drinking, shoplifting, promiscuous teenagers who are taught to hate Amanda. At age 18, the girls must decide if they will accept or reject an offer from Amanda that could change the course of their lives.

Keeper of the Night

This book started out really boring and it bounced around from topic to topic. It was basically about a girl's life in Guam and her family after her mother killed herself. Around the middle it got more interesting and it ended decently. It still wasn't that great of a book and I don't recommend it.

Review/Description
In a fascinating departure from her usual folksy Southern fiction, award-winning author Kimberly Willis Holt transports her readers to the island of present-day Guam, where thirteen-year-old Isabel’s family is broken by her mother’s suicide. Numbed by her mother‘s death, Isabel grimly plods through each day, while scribbling in her ever-present notebook. But existence on the colorful, richly cultured island hasn’t ended, and life keeps interrupting Isabel’s sorrow. Her best friend Terecita needs help in becoming the best female cock-fighter on Guam, her father’s fishing assistant, Roman, appears to be flirting with her, and Auntie Bernadette, the local healer, keeps trying to school her in the art of herbs. Meanwhile, Isabel is disturbed by the fact that her father has practically stopped speaking, and her brother Frank is beginning to cut himself when he thinks no one is looking. But Isabel sees, and her heart is hardened: "I may look like my mother, but I’m not like her...I’m not like my mother at all. I am here." Isabel’s challenge will be to learn how to heal, and with the help of her vibrant community, she will. Holt is a masterful plotter--each strand of Isabel’s story comes together beautifully. But that doesn’t mean Holt sacrifices description or character for storyline. Every nuance of the Guam landscape and culture is seen and heard, from the quirky native "eyebrow language," to the illegal thrill of cock fighting.

Light Years

This was a really good book.It was about an Israeli girl who loses her boyfriend to a suicide bomber and her life coming to deal with it. The chapters jump back and forth between her past life in Israel and her present life in Virginia. It was a really good book for anyone to read. I recommend it highly.

Review/Description
Maya, 20, blames herself for the death of her boyfriend, who is killed by a suicide bomber in a Tel Aviv restaurant. Haunted by grief and guilt, she leaves Israel for college in the U.S., but although she makes friends, studies, and even begins to fall in love and have sex again, she can't forget. The first-person narrative moves eloquently back and forth between Maya's American present and her Israeli past: growing up in Israel, serving in the army, working in a Tel Aviv office, falling in love, and finally, losing someone in a shocking bombing. Most characters in this novel, one of the first about a contemporary Israeli young woman in a high-tech, secular world, are drawn with some complexity. Maya's "healing" seems a little preachy, but there's depth to her character: she's needy and angry, sarcastic and warm. She also loves her country, yet she doesn't talk politics. Though she considers the Palestinians as "those" people over the border ("They hated us"), she doesn't always focus on herself as living in a war-torn place.

Just Listen

I really like this book. I have started reading Sara Dessen books and I lie them alot. This book was very interesting through the whole book, or it seemed that was to me. It deals with alot of different drama's including rape and eating disorders. Sometimes it went a little too into detail with some things that were kind of boring and unimportant to me, but otherwise it was really good. One of the main characters, Owen, was really into music just like me. Except I don't listen to some of the weird stuff he does.

Review/Description
Annabel Greene seemingly had everything: cool friends, close family, good grades, and a part-time modeling career in town. But it all came crashing down, and Annabel has spent the summer in shaky, self-imposed exile. She finds herself dreading the new school term and facing, well, everyone again. The last thing she wants to do is revisit old friendships while the losses are painful, the secrets behind the rifts are almost unbearable. Her solid family seems fragile, too. What happened to cause the stiff silences and palpable resentments between her two older sisters? Why is no one in her loving but determinedly cheerful family talking about her middle sister's eating disorder? Annabel's devastating secret is revealed in bits and snatches, as readers see her go to amazing lengths to avoid confrontation. Caught between wanting to protect her family and her own struggles to face a devastating experience, Annabel finds comfort in an unlikely friendship with the school's most notorious loner. Owen has his own issues with anger, but has learned to control it and helps her realize the dangers of holding in her emotions. Dessen explores the interior and exterior lives of her characters and shows their flaws, humanity, struggles, and incremental successes.

Prey

I thought this book was actually pretty good.Being that it was about a female teacher who has an affair with a male student. I was surprised how well I liked it. I had heard that the ending wasn't very good, but I actually thought it ended pretty decent. Even though the the ending was a little weird but so was the whole book considering the topic. This book wouldn't be appropriate for young or immature readers though because sometimes it gets alittle graphic.

Breathing Underwater

This book wasn't as good as I thought i was going to be, I really didn't like the topic and the writing style was a below my level.The end kind of made up for the rest of the book though. It talked alot about controlling relationship and abuse, which made me understand a little bit better why people act that way.

Prey by Lurlene McDaniel

I though this book was pretty good. It's less than 200 pages. I think there should have been just a little more exposition in the beginning...because a teacher's not just gonna invite you over on the fly. I really like the writing style. It shows you Honey, Ryan, and Lori's perspective. Over the course of the book, they expose many secrets. This book makes you put two and two together. It's got some sex in it...but that's probably a given because it's a book about a teacher and student who get involved in a sexual relationship. I feel really sorry for Honey. Every girl can relate to her and probably would've done the same thing she did in her position. It's a great read and I reccomend it to everyone. The ending isn't good or bad, it's really just all about how YOU see it.





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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Courtesy of Teens Read Too, February 12, 2008
By
TeensReadToo.com "Eat. Drink. Read. Be Merrier." (All Over the US & Canada) - See all my reviewsBestselling author Lurlene McDaniel has taken a turn from her normally heartbreaking inspirational novels to write something completely different with PREY. This time around, she tackles a once taboo subject head-on -- that of the skewed relationship between a female teacher and her young male student. Ryan Piccoli is a typical teen. He's fifteen, a freshman in high school, has a close knit group of friends that include Joel and Honey, and a fairly average student. Although his mother died when he was still a toddler, he has a father that, although gone most of the time as part of his job, still tries to connect with him as much as he can. Things are going pretty well; he's hoping for a car for Christmas for his sixteenth birthday, he's both excited and anxious to be starting high school, he's wondering if he'll get a girlfriend. And then the unthinkable happens: he meets Miss Lori Settles, the knew World History teacher. Miss Settles is an immediate hit at McAllister High School, at least with the male population (you'd probably get a different response from the females). She's young, she's gorgeous, she seems to understand teenagers, and she has the most important attribute that any normal male can ask for -- she's got a body to die for, and she dresses for school each day in a way that will show it to its best advantage. Suddenly, every guy in the building, from students to faculty, wants to find a way to spend time with Miss Settles. Only Ryan gets to spend time with her in a way that no one else would ever expect. What starts off innocently enough as a request to help his teacher move furniture soon evolves into trips to a coffee shop late at night. And when those trips then turn into visits at her apartment, Ryan figures it's only right, since they obviously are in love with each other. What follows is a sexual affair that, although high in intensity, might end up burning them both in the end. Ms. McDaniel has written a real page-turner with PREY. Once you start reading, you'll not want to stop until the last word is read. This is a book that has no clear-cut answers and, actually, has no clear sense of who has done right and who has done wrong. Pick up a copy -- you'll be glad you did.