Exceptional Living

I read this post today, and it really touched me.  I need to find a way to post this on my mirror and read it every time I pass by!

Exceptional Living

Forgiveness is a hard one. What is it about forgiveness that is so difficult, even when holding a grudge, or holding on to hurt, or holding yucky old memories makes us feel so rotten. What is it that makes it so hard to let go?

Forgiving someone does not mean that you have to have them in your life.

Forgiving is not “giving up” or “giving in”, forgiveness does not mean that you are saying that an injustice has not been done, or that you agree with what happened. Forgiveness is a magic little decision that you make to free YOURSELF.

Bad feelings, horrid memories and grudges are little daggers that carve away at your soul day after day. Those daggers come with handcuffs and chains and one of those big metal balls latched to your ankle. Who wants to live like that? Who CAN live life like that without it completely holding us back from everything that is meant for us?

You are worth EVERYTHING it will take to forgive someone. YOU are worth it. YOUR LIFE is worth it. Give yourself a deadline to let it go…then scream at the top of your lungs, write down everything that bothers you, get ALL of it out…then when the deadline is up…let it go…forgive…..

It’s time to move forward, sweet friend. You can’t move forward when you are chained to all of that yucky stuff.

YOU CAN DO THIS. You can fully forgive. You can.

Written by Brave Girls’ Club

via Exceptional Living.

Mailbox Monday

Welcome to Mailbox Monday, a meme started by Marcia of  A Girl and Her Books and hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books for the month of January.  Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs.

Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

This week I got one book in the mail, and several e-books.

To my daughter’s delight, we received an autographed copy of Debbie Macomber’s  (with Mary Lou Carney) book, The Yippy Yappy Yorkie in the Green Doggy Sweater.  It is such a darling book, she and her bestie sat down and read it right away.  I had them read it outloud so I could enjoy it too.

I received the following e-books:

Ink by Isabelle Rowan from Dreamspinner Press

Heart’s Home by H. B. Pattskyn also from Dreamspinner Press

The Blood Sugar Solution by Mark Hyman, MD from Little Brown and Company

The Ninth Step by Barbara Taylor Sissel from Author Buzz

The Last Titanic Story by Chris Angus from Iguana Books

What awesome books came into your house this week?

Voices of Dragons

I picked this book up at the library on a whim – I’ve read Carrie Vaughn’s entire  Kitty Norville series and really like them.  I hope hope, fingers crossed, that this book is the start of a new series.

This book is about seventeen year old Kay Wyatt who lives in a border town with her father, Sheriff Wyatt and her mother, a member of the FBBE (Federal Bureau of Border Enforcement).  She loves to spend time hiking and climbing the cliffs near the border.  One afternoon she finishes her climb and stops at the creek to rinse off.  She slips and falls in, and is saved by a dragon from the other side of the border.  The dragons haven’t been seen much in the last 60 years since a treaty was reached between the dragons and humans.  At the risk of being punished, or causing political upset, they become friends and continue to meet.

The first chapter grabbed me about four pages in.

“The rock must have had a wet spot, or she hit a crumbly piece of boulder – gravel instead of stone, it slid instead of holding her foot.  Yelping, she toppled over and rolled into the creek.

The chill water shocked her sweaty, overheated body, and at first she could only freeze, numb and sputtering, hoping to keep her head above water.  The current carried her.  These mountain creeks were always deeper and faster moving than they looked, and she tumbled, dragged by the water, buffeted by rocks.  When she finally started flailing, struggling to find something, anything, she could grab to stop her progress, she found nothing.  Her hands kept slipping off mossy rocks or splashing against the current.  She’d always discounted the idea of someone drowning after getting swept away in one of these creeks, when they could just put their feet down and stand up.  But she couldn’t seem to get her feet under her.  The current kept snatching her, turning her, dunking her.  she was already exhausted from her climb, and now this.

When something grabbed at her, she clung to it.  A log, some kind of debris fallen into the creek.  That was what she though.  But her hands didn’t close on sodden bark or vegetation.  The thing she’d washed up against was slick, almost like plastic, but warm and yielding.  And it moved.  It closed around her and pulled.  Water filled her eyes; she couldn’t see.  The world seemed to flip.

Then she washed up on dry land.  She lay on solid, gritty earth and smelled dirt.  She sepnt a long moment coughing her lungs out, heaving up water until she couldn’t cough anymore.  Hunched over, learning how to breathe again, she got her first look around and realized she’d ended up on the north side of the creek.  The wrong side of the border.

A deep, short growl echoed above her.  She rolled over and looked up.  she was in shadow, and a dragon hunched over her.  A real dragon, close up.”

I really enjoyed this book, and hope there are more to come!  I give it four stars out of five!

You can read the Goodreads review here.

Washington DC Named America’s Most Literate City – GalleyCat

Washington DC Named America’s Most Literate City – GalleyCat.

“This study focuses on six key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources.”

Did your city make it?

Yummy Thursday Treats

On Thursdays I pick up my daughter and her bestie from school, and they come home, have a snack, do homework and play until their dance class in the evening.  If we have snack at 3:15, by 6pm when we’re leaving for dance they are hungry again, but I don’t see the point in fixing dinner before we go, so I’ve been looking for simple snacks to make for them that will tide them over through their dance class.

Today I was on Pinterest (which is like saying, “today I was breathing”), and came across a scrumptious picture.  When I want to pin something that is a recipe or maybe a how-to, I try to find the original source and pin from there so nothing gets lost in translation.  I’ve seen a few pics of products or food without links to show how to do or make them.  :(  In any case, I followed this photo to it’s home on the “For the Love of Cooking” blog.

This looked so easy, and so yummy, that I dropped (almost literally) my laptop and headed to the kitchen to fix this 11 minute snack.  I’m pleased, it’s baking, the kids are playing, and we still have more than half an hour until we need to leave!  Plenty of time to feed the girls before we leave, but not enough to ruin their (late) supper!  Yay, me!

Mailbox Thursday?

Welcome to Mailbox Monday, a meme started by Marcia of  A Girl and Her Books and hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books for the month of January.  Mailbox Monday is a gathering place for readers to share the books that came into their house last week and explore great book blogs.

Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists.

I got a little behind this week, but still wanted to list the books I’ve acquired, so…today is Mailbox Thursday.  :)  I haven’t read as much this past week as I usually do – I have no excuse, the weather has been perfect for reading – cold, wet and windy!

I received other waters by Eleni N. Gage (author of North of Ithaka) from St. Martin’s Press.

It looks like other waters appeared in several mailboxes in the last couple of weeks.  You can read a little about it at Goodreads  or at Eleni’s webpage.

I also received a bundle of ARC e-books:

This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers from St. Martin’s Press

The Lilac House by Anita Nair from Macmillan

The Fairy Letters: Letters from Prince Kian to Queen Breena by Kailin Gow from Sparklesoup Inc.

The Whipping Club by Deborah Henry from T. S. Poetry Press

The Replacement Wife by Eileen Goudge from Open Road Media

A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson from Bloomsbury

Voices of the Dead by Peter Leonard from The Story Plant

Anything by Michael Baron from The Story Plant

I have plenty of books to keep me busy this weekend!  What books did you get this week?

Wondrous Word Wednesday

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by BermudaOnion at Bermudaonion’s Weblog where we get to share new words that we’ve encountered in our reading. Anyone can join in!

“prevaricating” -[pri-var-i-keyt]

verb (used without object), -cat·ed, -cat·ing.

to speak falsely or misleadingly; deliberately misstate or create an incorrect impression; lie.

Dear Mr. Obama: « Books and Bowel Movements

Cassie writes one of my top-visited blogs, please check her out!

 

Dear Mr. Obama: « Books and Bowel Movements.

Tuesday Releases

I missed my Mailbox Monday (maybe I’ll be motivated to do it a day late), but I don’t want to miss the new releases today!

This one I read as a hardback, and was so excited to see it release in paperback, because I know some people won’t spend the money on a new hardback book, but will pick it up now!  Also, if you click the graphic below, you’ll be able to read an excerpt!

Graveminder by Melissa Marr  (Author of Wicked Lovely)

From Goodreads : “Her debut leap into adult fiction lands her in the small community of Claysville, a town where the dead walk free unless their graves are not properly tended. Into this eerie maelstrom, Rebekkah Barrow descends as she returns to a place that she once believed she knew. Kelley Armstrong justly described Graveminder as “a deliciously creepy tale that is as skillfully wrought as it is spellbindingly imagined.” A new genre author to watch.”

I really enjoyed this book – read it in a day, and although I haven’t read the Wicked Lovely books, I’m much more apt to pick them up now!

Another new book released in Paperback is Steven Tyler’s Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?

I just picked this book up from my library, and will be starting it today.  I never listened to his music growing up and didn’t know much about him until he showed up on American Idol last season.  Then earlier this year Oprah did an interview with him on her “Next Chapter” series, and I really liked how open he was.  I’m excited to read his book!

Fairy Tale Interrupted by RoseMarie Terenzio is about John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn.  I watched an interview with RoseMarie on Good Morning America.  (You can watch it here).

I’m a big fan of James Patterson, and have read everything he’s written.  I like the new series featuring Jack Morgan.  Private #1 Suspect is the second book in this series, co-written with Maxine Paetro.  Click here to read the first 28 Chapters.

Everneath by Brodi Ashton was an ARC book I coveted.  I was not able to get it, so I haven’t read this yet, but it’s on my “TBR” list, and I can’t wait to get ahold of it!

You can read a brief review at Goodreads here.

Although it’s not technically a new release book for today, another book I can’t wait to read is 77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz.  I’ve been a fan of Dean Koontz since I came across the book, The Watchers, which was later made into a pretty disappointing movie.  Since then I have read everything he’s released, and tried to collect all his books.  This book has a great website to go with it, you can check out the Immersive Experience online for this book here.

What books are you excited to get today?

“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”

I received this book by Seth Grahame-Smith for Christmas in 2010, and read it, devoured it really, right away.  I was thrilled today while reading Shelf Awareness to find out that this book is being turned into a movie in June of this year.  Given the current popularity of Vampires and other supernatural beings this has the potential to be a great hit!  I scoured entertainment news and youtube and found some information about the upcoming movie.

Actor Benjamin Walker is cast as Abraham Lincoln, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is cast as Mary Todd Lincoln.  Other cast members include Jaqueline Fleming (Harriet Tubman),  Robin McLeavy (Nancy Hanks Lincoln), Alan Tudyk (Stephen A. Douglas) and John Rotham (Jefferson Davis).

(Please note that if SOPA/PIPA is passed as it stands, I would be in violation for posting this content)

This is the original book trailer found on YouTube:

Read the  Shelf Awareness article here.