Year of No Sugar

Year of No Sugar by Eve O. Schaub
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm not sure I get the point of the book. Spoiler alert - they did NOT indeed go a year of no sugar.
& what the book is telling us is basically, its IMPOSSIBLE to do. So there's that.
I did find some things interesting in the book - but most of the things I found interesting were facts she shared from other writers on the subject.
She never really mentioned anything about how it effected her family, except little snippets of her daughters journal, who basically felt tortured & hated every minute of it, but nothing about health & energy. I think she mentioned one time about the fact that they didnt loose any weight - that was the extent of her documenting their health. Oh, & that her kids missed less days at school by a few days. M'kay.
& then she COMPLETELY 100000% lost me when she talked about an anniversary trip to Tanzania where they slit a goats throat & how she wished she could go back & do it again - because then, she was a pescetarian & now, she's a carnivore - & even drinking the blood mixed with milk (A local tradition) sounds interesting to her. EXCUSE ME? She also goes on to talk about why eating meat is a good thing & even goes as far as visiting a friend's farm to watch chickens being "processed" & even slits a chicken's neck herself. Needless to say, for me - after this chapter, I really didnt even care what else she had to say. This was a book on sugar, not about a switch from vegetarian to a carnivorous life style.
In the end - I'd tell everyone to skip it. You'll not really learn anything & you'll be very sick of hearing the word "Dextrose"

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It's Dinnertime. Do you know where your sugar is coming from?

Most likely everywhere. Sure, it's in ice cream and cookies, but what scared Eve O. Schaub was the secret world of sugar--hidden in bacon, crackers, salad dressing, pasta sauce, chicken broth, and baby food.

With her eyes open by the work of obesity expert Dr. Robert Lustig and others, Eve challenged her husband and two school-age daughters to join her on a quest to eat no added sugar for an entire year.

Along the way, Eve uncovered the real costs of our sugar-heavy American diet--including diabetes, obesity, and increased incidences of health problems such as heart disease and cancer. The stories, tips, and recipes she shares throw fresh light on questionable nutritional advice we've been following for years and show that it is possible to eat at restaurants and go grocery shopping--with less and even no added sugar.

Year of No Sugar is what the conversation about "kicking the sugar addiction" looks like for a real American family--a roller coaster of unexpected discoveries and challenges.

In the Unlikely Event

In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm just mad I wasted all my time.
This book just felt like it took forever... & by the end of the story, I was like, "What's the point of this book?"
If I hadnt gotten so far into it, I would have just stopped but I kept thinking there had to be some revelation or something more towards the end.
Nope.
I didnt care for this book at all. Between the zillion characters & just the weirdness of the plane crashes that hinted there would be something more to this story... again, nope.
& then it just aggravated me to think how young the characters were in this book & it just threw another wrench in it to me on how their experiences were happening.
I'm just disappointed. I grew up a Judy Blume fan... Give me her YA stuff any day over this.

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In her highly anticipated new novel, Judy Blume, the New York Times # 1 best-selling author of Summer Sisters and of young adult classics such as Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, creates a richly textured and moving story of three generations of families, friends and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed by unexpected events.

In 1987, Miri Ammerman returns to her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, to attend a commemoration of the worst year of her life.

Thirty-five years earlier, when Miri was fifteen, and in love for the first time, a succession of airplanes fell from the sky, leaving a community reeling. Against this backdrop of actual events that Blume experienced in the early 1950s, when airline travel was new and exciting and everyone dreamed of going somewhere, Judy Blume imagines and weaves together a haunting story of three generations of families, friends, and strangers, whose lives are profoundly changed by these disasters. She paints a vivid portrait of a particular time and place — Nat King Cole singing “Unforgettable,” Elizabeth Taylor haircuts, young (and not-so-young) love, explosive friendships, A-bomb hysteria, rumors of Communist threat. And a young journalist who makes his name reporting tragedy. Through it all, one generation reminds another that life goes on.

In the Unlikely Event is a gripping novel with all the hallmarks of Judy Blume's unparalleled storytelling

Exposure to a Billionaire

Exposure to a Billionaire by Ann Menke
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This is probably one of the worst books I've read in a long time.
It just felt like it was written by a high school kid. It just skipped so fast through the story, leaving out so much detail & always repeating itself. If I heard one more time that the 2 pilots were like Anna's brother or that Stuart would say, "You are like family" again & again, I would scream. Or the gifts or the $25,000 bonuses & the notes & the reminding how beautiful Stuart's wife is.... just stop.
The story is about Anna, who becomes a personal assistant to Mr. Stuart Manning - a billionaire - & the life she now gets to experience traveling the world & the people she meets.
It was really a bunch of Karadisian dreams to me & not story telling.
For instance, there is a man who repeatedly shows up trying to kidnap Anna for some reason... & not to spoil anything, the results of this story showing up throughout the book - all gets handled in one paragraph. No real depth ever happened with this story.
I do have to say, I feel like this book took me all over the world though because I'm exhausted.

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Not that kind of girl

Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned" by Lena Dunham
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I just don't get it.

I know I've seen this book everywhere with everyone reading it.

I thought I was going to pull the hairs out on my arm for more entertainment than this.

Let's just say that I get it - I'm a totally different person than Lena Dunham. We have different up bringing, we have different ways to approach life situations - & apparently we have different outlooks & values in life. Maybe I'm just a prude. Half of the book, I'm shaking my head at the language & the stories & the other half, I was just sort of bored.

I don't get what all the huff is about.

I'm totally disappointed.

Maybe I'm NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL ....

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Sleep Tight

Sleep Tight by Anne Frasier
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

SPOILERS!!!!!

I have to include spoilers to explain why I didnt care too much for this book.
So if you dont want to know - dont read...

Why this book rubs me the wrong way...
I'm being introduced to so many characters, each one, I'm trying to remember specific things - trying to find out who the man is that is capturing blonds & killing them.
Only to find out, the man? A person that is never mentioned until the last 15% of the book..really?
And then we hear a story of why he's so crazy... a story out of no where...

And then, the story of Fionna, the young girl killed at 16, do we ever get to figure out who killed her? Just on the last 5 pages...
it made this book just feel like a waste of time

I didnt care for all the graphics & all the language either...
glad I didnt pay for this one .... free Kindle Download
Wont even waste more time trying to explain the characters or the story... just glad its over.

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The Extra Large Medium

Book:  The Extra Large Medium

Author: Helen Slavin

Ever since she was a child, Annie Colville has been talking to the dead. She knows they’re dead because for some reason they’re always dressed in chocolate brown. But Annie’s grown up now, and things are getting serious. Especially after she falls for and marries Evan Bees. It’s hard enough to lose someone you love; but what if you know they could come back to you? And they just . . . don’t? During her long wait for her missing husband to come back to her, in chocolate brown or not, Annie searches through her mother’s vast collection of lovers for the other missing man in her life — her father — and struggles with the questions her gift asks of her.
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The way the book started off, I thought I was really going to like it... but about a quarter in, I just kind of lost my interest.  The character of Annie just turned "whiney" to me & I just wasnt feeling the story.  I think a big part for me was that areas that I would think would be big parts of the story - like Evan Bees - it would be all covered on one page.  Like in one sentence, they would say, "Evan Bees met me that day.  Two months later we were married.  & then 4 years later, he went away one evening & he disappeared" - that's not from the book, but the way I perceived it .... & seriously, thats the way it seemed to flow.  Then it would take time on something that seemed far away from the story... just weird.

Plus, this is from an English writer so there were terms & words that seemed to be English sayings or their way of speaking....

I dont know... I just by the end, didnt really even care.  Hated that too because I did really think it was going to grip me in those first few pages.

My rating:  1 skein

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Book: The Memory Keeper's Daughter
Author: Kim Edwards
OK - I have seen this book out & wanted to buy it. Lynn let me borrow it & I was excited... my bubble was popped though... I didnt care for this book at all....

The story is about Dr. David Henry & about his wife who gives birth to twins. The first is born healthy - the 2nd is a daughter born with Down Syndrome. He asks the nurse to take her to a home & gives her up, telling the mother the baby died. The nurse, Caroline, wasnt able to leave her & ran with the baby, Phoebe, & raised her on her own.

The secret between David & Norah caused a rift in their relationship - that only builds more secrets... & then when their son Paul gets older, he too starts getting caught in the "rifts of secrets"....

Good story idea I guess... but for me, I just couldnt "get into it"... LONG chapters, complicated wording to tell a simple thought. Like someone would be thinking of something & next thing you know, they are thinking of the past, & then right back to the present... for me - that was hard to follow.

Plus, I thought it was sad in the end when David never got to meet his daughter or explain...

Again - this is just my opinion... this book wasnt for me... at all...

My rating: 1 Skein out of 5