disappointed...

now, you know i really try to be positive about reading, authors and books... but i was so disappointed yesterday with listening to a new book and i feel like i need to tell you.

i love, love, love garden spells and all things sarah addison allen. this isn't new to you, i know. yesterday, i decided that i would listen to it because i had just finished listening to winter solstice by rosamunde pilcher in my office...

... the reader for winter solstice was wonderful. she carried the story beautifully. i was in scotland. i was in rosamunde pilcher's world--which you also know is another of my favorite places!

that's one of the things i love about listening to novels, is getting the dialect of the region to make it even more real in my head. i'm also listening to pat conroy's south of broad... and that reader makes me melt with gentle lilt of the carolina accent, even when talking about the vilest of vile situations. it makes me feel like i'm there, and sometimes that's what i want--an audio escape!

but this reader and her interpretation of garden spells is all wrong! she's too clipped, too abrupt, with too much emphasis in spots--making me feel not what i felt when i first read this book... i want to be awash with the gentle magic that is this book.

i understand, that it must seem that i live in this little naive book world. but i listen to a lot of books and there has only been one other book that i've felt this way about... okay maybe three books:

the birthing house by chris ransom

the girls guide to hunting and fishing by melissa banks

and fahrenheit 451 by ray brandbury

and sadly, both of the girls guide to hunting and fishing and fahrenheit 451 were read by the authors! oh, now i feel bad karma* coming my way...

quick! did i tell you

• how much i loved the privileges by jonathan dee?
• or that i'm half-way thru the fiery cross by diana gabaldon, and obviously enjoying it
• and i just finished reading the immensely cute the inn at lake devine by ellinor lipman

what is your favorite audio book?!

*or as much karma this little lutheran girl can feel... maybe some residual catholic guilt

confessions...

today, i stumbled across a new blog... a novel ideaa

sometimes it's about books,

sometimes about life, husbands and babies

and sometimes about being a feminist.

but what this blog really is about--if you ask me--is a young woman finding her place in the world. i have hoped for this for her for quite awhile, and glad to see her coming into her own. however, i have to confess that her idea of a role model kinda blew me away...

thanks alice... but if you don't reach out, no one else will either!

* * * * *

another confession... i despised "confessions of a shopaholic"

ridiculous drivel.

and i was totally not interested in another book by sophie kinsella until my beautiful and wonderfully, pushy italian friend LORI put this one in my hand... and now i have to say that i loved loved loved

can you keep a secret!

i was hooked with 5 little words:

my g-string is hurting me

how many times have you been sitting or standing somewhere, and thought that very thought? or have you wondered why you are even wearing the said item... are you wearing because someone you adore bought it for you? and are you wearing it so you don't hurt that adored person's feelers? wouldn't it be nice not to have to have these little fibs?

wouldn't it be amazing to have a relationship {any relationship} with all of your secrets out in the open...

in can you keep a secret, emma confessed all of those hidden, deep, dark secrets to the stranger next to her on the plane when she thought she was going to crash and die... and then that stranger turns out to be something more... something far more!

simple concept... does honesty on all levels makes for a better relationship? would you rather have total honesty, or have your feelers spared with little lies?

i don't know... hard call...

happy reading, my friends!