Update #3: book two complete :)

Personal update: hahah!! you all are so sweet. If you only knew that even the caffeine from dark chocolate will make my hands shake (it isn't like a tremor or anything, just if I try to hold them steady they will slightly shake). Thanks for taking care of me though!!! You are all so great!! Veens...no worries girl, I am not sick or anything. I am sorry to have worried you :)

Many of you are wondering why I am at a coffee shop, that it would be impossible for you to concentrate at one. If you had two boys, ages 2.5 and 4.5 you would be able to concentrate anywhere better than at home :) Haha....I have become way better at concentrating since I had them.

Thanks so much to all you who are diehardedly (another invented word!!) cheering me on! You are hard core and awesome thanks so much to you all for keeping me in the game!

As far as books go: I have finished my second!!!! Yah! Beasts of No Nation is Complete. I am so glad to be done with it. I will try to pick something silly now to balance it out.
I am going to try Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris. Have you read it?? :)

I have now earned $ 62 for clean water worldwide!!!
Plus trish is adding in $5 for every book she finishes!! That brings the clean water total to: $67.00 so far! (make sure you go cheer her on!!)

Where will the dinero ($) go? It will go to an organization I have become quite passionate about. I will be giving it to Living Water International an amazing organization funding the building of wells all over the world in developing nations.
(there is still time to sponsor me!!!)

Update #2: half-way through second book!

I am half way though Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala! Oh wow. I was going to ditch it several times...but it is pointless since I want to get done with book 2 and I am half way through it :) It is just too real. But it shows how jaded you could become from witnessing death, gore and all that involves a guerrilla type civil war.

Personal update: I am still shaking. I ate a scone and ordered a decaf sweet bean (sweet decaf mocha) but have not been able to try to drink it. My body wants water! :) I am at the Beanery, a coffee shop in Corvallis, Oregon. I love it here, jabber all about....but at constant drone and I am still steady and indistractable (is that a word?? I always make up strange words!)!


Read on I must!!!!!



I have now earned $46.50 for clean water worldwide!!!

Where will the dinero ($) go? It will go to an organization I have become quite passionate about. I will be giving it to Living Water International an amazing organization funding the building of wells all over the world in developing nations.
(there is still time to sponsor me!!!)

Update #1: first book complete, second started

I know, that you are all interested in an update. Here is my first! I am now just over three hours into this and have read my first book and started my second.
I finished The Shiniest Jewel: A Family Love Story by Miriam Henely. It was incredible. I cried. If a book can make you cry at 6 am it has to be great. I started Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala. I am 20 pages in, but it is pretty intense, guerrilla warlike and I don't know if I will handle the intensity well right now. Anyway, so yes, there you have it.


Personal update: I had Mate for my waker-uper this morning. Do you know what that is? No, it is not illegal! It is a caffeine-like stimulant used in many places in southern america (Guatemala, Peru.....) It got me going, but now I feel shaky. I should eat. It is now 8:29 or three hours and 29 minutes into this 24 hour read-a-thon and I need to get out of my house. The little monkeys (my sons) will be up soon. I need to open up my chicken coup and feed the chickens and then hop into my car and head out!

How are you holding up?? How is that for an update Veens!?!?! :)

I just earned $31 for clean water!!!

to your starting blocks....ready, set, POP!

The 24 hour read-a-thon just started!!! (yep, 5am here!!!)
I will be reading my eyes off and all for clean water!!

I have some wonderful sponsors to thank:

S.C. at $10 per book
E.C. at $1 per book
B&D. J- at $10 per book
B&b.C. at $5 per book
R. at $5 per book
__________________
$31 per book I read during the 24 hour read-a-thon

I will keep the updates coming, and feel free to comment as much as you physically are able, this will be a test of endurance for me (mostly on attention span for sure!!!)

I just made this button/image/add....I am pretty excited about this whole thing!




(there is still plenty of time if you want to sponsor!!)

read-a-thon must haves:

1. An non distracting environment
2. A comfy seat (although I sat on a wood bench last time for most of it and was blessed by the alertness of being uncomfortable :)
3. food. Salty, sweet, yummy, and tons of variety. I know exactly what I want, I love MOCHI!! (Japanese Ice cream rapped in yummy rice four mochi)
4. liquids. I will drink a little coffee in the AM tomorrow, but only because the read-a-thon starts at 5 am for me. Besides that, I won't. Just herbal tea, water and hot chocolate. :)
5. A dozen short, fun, good books that grab your attention well. If you don't like one, ditch the dud and move to the next.
6. my trusted macbook :)
7. the amazing cheerleaders that help me every step of the way :)
8. a blanket
9. a good, fast internet connection
10. a wonderful husband to watch my boys all day while I get to read!! (thanks B)
what did I miss??? You tell me!

Here is what is in my bag (since my camera takes pictures backwards):

Night by Elie Wiesel
Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther
The Book Shop by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas
Dating Da Vinci by Madalena Lott
The Pearl by John Steinbeck
When We Were Romans by Matthew Kneale
Out-Takes from a Marriage by Ann Leary
The Shiniest Jewel by Mariam Henley
The Chinese Knot by Lien Chao
Monique and the Mango Rains by Kris Holloway

Have you read any of them? warn me if one of these is horrid!!!
I won't get through them, maybe not even half of them...but I like to bring a selection along with me :)

The read-a-thon starts in less than 9 hours!!! I can't wait to get my readin' on.
Also, I have to tell you I am being sponsored (so far) for $31 per book I read during the 24 hour period! It is not to late for you to join in too, my cause is for Living Water International which digs wells in developing nations worldwide so that everyone can have clean drinking water, here is my full post.

There is still a TON of time to sponsor me, you can do it per page, per book or a set amount:

book by book to clean water

This is a widget that makes donations easy. I wanted to be sure all the money goes straight to Living Water International. You can just click on the link and donate. That is easy enough right? I just started my donation page, our little piece of change.
During the read-a-thon I will sponsor myself for $5 per book. Would you like to too? Do you want to sponsor yourself?

If you don't know what this is all about, go here.

Read-A-Thon: Reading for Clean Water!

The Read-A-Thon starts soon, on Saturday morning supa-early (for me at 5 am). I just made a post stating that I really want to read this time (last time I only read for 11.5 hours!), read, read, read!!! Don't doubt that I will check out the other readers and help cheer a little too, but I am reading for a reason this Read-A-Thon. I am going to donate $5 per book I complete during the 24 hour period.

Where will the dinero ($) go? It will go to an organization I have become quite passionate about. I will be giving it to Living Water International an amazing organization funding the building of wells all over the world in developing nations.I posted some videos yesterday for an organization called Advent Conspiracy that works through Living Water International. Clean water is such a huge problem, here is what the news says:

Water-related disease is the single largest killer of infants in developing countries—diarrhea alone causes 1.8 million child deaths each year—and access to safe water is the most important factor in the survival of children under the age of five. Nearly half of all people in developing countries are suffering from water-related health problems. The annual number of deaths from water-related diseases is six times greater than the number of deaths from armed violence.

So why don't I take a part, take a little step. If we all did, the problem would be resolved. Yes RESOLVED! So for that reason I am taking this Read-A-Thon seriously....(not so seriously I can't enjoy it though, don't worry about that!!!! :) But I am reading with a purpose, reading for a reason other than just for me.

Contaminated drinking water is the largest killer in the world.

Would you drink it? What if that were all there was?



I want to be part of making this (above) into
this(below)

Want to join in on this??? Tell me about it. You can sponsor me too, or you can do the same thing I am doing. Let's make the difference!

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

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Title: Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Pages: 109
Yearly Count: 69

When one old man turned ninety he decided to surround himself in the young love virgin. Gabriel Garcia Marquez takes the reader on a journey, a well written but somewhat naive journey into the realm of aging, virginity and what it all could cost.

To be quite frank I don't know why I read this book , other than that it was the only one of Gabriel Garcia Marquez there to choose from that I hadn't read. I didn't like it. However I could still see glimpses of the man who won the Nobel prize for Literature. This was his first book in ten years! It seems to me he would have had much more to say than what he said.

That is about as good as my review gets for this one, sorry folks...not a book for me.

Other blogger reviews of this book:
Fresh Ink Books

Have you read and reviewed this? What were your thoughts? Give me your link and I will add it here.

READ-A-THON!! vs. CHAT-A-THON

It is this saturday. I will be doing it, reading as much as possible. The last time around half way through I had to get stricked with myself, here was my pep talk: " seriously, you are blogging and commenting more than you are reading! this is a READ-a-thon not a CHAT-a-thon! If you blog for 20 minutes of every hour, that is a LOT. Get with it girl!"

Okay, so I say this not to be mean at all, but just that last time with all the entering contests for prizes and all that I lost a lot of time. And the very sad news about that: I didn't win ONE thing! yeah, I know. I hardly ever have good prize winning skillz (except for some flukes with Softdrink a while back!!!! thanks girl!)

So I know this is a community building thing, a fun thing, and we all want to be chatty when we have spent way too much time reading, but I am going to try and keep my blogging to a minimum. I am sorry folks, I really hope you understand. I want to communicate, I want to bond, but I want to read as many books as I can during the read-a-thon. I will check my blog, and post updates, and I will comment. I will do an update every 3 hours (instead of hourly like last time). And I know I will miss out on prizes, and be a boring loner...but I signed up as a reader yo! Please don't be mad.

Why am I this serious about it?? Well, I will tell you why later today. Stay tunned :)

Janeology

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Title: Janeology
Author: Karen Harrington
Pages: 256
Yearly Count b: 68

One woman, who is known by Jane, but is bits and pieces of so many different relatives. Just like any of us, we have our fathers smile, our mother's hair, but do we inherit more than that? For Jane, an emergency room nurse, a compassionate mother and loving wife to suddenly snap and harm her children there must be something wrong, but what? A court case will come to the conclusion that Jane does earn herself the insanity plea, she then goes to a mental institution. Her husband Tom is left to continue on with life just as she left it, while grieving and holding on to his teaching position. One prosecutor gets it in his mind that Tom is partially guilty as well, for "failure to protect" . Tom and his attorney will begin a journey to learn much more about Jane's family than they had expected, and more than anyone would ever want to know. Do all the little broken pieces from Jane's predecessors make Jane one whole person, or is she a conglomeration all of their past hurts, crimes and pain?

Oh, goodness....this was good. I was starving from a break from my regular international fiction and this was perfect. It was just enough shake up for me to get me back into the groove. I adore Karen Harrington's writing, it is beautiful. The plot of Janeology could not be more gripping, and the characters are believable and true. Harrington does an exquisite job at character development, and develops even the ancestors of Jane with a deep and thorough precision. I did not find the book predictable or cliche or even similar in storyline to something I had already read! Janeology is the good unique, the unique that we would all like to be if we had the courage to be ourselves. Janeology spiked my curiosity and took me deeper and deeper into the storyline.

How do moms kill their kids? How is that nurturing instinct not there to protect even above their own protection? We see it in bears, in cats, and even in chickens. It would seem like it is innate, or an instict. But if it isn't does that mean those kids are in danger? This book made me think and made me wonder. Such an interesting premise!

What didn't I like about the book? Well, I am not super into the book cover, too science fiction for me. I would have preferred a photo of the relics or a mosaic of tons of black and white photos. The only other thing that I am unsure of is the title. However with both of those things mentioned, I think it caters to the sci-fi audience, I am used to the pretty covers of novels. That is as bad as it gets for this book, the cover and the title....the rest is beautiful, captivating, shocking and a plot that will keep you with it the whole while.

Karen Harrington's web page, filled with facts and details from writing Janeology
Karen Harrington's super fun and funny blog

Other blogger views of Janeology:
Booking Mama
Maw Books

Have you reviewed it too?? Give me your link.





Because today is blog awareness, because Karen Harrington believes in it (she authored a children's book for the My Stuff Bags Foundation), and because it is an amazing organization I want to mention My Stuff Bags, and the My Stuff Bags Foundation.
This foundation was established to help children who are taken from their homes because of an abusive or dysfunctional situation, and placed into other homes...many times they need out fast, and can take nothing with them. This is where My Stuff Bags comes in, they fill these bags with personal items such as homemade blankets, books, stuffed animals, journals, toiletries in order to give these kids a little semblance of normality, of routine.
You can do so many things to help with this organization. There is even a template for making blankets, if you have never done it before, or you can send stuffed animals, or hats, cash or journals.
Watch this video to get more of an idea about the super-neato things My Stuff Bags is doing:

say it with me: \ˈpä-vər-tē\

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Today is the day that the bloggie world chose to unite to talk about poverty. It is called blog action day, and the date is the 15th of October. The topic is poverty, and how to get rid of it!

poverty: \ˈpä-vər-tē\
(the definition would go here, but I decided not to) you all know what poverty is, you see the need. Does poverty have a face to you, or is is a group of unnamed, underprivileged folks at some smelly overworked soup kitchen? How do you justify not giving? Would you give if you had no doubt that your money would be used well?



However large the need here though, poverty is even deeper, darker in much of the world. Water. Did you even think that it is possible that in many nations, people are dying from the pollution in their water supplies, dying. What is poverty if not the need for even water. My friend jessica recently told me about this amazing organization, Advent Conspiracy. I have posted two of the videos here, that tell you what it is all about, and I will mention this over and over as it has really struck in my heart.

Watch these two super short videos, you can't tell me there isn't something wrong:









Advent Conspiracy!!!! I am so jazzed about this movement, this change in the way we greedies are thinking. STOP ASKING, WHAT ARE YOU GETTING ME? and give!

As book bloggers what is the point of just READING about things and not doing anything about it! I am joining this movement, this is my movement now.

livin' it up: sunday salon style :)

Oh, what a nice sunny Sunday day for Sunday salon :)
How is your reading going?
Mine is going just dandy, thank you!!


Here is what I have read and reviewed this last week:
(click to take you to my review)

Immortal by Traci L. Slatton
Watership Down by Richard Adams
March by Geraldine Brooks
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by ZZ Packer
Half A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Out of the above reads my faves were Watership Down and Half A Yellow Sun, no question!



In case you are like so many of us book bloggers, and The God of Small things has been on your TBR for an eternity...YOU should read it this month!!! :)

I am doing a book club thingy over at Book Blogs, you should really check it out!
Click on the link below and let me know you are interested. It will be loads of fun.
Travel the World (form a comfy chair) The God of Small Things
(you will have to register, it only takes 2 seconds! if you want to be a part of the book club commenting fun.)

What am I reading now you ask?? I am just starting this:



I have been wanting to read Janeology by Karen Harrington ever since I saw a review a while back. Well, FINALLY I get to :) I will be sure to tell you how I like it. So far I am really enjoying it. I will have my review up this week fo sho.

What are you reading? What were your faves this week?