Feeding Your Soul

After reading the book, I knew that I had to watch the movie to see if the emotions described by Nicholas Sparks would come through with the same fierceness on screen.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Safe Haven is about a young woman who is running from her life in Boston and ends up in a small, seaside town in North Carolina.  All she wants to do is lay low and hope no one notices her.  She rents a small cottage in the woods/grass area which is isolated from most of town.  That doesn't last long. The general store owner and his 2 kids notice her and can’t stop thinking about her. She also befriends a neighbor.  Her plan of just blending in doesn't work out very well.  In a side story, the life she was leaving behind in Boston is slowly catching up to her. Julianne Hough was a perfect fit for this role.  She portrayed the battered yet hopeful young woman well having to switch between the two regularly throughout the film.  You believe her when she looks like she needs resc

Since I finished the book I have been racking my brain trying to come up with a solid explanation why Roth ended the series the way she did.  Is it to teach everyone that no matter what happens the human race will mend each other? Is it to show us that no matter what someone does to you family will always come first? Or is it to show that no matter what bad things happen?  I fear that I will never know the answer to why she ended it the way she did. All I know is I do not like it and that is the choice I make. Allegiant picks up a few days after the end of Insurgent – Tris and her friends are being held in Erudite headquarters after the display of a video explaining that the world they live in not reality.  The world they live in was concocted as a way to save human kind from itself. War broke out generations ago and the only way to save everyone was to create their world. Once the level of special people – aka the Divergent – was high enough they would know to go beyond the fen

Whodunnit.   You hear the words and think of mystery, intrigue, suspense and murder.   In the summer of 2013 you think of a new summer series on ABC about a group of 13 people from all walks of life who come together to Rue Manor to solve a murder. Every day. The twist – the Killer is among them. Their goal which has $250,000 at the end of it, is to be the last one alive in the house with the Killer.   Theories abound, mysteries are unmasked making way for more mysteries and everyone is suspected, even the butler Giles.   But in the end 1 person would walk away with a quarter of a million dollars and the other would walk out of Rue Manor in handcuffs.   Let the murders begin. The 13 cast members were from all walks of life – a former Miss Nevada and a bar trivia host to a Homeland Security lawyer and a bounty hunter.   Alliances are made, plots were twisted and the game changed every second.     If you stepped away from the TV you would have missed a crucial piece of evidence

What is it about the supernatural that attracts people? Is it the fantasy world they are looking at? Is it the mysterious people they encounter? Is it the forbidden that makes people want more?   Every person has their own reason for watching, reading and experiencing the supernatural and True Blood is just another supernatural show that attracts people to the mysteries of Bon Temps, Louisiana.   True Blood has been on for 6 seasons and counting (recently picked up for a 7 th season to air in the near future; season 6 is currently airing).   The show follows Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress at Merlotte’s in Bon Temps, Louisiana.   In this world, vampires exist and are well known throughout the world.   They are fighting for peace and acceptance through the legal system, wanting the same rights and privileges the humans do.   This is obviously met with a lot of hostility.   Sookie has always been an advocate for giving vampires rights which only intensifies when Bill Compton wal

Tris doesn’t know what to believe anymore yet she is curious about everything.   She doesn’t know who to trust yet she confides in everyone but herself.    Insurgent is the next installment in the Divergent series of books by Veronica Roth and it has packed quite a punch of emotions.   And they all came from Tris.   The book starts right where the first left off – Tris, Tobias, Marcus, and a few other Divergent are on a train headed to Amity to find the other Abnegation survivors.   There are alliances created, relationships tested and trust is a rare commodity.   Tris is only 16 and can’t figure out what to think or do.   She was brought up thinking she was an outcast then all of a sudden a different view of the world is given to her that tells her she isn’t an outcast after all.   She is finding her place in the world, one scrap at a time.   She is trying to believe in herself but she can’t.   She doesn’t trust herself to believe herself if that makes sense.   Everything she

At 16 you have to choose between staying with your family, friends and everyone you grew up with and leaving them all behind, never to see them again.   That is the premise for Divergent by Veronica Roth.   Beatrice “Tris” Prior is a 16 year old girl growing up in dystopian Chicago where the population is divided into 5 factions. Each faction is centered on 1 ideal – Amity (Peaceful), Candor (Honesty), Abnegation (Selfishness), Erudite (Intelligence) and Dauntless (Bravery).      Tris has grown up in Abnegation but has always felt she never belonged. In her 16 th year she has to choose to stay in Abnegation for the rest of her life or choose another faction and never see her family again.   She makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.   The book revolves around Tris, her decision and the consequences both good and bad.   Roth creates a beautiful picture of a dystopian Chicago.   At first Chicago is a separate but equal place to live with each faction living

What would you do if you were Anastasia Steele? Throughout the 3 rd and final book in the Fifty Shades trilogy I found myself asking what I would do if I were in Ana’s shoes? Would I stay with Christian through his insecurities? Would I try and help him push through those walls he has had up since he was 4?   If I loved Christian as much as Ana, my answer would be yes. Love makes us do crazy things but in the end love is what gets us through the day and especially the night.   Freed picks up a few months after the events of Darker – Ana and Christian are married and life couldn’t be happier.   There is still someone following them and threatening them but besides that they are still the loving, happy, crazy couple they have been.   Christian is slowly coming undone due to his love and need for Ana; Ana is becoming more attached to him the more she learns about his past and his mental state.   The book reads more like an action adventure book due to the stalker and situations An

Today of all days it is important for people to have entertainment as outlets. I am not talking about the “entertainment” that is the news nowadays. I am talking about the entertainment of movies, books, television shows, music and radio.   These pieces of entertainment give us an outlet for an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, however long we need to feel safe and secure. I found myself watching the Red Sox last night and already this week I have watched more Red Sox than I did all of last year. When every other news station is blaring out one unconfirmed lead after another you become immune and numb to it all. You need a release, something to take you to another world for a little while, while you decompress and return to normalcy.   After the Red Sox won I immediately went to another piece of entertainment – my book of the moment, Masquerade part of the Blue Blood series by Melissa de la Cruz.   It isn’t the most intelligent and thought provoking books in the world but it is a superna

In the middle book of the Fifty Shades trilogy that has launched in popularity all over the word, Ana finds herself broken up with her Fifty Shades, Christian,   and mourning the loss of her libido.   She was scared of whom Christian became in the Red Room of Pain and thought at that moment that there was no way it was going to work; he was too damaged for anything to work out between them. At least she thought.   Circumstances arise that lead her and Christian to attend her friend Jose’s gallery opening and bringing all of those feelings she doesn’t want to feel to the surface.   But this time she is ready – at least more than before.   She knows what she wants and will fight to have him and the man she knows he is. She is also less afraid to tell him (notice how I said less and not fully).   This starts Ana’s journey into the darker side of her Fifty Shades. At first I was hesitant to read the second book.   I didn’t want every other page to be kinky sex and Christian using his

When you have done one thing your entire life, it is the backbone of your existence what happens to you when it is suddenly taken away? In Trouble With the Curve starring Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams, Gus has been a baseball scout for as long as he can remember.   He has a keen eye to finding the best of the best and sticks with his gut.   When his eye sight starts failing and he starts to go legally blind he doesn’t   know what to do or where to turn.   His friends ask his lawyer daughter to help him when they know he would never ask for her help. When she arrives to “help” him, he keeps telling her to leave that he doesn’t need help and she keeps staying.   Stubbornness runs in the family.   The story follows the two on this journey of self-discovery – who are you when everyone around you is saying you lost it.   This movie was different than I expected.   I was expecting light-hearted banter between Eastwood and Adams.   Even though there was some there were a lot of serious

You wake up in a hospital bed after getting shot on a routine car chase.   No machines are working to help you stay alive yet you are awake.   You try and call for help but there is no answer.   You finally get all unhooked from dead machines and leave your room.   You walk the halls of a deserted hospital to find the door to the morgue with a message written in blood: “Don’t Open, Dead Inside.”   Then the doors begin to move and a hand crawls out, dirty and broken and you turn around and get the hell out of the hospital to find rows and rows of dead, decaying bodies covered in white sheets outside.   No human around, just dead bodies and what you think look like zombies - at least that is what you would call them from movies and television shows.   So begins The Walking Dead on AMC. The Walking Dead follows a group of survivors trying to stay alive in a world surrounded by zombies.   No one knows how it started but that isn’t the forefront of the show.   The show is about survi

Is there a safe haven for everyone? That is the question the main character Katie deals with in Nicholas Sparks’ book Safe Haven.   Sparks delivers yet again a powerful and emotional read with a twist that I have not read from him yet – suspense and mystery.   In this book, it isn’t all about love and loss. It’s about survival and protecting yourself even if the thing you are protecting yourself from is you. The novel starts with the newest resident of a small North Carolina town, Katie.   She came to Southport, NC to start over and hopes no one notices. She rents a small cottage on a gravel road out of the way and takes a waitressing job at a local watering hole.   As much as she wants to blend in people start to notice her and ask questions as Southport is a very small and tightknit community.   She befriends the local general store owner Alex and his 2 kids, Kristen and Josh.   Hints about Katie’s past start to pop-up both for herself and Alex.   She begins to shut down and do

In the original stories by the Brothers Grimm, not all were pretty and magical and had happy endings. They were bitter, dark, and cruel.   The movie Snow White and the Huntsman starring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron and Chris Hemsworth took the same route.   Snow White and the Huntsman begin with Snow White as a child, losing her mother and her father remarrying.   The night her father gets remarried, Ravenna kills him and takes over his kingdom locking Snow White in the north tower until she is useful.     When Snow White comes of age, Ravenna sends her brother to kill her as Snow White has become fairer than the Queen.   Snow White escapes and so begins the pursuit of Snow White by the Huntsman and the search for her by her father’s faithful following that survived the purging of the kingdom so many years ago. This was Kristen Stewart’s follow-up movie to the Twilight Series.   Was it good – was it bad? It was hard to tell.   The farther the movie progressed, the less

In my experience, you either love or hate Nicholas Sparks. Even if you hate him, it is a loving hate because he writes such powerful and emotional love stories.   In his book, The Choice I have a loving hate for him this time around mainly because for the first time while reading one of his books, I have someone in my life who I think about when reading.   The Choice tells the story of Travis, a veterinarian in South Carolina and Gabby, a physician’s assistant at a small practice in the same town.   The novel starts with the present Travis reminiscing about how he met Gabby and fell in love.   Only later when the novel comes back to the present does the reader fully understand the meaning of love and what Travis was thinking when he thought of the past. The book kept me thinking the whole time.   I found myself having to reread passages to see if my hunches were correct.   As Sparks moved from the present to the past back to the present, he wove a story about love that transc

The New Year has come and gone without much fanfare for this blogger.   New Year’s was spent with close friends, at home and in bed by 12:05am.   It was a great, relaxing and inexpensive New Year’s.   As 2012 came to a close that night I realized that I had yet to make any resolutions.   I was in shock.   How could I have forgotten about the most important part of my year – planning!   Well here it is a few days late but here nonetheless.   2013 promises to be the best year on record. Not just for me but for my fiancée. We are getting married this year. 9 months and counting.   All of my resolutions this year revolve around my wedding – getting healthier, saner and less stressed.   In the past few years I haven’t been able to keep many of my resolutions except for reading and writing because I love to do those things. Even though I haven’t read 26 books every year I never gave up and won’t this year.     Goodreads.com makes that resolution easy.   They have a 2013 Reading Challe