Feeding Your Soul

When you have a list of over 400 books on your to-read list, you tend to forget that you put some of them on the list. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is one of those books. I used the randomizer on my Goodreads list to give me my next book after Landline. It gave me Station Eleven. I tried racking my brain, willing myself to recall when I put this on my list and my mind couldn’t come up anything. I guess that is what happens with over 400 books on your list. Station Eleven is about the post-collapse United States and Canada and the characters that have lived through it (and some that haven’t).  A flu broke out in Toronto that had an incubation period of less than 24 hours once exposed.  Only 1 in 3000 survived the outbreak.  Everything is gone - electricity, internet, gas, everything that we take for granted all gone in a couple of years.  The story moves back and forth between pre-collapse and post-collapse as well as between 3 main character lives. ...

**Spoiler Alert** Erin Duffy is a former wall street player, procuring a job in finance right out of college working her way up to analyst.  In her novel Bond Girl, Duffy takes us on a fictional tale (some say not so fictional) of a recent college graduate's first job out of college - Wall Street.  Alex Garrett has dreamed of a job on Wall Street - money, fame, expensive dinners, parties every night, everything a person can dream of working in the financial world.  That is if you are a man. Alex believes her career in the financial world will give her the money and freedom to do whatever she wants, go wherever she wants and be whoever she wants. What she doesn’t realize is the true nature of the boys club that is the financial world.   The minute she sets foot in the pit of Cromwell Pierce she is bombarded with male testosterone beyond anything she has ever known.  Every stereotype of the male species is glorified in the first few chapters - secrets f...

Bella and Edward. Katniss and Peeta. Tris and Four. Jack and Schuyler. Lucinda and Daniel.  Clary and Jace.  In young adult fiction/fantasy those 6 couples are legend.  Some more than others. Everyone knows Bella and Edward, Katniss and Peeta and most recently Tris and Four.  The last 3 are not as known but for this avid reader, they are the most important.   Supernatural and fantasy stories - movies, books, television - are my addiction.  I gravitate toward any and all of those stories I can find.  The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare is my most recent and this story involves the last couple on the list - Clary and Jace. Clary is a 16-year-old normal teenager who finds out that there is a world beyond your imagination dealing with demons, vampires, werewolves and Shadowhunters - half human, half angel beings that are the “police” of the world beyond.  She and her best friend Simon go to a club one night and Clary witnesses what sh...

When I read The Host by Stephanie Meyer at the time it was one of the hardest books for me to get through.  This was before eReaders and Nook and all the fancy things we have today.  Back when it was just books (yes there was a time we just had physical books) the length of the book was the main reason why I could not get through it.  I was always looking to see how much I had left, figuring out the percentage instead of worrying about the story. The book took me about 6 months to read. I had to force myself to go back and read it; I was very intrigued by the genre and plot but the amount of pages kept getting in the way.  Meyer did use more description than I like in The Host which made it very difficult to keep my attention for long periods of time (hence the time it took me to finish the book).I know that I missed a few things and when I heard the movie was being made, I was ecstatic.  And in October of 2014 I finally got around to watching it.   ...

It has been a long time since I have found a great book that I didn’t want to put down. The last one was Ellen Degeneres book “Seriously I”m Kidding” in June! I was due and The House on Tradd Street did not disappoint. The House on Tradd Street tells the story of Melinda, a woman with an ability to speak to the dead. No one knows she has this ability and she likes to keep it this way. Her mother left when she was 7 years old and her father has been an alcoholic since she can remember. She has had to fend for herself most of her life and she prefers it that way. She is a high profile realtor in Charleston South Carolina, selling high end homes including the old, southern homes and plantations. When she meets a very old homeowner to talk to him about putting his home on the marketing she never expects to suddenly be willed that home to renovate and solve a mystery that bears similar resemblance to her own life. With the help of her bohemian best friend and a handsome (although she...