Teaser Tuesdays and It's Tuesday....Where Are You?

TEASER TUESDAYS asks you to:

Grab your current read.

Let the book fall open to a random page.

Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.

You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!

Please avoid spoilers!

Touching the scars on his belly, his chest. She knows that Cabel feels the same way she does, sometimes--like no one would want to be with him because of his issues. Maybe the two of us really could last, Janie thinks. Misfits, united.

p.101 from FADE by Lisa McMann

____________________________________________________________________

It's Tuesday...Where Are You?

Well, I'm still in the 1861 right before the start of the civil war but right now I only have Ashley Wilkes on my mind and not some awful war, and anyway our Southern boys will run off those awful Yankees in no time!!- Gone With the Wind

I'm jumping in and out of people's dreams and sometimes I enjoy them, when it's my boyfriend's dreams but most of the time they're scary!! - Fade

Weekly Geeks- A Quote a Day #4

Nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills...girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.
p. 76

Napolean Dynamite

I Love You, Beth Cooper- my thoughts

I Love You, Beth Cooper
by Larry Doyle
Published 2007
272 pages

From Goodreads:

Denis Cooverman didn't want to give a typical graduation speech, cherishing memories and embracing challenges and crap. So, instead, he stood up in front of his 512 class-mates and their 3,000 relatives and said some-thing really important:

"I love you, Beth Cooper."

It would have been such a sweet, romantic moment. Except that:

Beth, the head cheerleader, has only the vaguest idea who Denis is.

And Denis, the captain of the debate team, is so far out of her league he is barely even the same species.

And then there's Kevin, Beth's remarkably large boyfriend, in town on furlough from the United States Army.

Complications ensue.

Denis comes of age overnight in this exhilar-ating, endearing novel that reminds us why we can't wait to escape high school but can never leave it behind.

Honestly, reading this book is like jumping on a roller coaster, forgetting to buckle your seatbelt, and you didn't have enough time to pull the bar down. So now you're flying all over the place, screaming your damn head off, swooping over the hills, feeling like you're going to throw up, ducking your head so you don't get decapitated, and then finally you pull back into the station, look at your partner that rode next to you and say..."Dude, that was one freakin' awesome ride. Let's do it again!!!!!!"

It's a mixture of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Porky's, American Pie, and whatever coming-of-age movie you can think of. I had a great time reading this book and totally loved the pictures of Denis at the start of each chapter. As you work you're way through the book, his face gets a little bit worse for wear. But in the end he clearly feels that the best time he ever had in high school was this one single night!! If you're looking for a fun YA book to read then I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this to you, but it won't change your world like, say, a John Green book would, but you will laugh and you just might see a trace of your "teen self" in some of these characters and their experiences!!

I leave you with a funny passage that made me laugh:

Denis took a calcaneus to the temple. He staggered backward into a corner, trapped. So this was it: boned to death in his own room. Not exactly the tragedy he had always dreamed about. He thought of his mother finding his bloody pulped remains, and then he thought of that copy of Celebrity Sleuth: Women of Fantasy 15 on the floor, lying open to topless shots of Kristanna Loken, the Terminatrix. Embarrassing. If he had time, he would try to eat the magazine before he died.
p.87

Weekly Geeks- A Quote a Day #3

"For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

Classics Challenge 2009

Welcome to the Classics Challenge 2009

Classics: We love them, we hate them, now we are going to challenge ourselves to read more of them.

**Choose Your Level (Keep reading for Bonus)
1. Classics Snack - Read FOUR classics
2. Classics Entree - Read FIVE classics
3. Classics Feast - Read SIX classics

**Rules/Guidelines
1. Cross-posting with other challenges is allowed (and encouraged!)
2. Audiobooks are fine
3. Re-reads are acceptable, BUT books must be finished after April 1st to count for the challenge
4. Lists don't have to be set in stone; you can change your selections at any time.
5. Have Fun!!
6. You do NOT need a blog to participate.


I saw this Challenge on Wendy's post over at Musings of a Bookish Kitty and thought it would be fun challenge. And I can even cross-post with other challenges so that is an added bonus. Playing alone with this challenge will also count towards me Read-What-You-Own Challenge. My choice off the menu is the Classics Snack and here are my four choices:

• Mansfield Park

• Emma

• Northanger Abbey

• Persuasion

I'm really excited about this challenge because I've been "meaning" to read these books for so long and hopefully I really will!!! If you want to play along click on the link below the Challenges Picture...you know you want to!!!

Weekly Geeks- A Quote a Day #2

"Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course."
~ The Sugar Queen by Srah Addison Allen
p. 206

Skim- my thoughts

SKIM
words by Mariko Tamaki
drawings by Jullian Tamaki

From the inside cover: Heartbreakingly funny, moving and vibrantly drawn, Skim is an extraordinary book - a smart and sensitive graphic novel of the highest literary and artistic quality, by and about young women. "Skim" is Kimberly Keiko Cameron, a not-slim, would-be Wiccan goth who goes to a private girls' school. When her classmate Katie Matthews is dumped by her boyfriend, who then kills himself, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. As concerned guidance counselors provide lectures on the "cycle of grief," and the popular clique starts a new club (Girls Celebrate Life!) to bolster school spirit, Skim sinks into an ever-deepening depression. And falling in love only makes things worse.... Suicide, depression, love, being gay or not, crushes, cliques, and find a way to be your own fully human self-are explored in this brilliant collaboration by cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamako. An edgy, keenly observed and poignant glimpse into the heartache of being young.

I found myself really liking this graphic novel. The drawings are superb and the story is one that is still very applicable to today's teens. This book was first written in 1998 and I'm not sure that the graphic novel market was as huge as it is today, so I'm glad that this one has gotten the chance to be re-published and to be brought to a whole new market. Kim, aka Skim, is a pretty reserved girl who is really not comfortable in her own skin. She lives on the outskirts of the popular crowd and seems quite content with having her friend Lisa and her interest in Wicca. When a fellow student's boyfriend commits suicide she begins to think about what it means to be depressed and to maybe be gay. After this young man kills himself the counselor's at her school seem to target the goth crowd because they're dark and they (the adults) think are more susceptible to thoughts of suicide...all because of the way they look! I believe that is still true today. That's why the following passage really made an impact on me.

Mrs. Hornet said she's particularly concerned about people like me, because people like me are prone to depression and depressing stimuli.

Mrs. Hornet says students who are members of the "gothic" culture (i.e. ME) are very fragile.

Truthfully I am always a little depressed but that is just because I am sixteen and everyone is stupid (ha-ha-ha). I doubt it has anything to do with being a goth.

John Reddear was on the VOLLEYBALL TEAM, not a goth, and he KILLED HIMSELF!!!!

How come all the girls on the soccer team aren't in counseling?

p. 22

I agree with Skim....why weren't the other kids being counseled? Because they looked normal? They didn't dress in black or wear weird clothes? Kids, no matter what they look like, are capable of being depressed without anyone knowing they are...regardless of what they look like or whether they're jocks, geeks, goths, emo, gay, lesbian, .....you get the picture.

The other part of this book that I enjoyed was Skim falling in love for the first time. Of course, this isn't your typical love affair...boy and girl, this is Skim falling in love with her English teacher, Ms. Archer. As she goes through this experience and the heartaches that come with first love, she's not able to tell anyone how she's feeling or to share this with her friend Lisa, because Lisa has decided to join the clique and be a part of the "popular club." At the end I loved how Skim thought we all carried the experiences of growing up....

Dear Diary,
I think there are a lot of ways to be marked.

If you are ugly, like Natasha Cake who has no eyebrows and doesn't wash her hair, then you are marked to be treated like crap for life.

I have eyebrows and wash but I think I am also marked to some degree (biologically) as a weirdo for life. (Mom says that there is nothing about my appearance that I don't contribute to with my habits.)

People can also mark you. Scott Bouffant marked me in grade nine with a disgusting hickey that didn't go away for a week.

Me= slut for a whole week.

(He never even called me afterwards because I wouldn't give him a handjob-BECAUSE I'D JUST MET HIM!!!!)

Lisa's mother got drunk once and told us that all relationships leave a scar. Lisa said her mother was talking about VD (=Venereal Disease- I had to look it up.) Lisa said you could have a VD and not even know it.

I think everything you do and everything people do to you leaves a mark, or at least if affects who you are.

pgs. 124-125

This book made me think a lot about my own experiences in high school and how hard life was as a teen....overall, a very interesting and enlightening read.