MIA in 2010

2010 turned out to be a very tough reading and blogging year for me.  I don’t know if it was the out of sorts feeling I had while Hubby was deployed for five months or what but I totally sucked at keeping up with things.  At times it seemed as if I had become a slower reader and was easily distracted by everything and anything.  I fell into the habit of only reading before bed and that never is a good thing for me.  I get tired and after only reading a few pages its lights out.  Book club should have helped but it really didn’t.  I only read (if I liked it enough) the selected title and didn’t read other titles in the second half of the year.  

Good news is I’m still in love with my Kindle and 2011 will bring an iPad 1 or 2 into my hands thanks to my folks generous birthday gift on the 1st.  I will download the Kindle App to whichever version of iPad I end up getting (waiting for the MacWorld 2011 conference to see if Steve Jobs introduces the 2.0) and that will allow me to read without the lights on when Hubby goes to sleep.  I don’t really like book lights.  I am off to a good start in 2011 though.  I finished my book club’s selection for Sunday’s brunch just last night.  I’m going to try to read one book of my choice for every book club selection this year.  That is my reading goal for 2011.

There were some fabulous books that I read in 2010 though and I have listed them below.  The scariest ones, all for different reasons, were Room, The Blue Notebook and Born on the 4th of July.  All very realistic stories inspired by true accounts, like Kovic’s retelling of his experience in Vietnam and the aftermath of the war back home, these books still haunt me.

The Postmistress and The Help are books that I will always recommend to the reader looking for a great novel to lose themselves in.  They are simply fantastic.  Others I listed made the list because they were either extremely unusual, Raven Stole The Moon, or made me laugh my ass off, My Fair Lazy.  How To Be An American Housewife took me back to Japan and made me miss the country, culture and it’s people all over again.  

I have also taken the liberty of listing my 20 favorite tunes of 2010.  I rediscovered Pop music last year and I am so thrilled that it’s laced with hot beats, fun lyrics, melodic melodies and strong construction.  Thank goodness!  Country music didn’t disappoint and the highlight for me was going to the CMA Music Festival in Nashville, TN last June with one of my best friends, Jesse.

What were some of your favorite reads in 2010?  Tunes?  Discoveries?  Please share them with me and any readers I still may have after being MIA in 2010!   

My FAV reads of 2010 (in no particular order)

Room – Emma Donoghue

The Blue Notebook – Dr. James A. Levine

How To Be An American Housewife – Margaret Dilloway

Born on the 4th of July – Ron Kovic

My Fair Lazy – Jen Lancaster

Raven Stole The Moon – Garth Stein

The Postmistress – Sarah Blake

The Help – Kathryn Stocket

 

My FAV 20 Tunes of 2010 (in no particular order)

F You – Cee Lo Green

Club Can’t Handle Me – Flo Rida

Dynamite – Taio Cruz

Teenage Dream – Katy Perry

Just the Way You Are – Bruno Mars

Paris (Ooh La La) – Grace Potter and The Nocturnals

1983 – Neon Trees

Undo It – Carrie Underwood

Lover, Lover – Jerrod Neiman

Put You In A Song – Keith Urban

Smoke A Little Smoke – Eric Church

Empire State of Mind – Jay Z & Alicia Keys

Bullet Proof – La Roux

All About Tonight – Blake Shelton

Raise Your Glass – Pink

Telephone – Lady Gaga & Beyonce

Colder Weather – Zac Brown Band

Crazy Town – Jason Aldean

Roll With It – Easton Corbin

Stuck Like Glue – Sugarland

Due to restrictons on videos from YouTube I am unable to share any of the videos I wanted to here on Planet Books.  Sorry Dude!

Book Review ~ Glee The Beginning by

Summary ~ Calling all Gleeks!
Get more of your favorite characters in this official Glee prequel!
All great performances deserve a warm-up! Enroll early at McKinley High–before New Directions was even a glimmer in Mr. Schuester’s eye. When did Rachel first decide Finn was more than just a jock? When did Puck and Quinn start their secret romance? And how did the fledgling Glee Club function without a fearless leader? Hint: It wasn’t exactly a perfect melody.
Break out the gold stars and refill the slushies: It’s time to find out what happened to all your favorite characters before the show-mance began.

OMG!!  I was tickled when I learned about this book.  Glee The Beginning by Sophia Lowell is just that, the beginning of the Glee kids story.  If you aren’t familiar with the Fox hit Glee than I don’t know what’s wrong with you (seriously, it’s a fabulous, fun and dramatic thrill for the senses!) and you have a few short weeks to catch up with the rest of the Gleeks out there and Netflix/buy/download on iTunes Season 1 of Glee before the new season starts in mid-September. 

This book was a fun, imformative (for the Gleek that I am) and entertaining read that was a perfect way to end the summer with (school started in some counties here yesterday and the rest of the students out there will start Monday.)  I know I like to read whatever all year round but it was fun to read Glee The Beginning at the end of summer vacation and the beginning of the school year.  Does our muscle memory of the beginning of school ever really leave us?  Glee The Beginning covers all the core Glee kids; Rachel, Tina, Mercedes, Kurt, Finn and Quinn and gives the fan/reader a good look into what the characters were up to before we met them in Season 1 Episode 1 on television.  Quinn was torn between who she thought she should be and who she wished she could be and Rachel was always all about being the star performer in her school.  Glee Club was flailing until Kurt had the stroke of genius to invite Rachel to join Glee for a rehersal and see what she thought.  Why does Tina stutter?  What is Mercedes home life like?  All these questions and more are answered in Glee The Beginning.

If you are looking for a quick read that will get you excited all over again for the upcoming fall season then Glee The Beginning is for you.  My secret for really diving in each time I turned on my Kindle to read was turning on my iPod and playing the Glee soundtracks.  I own ALL of them.  “Hi!  My name is Karen and I’m a Gleek!”

{Rating 4 out of 5} 

 

 

 

11 Days And Counting!

11 Days ’till CMA Fest in Nashville, TN!!  Below are some music videos to represent just some of the eye-candy Jess and I will be seeing on the concert stages of CMA Fest.  Yum!

29 Days & Counting!

I’m going to continue sharing music videos by numerous artists who will be jammin’ at the 2010 CMA Fest next month in Nashville, TN.  Tonight, I’m listening to the wonderful Patty Loveless and her boot stompin’ tune, Lovin’ All Night.  I love to sing this song at karaoke because it is so much fun!  I hope you’ll like it too.

30 Days & Counting!

In thirty days a dream of mine is going to come true.  One of my best friends, Jesse, and I are going on a road trip.  This isn’t a road trip to just anywhere either.  We are going to Music City USA, Nashville, TN to attend CMA Music Fest aka Fan Fair!  I have been a lover and singer of country music since 1992 (and Olivia Newton-John’s country records from the 70’s since birth) and can’t believe that I’m going to the “Mecca” of country music in a few short weeks.  Yee Haw!!

A week ago Jesse and I were concerned that the festival wasn’t going to happen next month after the massive, deadly and destructive floods wreaked havoc on Nashville.  Last Monday night I received an e-mail from the Gaylord Opryland Hotel announcing that due to the detrimental flooding that changed the resort into a giant pool, they will be closed for at least three months and that all reservations made for those dates will be cancelled.  Uh Oh!

 

After checking The Tennessean, CNN and other news websites the following morning I decided to make a new reservation at a hotel in the downtown area that has an easy cancellation policy.  I still didn’t know if the show would go on so I wanted to play it safe but I also wanted to be sure we had a hotel room in case it was still on.  Turns out the Gaylord Opryland Hotel makes up 12% of all hotel rooms in the Nashville area!  WOW!  I consider myself lucky that I got a room for us at a great rate and closer to the action before all the hotels in the area booked up with displaced people attending the festival. 

Jesse and I, and probably all the other country music fans who will be attending CMA Fest 2010, are looking forward to going to one of my favorite cities in the country, spending our money to help the local economy and seeing/listening to some amazing music.  The festival lasts four days/nights and concerts will be held at the Riverfront Stage, LP Field as well as at the local honky-tonks on Broadway, 2nd Avenue and other venues in Music City USA.

So, to mark the beginning of the count down, I would like to share a video of one of the groups I can’t wait to see on the Riverfront Stage.  They are called Steel Magnolia and are the winners of last year’s CMT’s Can You Duet.  Their awesome single is “Keep On Loving You” and I can’t wait to hear them perform it live. 

Today’s Favorite Song

I haven’t listened to Pandora Radio in forever so I decided to log on and take a listen.  Well what I got was so unexpected and fabulous that I had to share it with you.  Kings of Leon is becoming a favorite band of mine primarily due to the tune “Sex On Fire” but I love when big songs are covered by artists in other genres.  I just heard Sugarland (one of my all time favs) perform this song on Pandora.  So, because I was so moved and thrilled to hear Jennifer Nettles HUGE and VIBRANT voice singing this vocally driven song, I want to share it with you.  Enjoy!

Book Review ~ The Help by Kathryn Stockett

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. What perfect timing for this optimistic, uplifting debut novel (and maiden publication of Amy Einhorn’s new imprint) set during the nascent civil rights movement in Jackson, Miss., where black women were trusted to raise white children but not to polish the household silver. Eugenia Skeeter Phelan is just home from college in 1962, and, anxious to become a writer, is advised to hone her chops by writing about what disturbs you. The budding social activist begins to collect the stories of the black women on whom the country club sets relies and mistrusts enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who’s raised 17 children, and Aibileen’s best friend Minny, who’s found herself unemployed more than a few times after mouthing off to her white employers. The book Skeeter puts together based on their stories is scathing and shocking, bringing pride and hope to the black community, while giving Skeeter the courage to break down her personal boundaries and pursue her dreams. Assured and layered, full of heart and history, this one has bestseller written all over it.

 There aren’t enough positive, glowing and loving words that I’m aware of describe Kathryn Stockett’s touching, eye-opening, powerful and memorable novel, The Help.  And that’s my review!  Just kidding.  But seriously, I loved, love and will always recommend The Help to anyone looking for a good book to sink themselves into.  The story is deeply involved with wonderfully detailed character development.  As you read The Help you get to know stong and weak women alike.  Aibileen and Minny are two housekeepers, child raisers and in Minny’s case, psychologists/mother to her employer.  Miss Skeeter is the young lady who brings their stories to light, or more specifically to paper.  She is a graduate from Ole Miss and wishes to be a writer and to live in New York City.  So after an idea of a book partly supported by a publicist in the Big Apple, Miss Skeeter begins secretly meeting with Aibileen, Minny and a few other maids in their hometown of Jackson, MS to get their stories of working in the family homes of white women on paper. 

The other characters we get to know (like them or not) are the white female employers who are, for the most part, a disturbing reflection of the time the story is set in.  1962 Mississippi and the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement is where The Help is set.  I’ll tell you what, this book has a villain like I haven’t read in a very long time.  If they made a film adaptation of The Help I would be very interested in seeing who is cast to play Miss Hilly.  I HATED her and all her beliefs.  Miss Celia (Minny’s boss) was fun, hopeless and the most alone of all the characters but still was one of my favorites. 

The Help is full of great twists, edge of your seat suspense and heartbreaking moments as well as laugh/gasp out loud ones.  The topics will make you think and if they don’t then this isn’t the book for you.  Though The Help is fiction, I would call it historical fiction.  Author Kathryn Stockett grew up in Mississippi and is said to have based a few of the characters on her own family’s maid and Stockett has written her story through and around true historical events in this nation’s history.  We just celebrated Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday and are getting closer and closer to February which is Black History Month.  Please take a few days to read this gem of a book and reflect on where our country has come from and where we are going.   

{Rating ~ 5 out of 5}

At one point in The Help, Miss Skeeter catches a brief listen of Bob Dylan’s “Times, They Are A Changin’.”  Here is that song followed by Sam Cooke’s amazing tune, “A Change Is Gonna Come” performed by Lauren Hill & The Fugees.

What I’m Listening To This Week

This week I was so happy that Vampire Weekend’s sophomore release finally “dropped.”  It’s called CONTRA and I just love it!  This band first hit the scene back in 2007 and I have loved them since my first listen on NPR’s All Songs Considered.  This tune is from this weeks release and it’s called “Cousins.”  Enjoy!

Sunday Salon ~ June 28th, 2009

I hope your weekend was a good one!  Mine was nice and relaxing.  Read a little bit, ate out, caught a flick with Hubby and went to a great little concert with a couple of girlfriends. 

I’m reading The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler.  I downloaded a free sample onto my Kindle last week and started reading that at the end of the week and just had to find out what was going to happen to Macon.  What a great read so far!  Hubby and I went down to our lot site and discovered that the builders started working on our house last week.  The foundation/basement has started and the concrete should be poured this week.  It was so cool to see that progress has started to finally show.  We went to a recommended Korean BBQ joint near the future house but learned they aren’t open for lunch so we went to Red Lobster.  It was really delicious and the establishment was really nice and new’ish.  Last night we saw “The Hangover” and boy was it a doozy.  Funny, outrageous and just plain wrong at points.  We really liked it. 

Today I stopped by my folks house in Maryland on my way out to Annapolis to meet up with two girlfriends of mine, Rebecca and Alison.  We used to do theatre together back in the ’90’s and have reconnected thanks to Facebook.  They thought I would enjoy one of their favorite east coast singers, Toby Lightman.  They were totally right with their assumption.  She ROCKED!!!!!  It was an acoustic show with a total of three acts performing.  The show was at The Rams Head On Stage in Annapolis, MD.  If you live in the DC area it is a great venue for intimate performances.  They have great headliners and the room is cozy (though a bit chilly), comfortable and has fantastic sound.  The first singer/songwriter was Kentavius Jones and he was brilliant.  His voice was gorgeous and sensual and his songs were smooth and rich.  Second up was Luke Brindley.  He was very very good and could make his guitar produce sounds I never would have thought could be made by a single instrument.  Toby Lightman was the headliner and I really could have listened/watched her perform for many hours more.  Her voice was so beautiful, rich, strong, soft, emotion filled and enjoyable to listen to.  All three performers were incredible guitarists in their own right as well. 

Here are a  few videos of Toby Lightman.  Enjoy!!

Sunday Salon/Today’s Favorite Song

This week/weekend has just flown by.  My friend Alison lent me her copy of My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult so I could read it before we see the movie version when it comes out at the end of the month.  Today I went to Beastmomma‘s bridal shower which was lovely and just the beginning of the wedding festivities that pick up on Thursday and run through Sunday evening.  This evening Hubby and I saw No Doubt live in concert at Nissan Pavilion in Northern Virginia.  Gwen and the Boys were FANTASTICALLY AMAZING!!!!  It was so wicked cool to see Ms. Stefani in person and hear all the bands great songs.  There were over 24,000 people in attendance and when No Doubt performed Just A Girl, the estrogen in the pavilion was intense. 

I tried to link the video of the band performing Just a Girlon The Ellen Show last month but it didn’t work.  Sorry!  I did find this footage on YouTube of No Doubt’s first late night network television performance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien from January 1996.  It’s the song Just A Girl again but it really is cool to see their energy back then and compare it to now, thirteen years later and kids.