The Descartes Highlands

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Print Length: 300 pages Publisher: Akashic Books (October 13, 2014) Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc. Language: English Genre: Fiction/Asian America Book Description: Two men, each unaware of the other, share a common family secret: they were sold for adoption by their American father shortly after their births in the Philippines. Three alternating stories interweave the experiences of father Andrew Breszky and the two sons who try to connect and piece together the puzzle of their reckless, impulsive father. One lives in New York and the other grows up in the south of France, later traveling all over Asia as a documentary filmmaker. Both will discover that their relationships somehow echo that of the young man whose history eludes them. Celebrated Filipino writer Eric Gamalinda's international debut novel is a contemporary work of ideas that combines mystery, film noir, and existential philosophy. Highly intricate and written in a style reminiscent of the maverick narrative techniques of such filmmakers as Andrei Tarkovsky and Béla Tarr, and with some of the philosophical underpinnings of Michel Houellebecq or Javier Marías. Named after the region of the moon where Apollo 16 landed in the same year these men were born, The Descartes Highlands demonstrates that for lives marked by unrelieved loneliness, the only hope lies in the redemptive power of love. My Review: I am sad to say I didn't make it through this book. The first chapter read rather choppy, that's the best way to describe it. It didn't flow well. The second and third chapter, got be extremely interested in the story and what was going to happen. But once I got to the four chapter I couldn't finish it. The graphic scenes and foul language was to much for me.  I am not even going to quote a piece for you to see yourself, I felt that uncomfortable I received this book from Edelweiss for my review

Doctor Who: The Crawling Terror

• Print Length: 258 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0804140901
• Publisher: Broadway Books (September 9, 2014)
• Sold by: Random House LLC
• Available at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million, 
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" And I thought Iraqi camel spiders were bad." he muttered. 

The Doctor and Clara land in a quiet little town of Wiltshire, Britain. It wasn't until they stumbled onto a cocooned man rendered down to skin and bones, caught in a giant spider web that they realized that Wiltshire wasn't as quiet as it seemed. Zombie town people, giant mosquito, mysterious symbols on stones and a mad scientist, all lead to one ending, a dangerous one.

To be quite honestly with you, I have never watched, read or even heard of Doctor Who before I started to read this book. Even with that I caught on to everything rather quickly. I also don't particularly enjoy "creepy crawlies". That being said I surprising, not just liked this book, I loved it. The book made me laugh at times, and intrigued at others. I could not put it down. I can not wait to pick up another Doctor Who book

* I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.

Bread Baking for Beginners

* I received this book for free for my honest review.

I was excited to start using this book, I have made white bread and banana bread before with hit or miss accuracy. I was looking forward to a more informative resource to help me understand what I was doing wrong. In this aspect I was not disappointed. The beginning of this 27 page ebook was set aside to explain why exact temperature, measurements and more are important when making breads.

Unfortunately, this was the only highlight of the book. I found the recipes incomplete and was not able to test any of them out, even though they sounded delicious. There were no oven temperatures on any of the recipes and no pictures. Though the pictures are not necessary, they would have made this document look more professional and less like something typed up in a word document.

Daily DASH for Weight Loss: A Day-By-Day DASH Weight Loss Plan

Publication Date: August 18, 2014

• Publisher: Rockridge Press (August 18, 2014)
• Available in : Print and ebook
• Available at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million
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The DASH, standing for The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, diet focus' on weight loss and reducing one's blood pressure. "..(the DASH) plan was developed for people who have to manage high blood pressure (as known as hypertension)."

Broken into three parts, including a section full of information a 28 day meal plan and recipes, this book is your one stop source to getting your hypertension under control. It does not just stop after those 28 days are over, no, this book gives you tops and knowledge on how to continue to make progress on your own.

A clinical study in 1997 involving hundreds of people with this problem, looked at the effect of diet on blood pressure. Over eight weeks these people partook in one of three diets, one being the DASH diet. The results showed that the DASH diet. The results showed that the DASH diet had "lowered systolic and diastolic blood pressure the most."

Not only does the book provide you with recipes,a 28 days meal plan and how to use it. It also is a reference guide to how diet effects blood pressure, what organ's are effected and how they are effected by high blood pressure. Questions are answered like "Understanding what your blood pressure means" and what to do.

Amazingly informative and easy to comprehend book on DASH with recipes including Breakfast, Snacks, Soup/Salad/Sandwiches, Entree's and Desserts. All recipes are delicious and worth a try.

A Big Thumbs up!

Disclosure: I received this book free of charge from Library Things Early Reader Program in exchange for my unbiased review of it. All opinions are mine.

Of Life's Troubles and Triumphs

Publication Date: July 29,2014

Publisher: Random House

Available in: Print, Ebook, and Audio

Available at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million

With an attention getting book cover and the first lines being "My father's wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us." Amy Bloom has attracted readers to enter to world of Eva Logan. But that's all she did. Though the book cover, at least for me, had nothing to do with the novel itself, it does get one wondering on what's inside. Mind you I am not saying that this novel is BAD I am saying that it doesn't live up to the hipe of the first two lines or the book cover. 

Eva's life before the age of twelve was one in which she had no complaints, but that changed when her mother dropped her on Eva's father's door step and drove off, never to return again. Eva is astonished to find out that her father is actually a wealthy, college professor with a sixteen year old daughter. Though her father won't even acknowledge that she is his own daughter Eva becomes know to all as his niece. With all this negativity in her life the only person with whom she is treated nicely is her own half sister, Iris. After helping Iris with practicing to win competitions, Eva and Iris run to Hollywood on the money from the competitions. 

This is only the beginning, the drama piles up in the novel, but Amy Bloom does a wonderful job describing her scenes and the characters experiences that it doesn't read like a contemporary drama. Narrated by Eva Logan herself, Ms. Bloom interrupts the narrative with letters from Iris and another character. Thus, the reader is able to follow these other characters in their paralleled lives without derailing the main narrative. 

This novel shows that family is not just limited to the relatives you have but the people who love you too. Though life can through a lot of troubles your way all you have to do is dust yourself off, move forward and triumphs will come your way. 

Book Synopsis:

"NEW YORK TIMES "BESTSELLER 
""My father's wife died. My mother said we should drive down to his place and see what might be in it for us."" 
So begins this remarkable novel by Amy Bloom, whose critically acclaimed "Away" was called "a literary triumph" ("The New York Times"). "Lucky Us" is a brilliantly written, deeply moving, fantastically funny novel of love, heartbreak, and luck. 
Disappointed by their families, Iris, the hopeful star and Eva the sidekick, journey through 1940s America in search of fame and fortune. Iris's ambitions take the pair across the America of Reinvention in a stolen station wagon, from small-town Ohio to an unexpected and sensuous Hollywood, and to the jazz clubs and golden mansions of Long Island. 
With their friends in high and low places, Iris and Eva stumble and shine though a landscape of big dreams, scandals, betrayals, and war. Filled with gorgeous writing, memorable characters, and surprising events, "Lucky Us" is a thrilling and resonant novel about success and failure, good luck and bad, the creation of a family, and the pleasures and inevitable perils of family life, conventional and otherwise. From Brooklyn's beauty parlors to London's West End, a group of unforgettable people love, lie, cheat and survive in this story of our fragile, absurd, heroic species. 

The Soul of the Witch by Dana Michelle Burnett

Published Date: July 19, 2014
Page Length: 246 pages
Available in: Print and Ebook
Available at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million


Do two halves really make a whole?
Two families joined together by a single moment in history, separated for over four hundred years. Both families being watched over by employees of a hypercritical woman, for generations upon generations and why? Because they possess a gift that she wants to extinguish. 
Mystery, revenge, anger, and confusion possess these two families for over four hundred years and threaten to continue. That is, until Devan and Janesa become best friends in high school. That is when weird events become apart of their lives. Clueless to what is going on Janesa and Devan are imparted upon the knowledge of their past, by the very man who during this generation is supposed to find them and eliminate them before they reproduce any more heirs to their gift. Nick, though hired to follow and eliminate these two girls, wonders if they are really as bad as all the files he has been given from the past four hundred years states. Going against his employer Nick hands over the files to Devan to help her understand what has been happening to her and her best friend and maybe even why.
Told from the present with Janesa and Devan ,as well as letters from the file from over the past decades their story unfolds in front of your eyes. Leaving you to wondering as to why these two families are followed so thoroughly and make your own decisions as to what is good and evil. 
A great story for those of you whom love a mystery, witches, and suspense. A must read

Disclousure: I received this book free for my honest review

Indexing by Seanan McGuire

Publication Date: May 21, 2o13
Page Length: 420 pages
Publisher: 47North
Available as: Print and Ebook
Available at: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million
Read the First Chapter: http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/05/indexing-excerpt


Are fairy tales real? If so, how dangerous can they really be?

Seanan McGuire helps the readers explores a new way of looking at fairy tales, through the eyes of a field team employed by a secret government agency to stop these fairy tales from surfacing in the real world."...most important, thing you need to know about fairy tales: once a story starts, it won’t stop on its own. There’s too much narrative weight behind a moving story, and it wants to happen too badly. It won’t stop, unless somebody stops it."

Told from the point of view of the agencies top field team leader, Agent Henrietta Marchen (an adverted Snow White), you walk through different fairy tale stories trying to stop them from coming into the real world. The rest of the field team includes a wicked step sister, an elf from the Elves in the Shoemaker, a non story agent and a Pied Piper. Not only do you follow a fairy tale story through each chapter but you also are walked through the bigger fairy tale going on in the background oblivious to all.

This story was sometimes hard to follow, and though you were in a different fairy tale each chapter it was repetitive in some descriptions and slow to get to the main plot of the story. Finding this to be the only real down fall to the story, the new way of looking at fairy tales as a whole was enlightening. Being a huge fan of urban fairy tale stories, fairy tales told in different ways, I have not found one that I have read yet that views them this way. It makes you see the common fairy tale characters in a new light.

I was though, a little disappointed in the fact that there weren't all fairy tales introduced in this story, they introduced Mother Goose and  Alice in Wonderland which are not fairy tales. I also felt that a different title would have suited the book better.