Teaser Tuesday: " Hard Cache," "The Confession"

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should  Be Reading. Anyone can play along, so I thought  I  would play for fun! Just do the following:          

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on  that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away!   You don’t  want  to  ruin the  book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can  add the book to their TBR  Lists  if they  like your teaser. 

Karen's::

At that moment, Greg heard the thin, unmistakable sound of a muffled scream. His mother's face, her mouth wide open, was framed in the triple-paned kitchen window. Insulation muffled the sound, but did nothing to hide her look of terror.

p. 61 of The Cache by Charles B. Neff

Gerard's:

     And so it had all come down to this: a drunk Joey Gamble confessing his sins and baring his soul in a strip club to a man with a concealed mike that produced a scratchy audio that no court in the civilized world would take heed of.
     The fragile life of Donte Drumm would depend on the eleveth-hour recantation b a witness with no credibility.

p. 156 of The Confession by John Grisham

Meet Us On Monday

Here are the questions:

1. What is your favorite kind of pie?
Gerard's: Pumpkin
Karen's: Lemon Meringue with Pumpkin very close

2. Have you ever ran out of gas in the car you were driving?
Gerard: No.

Karen: Yes. Actually, I took some teens to a park and ran out in the parking lot. One of them went and brought back some gas and put it in for me too. They all got a big laugh out of it.

3. How many languages do you speak?
Gerard: Just English
Karen: Just English, although, I did take German for 9th and 10th grade.

4. Do you take daily vitamins?
We both do.  Centrum Silver for both.  (Click on the link to read about the funny story about my dad and Centrum.)  Karen also takes Citracal and Glucosamine Chondroitin.

5. What is your worst eating habit?
Gerard: Never eats any vegetables.
Karen: Eats pizza usually three meals a week, sometimes four. I only have two pieces though at each meal.

Now go meet some more over 40 bloggers at Never Growing Old.

"Facebook Me!" by Dave Awl

Facebook Me! by Dave Awl is a good reference book for learning to use Facebook to its full capacity.  I've been on Facebook for a couple years now I think so most of the things in this book I already knew by just exploring on my own.  Had I read this book first, it would have saved me some time.  It does explain how to set up a fan page which is something I didn't know how to do.  Another helpful thing was that it pointed out how I can blog app requests like silly gifts and games that I am not interested in.  It's actually very simple, there's a "block this app" option in  tiny letters under the app request that all I had to do was click on.  

I recommend this to anyone considering opening a Facebook account or who just is kind of lost when they go into it and would like to have a better understanding of it.

Have you read this one? What did you think of it?

"Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk" by David Sedaris

I know Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris is high on the best-seller list but it must be because of the cover and title of the book.  That is what made me want to read it.  I read 10 out of 16 of the short stories, each with different animals and unrelated to each other.  It has some offensive language that turned me off and I thought the stories were just goofy.  The overall idea, I think, is to point out how silly people can be by having the animals act like people, but in a negative way.  To me, the book was very negative and the stories were just goofy.  This is not a book I can recommend, even though the cover is cute.  I was very disappointed in it.

(Karen's review)

Have you read this one? What did you think of it?

"If I Grow Up" by Todd Strasser

Through the fictional characters of DeShawn, his best friend, Terrell, and the gang leaders in If I Grow Up, Todd Strasser gives the reader a vivid picture of the pressures people face living in poverty with gang members ruling the neighborhood in the inner-city.  I really liked this book because it followed DeShawn and Terrell as they grew up in the projects and let me see a world I am totally unfamiliar with; on the other hand, it is disturbing that people in America are actually living like this in some places. 

Although DeShawn and Terrell were best friends, they had different goals.  At age 12, Terrell looked forward to getting into a gang while DeShawn wanted to stay out of it.  DeShawn was generally a kid who just wanted to help out his family, stay alive to see another day, do the right thing and  stay out of trouble.  Had he made some different choices, he may have succeeded.  Strange how things turned out.  You trust the wrong person, and boom—you’re dead.

Throughout the book, the author shares some shocking facts between chapters such as these:

There are three times more black men in jail cells than college dorms.  P. 216

Young, unemployed black men murder one another at nine times the rate of white youths.  In 1965, 24% of black males were born to single mothers.  By 1990, the rate had risen to 64% and by 2005, it was just under 70%.  p.155

If I Grow Up story kept my interest all the way through, right from page 1.  It’s well written and has clean language.  I recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading about teenagers, is living in a project or is interested in gangs. 

(Karen's review)

Gerard's review:
If I Grow Up is about a young boy growing up in the projects surrounded by two gangs. The people who he hangs around with and the decisions he makes is the core of this book. I enjoyed it. Kept me turning pages. The book rings true!

Related non-fiction book we also liked: 

Gang Leader For A Day by Sudhir Venkatesh   (non-fiction)                                                         

Can’t Get There From Here by Todd Strasser (fiction story about homeless street kids)

Have you read this one? What did you think of it?