"Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher

In Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, Hannah Baker has a plan to kill herself. Why? you ask. That is what the people who receive tapes from her in a shoe box want to know. Clay is one of the people who receives these tapes explaining why she did it.

I never ran across this angle in any book I ever read. It is interesting and very thought provoking. I liked it although I can see why some people may not.

(Gerard's review:  My rating: 4 of 5 stars)


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

"Love Lifted Me" by Sara Evans with Rachel Hauck

This Christian fiction book is about the marriage of Jade and Max.  When Max wants to go and coach a high school football team, Jade goes along, but things don't go very well.  I liked this book some but was not riveted to it.  It's worth a try. 

(Gerard's review:  3 stars)
 
Have you read this one? What did you think of it? If you reviewed this too, feel free to share your link to your review in the comments. Happy Reading!

Teaser Tuesdays: 3 Teasers For You

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.   

Gerard's:

I hold my finger over the button, listening to the soft hum in the speakers, the faint squeak of the spindles winding the tape, waiting for her voice to return.
But it doesn't. The story is over.

From pg. 31 of Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher about teen suicide.

Spunky Doodle and Manny's teaser:

They place excessive importance on useless things like sitting in front of a desk and fiddling around with strange, uninteresting machines. Do you really expect such dull, graceless creatures to understand that 4:00 a.m. is playtime?

Karen is reading on Kindle to us, quote at 6% from Dear Sparkle: Cat-to-Cat Advice from the World's Foremost Feline Columnist by Sparkle the Cat

Karen's:

I know you're probably afraid of your daddy.  I'm afraid of him, myself, and I only saw him once.  So why don't I have my daddy talk to your daddy?  My daddy's a preacher.  He talks people into changing their ways all the time.

From pg. 57 of The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield.

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

"Furry Logic Books" by Jane Seabrook are Cute

I got three Furry Logic books by Jane Seabrook for my birthday and found them to be very cute and humorous.  They all have witty sayings (one saying every other page) with cute animal watercolor drawings.  Obviously, these books do not take much time to read.  The three I got are:  Wild Wisdom, Love, and A Guide to Life's Little Challenges, which is my favorite one.

It's the pictures that make these books o I'll give you an inside peak:

A GUIDE TO LIFE'S LITTLE CHALLENGES

No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap.

WILD WISDOM

Happy people are more likely to get what they want which only makes them even more happy.

LOVE

As long as I have you, there's just on thing I'll always need--tremendous self-control.

(Karen's review)

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

Our 12 Best Reads of 2011

Here is a list we each made of our top 12 reads this year. It is never easy to choose only 12 because we read so many, but these are the ones we narrowed it down to. We've included the links to our reviews of the books for your further reading. You will note that several are on both of our lists.

Our Top Favorites That We Both Liked:

• Never Knowing by Chevy Stevens
• Rose In a Storm by Jon Katz
• Divergent by Veronica Roth
• Iron House by John Hart

Gerard's Other Top 8 books of 2011 out of 157 books:

• Faith by Jennifer Haigh
• The Eighty-Dollar Champion by Elizabeth Letts
• Glimpse by Carol Lynch Williams
• Still Missing by Chevy Stevens
• Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary by Andrew Westoll
• Blood Feud by David Robbins
• Vicious Cycle by Terri Blackstock
• Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

Karen's Other Top 8 books of 2011 out of 106 Books

• Still Alice by Lisa Genova
• The Maze Runner by Jim Dashner
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
• True Colors by Kristin Hannah
• Lethal by Sandra Brown
• Night Road by Kristin Hannah
• A Difficult Boy by M. P. Barker
• Want to go Private? by Sarah Darer Littman

Gerard bought me a Kindle for my birthday so I'm not sure if we can always include our books in our header like we have been doing, but so far we have.  I get the book from the library as well so I can take a picture of the cover to include it.  I am also considering changing our blog template to show more of our posts but think I'll lose our header.  We appreciate all our readers and are excited to see this blog has actually caught up to our Right Where We Belong one in number of followers!  HAPPY NEW YEAR AND HAPPY READING!

Have you read any of these? If so, feel free to share the link to your review.  If not, you definitely should! Do you have any "best reads" you think we should read?

Last day to help The Cleveland Pregnancy Center just by leaving a comment on any of our blogs! We will donate 50 cents per comment at the end of the month. The charity for this month is at the top of our blog.