As a self-professed Christmas fanatic, Christmas TV Memories is a very informative and enjoyable read. Although I'm a little too young to have experieAs a self-professed Christmas fanatic, Christmas TV Memories is a very informative and enjoyable read. Although I'm a little too young to have experienced many of these specials' first airings, the author brought me back to being a kid awaiting "appointment viewing", a concept that is seemingly a relic of the past with the advent of OnDemand TV and streaming (sports and other live programming excluded).
For many, reading a book about Christmas out of season would be unthinkable, but when you're a holiday enthusiast like myself, it was a welcome distraction from the oppressing heat that can sometimes linger in the dying days of summer. Reading about those early variety shows featuring the likes of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and many others, had me longing to sit by the TV and listen to a few crooners belt out Christmas classics. I learned more than a few things about my "evergreen" viewings (pun intended) like A Charlie Brown Christmas, How The Grinch Stole Christmas and many others (the animated TV special part of the book was my favorite).
If you're looking for a stroll down memory lane back to the holidays seasons of old, I can't imagine a better experience than Pilato's presentation. Curl up by the tree in your favorite recliner with a glass of eggnog and prepare yourself for a heavy dose of nostalgia....more
I don't really know how to rate or review this. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone as it wasn't a pleasant experience (not that it's supposed to I don't really know how to rate or review this. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone as it wasn't a pleasant experience (not that it's supposed to be). It is well-researched and offers a blow-by-blow timeline of the events that will likely unfold once an initial attack is launched against the United States by North Korea, in this scenario.
It's difficult to comprehend how quickly everything ends after it begins....more
Discouraged following endless employment rejections, aspiring fashionista Dez (Desiree) Lane may have found her ticket to trendiness. While it means gDiscouraged following endless employment rejections, aspiring fashionista Dez (Desiree) Lane may have found her ticket to trendiness. While it means going out with creep Patrick Ruskin, this may allow her to crack open the door to meet Patrick’s mother – fashion icon and magazine magnate Marie Caulfield-Ruskin. After a few short weeks of dating, Dez is overjoyed to be invited to the private Ruskin Family Island just off the coast of Savannah, Georgia for Easter festivities. Upon arrival, everything feels off for Dez; the family is distant, rude to staff and generally cold to her. This feeling is only enforced as she’s promptly asked to sign an NDA before she can continue with her stay – otherwise, she’s on the first boat back to shore. Dez signs, against her better judgement, as she cannot let yet another opportunity to further her career slip through her fingers. What unfolds next is, in a word, gruesome.
Let me tell you, this was a trip to say the least. I read Dawson’s THE VIOLENCE a few years ago, so I thought I was prepared for how far she could go with the “blood and guts”, so to speak, but I feel like this one was on another level. The Ruskins are awful, awful people, so what happens throughout the story is certainly in a way, cathartic. It always seems like those with unimaginable wealth and power rarely pay the appropriate price for their horrific actions, and author Delilah Dawson has tasked herself with seeing appropriate punishment doled out here.
GUILLOTINE is a swift, merciless read that you’ll likely finish in no time; its brisk pace and small page count lent itself to the type of story Dawson told. While I found Dez to be an unremarkable protagonist overall, I thought the story around her had been fleshed out enough to make an impact, when all was said and done. GUILLOTINE will fit nicely in your spooky season stack this autumn....more
Veteran sportscaster Jim Lang is back once again, this time without frequent collaborator Bob McKenzie, to present another volume of the Everyday HockVeteran sportscaster Jim Lang is back once again, this time without frequent collaborator Bob McKenzie, to present another volume of the Everyday Hockey Heroes series. Lang presents the story of fifteen men and women who’s selfless actions have helped to make the game more accessible and enjoyable for everyone.
The stories here are uplifting and inspiring, particularly that of Graham McWaters and his drive to get equipment in the hands of indigenous youth struggling to find an entry point into the game. There’s also Kelly Serbu and his quest to make low-vision hockey more well known so visually challenged men and women could someday compete in the Paralympics. There is also Coach Kim McCullough, founder of Total Female Hockey, as she empowers women to compete and push themselves to their ultimate limit. I would be remiss not to mention the tragic story about Logan Broulet, one of the many Humbolt Broncos who passed away in a horrific bus crash a half dozen years ago as his donated organs helped save the lives of six individuals.
Everyday Hockey Heroes shows why it is so important for those both inside and outside the game of hockey to provide a helping hand to those who don’t - or can't’- always ask for help. Hopefully it inspires kindness and empathy, as that is I assume the ultimate goal with these books....more
Kristen Hannah’s THE NIGHTINGALE follows a pair of sisters during Germany’s occupation of France in the midst of the Second World War. One sister, IsaKristen Hannah’s THE NIGHTINGALE follows a pair of sisters during Germany’s occupation of France in the midst of the Second World War. One sister, Isabelle, refuses to sit idly by and allow the enemy to operate without opposition whereas the other sister, Vienne, must resort to doing everything possible to keep her daughter Sophie safe; even if that means living with the enemy in her home. I don’t want to say too much about this book as I’m fearful of spoiling the plot and the developments that go along as the story progresses.
A few years ago, I had to step back from both fiction and non-fiction surrounding World War Two due to being completely overwhelmed by the atrocities that took place in the concentration camps and the inhumanity shown on the part of the Nazi regime. While I didn’t expect that I would grow numb to what I was reading, it never got any easier. As this was chosen as the first selection of a newly established book club at my office, it looked like I was set to return to 1940s Europe once again. This time around, it was from a perspective that I don’t believe I’d read before. It wasn’t so much at the front lines, nor was it entirely within a concentration camp, but more so a look at ordinary citizens living in occupied territory. The food scarcity coupled with the gradual stripping of rights of the Jewish people were tough to read about, but certainly puts into perspective the troubles in my modern life and how I’ve personally never known such hardship.
In Vienne and Isabelle, Kristen Hannah has created profoundly powerful women who did everything within their power to attempt to make it through the war even if they always knew that the person who came out on the other end of the conflict would never resemble the person before the German army marched into France. As the novel progresses, their evolutions are both deeply heartbreaking and intensely inspiring. I expect that I’ll think about both for years to come.
This isn’t a perfect novel, despite the deluge of five star reviews you can read. There’s some moral ambiguity in that the author paints a Nazi commander in a sympathetic light, which I struggled with quite a bit and feels very much like a “not all Nazis” were bad sort of way. I get that it is necessary to juxtapose one situation with another which arises later in the novel, but I still feel weird about it and a bit manipulated.
Despite that, I believe it is definitely worth reading and one that I wholeheartedly recommend. Don’t listen to the reviews that say that the “romance” sort of downplays the atrocities and the seriousness of the war. Those who fought in the war did so out of both moral obligation and the hope for a better world once all was said and done. And is there nothing more romantic than hope?...more
Cormac McCarthy's The Road is probably the single most important book I have ever read. It created in me a love of reading that completely changed my Cormac McCarthy's The Road is probably the single most important book I have ever read. It created in me a love of reading that completely changed my life. I will forever be grateful for that novel.
That said, I hated this book. The endless run-on sentences, the paper-thin characters (judge aside), the relentless violence that after so long, left me completely numb; all of it. And I suppose that's the point, that the West was settled as a result of unimaginable cruelty and violence, and I guess that's what McCarthy was going for. But McMurtry approached from the same angle with his novels Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo, and those books made me feel something.
For me, one-star reviews are rarer than hen's teeth, but I couldn't find anything redeemable here.
Side Note: What the hell did this guy have against quotation marks? I don't want to complain because it didn't bother me so much in The Road, but here it had my head spinning....more
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