The 100 Book Diet The adventure to read 100 books in 10 weeks

will post those shortly!

This is the first thing I read on my kindle.

Honestly, I’m not going to bother reviewing this one because it isn’t the kind of book you can really have a huge opinion on. I will say there were a few ’ ha ha’ moments, a lot of pictures of a youthful tina [which is to say all of them because she has the most babin’ babyface], and not enough amy poehler. For me there were a few times I just sighed and wished I could skim, as there were a lot of quotes from 30 rock, which I have never seen and thus were lost on me.
But, it was a really fast read at 288 pages and there were several sections that had nice heartwarming messages. I particularly enjoyed the ones on womens beauty and breastfeeding.

Brokeback Mountain is the story of Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two cowboys who share a small cabin while working as herders and camp tenders during a summer spent on a range far above the tree line.  Proulx’s description of their bond is beautiful and haunting-and often brutal in its portrayal of the hardships, and ultimately the violence, they face.

This is one fine short story. If I could write Annie Proulx it would say the following:
1. damn, you can write, annie proulx!
2. let me have your babies
3. jack and ennis are excellent

This book makes me want to cry a swimming pool full and lay in it for the rest of my life, replenishing it as I re read this book annually.
The relationship that Jack and Ennis have with one another can only be described as a hopeless romance destined to fail. My favorite thing about this novel is that despite its short length, it covers a lot of ground, and does so in a way that is quick but not rushed.

Initially, Jack and Ennis’ relationship seems purely physical - setting their fate in a tent they shared one night. As the book goes on, and the boys develop their own lives with their future wives and children, only then do we get to see the real relationship that Ennis and Jack have always had together.

This book just, agh it really displays true love and everything that comes with something as “controversial” as two cowboys who want to spend the rest of their lives together.
There is one quote that really stands out to me, as well as one particular moment towards the end that struck me really hard.

Great Book. I wouldn’t want it to be any longer than it was. Everything about it was perfect.

5/5

I’ve got two books written up in drafts and once i add a bit more to them i will post them. It’s really hard to stay motivated to update every day when i have no readers, but im still reading!

It will probably be some time before i get to read it, i’ve got a few other things i want to take a look at first.

Young Nate Twitchell is surprised when one of the hens on his family farm lays a giant egg. After a painstaking wait, Nate is even more surprised when it hatches and out pops a baby triceratops that he names Uncle Beazley! But when Nate decides to keep the dino and raise it on his own, he has no idea what he’s getting himself into. As Uncle Beazley grows, Nate and his family realize they are not equipped to take care of a full-sized dinosaur, and so with the help of their scientist friend, Nate and Uncle Beazley set off for the National Museum in Washington, D.C., on the hunt for the perfect home for a modern-day dinosaur—-then the real trouble begins!

Not a lot to share on this one by Oliver Butterworth. The Enormous Egg is a  children’s book, level E on the Kumon reading level scale, so I had to read it for work. It was a pretty cute book and this edition happens to have really, really nice illustrations as well, done by Mark Crilley. It was published almost 60 years ago, back in ‘56, and is still a popular book today.
My only issue would be the fact the dinosaur came from a hen. It would have been more ideal to just have the egg show up somehow - mysterious, but a lot more feasible than for a hen to pop out a dino egg. But hey, its for kids and doesnt really need to have that realistic concept to it.

  It may be for younger folk but I’d totally pick up a copy of my own honestly, it was adorable, and I am quite fond of triceratops’! Definitely one I could envision myself reading to my own child(ren) one day.

Book 2 is brought to you by the author of novels such asl The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” a witty and fantastical satire about aging, is one of his most memorable stories.

In 1860 Benjamin Button is born an old man and mysteriously begins aging backward. At the beginning of his life he is withered and worn, but as he continues to grow younger he embraces life — he goes to war, runs a business, falls in love, has children, goes to college and prep school, and, as his mind begins to devolve, he attends kindergarten and eventually returns to the care of his nurse.

This strange and haunting story embodies the sharp social insight that has made Fitzgerald one of the great voices in the history of American literature.

First published in a magazine in 1922, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has since gone on to become an Oscar winning film featuring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. This short story is certainly worth a read, regardless of any affection or distain you developed upon seeing the movie version.   For one, the book is shorter, significantly so. I read this book in about 20 minutes. It is a quick, simple read, and my version had pleasant artwork done by Calef Brown.

I took some notes as I read through this time, making it easier for me to reflect on it afterwards.

We meet “young” Benjamin Button straight away. A day old baby who just so happens to look quite like a 70 year old man, lengthy beard and all. He  ages in reverse. Throughout the short story we join him as he goes through a lot of lifes obstacles; college, love, work, taking over his fathers business, and progressing from an elderly man to a mere toddler - indeed, a newborn actually. Benjamin was a character I found simple to like, and initially, to empathize with. As he aged [aka grew younger] I found him harder to relate to and gradually grew to dislike him a slight bit. I preferred older, wiser Benjamin, but that is really just a reflection on my own personality, not the character.

One of the more ironic things would be the centering around how abnormal Benjamin is in comparison to those around him, but when we view his relationship with Hildegarde it gives us insight into just how normal he really is. He becomes unattracted to his wife as she ages, and he grows into a younger man, enabling us to see that he is very much like, and experiencing, the typical youth of men.
  My favorite quote on this particular area was,

“  ‘Look, what a pity! A young fellow at that age tied to a woman of forty-five. He must be twenty years younger than his wife.’ They had forgotten - as people inevitably forget - that back in 1880 their mamma’s and papa’s had also remarked about this same ill matched pair. “

“Hildegarde was almost fifty, and the sight of her made him feel absurd.”

I really wish this had been a full length novel in a way, because I really thought this one was great, genius, and an enjoyable read. I can only imagine how much better it could be if it had been longer and more descriptive of Benjamin’s journey through life.

Rating: 4/5       [wish it had been longer.]
Characters: 3/5       [due to the shortness of the story, and how quickly Benjamin aged, and the vagueness of other characters, I couldn’t grow attached.]
Writing Style: 5/5     [well worded, as most classics tend to be.]

Last week they invaded Manhattan. This week they will destroy the world.

The vampiric virus is spreading and soon will envelop the globe. Amid the chaos, Eph Goodweather?head of the Centers for Disease Control’s team leads a band out to stop these bloodthirsty monsters. But it may be too late.

Ignited by the Master’s horrific plan, a war has erupted between Old and New World vampires. Caught between these warring forces, powerless and vulnerable, humans find themselves no longer the consumers but the consumed. At the center of the conflict lies an ancient text that contains the vampires’ entire history … and their darkest secrets. Whoever finds the book can control the outcome of the war and, ultimately, the fate of us all.

My first book is one I finished just yesterday, just in time for discussion with the online Stephen King bookclub i joined years ago.

The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro + Chuck Hogan has a straightforward theme: There is a high risk of a plague rushing through Manhattan. The fun part of this book [the first of the strain trilogy] is trying to decipher WHAT exactly this virus is. There are blood sucking tendencies, white blood, slow moving corpses that come back to life “turned.”

 They have always been here. Vampires. In secret and in darkness. Waiting. Now their time has come.

Synopsis:

In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country.

In two months-the world.

A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold.

In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing . .

So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city-a city that includes his wife and son-before it is too late.

Initially I felt neutral about this book. It started off at a good pace, and I was curious about what was inside the Boeing 777 plane. My first thought to share was, “Even if I don’t like this one, it is incredibly well written.” And that is the truth. The word choice is perfection, but more than that would be the way the tale is weaved. The description is never over the top, but helps place a frightening visual in your head of what you should be seeing.

Both Hogan and Del Toro have combined forces to create something horrific, something untrue that feels very, very real. I was hesitant to pick this up at night to read what happened next. It’s also very refreshing to read something involving vampires that isn’t placing them in a teenage setting. 

The Strain didn’t hesitate to knock novels like the Sookie Stackhouse series or the Twilight saga off their pedestal, and bring back vampires to literature as they should be - scary as hell.

Rating: 5/5
Characters: 4/5
Writing Style: 5/5

As you can see, I am pretty rusty at writing. I’ll improve eventually once I get a feel for it, sorry!