I thought I was going to continue to struggle to read this book. It's summer break for my kids, just had a holiday, and lately I've been moody so whenever I get a chance to pick up the book I'd only get a couple of pages or so in and then life demands my time. Anyway, this book is due tomorrow so I had to finish it (library says, "This book cannot be renewed") today and fortunately my kids played to themselves at home and I just read and read. It's actually how I'd like to read a book ... somewhat all at once because as a forgetful person, reading choppily ... well you can imagine ... I might forget something important! Ha ha!!
Moving on, I liked this book. It's charming, funny, and well written. It was fascinating to see Joy's mid-life unfold. In her late 40s, she made an offhand decision to take a job in a small college town in Massachussetts. Quite a move from New York City. Quite a fixer-upper of a house she purchased as well. No worries, Ted to the rescue! A well liked handyman. And before she knows it, Joy befriends colleagues and people around her becomes important in her life and in turn she finally gets the second chance, or third, or fourth ... to make a meaningful life.
Wonderful group of supporting/extra characters as well. The bonding was moving and a nice reminder that friends are blessings in our lives. The ending was not quite what I hoped but it was acceptable. A solid good first novel for this author.
Now I leave you with just one my quoteable: "My point is that others can open the door for you, others can even push you over the threshold, but only you can take up the challenge and commit yourself to doing something with all your heart." pg 167.
Posts
Hey there! I just wanted to write you a comment back answering some of the questions you asked me about my book blog. I started mine about 10 months ago and when I did I also joined www.bookblogs.ning.com. It is a community of book bloggers (kinda like Facebook) and that is how I got most of my first followers. You also have to be real consistent with your blogging and your comments to other bloggers. If you are loyal to them they will probably be loyal to you too! As far as getting your blog posts in a Google search, that is what the Labels box on the bottom of your posts are about (like in this post you typed "3.75, Meier". I type the title of the book, the authors name, and my rating into all of the Labels every time I type a blog post. Google searches the content of you blog and especially the Labels.
ReplyDeleteThe Blog Hop and the "Wednesday this Friday that" stuff are called Memes. They are little things bloggers do so that they post something everyday. Someone comes up with one and then other people use the same ones and thats why you see a lot of the same ones floating around. So an example would be "Monday Mailbox" you see this on some blogs, that is when the blogger is blogging about the books they received over the past week via mail (Amazon, Publishers, etc). The Blog Hop is one that Crazy-For-Books.com puts on and this is a neat one because you sign up every week (on her blog) a link of you blog goes up and people click on the links of different blogs and meet new bloggers and find new blogs to follow. I don't really participate in Memes but I like the Blog Hop.
Anyway, I'm going to follow you and I'll check in every once in a while and see what you are reading! (:
Lauren
www.geebsbookclub.blogspot.com