Average Girl Reads

Book bloggers: do you review all the books you read? I know that many bloggers have decided never to post negative reviews; I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about books that you liked but there isn't much to say about them.

This week I read The Real Thing: A Tobey Heydon Story by Rosamond du Jardin. It is part of a light romance series from the 1950s. I love books like this because the speech pattern of the characters is different than in modern books, and I'm guaranteed a happy ending. However, I recognize that a book like this doesn't give me much to write about in a blog post. At the same time, it seems like cheating if I don't post every single book I read on the blog. I do add all the books I read to my Goodreads account. What do you do?

READ: Besides the vintage romance, I also read The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Down and a lot of magazines. It was extensive magazine reading that lured me away from reading books years ago. I don't want to give them up totally, but I want to find a better balance.

CURRENTLY READING: This morning I picked up another book that doesn't need to be reviewed, Cheat Sheet. It is part of the Middle School Survival series. They are almost too light for my kids, but I keep checking them out because my reluctant reader C2 devours them. I zip through them just to keep tabs on what she is reading.

TBR LIST: I removed one book but added three, so my current total is 103 titles. One of those books is one that I've actually read before, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. My M is reading this for one of her advanced classes. I thought it might be a good idea if I reread it so that I could field any questions she will have. I generally don't like to reread books, but it has been many years since I read this one, so I could use a refresher!

The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Down by Neta Jackson

Genre: Christian fiction
On my TBR list?: No
Available on audio?: Yes

Book #2 of an ongoing series (7 so far)



This book picks up a couple months after the events of the first book, and life still isn't calm for Jodi Baxter. The prayer group falls prey to attack by a drugged-crazed woman, and racial tensions surface in the group. All the while, Jodi keeps learning that her image of herself as a good Christian woman needs to be refocused.

As usual, Neta Jackson hit on the exact issues that I struggle with as a Christian. Whereas the Christian books I have been reading are just "clean" romances, the Yada Yada series is more like a devotional hidden in a story. This book is perfect fodder for discussion in a Christian book club, but the story doesn't have the stilted feeling of a story created just to teach a lesson.

I like the way that Jackson fleshes out the characters, as well. Some book series remind me of the TV show The Dead Zone, where each episode was focused on one character: one week Johnny's best friend is in mortal danger, then his son is in mortal danger, then his ex-girlfriend was in mortal danger. By the end of the series, everyone around him had been in mortal danger at least three times! It got old. In this book, Jackson doled out information about all the characters, so I didn't really feel like there was a main plot and a subplot.

Audio: I haven't listened to the audio version of this book, but I can tell you that the reader, Barbara Rosenblat, is great. I've listened to her read Christian fiction by other authors and she conveys the emotion without making it sound sappy.



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My kids will be heading back to school this Tuesday, so in preparation I had to have The Talk with them. No, not that talk. I'm referring to the talk I give them every year about Accelerated Reader.

The local schools makes a big deal about earning AR points, and it turned my kids off reading at one point. C2, my reluctant reader, couldn't read fast enough to meet her AR goal and kept getting left out of AR parties. My other two middle schoolers are such fast readers that they run through all the books of interest at the school library quickly. I anticipate that C1 and DJ will finish all the AR books on their level before they finish 7th grade, leaving them with no AR points to earn in 8th grade. In addition, all three of them are frustrated about not being able to use their reading time to read non-AR books that they like, such as graphic novels.

Once I realized that AR points weren't something they were graded on, I starting giving all the kids The Talk. Basically, I tell them that as long as they read something for 30 minutes each night and can tell me about it, then it doesn't have to be an AR book. I let them know that I am prepared to talk to any of their teachers if this becomes a problem with them. I want them to understand that enjoyment in reading is the reward, not any party or prize the teacher gives you.

TBR List: As of today, my TBR list has 101 titles. I added one book (Extreme Barbecue: Smokin' Rigs and 100 Real-Good Recipes) and removed three books. Out of those three books, two I read and one I abandoned. On my bedside now, I have two books that are on my list and five that aren't. So, if I exercise restraint in adding books, I should be down to 99 books by next week.

Do you ever remove books from your TBR list without reading them? I have a couple books on my list that I thought I wanted to read when I added them to the list a year ago, but they sound totally unappealing now. For instance, I have Between the Bridge and the River at the top of my list and I've been skipping over it for months. I added it to the list when I was going through a Craig Ferguson phase and watching his talk show every night. Now that I've reread the synopsis, I realize that the book doesn't appeal to me. It feels like cheating to just take it off the list, though. I guess I will let it sit there until there is nothing else left!

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Genre: fiction, supernatural, vampires
From my TBR list?: Yes

Book #1 of an ongoing series (10 books so far)

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Dead Until Dark, the first book in the Southern Vampire series, introduces the readers to a world in which vampires are recognized as citizens. Their advanced age is explained away by a "virus" that makes them appear dead but that hasn't helped them become accepted by the general population. However, the main character Sookie Stackhouse is fascinated by vampires, probably because she also has a supernatural ability herself. All of this surrounds a murder mystery that the officials seem eager to blame on Bill, a new vampire that's just moved to town.

Honestly, I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did. When a book has a lot of hype surrounding it, I tend to view it more critically than other books. However, the story charmed me right out of my inclination to be negative about it. I especially enjoyed Sookie's willingness to be open to new experiences. One aspect I did have to overcome was Sookie's naivete. It was difficult for me to imagine a 25-year-old in the modern world being as innocent as she seemed to be.

There is a bit of sex in this book; not as much as I've heard is in the TV adaptation, but still more than I want in a book that I hand to my teenager (yes, I'm a protective mom). I don't think the sex is graphic enough to offend an adult, though. I would say that if you were a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed and haven't had a supernatural fix since they went off the air, this might be the series for you.

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Chicks With Sticks (Knit Two Together) - Book 2 by Elizabeth Lenhard

Genre: fiction, young adult
From my TBR list?: Yes

Book 2 in a trilogy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

You know the story: four girls who shouldn't be friends are drawn together through a common interest. In the case of the book, the common interest is knitting. Of course, what would a story about knitting be without patterns in the back? Yes, it is another "novel plus".

I liked this second installment of Chicks with Sticks, but I didn't love it. While the first book felt more edgy with each of the Chicks dealing with serious issues in their lives, this time we are treated to a light story about how the Chicks are handling their relationships with boys. Perhaps my vantage point as an adult makes a difference, but the little dramas felt overblown this time around.

Another thing that felt overblown was the magical quality of knitting. (I am a knitter myself, so don't send me hate mail!) Again, in the first book it felt natural because Scottie discovered knitting when she needed something to calm her and make her take the focus off of herself. In this book, it seemed hokey.

The bottom line is that this is a YA book that is probably best left to the kids. My 12-year-old daughter enjoyed the book more than I did and wants me to hunt down the third book. The issues are much more urgent to her age group than they are to a 40-something woman like me.

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Out of the Frying Pan: A Chef's Memoir of Hot Kitchens, Single Motherhood, and the Family Meal by Gillian Clark

Genre: nonfiction
From my TBR list?: Yes


My rating: 2 of 5 stars


The author's disjointed method of storytelling turned me off. The third chapter of the book, which was about her childhood and how she developed her love of cooking, should have been the first chapter. If it had been, then I wouldn't have struggled through the first 60 pages.

I believe that even if I am reading a memoir or a biography, the story should be told in a way that makes me care about what happens next. Clark jumped straight into the account of how her husband left her with two kids and no job before telling me how she got to that point. Why should I care about how much working under a famous cook meant to her when she hasn't told me about how an afternoon snack meant love in her family? Maybe linear storytelling is considered old-fashioned, but I need a bit of a build-up.

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Today's Salon entry will be short because, frankly, I want to get back to commenting on your blogs and then reading the stack of books that is threatening to fall off of my bedside table!

Even though I don't read a lot of series, I indulge in series-like reading behavior. I discovered that I have trouble jumping immediately from one style of novel to another. For instance, when I finished reading Life As We Knew It, I didn't pick up my next novel for five days. It took me that long to shake the story out of my head so I could give the next book a fair chance. If both books had been romance novels or mysteries, then it wouldn't have taken that long. I think that's why I try to read books in sets of three. By the time I've read the third book, I'm usually ready for a change of pace. Lori Wick's series were great for that because each town she created only had three or four books to go with it.

So what is my latest set of three? Well, I'm back to my old standby of food-related books. Last week I read Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder (review here) and A la Carte (review here). Both of them are in the "novel plus" category -- novels that have recipes or patterns between the chapters, in this case recipes. To keep the foodie vibe going, I'm starting a chef's memoir called Out of the Frying Pan: A Chef's Memoir of Hot Kitchens, Single Motherhood, and the Family Meal. I'm pretty sure I'll be ready to move on to a few romances after this.

TBR List: I read two books from my TBR list this week. The list is currently at 103 titles. I've toyed with the idea of not adding any more books until the end of the year, but that would defeat the purpose. The reason I started my list at Goodreads was so I could keep a record of those books I hear about on other blogs that I want to read later. My original goal was to reduce the list, but if I still have 100 books at the end of the year and it is 100 different titles than I started with, then I'll be fine with that.

A la Carte by Tanita S. Davis

Genre: young adult fiction
From my TBR list?: Yes
Available on audio?: No

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Summary: A high-school senior and aspiring chef using cooking to help face the challenges in her life, like trying to figure out if her best friend is really a friend at all.

Most people aren't lucky enough to have the same best friend throughout their lives, so I think that this is a story that most teens can relate to. The main character Lainey has a friend who has basically been her only friend since elementary school. Once they hit high school, she is forced to reexamine their relationship, especially when it starts to jeopardize her relationship with her mother.

A big component of the book is the cooking. Lainey has always dreamed of being a famous chef. Luckily, her mother owns a restaurant so Lainey can experiment to her heart's content. There is even a few references to not using food as comfort that are thankfully written with a light touch. This is another "novel plus" with recipes at the end of every chapter. They are all vegetarian, so this might be a good book to hand to a vegetarian teen who has a little experience in the kitchen.

"A la Carte" reads like a more mature version of the Middle School Survival books that my 12-year-olds love. In this book, however, the lesson isn't as obvious and the ending isn't as pat. Davis does a good job of portraying the push and pull that can occur between a mother and a teenage daughter even when the daughter is a "good girl". The story is also a good illustration of what it can feel like when you outgrow a friendship.

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Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke

Genre: Cozy mystery
From my TBR list?: Yes
Available on audio?: Yes

Book #1 of an ongoing series (11 books so far

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Summary: Hannah Swenson, a baker in a small Minnesota town, turns into an amateur sleuth when the town's milkman is killed behind her shop. She has two reasons to get involved: she wants to help her policeman brother-in-law get promoted to detective, and she wants to protect her shop's reputation. The milkman was found with her special cookies scattered around his body!

This is a light mystery set in a small town where the main character, Hannah Swenson, is loved by everyone and her cookies are treated like manna from heaven. The author's website is called MurderSheBaked, if that gives you any idea as to the tone. All it takes is a bag of Hannah's Chocolate Chip Crunch cookies to get the townspeople to spill their secrets to her. There is a bit of chick lit flavor to this novel, as well. Hannah is not a grandmother, but a smart young woman who was a few credits away from a graduate degree when she came home to help her mother when her father died. She has a forthright manner that is just shy of being snarky, which may explain why her mother has trouble setting her up with the available men in town.

Recently I wrote about jarring tech references in books, and Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder is a perfect example. The copyright on the book says 2000, but there are references to pagers. Who was still using a pager in 2000? There was also something about waiting days for a printout from a company. Um, how about a fax or an email attachment? No one in the book has a cell phone, either. I'm sure that this sort of thing wouldn't bother anyone else, but it drove me nuts.

Silly aside: This is one of those books that I like to call a "novel plus". It includes recipes for all the cookies that Hannah plies her neighbors with to get information. With seven cookie recipes in the first book of the series, I was wondering how Fluke was going to find enough recipes for the rest of the books. After a visit to her website, I noticed that she has branched out into other baked goods in the later books so I guess she's safe.

This book wasn't bad, but I could see how someone like my mother-in-law (a devoted fan of shows like Murder She Wrote) might like it more than I did. I also think that this book would probably be more enjoyable on audio (most of the series available via iTunes). Unlike other series, I don't feel compelled to rush out and get the next book right away. I was more interested in Hannah's relationships with the townspeople than the mystery; if Fluke wrote a romance, I would probably read it. I might add the next few books of the Hannah Swensen series to the bottom of my TBR list, if only to see how Hannah ends up adding strawberry shortcake and blueberry muffins to her shop's menu.


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Do you have a favorite era that you prefer your books to be set in? I never thought I did until recently. I've run across a couple books that didn't appeal to me because they were set in the recent past (1980s - 1990s). This seems like a contradiction to me because I love books from bygone eras. Remember my Lori Wick obsession last winter? All those books were set in the 1800s. On my bedside now I have a book from 1936 and 1956, and last week I finished a book set in the 1910s. What's wrong with the recent past?

Perhaps because I didn't live through it, a bygone era seems more exotic. When I read a book from the 1980s, it just feels dated. One book I was reading was focusing on the struggle of working mothers to balance everything. The whole attitude combined with terms like "power suit" made me say to myself, "No one acts like this any more" and throw the book aside in disgust. I also squirm when some authors mention computers and such in their books. Some incorporate tech naturally, but others sound like those morning-show anchors who get stuck talking about the new iPhone when the tech expert doesn't show up :-). Maybe my daughters will pick up books like this in 20 years and find them novel.

TBR List: Even though I feel like I've been reading a lot this week, I've only finished two books. That doesn't compensate for the 20 that I added to the list! I told myself that I wasn't going to change my behavior, but I think I need to refrain from adding new books to the list until the end of the year. That will be difficult to do, since I will forget about books I hear about if I don't add them to the list. A perpetually long list may not be such a bad thing!

CURRENTLY READING: I'm reading Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder and it isn't going as quickly as I thought. I haven't reached the point in the book where the plot starts pulling me through, so I don't feel compelled to pick the book up. It sat untouched all day Saturday, but I'm going to make a better effort today. I don't want to be stuck with this book for another week.

I've been thinking a lot about whether there are any special features that I could add to this blog to make it especially useful to any readers that live in my area. I'm still thinking, but in the meantime I've added a link to the Gaston-Lincoln Library in the sidebar. In the past few months I've met several people who use the library but don't know about the website and all that it offers.

My favorite feature of the library website is the book request function. It is a godsend! I wouldn't be reading nearly as many books without it because my husband hates waiting an hour or two for me while I'm perusing the stacks. This way I sign into my account, request the books I want, and have them sent to my local branch from the main library in Gastonia. My husband ABM goes to pick up my books every Monday, and he is in and out in five minutes. I've been doing this for at least two years and it works well for us.

For my readers who aren't local to me, I want to hear about your libraries. Does your library have a website? Does it have a blog? Do you use any of your library's online services?

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

Genre: young adult fiction
From my TBR list?: Yes

Book #1 of a trilogy

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Even though this book deals with the aftermath of a fantastical natural disaster, I wouldn't call it sci-fi. It is more about how family members cope when all they have to rely on is each other. For me, it brought up the question of how I would react in a similar situation.

The author doesn't sugarcoat events as much as I would have expected in a young adult novel. There are deaths and bad behavior, and the main character Miranda isn't exactly a Pollyanna. There isn't a magical ending, either, that would make everyone live happily ever after. My 16-year-old daughter couldn't finish the book because she kept crying and she isn't an overly emotional girl. That is a testament to Pfeffer's storytelling; she made us both feel like the situation in the book could really occur.

I didn't find out that this was the first book in a planned trilogy until until after I finished it. My policy is to wait until all books in a trilogy have been published before I start reading. If you are like me, then you may want to wait until April 2010 when the third book, "This World We Live In", is published. However, I think that this book is wrapped up in such a manner that it will be nice to revisit these characters next year, but I'm not tearing my hair out wondering what happened.


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When I started this blog, I thought that I was a book blogger. After a few months of reading Sunday Salon posts, I realized that this blog resembles a book blog about as much as my personal blog (Straddling the Century Line) resembles a mommy blog. I read books and I blog about them, but I don't know much about blog tours and ARCs. I don't have publishers contacting me to ask me to review their books; I can't even get ARCs when I ask for them. That's OK, though. I don't have room for a bunch of extra books around here, anyway.

So what's with the title of this post? Well, there seems to be a kerfuffle that makes the rounds of the literary part of the blogosphere every so often about whether the reviews written by bloggers who receive ARCs are biased. I am not about to jump into that fracas, but it made me think that I may not have mentioned lately how I get my books. So here goes:

"I only read free books" means that 99% of my books come from my local library. The main exception to this is really old books that I've read online like Justine or Good Conduct Well Chastised. I've only received one ARC since this blog has been in existence, and I didn't even review it here; I gave feedback on Harper Collins' website (I didn't understand that they were giving away books to get advance buzz -- duh!).

When I originally started this blog, it was about me reading classics that I never read in high school or that I would have read in college had I gone. These older books are available at the library or online, so why buy them? I like reading the new hotness from time to time, but I find that I especially enjoy reviewing books after all the hype has cooled down. In my mind, I am helping readers (especially those living in Gaston County, the coverage area of my local library) to find good books that never got the mainstream buzz of the Harry Potter series.

I wonder if there is a badge for bloggers who only review library books?

It took me a little over a week but I finally finished reading "Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis. I don't think it took me this long to read "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" and it had twice as many pages. However, "Main Street" was 451 pages of small type and big ideas so it required more concentration.

Anyway, that's one more book off the 1001 Book list -- yay! Unfortunately, it wasn't on my main TBR list -- boo! It did give me fodder for several different posts, though, including one on my main blog and a spoiler-free review below.

Speaking of my main TBR list, mine just keeps on growing! It was 80 titles long at the beginning of the month, and as of this writing has jumped to 100. I say "as of this writing" because I haven't done my Sunday book blog tour yet. I know I will add at least 10 more books once I start reading other bloggers' reviews. The good news is that I have at least five books from my TBR list sitting on my bedside table and four of them are light reads, so I should be able to make a small dent in the list this week.

UP NEXT: I'm letting the due dates on my library books decide for me. That means I'll be reading Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder next. It is part of the "cosy mystery" genre. I used to read a lot of books in this genre when I was about 12, before I even knew it had a name. That was 30 years ago; I wonder if I still enjoy these kind of books.

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Genre: Fiction
Recommended for: Anyone dissatisfied with small-town life; teenagers
From my TBR list?: No; on the 1001 Books list

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Summary: A young woman from the city marries a country doctor and has trouble adjusting to small town life.


This novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis is still relevant in many ways, even though it was written 89 years ago. It deals with the gossip, jealousy, and close-minded attitudes you can encounter if you live in a small town. It shows that there can be a lot of dissatisfaction hidden beneath the facade of an idyllic village setting.

The main character Carol has always wanted to do something great with her life. After trying a number of things, she majors in library science in college and becomes a librarian. Deep down, however, she wants to be a "reformer". She wants to transform what she sees as dingy prairie towns into centers of culture and beauty. Carol sees her chance when she meets Will Kennicott, a doctor from just such a town called Gopher Prairie. She marries him and moves to Gopher Prairie, only to find that not only are the people happy the way they are, they are suspicious of anything new.

While reading this book I vacillated between feeling sorry for Carol and being angry with her. I could sympathize with how boring it must have been for her in a town where all the women wanted to do was discuss babies and the price of beef. However, there were many times that I thought she should leave Will and move back to the city instead of making him miserable.

I think that in this day and age a teenager might identify with Carol more than an adult. Much of the book deals with how trapped Carol feels and how frustrated she is in not being understood by the people without her. If a teenager could make it through the dated language, she might find herself in the pages of this novel. After all, teenagers don't have much control over their lives and are pretty much stick where they are, and high school isn't often tolerant of people who don't fit into any of the groups.