The Demon King Winner!

Thank you to everyone who entered and participated in this giveaway!  I enjoyed all your comments!

The Winner is.....

KAPRI from Book Fanatics

Congrats Kapri!!  I'll be contacting you soon for mailing info!  You have 48 hours to reply or I'll choose another winner.  

Cyrano de Bergerac

From Goodreads:    Regarded as one of the greatest dramas ever written, this story of the silver-tongued soldier whose unfortunate looks drive him to woo his love by speaking for his handsome but dull-witted rival is beloved around the world.

My Thoughts:

-    This was a really fun and beautiful play.  I laughed and almost cried.

-    I couldn't pronounce a lot of names, but it didn't detract from the story at all.

-    I liked the first few poems at the beginning.  They were really fun and used well.

-    I think I would almost fall for Cyrano as well.  He was very witty and eloquent.  He is really prideful though, and I don't know if I could get over the big ego.

-    The ending is sad, real sad.  Why do plays have to end sadly?  

-    Even though it is written as a play, it was really easy to read, and I could picture everything. 

-    I've never read this classic play before, but I'm glad I did, and I really want to add it to my library now.  It is a keeper!  

-    I'm going to be thinking about this play for next few days.  

Cinder

Goodreads Synopsis:    Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, the ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . . 

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

My Thoughts:

-    The story and characters are brilliant!!  This is such a unique twist on a classic fairy tale that has been re-told countless times!  Meyer has brought the story back to life!

-    I love the font.  It's so different, but still easy to read.  Plus it looks really cool.

-    A lying sensor would be very useful, but I wouldn't want everyone to have one, just me.

-    The plot was predictable.  I figured it out really early in the book, but the story is still great, and it kept me captivated.

-    It ends with a bit of a cliffhanger!  Grrrr!!  I'm angry that I have to wait for the 2nd book to find out what happens!!!!!

-    I loved all the characters!  Even the evil characters, they are the kind that you love to hate.  I hope justice is served in a very brutal manner!  I LOVED Cinder!  She is a girl I can really relate too.  I enjoyed her attitude and confidence.  I also liked Prince Kai!  He is a wonderful knight in shining armor type protagonist.  

-    I didn't have a ton of thoughts while reading, I just enjoyed the story and let it take me along for the ride.  It was a really fun read!

Talk N Swap

I went to Talk N Swap at the Provo Library last night.  It was fun, and I got a lot of great books to add to my library!!

Here is what I picked up:

Brave

My Thoughts:

-    Super Super Super CUTE movie!!  I thoroughly enjoyed it!  I laughed a lot!

-    The whole movie is visually stunning.  The CG was amazing!  The scenery was so beautiful!!  I loved all the colors.

-    The story was great!  It was really heartfelt, I even got teary.  The moral was really touching!  It was all about mother and daughter bickering and differences, and how we need to swallow are pride.  

-    The music (minus the pipers) was fantastic!

-    The animated short is called LaLuna.  It was AWESOME!!  It was so cute.  I loved it! 

-    The dad and the 3 little boys were hilarious!  They were probably my favorite characters.  Every scene with them was just a riot.

-    I laughed every time the bear walked upright.  It had this bum wiggle that just cracked me up.

-    The voice actors were perfect!!

-    The little blue wisps reminded me of the little forest spirits from Princess Monoke.  I kept expecting them to bobble their heads.  It wouldn't surprise if John Lasseter patterned them after the spirits.  He is such a Miyazaki fan.  

-    I loved her horse!!

-    There were some bums in the movie.  They were comical bum shots, but I'm not a fan of seeing butts in general.

-    This was a really charming movie.  I highly recommend getting to a theater to see it!!  It is worth it. 

Marry Me

From Back of DVD Case:    Rae Ann Carter always wanted the fairytale where she meets a prince, falls in love and gets married but feared that dream would never come true.  Suddenly, Rae goes from having no man in her life to having three.  Charming Luke, passionate Adam, and sophisticated Harry are all in love with Rae and asking to marry her.  Which man will she choose?  Marry Me is a romantic movie event that will sweep you off your feet.

My Thoughts:

-    This was terrible!  TERRIBLE!!!

-    At first I was like, this is a weird movie, it feels and looks like a TV show.  After a little Internet searching, I found out that it is a 2 episode mini series.  That explained A LOT!

-    There was a lot of fast talking, and it was hard to hear what they were saying sometimes.  The guys weren't too bad, but all the girls talked really fast.

-    Rae acted like a blonde.  She was really fickle, and she made a lot of really really  bad/dumb decisions.  

-    I liked Luke for the first 3/4 of the movie show, but then he turned into a pansy.  In the beginning, he was charming, confident, and he knew what he wanted.  Then he watched The View and lost his manhood.

-    Rae's dog was really cute!

-    Rae's family and a lot of other people gave her really really bad advice.  Her mom and sister were the WORST!

-    The 3 guys were ridiculous!  She should have told the 2 she wasn't going to end up with anyway to get lost!

-    I liked Amy, she was fun and spunky.

-    There were a few moments where my heart melted and I gushed, but it didn't make up for the overall lameness.  

-    There were moments where I wanted to just quit and stop watching, but then I just wanted to see what happens, and I kept going, and there would be a line or a scene that I thought was funny or good, but then it went dumb again. 

-    Overall, I never want to see this again.  Lucy Liu, you have failed me!!

Tyson's Thought:

-    Even Lucy Liu couldn't save this movie. 

Hubby's Thought:

-    Lucy Liu's left eye squints more than her right, and it bugged me.

Poison Study

Goodreads Synopsis:    About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She'll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.

And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly's Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.

As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can't control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren't so clear…

My Thoughts:

-    The story captured me from the very beginning, and it never slows down.  Each chapter is full of awesomeness!!  The plot is intense!!

-    A lot of chapters ended with a little cliffhanger, so I kept telling myself "just one more chapter," but then I couldn't stop.  I read this in 2 sittings.

-    There is some sexual abuse in this book.  Nothing extremely graphic, but it made me cringe a little inside.  This book is probably more for adults.

-    I LOVE LOVE LOVE the banter and bond with Ari and Janco!!!  They crack me up!  Yelena couldn't ask for better friends.  Their loyalty is priceless.  They remind me of how my older brothers protect me.

-    Valek...*sigh*...he is my literature heart throb.  The little flirtations between him and Yelena just make me swoon!!  I haven't swooned this bad over a guy from a book since Gilbert Blythe.

-    Every character is AMAZING!  I really liked how complex some of the people were, like Rand.  I also LOVED seeing Yelena grow so much from beginning to end.  I really connected and fell in love with a lot of the characters, and I just want to read more about them!!

-    Snyder's writing style is perfect.  Everything flows so well, and I can picture everything so clearly and easily.  She is one of my favorite authors.

-    This book gives me such a thrill.  The emotions I go through while reading are crazy!  I feel sad, happy, hopeful, gushy, angry, suspicious, excited, etc.  I love books that let me experience so many things!  

-    I just can't say enough about how great this book is.  It is one of those books where you can't stop turning pages to see what happens, but you are sorry it is over cause you never want it to end.  

Tiger Lily

From Goodreads:    Before Peter Pan belonged to Wendy, he belonged to the girl with the crow feather in her hair. . . .

Fifteen-year-old Tiger Lily doesn't believe in love stories or happy endings. Then she meets the alluring teenage Peter Pan in the forbidden woods of Neverland and immediately falls under his spell.

Peter is unlike anyone she's ever known. Impetuous and brave, he both scares and enthralls her. As the leader of the Lost Boys, the most fearsome of Neverland's inhabitants, Peter is an unthinkable match for Tiger Lily. Soon, she is risking everything--her family, her future--to be with him. When she is faced with marriage to a terrible man in her own tribe, she must choose between the life she's always known and running away to an uncertain future with Peter.

With enemies threatening to tear them apart, the lovers seem doomed. But it's the arrival of Wendy Darling, an English girl who's everything Tiger Lily is not, that leads Tiger Lily to discover that the most dangerous enemies can live inside even the most loyal and loving heart.

From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "Peaches" comes a magical and bewitching story of the romance between a fearless heroine and the boy who wouldn't grow up.

My Thoughts:

-    This is not your typical Peter Pan story!  No flying, no happy thoughts, no magic...just the life of a young girl.  

-    The story is told from Tinker Bell's viewpoint.  I wasn't expecting this at all, but it was cool to get the story from an observer's perspective.  I also liked getting to know Tink and being inside her head.

-    It was fun to see how Tink, Tiger Lily, Peter, and Wendy all meet each other for the first time.

-    The writing style was different, but it really worked for this book.

-    Sometimes I got so wrapped up in Tiger Lily's world that I forgot it was Tinker Bell speaking.

-    The cross dressing shaman was a little weird for me, especially for the time period.  I really liked Tik Tok's character though.  He was so compassionate and wise, and I loved his relationship with Tiger Lily.  He reminds me of my own father, minus the long hair and dresses of course.

-    I'm not sure if I liked this or not.  I kept going back and forth about how good it was.  I'm still a bit undecided.

-    The story is a slower and solemn one.  I wasn't expecting that at all!  In fact, the whole thing was just so different from what I thought it would be.  The story picks up speed a bit towards the end.

-    I am happy with the way things turned out, but I'm also a little sad by it.  This story is closer to real life than a lot of stuff I read.  

Analyzing Aesop #2

I love Aesop's Fables, and I'm sure everyone knows at least one of them.  I love Aesop's use of animals and symbology.  I love the lessons he teaches through parables. 

I want to start a series of Analyzing Aesop blogs.  It will be loads of thought provoking fun!  I'm going to share one of his fables, and we're going to dissect it and find the meaning and lesson behind the parable.  I'm eager to read your response! 

Ready?

A man and his wife had a good fortune to possess a goose which laid a golden egg every day.  Lucky though they were, they soon began to think they were not getting rich fast enough, and, imagining the bird must be made of gold inside, they decided to kill it in order to secure the whole store of precious metal at once.  But when they cut it open they found it was just like any other goose.  Thus, they neither got rich all at once, as they had hoped, nor enjoyed any longer the daily addition to their wealth.

Much wants more and loses all.

My Thoughts:

-    First of all, those people were dumb!

-    I think the message is simply:  Don't Be Greedy!!

-    I wish I had a bird like that.  It would be sweet!

-    Sad thing is, there are really people out there like this.  

The Island

My Thoughts:

-    I wish the doctor's offices had a toilet that checked pee.  Then I wouldn't have to mess with the cup. 

-    McGregor needs that mole on his forehead removed.

-    That facility's security sucks!!  It is supposed to be super advanced right?  WRONG!

-    There were moments that reminded me of Dollhouse

-    MSN Search in 2019?  Ya right!!  ha ha ha!!  

-    There were some queasy moments where I shielded my eyes.

-    After falling off the big red "R" (which looks likes the Team Rocket building), they'd be dead.  

-    The action scenes were great!  I loved the train wheel scene.  That was awesome!!

-    It was a really good flick overall.  I really liked the message it sent.  

Tyson's Thought:

-    Scarlett Johansson has some smooth skin.

Hubby's Thought:

-    This movie should have taken play further in the future.