Review: Doctor Strange: Mystery of the Dark Magic by Brandon T. Snider

Goodreads Blurb

When Thor and the Avengers battle a group of enchantedbeasts that mysteriously appear at a Long Island Mall, they call the best inthe magic business to help them out-Doctor Strange. But the good doctor isoverworked and underpaid. These days he’s become the go-to hero for all thingsmagic and he’s exhausted. He’d really prefer to work alone since it’s not likejust anyone can understand his Mastery of the Mystic Arts. More bizarre attacks occur around New YorkCity and Strange finds himself seeking guidance from a number of mysticalallies despite his desire to remain solitary. And when the threats grow wildlybeyond his control, he may have no choice but to accept the counsel of hissuper hero comrades in order save his best friend and the world. This 128 pagechapter book, focusing on Dr. Strange will feature full-color interactiveillustrations throughout. And just in time for his new film!

My Review: Rated 5 out of 5 stars

It’s totally a fun book for everyone to enjoy. Doctor Strange is a fascinating character. He loves to be on his own and doesn’t like to seek help from others who don’t know anything about magic. The world was turning upside down with magical creatures attacking humans. He had to seek advice from Marvel characters in order to help humankind. I loved the illustrations very colorful. Brandon did a lovely job of writing a story that brings a superhero to the rescue.

Review: Olga and the Smelly Thing From Nowhere by Elise Gravel

Goodreads Blurb

Olga and the Smelly Thing from Nowhere is jam-packed with fun: vibrant illustrations, word bubbles, quirky humor, olgamus facts, and plenty of excitement for readers who love making discoveries and meeting new friends. Olga is a charming combination of independent, curious, and smart—making her the coolest girl scientist around—perfect for fans of Dork Diaries and Captain Underpants.

When Olga crosses paths with a weird creature and becomes the first kid to discover the species olgamusridiculus, she is ecstatic! What does an olgamus eat? How does it poop? Why does its burp sound like the word rubber? With her trusty observation notebook and the help of a librarian, a shopkeeper, and some friends, Olga sets out to do science—learning the facts about her smelly, almost-furry pal and searching for him when he goes missing. The scientific method is the best way to discover anything!

My Review: Rated 5 out of 6 stars

Olga wants to be an animal scientist who finds an animal who she can’t identify. The book has funny illustrations that go through her observation lab. It was such a fun book for young children, especially if they love science and animals. Olga is hilarious and very smart. The author did a great job to bring a book that will teach kids about science and the love of animals. If you need a laugh, you will want to read this quirky book.

Review: Sci-Fi Junior High bg John Martin and Scott Seegert

Blog post

This gleefully illustrated space adventure is a laugh on every page. That’s a lot of laughs!

Kelvin Klosmo isn’t just the new kid at school — he’s the new kid in the galaxy! Welcome to Sci-Fi Junior an inter-galactic space station with students of all shapes, sizes, smells, and . . . slime content.

As the son of Earth’s two most famous geniuses, Kelvin isn’t just the smartest kid in the world . . . he’s the smartest kid in the Universe . At least, that’s what everybody at Sci-Fi Junior High thinks. So, maybe Kelvin lied a little about being a genius to fit in. And maybe a mad scientist is about to take over the universe unless Kelvin can stop him. Maybe everyone is doomed.

Well, at least Kelvin won’t have to worry about math homework anymore. Sci-Fi Junior High is an out-of-this-world story about friendship, accepting our differences, and the fight against evil . . . bunnies. Yes, evil bunnies — don’t ask.

My Review: Rated 4 out of 5 stars

It’s such a fun book. I enjoyed the illustrations. It made the book come to life. Kelvin has a super genius mom and dad. Everyone at his new school in space thinks that he is brilliant, while in reality, he is average. His new school has creatures from all over space. He and his family are the only ones from Earth. It was great to have an evil villain trying to conquer a world. The plot for the book was thought out very well. It is funny and interesting. All readers of all ages will love it.

Review: Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans

My Review: Rated 5 out of 5 stars

I just love Madeline. The books take place in Paris, the city of lights. The illustrations are so spectacular that it makes me think I am there. It is truly a great book for all children to read.

Author Biography

Ludwig Bemelmans was an Austrian author, an internationally known gourmand, and a writer and illustrator of children’s books. He is most noted today for his Madeline books, six of which were published from 1939-1961. A seventh was discovered after his death and published posthumously in 1999.

Review: Fifty Shades Darker by E.L. James

Goodreads Blurb

Daunted by the singular sexual tastes and dark secrets of the beautiful, tormented young entrepreneur Christian Grey, Anastasia Steele has broken off their relationship to start a new career with a Seattle publishing house. But desire for Christian still dominates her every waking thought, and when he proposes a new arrangement, Anastasia cannot resist. They rekindle their searing sensual affair, and Anastasia learns more about the harrowing past of her damaged, driven, and demanding Fifty Shades. While Christian wrestles with his inner demons, Anastasia must confront her anger and envy of the women who came before her and make the most important decision of her life. Erotic, sparkling and suspenseful, Fifty Shades Darker is the irresistibly addictive second part of the Fifty Shades trilogy.

My Review: Rated 3 out of 5 stars

Love can change even the darkest man. I was not as happy with this second book. I felt like it dragged for a long time. It started to get very interesting halfway through the book. I was very happy with the outcome but could only imagine that the third book would have some sad moments. Christian and Anastasia were able to rekindle their love for each other. Christian worked very hard to forget the whole contract and try to make it a loving relationship. Cheers to a life full of happiness.

Review: The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti

Goodreads Blurb

After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter, Loo, to Olympus, Massachusetts. There, in his late wife’s hometown, Hawley finds work as a fisherman, while Loo struggles to fit in at school and grows curious about her mother’s mysterious death. Haunting them both are twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past; a past that eventually spills over into his daughter’s present, until together they must face a reckoning yet to come. This father-daughter epic weaves back and forth through time and across America, from Alaska to the Adirondacks.

Both a coming-of-age novel and a literary thriller, The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley explores what it means to be a hero, and the cost we pay to protect the people we love most.

My Review: Rated 4 out of 5 stars

This book brings together violence and love in a way we could not imagine. Just imagine first aid kits being part of your everyday needs! This book could never have enough first aid kits. That kit was a building block for Hawley. Without it, he would not have survived his first shot. Hannah split this book into all twelve shots that Hawley lived through without a complaint while coming to the present and showing us the life he lived with his daughter. Hawley is a man that from a very early age, met a friend who got him into stealing and killing in order to survive. It’s a book in which he is a villain but has a soft spot for his wife and daughter. He did everything in hopes of making a better life for them. Loo is Hawley’s daughter, who is constantly bullied at school until she takes matters to her own hands. Violence is what she learned from her father, and that violence made them both survive in their environment. As much as he didn’t want Loo involved, she was from the very beginning. Once you start this book, you won’t be able to put it down. Each bullet was a scar that we were part of as we read this book. Enjoy the thrilling story.

Author Biography

Hannah Tinti grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, and is co-founder and executive edtior of One Story magazine. Her short story collection, ANIMAL CRACKERS, has sold in sixteen countries and was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award. Her first novel, THE GOOD THIEF, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and winner of the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Hannah’s most recent novel, THE TWELVE LIVES OF SAMUEL HAWLEY was a national bestseller and is in development for television with Netflix.

Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling

Goodreads Blurb

J.K. Rowling’s screenwriting debut is captured in this exciting hardcover edition of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them screenplay.

When Magizoologist Newt Scamander arrives in New York, he intends his stay to be just a brief stopover. However, when his magical case is misplaced and some of Newt’s fantastic beasts escape, it spells trouble for everyone…

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them marks the screenwriting debut of J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved and internationally bestselling Harry Potter books. Featuring a cast of remarkable characters, this is epic, adventure-packed storytelling at its very best.

Whether an existing fan or new to the wizarding world, this is a perfect addition to any reader’s bookshelf.

My Review: Rated 5 out of 5 stars

It was so magical reading this screenplay. I did see the movie before reading this book. I actually loved that I was able to vividly see the creators as they came into the play. I loved all the animals that were created, plus Newt is just the perfect protector of these animals. He is very loving to them. I love the illustrations. They really depict the creatures in this book. I was happy to be able to come back to the world of magic after reading Harry Potter books. I love the romance between Jacob and Queenie it was just perfect. I can’t wait to read the continuation to this series.

Author Biography

Although she writes under the pen name J.K. Rowling, pronounced like rolling, her name when her first Harry Potter book was published was simply Joanne Rowling. Anticipating that the target audience of young boys might not want to read a book written by a woman, her publishers demanded that she use two initials, rather than her full name. As she had no middle name, she chose K as the second initial of her pen name, from her paternal grandmother Kathleen Ada Bulgen Rowling. She calls herself Jo and has said, “No one ever called me ‘Joanne’ when I was young, unless they were angry.” Following her marriage, she has sometimes used the name Joanne Murray when conducting personal business. During the Leveson Inquiry she gave evidence under the name of Joanne Kathleen Rowling. In a 2012 interview, Rowling noted that she no longer cared that people pronounced her name incorrectly.

Rowling was born to Peter James Rowling, a Rolls-Royce aircraft engineer, and Anne Rowling (née Volant), on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England, 10 miles (16 km) northeast of Bristol. Her mother Anne was half-French and half-Scottish. Her parents first met on a train departing from King’s Cross Station bound for Arbroath in 1964. They married on 14 March 1965. Her mother’s maternal grandfather, Dugald Campbell, was born in Lamlash on the Isle of Arran. Her mother’s paternal grandfather, Louis Volant, was awarded the Croix de Guerre for exceptional bravery in defending the village of Courcelles-le-Comte during the First World War.

Rowling’s sister Dianne was born at their home when Rowling was 23 months old. The family moved to the nearby village Winterbourne when Rowling was four. She attended St Michael’s Primary School, a school founded by abolitionist William Wilberforce and education reformer Hannah More. Her headmaster at St Michael’s, Alfred Dunn, has been suggested as the inspiration for the Harry Potter headmaster Albus Dumbledore.

As a child, Rowling often wrote fantasy stories, which she would usually then read to her sister. She recalls that: “I can still remember me telling her a story in which she fell down a rabbit hole and was fed strawberries by the rabbit family inside it. Certainly the first story I ever wrote down (when I was five or six) was about a rabbit called Rabbit. He got the measles and was visited by his friends, including a giant bee called Miss Bee.” At the age of nine, Rowling moved to Church Cottage in the Gloucestershire village of Tutshill, close to Chepstow, Wales. When she was a young teenager, her great aunt, who Rowling said “taught classics and approved of a thirst for knowledge, even of a questionable kind,” gave her a very old copy of Jessica Mitford’s autobiography, Hons and Rebels. Mitford became Rowling’s heroine, and Rowling subsequently read all of her books.

Rowling has said of her teenage years, in an interview with The New Yorker, “I wasn’t particularly happy. I think it’s a dreadful time of life.” She had a difficult homelife; her mother was ill and she had a difficult relationship with her father (she is no longer on speaking terms with him). She attended secondary school at Wyedean School and College, where her mother had worked as a technician in the science department. Rowling said of her adolescence, “Hermione [a bookish, know-it-all Harry Potter character] is loosely based on me. She’s a caricature of me when I was eleven, which I’m not particularly proud of.” Steve Eddy, who taught Rowling English when she first arrived, remembers her as “not exceptional” but “one of a group of girls who were bright, and quite good at English.” Sean Harris, her best friend in the Upper Sixth owned a turquoise Ford Anglia, which she says inspired the one in her books.

Review: The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip by George Saunders

Goodreads Blurb

In the seaside village of Frip live three families: the Romos, the Ronsens, and a little girl named Capable and her father. The economy of Frip is based solely on goat’s milk, and this is a problem because the village is plagued by gappers: bright orange, many-eyed creatures the size of softballs that love to attach themselves to goats. When a gapper gets near a goat, it lets out a high-pitched shriek of joy that puts the goats off giving milk, which means that every few hours the children of Frip have to go outside, brush the gappers off their goats, and toss them into the sea. The gappers have always been everyone’s problem, until one day they get a little smarter, and instead of spreading out, they gang up: on Capable’s goats. Free at last of the tyranny of the gappers, will her neighbors rally to help her? Or will they turn their backs, forcing Capable to bear the misfortune alone?

Featuring fifty-two haunting and hilarious illustrations by Lane Smith and a brilliant story by George Saunders that explores universal themes of community and kindness, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip is a rich and resonant story for those that have all and those that have not.

My Review: Rated 4 out of 5 stars

This was such a hilarious book that everyone can enjoy. It teaches us that we should all help each other in good times and bad times. That someone else’s problem might end up your problem even if you choose not to be involved. People choose not to be helpful when someone needed help but are quick to look for help when they are in a bind. I do truly love that after all the problems with the Gappers, they were able to look past the difference and join together.

Author Biography

George Saunders was born December 2, 1958 and raised on the south side of Chicago. In 1981 he received a B.S. in Geophysical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. He worked at Radian International, an environmental engineering firm in Rochester, NY as a technical writer and geophysical engineer from 1989 to 1996. He has also worked in Sumatra on an oil exploration geophysics crew, as a doorman in Beverly Hills, a roofer in Chicago, a convenience store clerk, a guitarist in a Texas country-and-western band, and a knuckle-puller in a West Texas slaughterhouse.

After reading in People magazine about the Master’s program at Syracuse University, he applied. Mr. Saunders received an MA with an emphasis in creative writing in 1988. His thesis advisor was Doug Unger.

He has been an Assistant Professor, Syracuse University Creative Writing Program since 1997. He has also been a Visiting Writer at Vermont Studio Center, University of Georgia MayMester Program, University of Denver, University of Texas at Austin, St. Petersburg Literary Seminar (St. Petersburg, Russia, Summer 2000), Brown University, Dickinson College, Hobart & William Smith Colleges.

He conducted a Guest Workshop at the Eastman School of Music, Fall 1995, and was an Adjunct Professor at Saint John Fisher College, Rochester, New York, 1990-1995; and Adjunct Professor at Siena College, Loudonville, New York in Fall 1989.

He is married and has two children.

Currently Reading: James by Percival Everett

Reading this book for the Barnes & Noble book club, which is back at Paramus, NJ B&N. I missed meeting other readers to discuss books. I’m looking forward to meeting my friends and discussing this book, which made B&N Book of the Year.

Goodreads Blurb

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Author Biography

Percival L. Everett (born 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.

There might not be a more fertile mind in American fiction today than Everett’s. In 22 years, he has written 19 books, including a farcical Western, a savage satire of the publishing industry, a children’s story spoofing counting books, retellings of the Greek myths of Medea and Dionysus, and a philosophical tract narrated by a four-year-old.

The Washington Post has called Everett “one of the most adventurously experimental of modern American novelists.” And according to The Boston Globe, “He’s literature’s NASCAR champion, going flat out, narrowly avoiding one seemingly inevitable crash only to steer straight for the next.”

Everett, who teaches courses in creative writing, American studies and critical theory, says he writes about what interests him, which explains his prolific output and the range of subjects he has tackled. He also describes himself as a demanding teacher who learns from his students as much as they learn from him.

Everett’s writing has earned him the PEN USA 2006 Literary Award (for his 2005 novel, Wounded), the Academy Award for Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (for his 2001 novel, Erasure), the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature (for his 1996 story collection, Big Picture) and the New American Writing Award (for his 1990 novel, Zulus). He has served as a judge for, among others, the 1997 National Book Award for fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1991

Review: The First Gift of Christmas by Richard Paul Evans

Goodreads Blurb

Explores the meaning of Christmas in reflections and introspections centered on the four seasons of Christmas–the Advent, Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, and Christmas night.

My Review: Rated 3 out of 5 stars

It’s a super short novel that has four short poems. The first one is titled Advent, then Christmas Eve, Christmas Morning, and Christmas Night. I felt the first three poems were profound and will brighten your day with all the wonders of Christmas. The last poem was more like questions about whether the children will remember this Christmas and whether they will be inspired to keep the Christmas spirit as they grow up. The illustrations brought me back to the good old days.

Author Biography

When Richard Paul Evans wrote the #1 best-seller, The Christmas Box, he never intended on becoming an internationally known author. His quiet story of parental love and the true meaning of Christmas made history when it became simultaneously the #1 hardcover and paperback book in the nation. Since then, more than eight million copies of The Christmas Box have been printed. He has since written eleven consecutive New York Times bestsellers. He is one the few authors in history to have hit both the fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists. He has won several awards for his books including the 1998 American Mothers Book Award, two first place Storytelling World Awards, and the 2005 Romantic Times Best Women Novel of the Year Award. His books have been translated into more than 22 languages and several have been international best sellers.