Book Reviews & Stories by Danielle
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for my blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,400 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Happy Friday to all my wonderful followers! I hope everyone had an amazing week. As you know, I’m a NetGalley addict. I seriously need an intervention considering I have about 50 books on my NetGalley shelf I haven’t read yet.
For this week’s Friday Finds, I wanted to share yet another book I found on NetGalley.
Title: The End of Feeling
Author: Cindy C Bennett
Genre: New Adult
Publication Date: January 27, 2015
“Eighteen-year-old Benjamin Nefer seems to have it all: great looks, incredible football skills, and smooth moves that have won—and broken—the hearts of countless girls at his high school. But his hellish home life has left him feeling empty inside, unable to experience real feelings. He thinks he’s fine being this way forever…until he meets a beautiful and witty seventeen-year-old girl named Charlotte “Charlie” Austin. She may be new in town, but she’s already been warned about Benjamin’s reputation, so it’s easy for her to shoot down his advances. Like him, she’s happier keeping people at a distance, especially since she, too, has secrets she’s not ready to share with anyone. But as the tentative friendship between the charismatic football captain and the new girl grows, Charlie finds herself feeling closer to Benjamin than she’s ever felt with anyone—and he wonders if he’s really capable of loving after all. Can they drop their guard, or is this so-called romance just another game?”
What did you find this week?
Feel free to post a link to your Friday Finds in the comments.
ABOUT THE BOOK
“Brandi Rarus was just 6 when spinal meningitis took away her hearing. Because she spoke well and easily adjusted to lip reading, she was mainstreamed at school and socialized primarily in the hearing community. Brandi was a popular and happy teen, but communication—and being fully part of every conversation—was an ongoing struggle.
In college, Brandi embraced Deaf Culture along with the joys of complete and effortless communication with her peers. For the first time, being deaf wasn’t a handicap; it was a passport to a new and exciting world. Brandi went on to become Miss Deaf America in 1988 and served as a spokesperson for her community.
It was during her tenure as Miss Deaf America that Brandi met Tim, a leader of the Gallaudet uprising in support of selecting the school’s first deaf president. The two went on to marry and had three hearing boys—the first non-deaf children born in Tim’s family in 125 years.
Brandi was incredibly grateful to have her happy and healthy family, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing from her life. She had always dreamed she would have a daughter. Little did she know that just across the state line, Zoe was waiting for her.
Set against the backdrop of Deaf America, Finding Zoe is an uplifting story of hope, adoption, and everyday miracles.”
MY THOUGHTS
When the publisher, BenBella Books, approached me about receiving a physical copy of the book and reviewing it, I was very excited to accept it. Finding Zoe gave me a glimpse into a world that I don’t know much about. It showed me what it’s like to be deaf, but the book is so much more than that. It’s about never giving up on your dreams. In this case, Brandi Rarus never gave up on her dream of having a daughter even though the journey was a difficult one.
I couldn’t put Finding Zoe down and kept reading every chance I got. Not only did the book provide some historical information about the deaf community, but it told the story of what it’s like to be deaf and a woman’s struggle to find the daughter she was meant to have. Brandi’s dream finally came true when she adopted Zoe.
The book is split up into three parts. Part one is about Brandi’s journey to accept herself as deaf and being a part of the deaf community. You find out how she met her husband and how much she wanted a daughter. She was so close to Zoe, yet so far.
The second part is about Jess and BJ who are the birth parents of Zoe. Their story seems like a sad one, but they are truly inspirational people. Deciding to give up your child so that she might have a better life is probably the most difficult decision someone can make. I admired their courage especially when there were many obstacles during the adoption process.
The final part of the book is how Brandi and Zoe were finally brought together as mother and daughter. It took quite some time for Zoe to finally be a part of a home where she could thrive as a deaf child, but everything she went through brought her to Brandi.
I learned so many things while reading Finding Zoe. I learned about being deaf and some significant events within the deaf community that helped bring awareness to the inequalities deaf people face. I learned more about adoption and the difficulties birth parents face. And finally, I learned not to give up on your dreams no matter what.
I absolutely loved Finding Zoe. It’s a very inspirational story full of love, hope, and courage. I would recommend this to all of my readers.
There’s a cute video with Brandi Rarus and her family. I wanted to share that here.
GIVEAWAY
BenBella Books has generously provided me with a physical copy of Finding Zoe to giveaway to my readers. Enter here for your chance to win this amazing memoir. The giveaway will be open until January 8, 2015.
FAVORITE QUOTES
“He was thinking that all she ever wanted was a good home, a good family, and parents who could give her what she needed, when all of a sudden, she just reached up and grabbed his finger. His heart melted. At that moment, she became his daughter, too.”
“Here was a young woman, I realized, who didn’t even know me and who had such painful experiences, yet she found it within herself to choose me – to place her daughter in my care – which was one of the greatest gifts of my entire life.”
OVERALL RATING
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Brandi has dabbled and succeeded in whatever she puts her mind to. Brandi is married to Tim Rarus, one of the leaders of the Gallaudet “Deaf President Now!” protest that took place in Washington, DC in 1988. A former Miss Deaf America, she signed the National Anthem at a Chicago Cubs baseball game, has spoken at corporations including AT&T, and federal agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, and the Federal Communications Commission. She has appeared on the Emmy-winning television series,“Deaf Mosaic,” given newspaper interviews, and was on the cover of the October 1988 issue of Deaf Life Magazine.
Gail Harris is an author who specializes in writing books for others. A story-teller at heart, Gail began telling stories for her clients as an award-winning advertising copywriter. She left Madison Ave. and, after a couple of stops along the way, including a stint at a yoga ashram, formed her own writing company. Her first book, entitled, Your Heart Knows the Answer, teaches us how to trust the true voice of our hearts by learning how to distinguish it from the thoughts, emotions and constant inner chatter that is inside our heads. She says that she wrote the book because “we teach what we need to learn.”
Buy Links: Book Page, Amazon, B&N
Brandi Rarus Social Media Links: Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads
Gail Harris Social Media Links: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Goodreads
Publishing Company: BenBella Books
Release Date: October 7, 2014
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs, Nonfiction
Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you the best in 2015.
First, I want to wish everyone a Happy New Years Eve. I can’t believe how fast 2014 went by.
Now, it’s that time of the week again when I participate in WWW Wednesdays hosted by Should Be Reading. Feel free to leave a link to your WWW Wednesday post in the comments.
To participate in WWW Wednesday, you need to answer three questions.
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?
It’s almost the end of the year and this will be my last Teaser Tuesday in the month of December and essentially in the year 2014. Crazy right!
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. It’s easy to participate. Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
CURRENT READ | YOU AND EVERYTHING AFTER BY GINGER SCOTT
“I fell back asleep, but not until after watching Ty for almost an entire hour – every breath, every rise and fall of his chest, the way his arm twitched slightly from the weight of my head – I was building a mental scrapbook of all these tiny little things.”
While I was browsing Instagram photos I came across a picture of my adorable nephew reading a book by the fire. I thought this was so cute that I had to share it with all of you. He’s reading a book I got him called Go Dog Go. I’m sure some of you have heard of it. It was one of my favorite books as a kid and it was so great seeing him reading it.
ABOUT THE BOOK
“Mia had everything: a loving family, a gorgeous, adoring boyfriend, and a bright future full of music and full of choices. Then, in an instant, almost all of that is taken from her. Caught between life and death, between a happy past and an unknowable future, Mia spends one critical day contemplating the one decision she has left—the most important decision she’ll ever make.
Simultaneously tragic and hopeful, this is a romantic, riveting and ultimately uplifting story about memory, music, living, dying, loving.”
MY THOUGHTS
I was really looking forward to reading this book and finally purchased it from Target. I thought I would cry while reading the book, but nothing ever came. The story was great, but it didn’t have enough emotion for me and I didn’t really relate to the characters who all seemed to be these hipster music people to me.
Even though I wasn’t fond of the personalities of the characters, I did enjoy the overall message of the book (or at least what I thought was the message). Never take the small things for granted. Seeing as I have lost two very important people in my life, I do miss the small things. Like watching Friends with my mother. That seems like something very insignificant, but now that I can’t share that time with her I really miss it.
While Mia is trying to decide whether to move on or stay she thinks about a lot of things we take for granted, like spending time with family, friends, and significant others. Essentially, when you’re time comes you don’t care what you did, but who you shared your life experiences with. At least that’s what I will think about.
If Mia really could decide to live or die, she’d have to come to terms with the people closest to her being gone. I’m not sure if I would decide to stay if I’d be an orphan and my young brother was gone. It would be really hard to cope with that kind of loss.
Now, I’m completely biased with my next comment, but I didn’t feel that there was enough of a connection between Mia and her boyfriend. There wasn’t a lot of romance between these two characters and I felt like there could have been more to it. But that’s just my hopeless romantic side talking.
Overall, If I Stay is a good book, but it didn’t live up to my expectations and sometimes I set those expectations too high.
FAVORITE QUOTES
“For the first time, I can sense how fully agonizing staying will be. But then I feel Adam’s hand.”
OVERALL RATING
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in such publications as Jane, Seventeen, Glamour, Elle, and The New York Times Magazine, to name just a few. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.
Buy Links: Amazon, B&N, iBooks
Social Media Links: Website, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr
Publishing Company: Dutton, Penguin Group
Release Date: April 2, 2009
Genre: Young Adult
I completed my 2014 Goodreads Reading Challenge!
I finished reading 15 books this year. For 2015, I’m setting an ambitious goal of 25 books.
Here are the list of books I read in 2014:
What will your reading challenge goal be in 2015?
Stories Unfolded 