What's in a Name Challenge 2

*Dates: January 1, 2009 through December 31, 2009

*The Challenge: Choose one book from each of the following categories.

1. A book with a "profession" in its title. Examples might include: The Book Thief, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Historian

2. A book with a "time of day" in its title. Examples might include: Twilight, Four Past Midnight, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

3. A book with a "relative" in its title. Examples might include: Eight Cousins, My Father's Dragon, The Daughter of Time

4. A book with a "body part" in its title. Examples might include: The Bluest Eye, Bag of Bones, The Heart of Darkness

5. A book with a "building" in its title. Examples might include: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Little House on the Prairie, The Looming Tower

6. A book with a "medical condition" in its title. Examples might include: Insomnia, Coma, The Plague

*You may overlap books with other challenges, but please don't use the same book for more than one category.

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My Tentative List

Profession

• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
• Belle de Jour: Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl

Time of Day

Relative

• The Alchemist's Daughter
• The Bonesetter's Daughter: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Body Part

• The Bluest Eye
• The Bonesetter's Daughter: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
• Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter

Building

• The Wasp Factory: Iain Banks

Medical Condition

• The Birth House: A Novel (P.S.)
• The Birth of Venus: A Novel
• The Blood of Flowers: A Novel
• The Bonesetter's Daughter: A Novel (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Fourth Annual NaJuReMoNoMo

National Just Read More Novels Month

1. Only Novels Count. This means no non-fiction books, memoirs, short stories, essay collections, or books based on internet memes like LOLcats. The judge is out on graphic novels. It's your call.


2. Memoirs Don’t Count. Even if they are fictional. And especially if they are fake memoirs about the Holocaust.


3. It Can’t Be A Novel You Have Already Read. Expand your horizons. Try some new authors.


4. You Must Start At The Beginning. If the book is on your nightstand, you have to start over. We are looking at January 1 to January 31. That is 31 days. We are on a deadline.
   Have Fun.


5. This a lark. You wouldn't be reading if you didn't enjoy it.

And of course we have our valuable prizes. You get to brag about your literacy ability by posting our "Winner" badges on your site. Any book qualifies for the Blue Winner badge. Now a lot of people read more than one. Three books qualifies for the Green Badge. Five gets the Silver Badge and ten is the Gold level.
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OK, I can SO do this one. I can finish at least one novel even if I stay in my reading rut! There are prizers at stake here. Must get badge...

Challenges I Did NOT Finish in 2008

Time to clean up the blog and get the challenges I did not finish off my sidebars. Some of the challenges I did not finish I came very close to making it...some I did not. Signing up for challenges makes me search through my books and read genres I normally may not pick up for myself. Even though there were a lot of challenges I did not finish there were many in 2008 that I did complete!

SERIES CHALLENGE and CARDATHON: 3/6

• I get to work on this one still since there is a Series Challenge 3!

CLASSICS CHALLENGE: 2/6

• I thought I would do better on this one. Once I decided I wanted to focus more on fulfilling my A~Z Challenge it was harder to find readings to fit this challenge that I was still interested in.

NON-FICTION FIVE: 4/5

• So close! I just ran out of time.

DECADES CHALLENGE: 6/8

• Once the end of the year kept getting closer and closer I just gave up on trying to fit in the two decades I needed.

19th CENTURY WOMEN WRITERS CHALLENGE: 1/4

• I thougth that by signing up for this challenge I would be motivated into an area where I do not have a lot of interest. It didn't work very well.

Books Read 2008

December

60. The Phantom Tollbooth: Norton Juster
59. The Zookeeper's Wife-A War Story: Diane Ackerman

November

58. Fire Study: Maria Snyder
57. A Prayer for Owen Meany: John Irving

October

56. Sushi for One: Cami Tang
55. The Ottoman Cage: Barabara Nadel

September

54. The Devil's Arithmetic: Jane Yolen
53. Veronica Decides to Die: Paulo Coelho
52. American Gods: Neil Gaiman

August

51. Like Water for Chocolate: Laura Esquivel
50. The Joy Luck Club: Amy Tan
49. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: Mark Haddon
48. The Rasputin Relic: William Valtos
47. Fieldwork: Mischa Berlinski

July

46. The Sixteen Pleasures: Robert Hellenga
45. a long way gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier: Ishmael Beah
44. The Secret Garden: Frances Hodgson Burnett
43. The Thieves of Heaven: Richard Doetsch
42. Pig Island: Mo Hayder
41. Murder on the Orient Express: Agatha Christie
40. Ella Minnow Pea: Mark Dunn
39. Decipher: Stel Pavlou

June

38. A Piece of Cake: Cupcake Brown
37. The Shadow of the Wind: Carlos Zafon
36. Number the Stars: Lois Lowry
Ozma of Oz: L. Frank Baum (audio book)
35. The $64 Tomato: William Alexander
34. The Awakening: Kate Chopin
33. Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone: J. K. Rowling
32. Parasite Rex: Carl Zimmer
31. The Things They Carried: Tim O'Brien

May

30. When We Were Gods a Novel of Cleopatra: Colin Falconer
29. I, Mona Lisa: Jeanne Kalogridis
28. Magic Study: Maria Snyder
27. Uglies: Scott Westerfeld
The Marvelous Land of Oz: L. Frank Baum (audio book)
26. The Blind Assassin: Margaret Atwood
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: L. Frank Baum (audio book)

April

25. Bel Canto: Ann Patchett
24. The House of the Spirts: Isabel Allende
Dracula: Bram Stoker (audio book)
23. Prentice Alvin: Orson Scott Card
22. Messenger: Lois Lowry
21. Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil: Deborah Rodriquez
20. The God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy

March

19. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn: Betty Smith
18. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: John Boyne
17. Rosemary's Baby: Ira Levin
16. Cruel & Unusual: Patricial Cornwell
15. The Burn Journals: Brent Runyon
14. Red Prophet: Orson Scott Card
13. Flowers for Algernon: Daniel Keyes
12. The Silver Rose: Susan Carroll


February

11. Gathering Blue: Lois Lowry
10. White Oleander: Janet Fitch
9. Lost Name: Richard E. Kim
8. Veil of Roses: Laura Fitzgerald
7. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal: Christopher Moore
6. The Glass Castle: Jeannette Walls

January

5. The Reckoning (The Blood of the Lamb): Thomas Monteleone
4. The Giver: Lois Lowry
3. Middlesex: Jeffrey Eugenides
2. Seventh Son: Tales of the Alvin Maker: Orson Scott Card
1. The Girls: Lori Lansens

A ~ Z Challenge 2009

I've decided to go with Option A--reading one book for each letter using the author's last name. I tried to do author and titles for 2008 and fell short. I also felt restricted with fitting books into the appropriate letters. Only doing authors will give me more freedom. I'll probably just join more challenges though!

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

A ~ Z Challenge List from 2008

45 / 52

Ended up a few short but that is OK! I got into a reading funk in September or I definitely would have made it.

AUTHORS

A--The Blind Assassin (Margaret Atwood)5.12.08
B--The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (John Boyne) 3.20.08
C--The Silver Rose (Susan Carroll) 3.5.08
D--The Theives of Heaven (Richard Doetsch)7.15.08
E--Like Water for Chocolate (Laura Esquivel) 8.28.08
F--When We Were Gods (Colin Falconer) 5.28.08
G--American Gods (Neil Gaiman) 9.5.08
H--Pig Island (Mo Hayder) 7.15.08
I--A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
J--The Phantom Tollboth (Norton Juster)
K--Lost Names (Richard Kim) 2.16.08
L--The Giver (Lois Lowry) 1.27.08
M--The Reckoning (Thomas Monteleone) 2.2.08
N--The Ottoman Cage (Barbara Nadel)
O--The Things They Carried (Tim O'Brien) 6.6.08
P--Bel Canto (Anne Patchett) 4.30.08
Q--
R--The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy) 4.2.08
S--Magic Study (Maria Snyder) 5.18.08
T--Sushi For One (Cami Tang)
U--
V--The Rasputin Relic (William Valtos) 8.13.08
W--The Glass Castle (Jeannette Walls) 2.3.08
X--
Y--The Devil's Arithmetic (Jane Yolen)
Z--The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon) 6.22.08


TITLES

A--The Awakening (Kate Chopin) 6.10.08
B--The Burn Journals (Brent Runyon) 3.12.08
C--Cruel and Unusual (Patricia Cornwell) 3.16.08
D--Decipher (Stel Pavlou) 7.7.08
E--Ella Minnow Pea (Mark Dunn) 7.9.08
F--Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes) 3.8.08
G--The Girls (Lori Lansens) 1.5.08
H--The House of the Spirits (Isabel Allende) 4.26.08
I--I, Mona Lisa (Jeanne Kalogridis) 5.26.08
J--The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan)8.20.08
K--Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil (Deborah Rodriquez) 4.5.08
L--Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (Christopher Moore) 2.8.08
M--Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenide) 1.26.08
N--Number the Stars (Lois Lowry) 6.19.08
O--
P--Parasite Rex (Carl Zimmer) 6.7.08
Q--
R--Rosemary's Baby (Ira Levin) 3.17.08
S--Seventh Son: Tales of the Alvin Maker (Orson Scot Card) 1.11.08
T--A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith) 3.23.08
U--Uglies (Scott Westerfeld) 5.14.08
V--Veil of Roses (Laura Fitzgerald) 2.12.08
W--White Oleander (Janet Fitch) 2.24.28
X--
Y--
Z--The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story (Diane Ackerman) 12.7.08

Books I Got for Christmas

The End of the Alphabet: CS Richardson
The Last Lecutre: Randy Pausch
Then We Came to the End: Joshua Ferris
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: David Wroblewski
Christine Falls: Benjamin Black

I also have several Barnes and Noble gift cards to use up!

Back from Vacation

I'm finally back from a fantastic vacation to Boulder CO and Rocky Mt. National Park. It was awesome! Time now to catch up on my blog which has been pushed to the back burner. I start back teaching next week though so it will probably take awhile to get caught up on my reviews.

A Piece of Cake is being given to...

Lisa!

Please email me at pandabear 102205 at gmail dot com so I can get you mailing information.

Thanks to everyone who commented.

Sunday Salon # 9

Hello everyone! I've missed some weeks so it seems like I have a lot of catching up to do. Since my last Salon I've finished the following books

• A Piece of Cake: Cupcake Brown (Review)
• The Shadow of the Wind: Carlos Zafon (Review)
• Number the Stars: Lois Lowry
• Ozma of Oz: L. Frank Baum (audio book)
• The $64 Tomato: William Alexander (Review)
• The Awakening: Kate Chopin
• Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone: J. K. Rowling (Review)

I enjoyed A Piece of Cake so much I'm giving it away to one lucky person. Just visit my review and leave a comment. I'm picking the person to mail it to tomorrow or Tuesday. Shadow of the Wind was another great read as well. I was disappointed in the $64 Tomato and really did not like The Awakening at all.


CURRENTLY READING:

Decipher: Stel Pavlou. For a book that looked very exciting so far it has been bogged down in unnecessary detail making it slow and tedious to read. Basically the city of Atlantis has been discovered and has been sending us warnings for 12,000 years about the destruction of the world. We have one week left to figure out what it is trying to tell us. Should be a nail biter. Right now I'm using it to keep my coffee table from getting water marks. I'm about 150 in and I think the idea has such potential that I'm going to keep going.

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO:

The Cinema Murder by E. Phillips Oppenheim. I literally just download this from Librivox so I just wanted to mentioned that I will be starting this soon. I am still slowing working my way through the Innocence of Father Brown. I think I have a small crush on the narrator. His voice puts me to sleep in seconds.

WHAT I BOUGHT THIS WEEK (what showed up from PaperBack Swap and can you tell I hit up Goodwill?)

• Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War byJudith Miller
• The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes
• The Judas Strain (Sigma Force Novels) by James Rollins
• Black Order: A Sigma Novel by James Rollins
• The Uncrowned Queen: A Novel by Posie Graeme-Evans
• the name of the rose by Umberto Eco
• Tangerine by Edward Bloor
• Intrepreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel
• Mortal Love: A Novel by Elizabeth Hand
• Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research

CHALLENGE UPDATE:

I joined the New Classics Challenge, Summer Reading Thing 2008, and A Daring Book Challenge. Directly below this post is a list of all the books I need to finish before the year is over. It is pretty long but I'm looking forward to the challenge. I also have no problem substituting new books as I find them and I'm also OK with not finishing a challenge (although I do try my best to finish each one). Sometimes I just come across a really good book I want to read and it doesn't fit into any of my challenges. If that means a challenge doesn't get completed...for me that is fine.

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For me it is now back to stripping the wood work in my kitchen. For my next break I'll be visiting other Salons. Happy Sunday!

What Do I Need To Read Before The Year Is Over?

This could be scary!

1. The Accidental Tourist (A-Z)
2. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Notable & In Their Shoes)
3. All Creatures Great and Small (Decades)
4. Alvin Journeyman (Cardathon & Series)
5. American Gods (A-Z)
6. Beneath a Marble Sky (Historical)*
7. The Crystal City (Cardathon & Series)
8. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (A-Z)
9. Decipher (A-Z)
10. The Devil's Arithmetic (A - Z and Orbis Terrarum)*
11. Ella Minnow Pea (A-Z)
12. The Family That Couldn't Sleep (Non Fiction 5)
13. Fieldwork (Notable)
14. Forcing Amaryllis (A-Z)
15. Harem (Historical)*
16. Heartfire (Cardathon & Series)
17. The Inheritance (19th Century Women)
18. Jane Eyre (Classics & 19th Century Women)
19. The Joy Luck Club (A-Z)
20. Like Water for Chocolate (A-Z)
21. Lucky (In Their Shoes)*
22. A Million Little Pieces (In Their Shoes)*
23. Murder on the Orient Express (Decades)
24. Of Earth and Sky (A-Z)
25. The Phantom Tollbooth (A-Z)
26. Pig Island (What's In a Name)
27. Queen Bees and Wannabees (A-Z)
28. The Rasputin Relic (A-Z)
29. The Republican War on Science (Non Fiction 5)
30. The Scarlet Pimpernel (Classics)
31. The Secret Garden (Classics)
32. Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood (Non Fiction 5 & In Their Shoes)
33. The Sixteen Pleasures (Historical)*
34. Something Wicked This Way Comes (Classics)
35. Soul Mountain (A-Z)
36. Snow Falling on Cedars (Herding Cats)
37. Stargirl (Herding Cats)
38. The Thieves of Heaven (A-Z)
39. The Time Traveler's Wife (A-Z)
40. Q--? (A-Z)
41. Whose Body? (Decades)
42. A Widow for One Year (A-Z)
43. Wuthering Heights (19th Century Womens)
44. X--? (A-Z)
45. Y--? (A-Z)
46. The Zookeeper's Wife (A-Z)

one more books for the classics challenge

two books for suspense and thriller

* = do not NEED to finish, I have enought alternates to cover the challenge but it was on my original list

I need to find some cross overs. I'll never finish and didn't include challenges that ended in January or Febuary. Funny, this won't stop me from joining challenges though. Most of the fun is in seeing how far along I can get and seeing how many books I can get to cross over.

Happy Fourth of July

New Classics Challenge

Joann from Lost in a Good Story is hosting the New Classics Challenge. She writes...

Deb from the A Novel Challenge yahoo group posted a link to this list of Entertainment Weekly's list of new classics, what they call the best reads from 1983 to 2008. I loved the list - many of my recent favorites are on it so I'm intrigued
to see what some of the ones I haven't read yet will be like.

So the challenge rules are:

1) Copy the list (which I have pasted here, just in case that link ever disappears) and bold the titles that you have already read.

2) Choose at least 6 other books from the list , read and review them between 1 August 2008 and 31 January 2009.

2) Come back here and post links to your reviews.

3) In January 2009, cast your vote for which one of the 100 books on the list is your favorite (and write a post on why). The winning book will be sent to a lucky winner chosen by the scientific method favored here in the blogosphere, i.e. names in a hat. Other contests are very probable too, I have some ideas, but they need planning.

4) Have fun! :-)

THE LIST
1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

SIX BOOKS TO READ

1. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
2. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
3. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
4. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
5. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
6. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)

Book Review: A Piece of Cake

Author: Cupcake Brown

Pages: 470

Genre: Non-Fiction/Autobiography

Personal Rating: 5/5

From the back cover:

There are shelves of memoirs about overcoming the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, miscarriage, alcoholism, hustling, gangbanging, near-death injuries, drug dealing, prostitution, or homelessness.

Cupcake Brown survived all these things before she’d even turned twenty.

And that’s when things got interesting….

You have in your hands the strange, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating tale of a woman named Cupcake. It begins as the story of a girl orphaned twice over, once by the death of her mother and then again by a child welfare system that separated her from her stepfather and put her into the hands of an epically sadistic foster parent. But there comes a point in her preteen years—maybe it’s the night she first tries to run away and is exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex all at once—when Cupcake’s story shifts from a tear-jerking tragedy to a dark comic blues opera. As Cupcake’s troubles grow, so do her voice and spirit. Her gut-punch sense of humor and eye for the absurd, along with her outsized will, carry her through a fateful series of events that could easily have left her dead.

Young Cupcake learned to survive by turning tricks, downing hard liquor, partying like a rock star, and ingesting every drug she could find while hitchhiking up and down the California coast. She stumbled into gangbanging, drug dealing, hustling, prostitution, theft, and, eventually, the best scam of all: a series of 9-to-5 jobs. But Cupcake’s unlikely tour through the cubicle world was paralleled by a quickening descent into the nightmare of crack cocaine use, till she eventually found herself living behind a Dumpster.

Astonishingly, she turned it around. With the help of a cobbled together family of eccentric fellow addicts and “angels”—a series of friends and strangers who came to her aid at pivotal moments—she slowly transformed her life from the inside out.

A Piece of Cake is unlike any memoir you’ll ever read. Moving and almost transgressive in its frankness, it is a relentlessly gripping tale of a resilient spirit who took on the worst of contemporary urban life and survived it with a furious wit and unyielding determination. Cupcake Brown is a dynamic and utterly original storyteller who will guide you on the most satisfying, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting tour through hell you’ll ever take.

I couldn't believe this was a true story by the time it I was finished. It was simply too horrific at times to have actually happened. This girl should be dead, she should be imprisoned...but she isn't...she is a lawyer and a functional member of society!

This is one eye opening look into our failing foster care system and how easy it for children and simply people in general to fall between the cracks. At the same time however, it is also a story about "making it" and picking yourself up and being somebody.

This book gave me perspective and what it really means to have hard times and be down. It also refocused me on what CAN be accomplished with hard work, dedication and determination.

I have never done this before but I am going to contact Cupcake Brown and just let her know what an impact her book had on me.

Sometimes I (we) think we have it bad, and sometimes we do. Usually we don't. This book really allowed me to set my priorities straight and appreciate how good I really do have it, even with the problems I do have.

I believe that this is such a good book that I would like to give it to someone. If you are interested in this book please leave me a note in the comments. I'll randomly pick someone in one week to mail it to.

Summer ReadingThing 2008

Summer Reading Thing 2008

Who: The Summer Reading Thing 2008 (or SRT 08) is for anyone who’s up for a reading challenge. All age groups are welcome.

What: A summer reading challenge for everyone. Set your goals and track your progress. No goal is too small; no ambition too great. Feeling overwhelmed? Make your list small or use the same list from any other reading challenge (like this one).

Make changes to your list as needed as desired. Finish early? Add more books (or
not). Change your mind on a title? Drop it. No pressure, no minimums.

Post a short review on your blog of at least one of the books you read during the challenge. If you like to do reviews, you can post one for each of the books you read. Please keep the reviews family friendly. I'll set up a Mr. Linky where you can link to your reviews. (Don't have a blog? Keep reading.)

When: Friday, June 2oth through Sunday, September 21st, 2008.

Where: The blogosphere. Join up using this Mr. Linky. Post your summer reading list on your blog and backlink here. If you don't have a blog, you can use the one I created last year for this very purpose. Simply e-mail your list and reviews to her and she'll post and link you up, making you eligible for prizes.

Why: To promote literacy around the world. Yeh, right. Because we need a reason not to feel guilty when we choose to read instead of mop the floor.

How: Make your list and post it on your blog. Then link to your post using the sign-up Mr. Linky. As you read your books, post a review on your blog and link to the review post using the review Mr. Linky. At the end of the challenge, post a wrap-up and link to the wrap-up Mr. Linky (coming in September).

Prizes: Prizes will be books (new or gently read) or book related items. (If you're an author or publisher and you want to provide a prize, send me an e-mail.) I'll give away one prize each week. To be eligible for prizes, you must have signed up on the Mr. Linky here. Beginning July 20th, you must also have posted one review using the Mr. Linky here. Due to shipping costs, you must live in the U.S. or Canada to win a prize. (Sorry.)

Spread the word: Let your blog readers know about SRT 08 so they can join the fun with you! Grab the button and use it on your blog. The larger image (top of post) is 400 px. The smaller image (below) is 220 px and will fit the standard Blogger sidebar. The image in my sidebar is 185px, for smaller sidebars, like mine. Please link your button back to this post.

Note: You can join Summer Reading Thing 2008 at any time.

My Reading List

1. Decipher: Stel Pavlou 7.7.08

2. Ella Minnow Pea: Mark Dunn 7.9.08

3. Alvin Journeyman: Orson Scott Card

4. Harry Potter II: J. K. Rowling

5. Stargirl: Jerry Spinelli

6. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier: Ishmael Beah 7.22.08

7. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: Mark Haddon 8.14.08

8. The Thieves of Heaven: Richard Doetsch7/08

9. The Phantom Tollbooth: Norton Juster

10. Pig Island: Mo Hayder 7.15.08

11. The Republican War on Science: Chris Mooney

12. Murder on the Orient Express: Agatha Christie 7.12.08