Thoughts on Thursday#5- Let's Discuss Disney

This will be the first discussion with Jenn and Ash..... Curious on how it will go...( curiouser and curiouser) 

Ash picked the topic this week and she wants to discuss Disney. (YAY) I am sure the main reason.... Disney on the brain with an almost 2 year old in the house..... just so you can get a visual here is our cute little guy....(MY cute little guy) (HEY he lives in my house he ours) we see lots of Disney.

This almost 2 year watches lots of Disney... all the time. Just like his Momma, who also watched a lot of Disney...and still does... Let's compare their favorites 

Here were Ash's (at about the same age as Finn is now)

Here are Finn's 

Just for fun... My all time favorite.

What is it about Disney that makes the movies so great, entertaining, fun. I can only answer for my Finding Nemo..It's just too funny. (No matter how times we watch it , we always crack up) I need Dory in my life. (me too) I would always be happy.

I think there were some really good ones in the past and there are some really good ones out now. I like how Disney is full of all kinds of feels... laughs, cries, love, loss... they cover so much and many times in the end... a lesson learned and warm happy fuzzy feelings. That is why I love Disney... (D'AWE)

What say you Ash?

Well jeeze, I think you just about covered it Jenn. I used to love Frozen, and Big Hero 6. Now we watch it about 10 times a day, every day. Still great movies, but come on. (It does get old Quick)

 There is a few Disney movies I really love, Bolt, Brave, Mulan, Nightmare before Christmas, Tarzan

And my all time favorite....

Alice in Wonderland

Of course I love anything Tim Burton, (He does rock) but Alice is one of my favorite stories no matter how it's told. I love retellings, and the Disney versions, and well,just about anything. Hatter and Cheshire are my favorites. (I am partial the white rabbit. I think the our favorites match our personality... White rabbit.. always late, a little spastic, likes watches... and Chesire and Hatter... crazy with a bit of dark and twisted. hehehe) 

Jenn says I should talk about the older Disney movies vs. the newer Disney movies. (Merely Suggested) I can't really say I like one over the other.They are just different. I love all the classics, okay.. Most of the classics. And I can't really say that the new Disney movies are getting better or worse. Just different.. 

Let's just say I really love Disney. That is all. (Seriously, she squeals like a fan girl when she sees the Disney Store)

Review: Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger

Title:  Etiquette and Espionage

Author: Gail Carriger

Publisher:  Hachette Little, Brown and company

Publishing Date:  October 8, 2013

Pages: 320

Genre: YA Steampunk/Alternate History/Supernatral

Series: Finishing School #1

Source: Paperback

  

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School.

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners--and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine's, young ladies learn to finish...everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage--in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year's education.

Pretty much this is an amazing kick butt steampunk/fantasy/action packed book. It has everything you could want in a book. Humor, action, werewolves and vampires, OH MY! 

What made me pick this book up?

 I had seen the second book at Barnes and Noble for a long time, and I had kept looking and looking for the first one. I picked this book up because the cover really caught my eye. It was bright and had Victorian clothing on, which immediately made me think steampunk. That's why I originally picked the book up.

What do I like about the cover?
It's more what I don't like about the cover. Which is absolutely nothing. The cover caught my eye pretty quickly. I especially love the colors of the cover.

What made me read it?
Steampunk. That's about it. Jenn had read another book by her, and said she was really funny. Which is another thing I look for in books, if it can make me laugh out loud then I'm sure I'll love the book. Other than that I love anything steampunk.

What did I like the most?
The humor, I was almost falling out of my chair at work laughing. I love the vampires and werewolves and how they are just a normal thing of society. I also love seeing the different gadgets and such that they come up with.

The least?
That it ended. But I just started the second one, so yay. 

Would you read the rest of the series/Other books by this author?

Uh, yes. I literally want to go buy every book by her now. 

This has become one of my favorite series, I really love this book and I'm sure I'd read it again.

Possible books of likeness...

Gail Carriger writes comedic steampunk mixed with urbane fantasy in three series: two adult, the Parasol Protectorate and Custard Protocol, and one YA, the Finishing School. Her books are published in over a dozen different language. She has twelve NYT bestsellers via five different lists (including #1 in Manga). She has received the Alex Award from the ALA (for her debut Soulless) and the Prix Julia Verlanger and the Elbakin Award from French readers. She was once an archaeologist and is overly fond of tea.
Gail has a fun newsletter: the Monthly Chirrup, sign up at
http://www.gailcarriger.com/contact.php

Waiting on Wednesday #139

Waiting On Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Jenn's Pick :I Can't wait for:

Paperweight by Meg Haston
  
July 7th 2015

                 

Seventeen-year-old Stevie is trapped. In her life. In her body. And now in an eating-disorder treatment center on the dusty outskirts of the New Mexico desert.

Life in the center is regimented and intrusive, a nightmare come true. Nurses and therapists watch Stevie at mealtime, accompany her to the bathroom, and challenge her to eat the foods she’s worked so hard to avoid.

Her dad has signed her up for sixty days of treatment. But what no one knows is that Stevie doesn't plan to stay that long. There are only twenty-seven days until the anniversary of her brother Josh’s death—the death she caused. And if Stevie gets her way, there are only twenty-seven days until she too will end her life.

In this emotionally haunting and beautifully written young adult debut, Meg Haston delves into the devastating impact of trauma and loss, while posing the question: Why are some consumed by their illness while others embark on a path toward recovery?

I have read Meg Haston previously and loved her book. I think I will like this one too. Sounds very emotional and just intense. 

Ash's Pick 

The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich
  
September 15th 2015

                 

Debut author Dawn Kurtagich is dead on in this terrifying psychological thriller!

Over two decades have passed since the fire at Elmbridge High, an inferno that took the lives of three teenagers. Not much was known about the events leading up to the tragedy - only that one student, Carly Johnson, vanished without a trace...

...until a diary is found hidden in the ruins.

But the diary, badly scorched, does not belong to Carly Johnson. It belongs to Kaitlyn Johnson, a girl who shouldn't exist Who was Kaitlyn? Why did she come out only at night? What is her connection to Carly?

The case has been reopened. Police records are being reexamined: psychiatric reports, video footage, text messages, e-mails. And the diary.

The diary that paints a much more sinister version of events than was ever made publicly known.

 This book looks very creepy, and of course that's all I'm into right now. I found this and got super excited to read it. Too bad I have to wait until September. 

Delightful Discoveries #98

Delightful Discoveries are books that I have discovered recently... old, new, just released... from blogs, Goodreads, libraries, friends, or bookstores. 

The House by Christina Lauren 

  

Gavin tells Delilah he’s hers—completely—but whatever lives inside that house with him disagrees.

After seven years tucked away at an East coast boarding school, Delilah Blue returns to her small Kansas hometown to find that not much has changed. Her parents are still uptight and disinterested, her bedroom is exactly the way she left it, and the outcast Gavin Timothy still looks like he’s crawled out of one of her dark, twisted drawings.

Delilah is instantly smitten.

Gavin has always lived in the strange house: an odd building isolated in a stand of trees where the town gives in to mild wilderness. The house is an irresistible lure for Delilah, but the tall fence surrounding it exists for good reason, and Gavin urges Delilah to be careful. Whatever lives with him there isn’t human, and isn’t afraid of hurting her to keep her away.

Future Perfect by Jen Larsen

Every year on her birthday, Ashley Perkins gets a card from her grandmother—a card that always contains a promise: lose enough weight, and I will buy your happiness.

Ashley doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the way she looks, but no amount of arguing can persuade her grandmother that “fat” isn’t a dirty word—that Ashley is happy with her life, and her body, as it is.

But Ashley wasn’t counting on having her dreams served up on a silver platter at her latest birthday party. She falters when Grandmother offers the one thing she’s always wanted: tuition to attend Harvard University—in exchange for undergoing weight loss surgery.

As Ashley grapples with the choice that little white card has given her, she feels pressured by her friends, her family, even administrators at school. But what’s a girl to do when the reflection in her mirror seems to bother everyone but her?

Through her indecisions and doubts, Ashley’s story is a liberating one—a tale of one girl, who knows that weight is just a number, and that no one is completely perfect. 

We'll Never Be Apart by Emiko Jean

Murder.

Fire.

Revenge.

That’s all seventeen-year-old Alice Monroe thinks about. Committed to a mental ward at Savage Isle, Alice is haunted by memories of the fire that killed her boyfriend, Jason. A blaze her twin sister Cellie set. But when Chase, a mysterious, charismatic patient, agrees to help her seek vengeance, Alice begins to rethink everything. Writing out the story of her troubled past in a journal, she must confront hidden truths.

Is the one person she trusts only telling her half the story? Nothing is as it seems in this edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller from the debut author Emiko Jean.

A Step Toward Falling by Cammie McGovern

  

Cammie McGovern follows up her breakout young adult debut, Say What You Will, with this powerful and unforgettable novel about learning from your mistakes, and learning to forgive. Told in alternating points of view, A Step Toward Falling is a poignant, hopeful, and altogether stunning work that will appeal to fans of Jennifer Nevin, Robyn Schneider, and Jandy Nelson.


Emily has always been the kind of girl who tries to do the right thing—until one night when she does the worst thing possible. She sees Belinda, a classmate with developmental disabilities, being attacked. Inexplicably, she does nothing at all.


Belinda, however, manages to save herself. When their high school finds out what happened, Emily and Lucas, a football player who was also there that night, are required to perform community service at a center for disabled people. Soon, Lucas and Emily begin to feel like maybe they're starting to make a real difference. Like they would be able to do the right thing if they could do that night all over again. But can they do anything that will actually help the one person they hurt the most?

The Distance Between Me and You by Marina Gessner

Wild meets Endless Love in this multilayered story of love, survival, and self-discovery

McKenna Berney is a lucky girl. She has a loving family and has been accepted to college for the fall. But McKenna has a different goal in mind: much to the chagrin of her parents, she defers her college acceptance to hike the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia with her best friend. And when her friend backs out, McKenna is determined to go through with the dangerous trip on her own. While on the Trail, she meets Sam. Having skipped out on an abusive dad and quit school, Sam has found a brief respite on the Trail, where everyone’s a drifter, at least temporarily.

Despite lives headed in opposite directions, McKenna and Sam fall in love on an emotionally charged journey of dizzying highs and devastating lows. When their punch-drunk love leads them off the trail, McKenna has to persevere in a way she never thought possible to beat the odds or risk both their lives.