Selasa, 16 April 2013

book review "Beautiful disaster " by Jamie McGuire



Beautiful disaster by Jamie McGuire is the equivalent of crack cocaine! I could not put it down, I got the shakes, I experienced some sky-highs some hellish lows, and it ruined several nights of sleep. This book turned my life into a chaotic mess... and I loved every second of it! The characters were enthralling and the story was spellbinding.

The story begins at Eastern University with college freshmen Abby Abernathy, her feisty best friend America, and America's sweet boyfriend Shepley attending an underground fight club, called The Circle, run by a guy named Adam. The Circle is held in different basements on the Eastern U campus where bets are placed and big money is won. The fighters that evening were Eastern University's star wrestler Marek Young and Eastern University sophomore and undefeated underground boxing champion Travis 'Mad Dog' Maddox. Excited but unable to see the fight, Abby pushes her way ringside just in time to be splattered with Marek's blood. Travis wins the bout, sees Abby ringside, and is immediately enchanted. Travis wipes the blood from her face and stops her from being trampled by the unruly crowd. Wearing a cardigan and pearls and a wide-eyed expression Travis nicknames Abby, 'Pigeon'. Travis and Abby are thrown into each other's orbit when Shepley and America (Travis' cousin and roommate and Abby's best friend, respectively) begin dating.

I tried to ignore him as long as possible, but when I looked up, Travis was staring at me.
"You know her, Trav. America's best friend? She was with us the other night," Shepley said.
Travis smiled at me in what I assumed was his more charming expression. He oozed sex and rebelliousness with his buzzed cut brown hair and tattooed forearms, and I rolled my eyes at his attempt to lure me in.
"Don't you remember, Travis," Shepley continued, "you ruined her sweater."
"I ruin a lot of sweaters."
"Gross." I muttered.

Senin, 15 April 2013

book review : fifty shades of grey by E.L james




I just finished reading E.L. James’ wildly-buzzed-about-and-speculated-upon erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey. Look, don’t judge me, it was for book club. And I only reread a few specific passages. No more than three or four times. The truth is, the book is completely, almost inarguably ridiculous. The main male character is a perpetually-single, unattainable, billionaire playboy with both a helicopter AND a private jet. We learn he earned his money through “mergers and acquisitions”, but little else about his business acumen or clear, obvious genius – after all, this billionaire with haunted eyes and a predilection for pain is 27 years old. Stop laughing. This is serious business. Anyway. It’s an inexcusably bad book, but it does have some pretty great saucy bits in it, if you 1) don’t mind a bit of spice with your sugar; 2) can get over the extreme discomfort felt by the reader upon realizing that our heroine, the unfortunately-named Anastasia Steele, does not want to be doing most of what she is doing, and is instead being untrue to herself in the feeble, desperate hopes of changing her paramour into someone who doesn’t revolt and terrify her; and 3) you can get past the hideousness of the writing. Massive points off for repetition alone – if I read the phrase “foil packet” (I get it, they’re practicing safe sex, kudos, let’s move on), “stop biting your lip” (maybe she’s hungry – she refuses to eat in front of Grey for most of the book), or “so and so gasped” (do these people have a waking form of apnea?) one more time, my head would have exploded. What breaks my heart is that there is a lot of good erotica out there. If you are looking for books to float your boat, you need not to resort to one-dimensional, cliched fluff in order to find it. Sure, 50 Shades of Grey might have introduced a ball-gag or two (spoiler!), but I’d argue it’s still your basic, run-of-the-mill romance novel. Man is haunted and can’t be tamed, woman yearns to tame man and falls all over herself crying and trying to please him while talking about her inner goddess, man’s eyes widen in alarm and arousal every other page. Yawn. In short, it ain’t great. But it was a quick, easy read with some nice thrills, and I’m happy people are reading at all. Now what’s this I hear about the potential of a film adaptation starring Ryan Gosling? That sounds like it would have some cultural worth and, um, artistic value. ‘Scuse me. ***Bonus! For those who have read the book (I’m sorry.), did you know that Christian Grey’s opulent, over-the-top and in-no-way-ridiculous-for-a-27-year-old condo was loosely based on a real building? Yup. It’s the Escala Building, a luxury high-rise in downtown Seattle. You can see photos of it at the Zillow blog here

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