Category Archives: READING CHALLENGES 2008
RECIPE: Buffalo Chicken
Buffalo Chicken (4 servings)
- 4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup seasoned bread crumbs
- 3 tablespoons canola oil
- 1/4 cup buffalo wing sauce
- 1/4 cup shredded provolone cheese
- 1/4 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
Directions:
- Flatten chicken to 1/2-in. thickness. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. In a shallow bowl, whisk eggs. Place bread crumbs in another shallow bowl. Dip chicken in eggs, then coat with bread crumbs.
- In a large skillet over medium heat, cook chicken in oil for 7-10 minutes on each side or until chicken juices run clear, adding wing sauce during the last 2 minutes. Turn to coat chicken. Sprinkle with cheeses. Cover and cook until cheese is melted.
Recipe Source: Taste of Home Simple & Delicious Magazine
Personal Review: This recipe was so easy and delicious! It comes together quickly for a good weeknight recipe. I served it with brussels sprouts. I am a huge fan of buffalo wings, so this recipe was perfect in my opinion. I can’t say anything negative about it. I might have added a tad too much cheese (if that’s even a possibility!) but it was definitely delicious either way. There are all kinds of different buffalo wing sauces out there and I personally used just traditional, but you could definitely play around with it for other tastes.
Highly recommended.
Finished Challenge – A Well-Rounded Challenge 2009
Teddy Rose hosted this wonderful challenge this year. The idea behind this challenge is to read books for challenges that you’re currently signed up for. I can tell you that this challenge really jump started me back up on my challenges, specifically the Celebrate the Author Challenge (which I was really behind on). Here is what I read:
- 1st in a Series Challenge
- Celebrate the Author Challenge
- Countdown Challenge
- 2009 Read Your Own Books
- What’s in a Name 2 Challenge
REVIEW: When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman
When the Bough Breaks
by Jonathan Kellerman
Copyright: 1985
Pages: 351
Rating: 5/5
Read: Sept. 14-17, 2009
Challenge: 2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2009 1st in a Series Challenge; A Well-Rounded Challenge; 2009 Celebrate the Author; RYOB 2009
Yearly Count: 47
First Line: It was shaping up as a beautiful morning.
Alex Delaware is a well-known and established child psychologist when he burns out at the age of thirty-two. But he gets involved when his friend, LA police detective Milo Sturgis, enlists his help as a “consultant” with the department. Charged with helping a terrified seven-year-old girl who might have seen the perpertrators of a horrific murder, he is intrigued with the entire case whereas the police seem less impassioned about it. Determined to get to the bottom of the case, he is caught up in a web of unimaginable evil and a forty-year-old secret.
I have read a few of the more recent Alex Delaware novels and have enjoyed them, so I was really excited to finally read the first in this series. I learned so much about who Alex and Milo really are that I had missed out on in the later books. I was so intrigued by all the twists and turns. Kellerman really wrote a great story with this one. I’m probably like the last person on earth to have read this book, but if you haven’t read this one before I highly recommend this one.
REVIEW: Real Murders by Charlaine Harris
Real Murders
by Charlaine Harris
Copyright: 1990
Pages: 175
Rating: 3/5
Read: Sept. 2-6, 2009
Challenge: 2009 100+ Reading Challenge; 2009 1st in a Series Challenge; A Well-Rounded Challenge
Yearly Count: 46
First Line: “Tonight I want to tell you about that most fascinating of murder mysteries, the Wallace case,” I told my mirror Enthusiastically.
Aurora “Roe” Teagarden is a small-town librarian. Nothing much really happens in her town of Lawrenceton. The peak of her excitement comes from her monthly meetings with her group “Real Murders.” They are just a group of people who share an interest in past murder cases. But when one of the members turns up dead at one of their meetings, with her murder scene looking suspcisiously like that of a murder case from the past that Roe recognizes. As time goes on, others in this small town turn up dead, also seemingly patterned after other famous murder cases. Roe can’t help but wonder who is at the heart of these murders – it almost has to be a member of Real Murders … but who could it be?
Okay, so I love the Harper Connelly series and was looking forward to giving this series a try. I liked it to a degree, however there were numerous spelling errors in this book (which really irritates me to no end). But for some reason I didn’t immediately take to this book. I mean it was okay in the end, but I felt as if it was missing something, I don’t really know how to describe my feelings though. It had a slow start. And I felt as if the character development lacked a little bit. But overall it was a decent book and I will probably continue on with this series, I just don’t know if I’ll be rushing to continue it.
REVIEW: An Ice Cold Grave by Charlaine Harris
An Ice Cold Grave
by Charlaine Harris
Copyright: 2007
Pages: 280
Rating: 5/5
Read: Aug. 20-23, 2009
Challenge: 2009 100+ Reading Challenge; RYOB 2009
Yearly Count: 43
First Line: The eastern seaboard is crammed with dead people.
Harper Connelly is called to a job in Doraville, North Carolina. She is hired to find a missing boy for a grieving grandmother. He is just one of several teenage boys that has disappeared from the area over the past five years. She ends up finding them all, buried at an old deserted house. Having done the job she was hired to do, all she wants to do is get out of town. Instead she finds herself attacked and in the hospital. While recovering Harper will learn more about Doraville, North Carolina, than she ever cared to know.
This is the third book in the Harper Connelly series. I have read online at Ms. Harris’ website that the fourth book due out later this year will be the final book in this series. I sure will be bummed out when this series ends. I have read the first three this year and I have really enjoyed all of them. I personally feel as if the first is still the best so far, but this was one was better than the second. I loved how Harper and Tolliver both grow as characters by leaps and bounds in this installment. I definitely recommend this series.
REVIEW: Swimsuit by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro
Swimsuit
by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro
Copyright: 2009
Pages: 391
Rating: 3.5/5
Read: Aug. 9-11, 2009
Challenge: 2009 100+ Reading Challenge; Countdown Challenge
Yearly Count: 41
First Line: I know things I don’t want to know.
On the beautiful beaches of Hawaii a beautiful swimsuit model disappears. Kim McDaniels’ parents immediately fly to Hawaii in order to find their daughter. Ex-cop Ben Hawkins is now a reporter for the L.A. Times. He is given the assigntment of covering the McDaniels disappearance. He starts to get the feeling that this might be the one big story that he’s been searching for. And he also realizes that the local cops just might botch this, so he begins his own investigation. But the killer has a plan in mind. He’s planning his own next move, and it has Ben Hawkins in the middle of it.
This is really a complicated story to try and explain. It is written as a book within a book. Being a pretty big fan of James Patterson, I must say that this one was a slight disappointment for me. First of all, I really did not take to Ben Hawkins’ character one bit. I felt disconnected from him throughout the entire book, and to me that connection with the narrator is a very important part of the whole book experience. Now that’s not to say that I didn’t like the book in general, there were definitely some great parts, but I just didn’t think that it was really up to par in my opinion. I don’t really know what to say about this book if you want the truth. It just really didn’t speak to me much.
REVIEW: The Piper’s Sons by Bruce Chandler Fergusson
The Piper’s Sons
by Bruce Chandler Fergusson
Copyright: 1999
Pages: 424
Rating: 3/5
Read: Aug. 1-8, 2009
Challenge: 2009 100+ Reading Challenge; A Well-Rounded Challenge; RYOB 2009; Random Reading Challenge
Yearly Count: 40
First Line: Would I have gone after the girl if my own daughter, Emma, were still alive?
Paul Sinclair is a haunted man. His brother disappeared many years before. His daughter, Emma, died years ago. But there’s more … there’s a terrible secret in his family. It’s a secret that he will only begin to scratch the surface of, starting with the unexpected death of his father. In his family history is a man called the Pied Piper – a brutal killer who was never caught and was presumed dead. But is he? He seems to be getting closer to Paul and his wife and son. And it’s Paul who is determined to find exactly what is in his past, even if it means losing his family in the process.
Okay, so this was really a strange book. It started out great and had me hooked from the first page. Then I got to the middle and it kind of lulled. Then it picked up again and I was really starting to see what Paul was seeing. But then, in the last 100 pages it hit another lull and I felt bogged down by a lot of unimportant descriptions that seemed more like filler to me than anything of real importance. I just don’t know what to think about this book. I mean, it wasn’t bad, but it was definitely kind of weird. I had a lot of issues with the way Fergusson kept changing who was talking, I had trouble keeping up sometimes. Now I will say this, I hadn’t expected the ending. I was surprised by who the Pied Piper ended up being, but after I finished the last sentence and set the book down and tried to make sense of everything that happened in the last third of the book, I will admit – I was confused. I must have missed something because I never did see how he ended up with the ending he did. But overall it was an okay book, just a little weird that’s all.
Harry Potter Reading Challenge
I shouldn’t … I really shouldn’t, but I’m going to anyway. I’m going to join the Harry Potter Reading Challenge. Two years ago my mom and dad bought me the hardcover boxed set for Christmas right after it came out on Amazon. Would you like to know what’s sad?! I never even picked up any of the books. In the past I have read books 1, 2, 5, and 6. I have somehow missed 3 and 4 and I purposely did not read 7 … heck, I don’t even know the spoilers because I didn’t want to know! So this challenge is something that I need because I’ve been wanting to start the series from the beginning and read it all the way through. My original intentions was to do this before I saw the 6th movie, that didn’t happen. But now I’m more determined than ever to read the series in its entirety in order. This challenge will help me achieve that. So here are the rules:
Calling all muggles! Do you aspire to master the craft of wizardry or witchcraft? Well if so you can start your research here!**waves wand**
Introducing the Harry Potter Reading Challenge
<<cough cough>> Dang all that awesome mist and fog is getting me all verklempt.
Anyway, the deets:
What: Read or listen to all seven books in the Harry Potter series
- Sorcerer’s Stone REVIEW
- Chamber of Secrets
- Prisoner of Azkaban
- Goblet of Fire
- Order of the Pheonix
- Half-Blood Prince
- Deathly Hallows
When: The challenge will run from August 1, 2009 to July 31, 2010. I know we’re all busy with life and work and other such fun things so join up whenever you want, there are no deadlines to the challenge besides the end date above.
So there we go, I’m going to read all the books in the Harry Potter series! I’m going to make myself do it … I’ve only been talking about reading the whole series through forever now … now I’ll really get around to it! I’ll be linking my reviews back to this page.
REVIEW: The Dyodyne Experiment by James Doulgeris & V. Michael Santoro
The Dyodyne Experiment
by James Doulgeris & V. Michael Santoro
Copyright: 2009
Pages: 448
Rating: 4/5
Read: July 20-25, 2009
Challenge: 2009 100+ Reading Challenge; Countdown Challenge;
Yearly Count: 37
First Line: Summer days in New York City could either be hot and oppressive or sparkling and glorious.
A research team has developed an amazing new technology: a computer system that can track people secretly with unimaginable accuracy. The system is called DaNA, and it is spread as a virus that can pass to others that the original person comes into contact with. What would make the country want to use this technology? Well, the idea behind it is that it can be used to track down criminals’ accomplices really trying to hone in on the drug cartel. But the research team gets orders from Homeland Security that they must put this system into use, before they can really test it out and work out all the kinks. What they find is unbelievable – six nuclear bombs hidden is six cities across the country. But as the team rushes to track down the terrorists in charge of these bombs, they find out something worse is happening …. DaNA is mutating and is spiraling out of control.
I received this book from Merritt Talbott at Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists for review. I don’t normally read books like this, but the blurb that she presented me just sounded too good to pass up. And when I finally got to reading the book, I have to say that I was definitely not disappointed! I found it to be a fast read, even with everything going on. It was easy to read as well, especially with some of the names and subplots it could have gotten confusing at times, but I had absolutely no problem with it. I really took to Sarah’s character, I thought that she was really well written and believable (which is something very important in my opinion). Overall I’m glad that I was given the opportunity to read this book, because I probably never would have seen or heard anything about it if I had not been contacted about it simply because it is a little out of my comfort zone, but I really do recommend this one to anyone.
