A Little Bit Wicked

Kristin Chenoweth

Summary:

You might know her as a Tony Award-winning Broadway star, who originated the role of Galinda the Good Witch in the smash musical Wicked and won a Tony for 1999’s You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown. Or TV - The West Wing, Pushing Daisies, Sesame Street… oh, and her Huge Hit Sitcom Kristin on NBC. (Huge hit. L.A. breast-implant huge. Ask either of the people who watched it.) Or maybe you saw her sexy spread in FHM magazine? Or her appearance on Pat Robertson’s The 700 Club? Kristin is a wonderful collection of contradictions - but everyone who’s ever met her remembers her as the little girl with the big voice. At four foot eleven, Kristin Chenoweth is an immense talent in a petite but powerful package. 

In this lively, laugh-out-loud book, Kristin shares her journey from Oklahoma beauty queen to Broadway leading lady, reflecting on how faith and family have kept her grounded in the dysfunctional rodeo of show biz. The daughter of an engineer and a nurse, Kristin was singing in front of thousands at Baptist conventions by age twelve and winning beauty pageants by age twenty-two. (Well, actually we was second runner-up almost every freaking time. But, hey, she’s not bitter.) On her way to a career as a professional opera singer, she stopped in New York to visit a friend and went on a whim to an audition. Through a combination of talent, hard work, and (she’s quick to add) the grace of God, Kristin took Broadway by storm. (whoops there was a back flap and I didn’t take a picture..soo… read the book…)

Okay, I knew she was adorable, but seriously Kristin Chenoweth managed to make me love her more with this book. It was so honest and sweet and funny and adorable. A point I make a lot in autobiography reviews is that there is a balance between pretending you’ve never done anything wrong, admitting you’ve done stuff wrong, and overapologizing to the point of insincerity for the things you’ve done wrong. Chenoweth managed to hit that middle point beautifully. I adored this book. It’s got enough silliness and reality to keep you interested but still being informative. 

5/5

E. L. James

50 Shades Trilogy

Summary:

…you guys know what this is about, and I don’t have a summary for the whole trilogy.

It.. I don’t know. I pretty much felt about this book how I did about Twilight, except I liked it much less. The only redeeming factor, like Twilight, was that I was interested in where the plot was going. I really hated the characters, it contradicted itself constantly, and the writing was awful. Don’t get me wrong, okay, I have no problem with the sex. If that’s what they want to do in bed, fine. But it was outside of that. The way he treated her in the relationship was disgusting, and she was smart enough to not put up with that. Yet she did. Just…none of it really made sense. This would not actually happen in real life, because no one at the places they are in their lives would act that stupid. Just a dumb series. 

1/5

Rebel Angels

Libba Bray

Summary:

Ah, Christmas! Gemma Doyle is looking forward to a holiday from Spence Academy - spending time with her friends in the city, attending balls in fancy gowns with plunging necklines, and dallying with the handsome Simon Middleton. Yet amid these distractions, her visions intensify - visions of three girls dressed in white, to whom something horrific has happened that only the realms can explain. 

The lure is strong, and soon Gemma, Felicity, and Ann are turning flowers into butterflies in the enchanted world to which Gemma takes them. To the girls’ great joy, their beloved Pippa is there as well, eager to complete the circle of friendship. 

But all is not well in the realms - or out. Kartik is back, desperately insisting to Gemma that she must bind the magic, lest colossal disaster befall her. Gemma is willing to comply, for this would bring her face to face with her late mother’s greatest friend, now Gemma’s foe - Circe. Until Circe is destroyed, Gemma cannot live out her destiny. But finding Circe proves a most perilous task…

I adored this sequel. I loved who Gemma became as a character. There were a couple of times when it was really obvious what was going to happen, and it annoyed me that Gemma just wasn’t getting it, but at the same time it sort of seemed like she was getting it, but didn’t want to so she denied it which was really interesting. And then there were other things that were super obvious and then they didn’t happen which I really liked, and we’ll see what happens in the third! Overall, I adored it, seriously. So much better than the first, and I liked the first!

5/5

Shutter Island

Dennis Lehane

Summary:

The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this barren island, despite having been kept in a locked, guarded cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades - with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is remotely what it seems. 

This book was incredible. It’s fairly long, but it races by. I was totally engrossed in it when I started, and when I finally decided to take a break, I looked and realized I was almost halfway through. It totally pulls you in and reads like a movie, so I can’t wait to see the adaptation, I bet it’s awesome. This book is seriously psychologically tormenting, which is my favorite and I rarely see that done well! It’s great, seriously, and man the cliffhanger had me dying! 

5/5

Home

Julie Andrews

Summary:

Since her first appearance on screen in Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews has played a series of memorable roles that have endeared her to generations. But she has never told the story of her life before fame. Until Now.

In Home: A Memoir of My Early Years, Julie takes her readers on a warm, moving, and often humorous journey from a difficult upbringing in war-torn Britain to the brink of international stardom in America. Her memoir begins in 1935, when Julie was born to an aspiring vaudevillian mother and a teacher father, and takes readers to 1962, when Walt Disney himself saw her on Broadway and cast her as the world’s most famous nanny. 

Along the way, she weathered the London Blitz of World War II; her parents’ painful divorce; her mother’s turbulent second marriage to Canadian tenor Ted Andrews, and a childhood spent on radio, in music halls, and giving concert performances all over England. Julie’s professional career began at the age of twelve, and in 1948 she became the youngest solo performer ever to participate in a Royal Command Performance before the Queen. When only eighteen, she left home for the United States to make her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend, and thus began her meteoric rise to stardom. 

Home is filled with numerous anecdotes, including stories of performing in My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison on Broadway and in the West End, and in Camelot with Richard Burton on Broadway; her first marriage to famed set and costume designer Tony Walton, culminating with the birth of their daughter Emma; and the call from Hollywood and what lay beyond. 

Usually when I read a bad autobiography, I have to stop reading them for a while but I’m really glad I made an exception with this one, because it lit up my life. Julie Andrews is literally so beautiful and perfect, even in writing. I love her immensely, and even more so after this book.

I hated that it ended on a cliffhanger like that but I totally understand why she did it. I just want mooooore. 

5/5

There and Back Again: An Actor’s Tale

Sean Astin

Summary:

Peter Jackson’s epic take on J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic tale of The Lord of the Rings has become a cinematic phenomenon. The three films were shot together over a period of eighteen months, during which time the cast became a close-knit family. 

Sean Astin is a veteran of more than thirty movies, but he knew that this one - or three - would be different from anything he had experienced before. Cast as Sam Gamgee, Frodo’s devoted friend and guide, Sean lived the dream firsthand, even directing a film about comaraderie and friendship within difficult working environments for the DVD release of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. 

In this fascinating memoir, Sean shares his thoughts on his early days as a Hollywood child (his mother is Patty Duke and his father is John Astin), including his famous roles in The Goonies and Rudy, as well as how he finally got the role of a lifetime and what it was like as an actor on the set of The Lord of the Rings. he reveals details of his relationships with the other cast members, including the latent tensions and backstage dynamics, reflects on the blood,sweat, and tears that wen into making one of the most ambitious film projects of all time, and offers insight into his decision-making process as he winds his way through an emerging career. 

This is an honest and revealing behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to be involved in making a blockbuster movie franchise, form one of the main actors on the set. But There and Back Again is also an insightful look at Hollywood from the inside, written by someone who proves that with passion and determination it’s possible to make any dream come true. Sean Astin takes readers on an unforgettable journey from Hollywood to New Zealand and back. 

There are two good things I can say about this book: The title was adorable. It was nice getting some behind the scenes pictures of the actors. 

Other than that, pretty terrible. Sean Astin is pretty whiny and endlessly annoying throughout this book. I seriously couldn’t stand him. He would say really whiny things, and then be like half-apologetic for it, but in a way that you could tell it was just so that he wouldn’t come across as a complete douche. Which he still did. 

And, aside from just being really annoying, this wasn’t even a good autobiography. As interested as I am in The Lord of the Rings, like he could (and should) have provided a bit more backstory on his life. Like, talk about the Goonies a bit man, that’s pretty interesting! And growing up with celebrity parents? He had no problem totally bashing people that he worked with on LOTR, so why have privacy about his past? 

And it was sooooo not chronological, it was just confusing. There are some ways that you can pull off not being chronological in an autobiography. He did not use those ways. 

It..ugh. 

2/5

Half-Minute Horrors

Assorted

Summary:

No summary. It’s a bunch of short horror stories by well-known authors.

This was adorable! And they were actually genuinely scary a lot of the time, which was cool. Pretty much just the fact that it exists should be reason for everyone to read this, so nothing I can say should change anything. (:

5/5

Matched

Ally Condie

Summary:

Cassie has always trusted their choices. It’s hardly any price to pay for a long life, the perfect job, the ideal mate. So when her best friend appears on the Matching screen, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is the one…until she sees another face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black. Now Cassia is faced with impossible choices: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she’s ever known and a path no one else has ever dared follow - between perfection and passion.

Matched is a story for right now and storytelling with the resonance of a classic. 

I’ve read the next book in this series, so now it’s harder for me to review this one! It’s a really good series. I love the story, love the writing, love how the characters are actually imperfect. I do have one problem, and it’s really more of a problem with the sequel so I’ll tell you about it when I do that one! (: 

4/5

The Nine Lives of Chloe King

Liz Braswell

Summary:

Chloe King is a normal girl. She goes to class (most of the time), fights with her mom, and crushes on a boy…or two. But around her sixteenth birthday, Chloe finds that perhaps she isn’t so normal after all. There’s the heightened night vision, the superfast reflexes - oh, and the claws. 

As she discovers who she is - and where she comes from - it is clear she’s not along. And someone is out to get her. 

Chloe has nine lives. But will nine be enough?

I really liked the storyline for this book (or I guess books, it was like three in one I guess?) but I hated the writing. There was SO MUCH focus on what a teenage girl she was and it was actually pretty annoying. Like the pop culture references all over the place? That’s one of my least favorite things to ever happen in a book. This obviously isn’t going to last very long, since many of the stuff in it is already outdated. It’s just a bad idea. And it annoys me. Like, wow, way to prove you understand teenagers. We’ll totally connect with this book now thanks! You know what I mean? I don’t know. 

I also really didn’t like the main character. She was pretty annoying and whiny. I just… I dunno I really didn’t like it. I wish someone more talented had taken the idea and written it a bit more sophisticated. It had potential.

2/5

The Last Little Blue Envelope

Maureen Johnson

Summary:

Ginny Blackstone thought that the biggest adventure of her life was behind her. She spent last summer traveling around Europe, following the tasks her aunt Peg laid out in a series of letters before she died. When someone stole Ginny’s backpack - and the last little blue envelope inside - she resigned herself to never knowing how it was supposed to end. 
Months later, a mysterious boy contacts Ginny from London, saying he’s found her bag. Finally, Ginny can finish what she started. But instead of ending her journey, the last letter starts a new adventure - one filled with old friends, new loves, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Ginny finds she must hold on to her wits…and her heart. This time, there are no instructions.

 I read this months ago, and I don’t really remember much of it, but I do remember being really upset. I had been so excited for this sequel, and I remember being disappointed, and wishing it had gone differently. I wish I could tell you specifically what I didn’t really like about it though. I remember it was pretty readable, and I cared about what happened, I just wanted it to be over. And it was pretty predictable, which I’m never a fan of. 

2.5/5