You say Tomato, I say Shut up - a love story

In this hilarious and ultimately moving memoir, comedians and real-life married couple Annabelle Gurwitch and Jeff Kahn prove that in marriage, all you need is love—and a healthy dose of complaining, codependence, and pinot noir.

After thirteen years of being married, Annabelle and Jeff have found “We’re just not that into us.” Instead of giving up, they’ve held their relationship together by ignoring conventional wisdom and fostering a lack of intimacy, by using parenting as a competitive sport, and by dropping out of couples therapy. The he-said/she-said chronicle of their intense but loving marriage includes an unsentimental account of the medical odyssey that their family embarked upon after their infant son was diagnosed with VACTERL, a very rare series of birth defects. Annabelle and Jeff’s unforgivingly raw, uproariously funny story is sure to strike both laughter and terror in the hearts of all couples (not to mention every single man or woman who is contemplating the connubial state).

Serving up equal parts sincerity and cynicism, You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up is a laugh-out-loud must-read for everyone who has come to realize that being “in love” can only get you so far.

On Cohabitation

He says: “Within days of Annabelle’s arrival, I became very aware that she demanded solitude and had the housekeeping habits of a feral animal.”

She says: “The guy had some sort of nudity radar. When I would take my clothes off for even a second, Jeff would be in front of me cheering as if he’d scored box seats at FenwayPark.”

On Sex

He says: “I want to have sex every day, but Annabelle only wants to do it once a week. So we compromise: we have sex once a week.”

She says: “Jeff says talking about money before you have sex is a turnoff, but it’s only a turnoff if you’re talking about not having money. Talking about money before you have sex when you have money is actually a turn-on.”

On Pregnancy

He says: “For God’s sake, all I wanted to do was have sex without a condom for a little while; now we were moments from bringing a new life into the world!”

She says: “My ass was expanding so fast it was like a Starbucks franchise. On every corner of my ass there was a new branch of ass opening up.”

This book was hilarious!! Good Read!!

5 out of 5  bookmarks!! Great Read!!  

Are you there vodka?

When Chelsea Handler needs to get a few things off her chest, she appeals to a higher power -- vodka. You would too if you found out that your boyfriend was having an affair with a Peekapoo or if you had to pretend to be honeymooning with your father in order to upgrade to first class. Welcome to Chelsea's world -- a place where absurdity reigns supreme and a quick wit is the best line of defense. 

Oh my goodness this was a funny, funny book!! Easy light read that makes you literally laugh out loud, I'm even trying to convince Brad to read it!! I can't wait to read some of her other books!!

5/5 bookmarks!!

The Wrong Mother

Sally Thorning is watching the news with her husband when she hears an unexpected name-Mark Bretherick. It's a name she shouldn't know, but last year Sally treated herself to a secret vacation-away from her hectic family life-and met a man. After their brief affair, the two planned to never meet again. But now, Mark's wife and daughter are dead-and the safety of Sally's own family is in doubt. 

I will admit that I totally judged this book by the cover!! Who wouldn't!! I happen to see it at Target one day and read just that lil bit I posted above and decided to buy it. This book seemed so much longer then it was and not b/c it was boring by any means....but b/c it was so jammed packed with action. Like within the first 20 pages the main character gets pushed in front of a bus!! Great psychological thriller!!!!! 

5 out of 5 bookmarks!!  

Switching Time

When Karen Overhill first walked into psychiatrist Richard Baer's office in 1989, she voiced problems that mental health workers become accustomed to hear. She said that she was depressed and harbored thoughts of suicide. What emerged, however, over the next weeks, months, and years would lead both Dr. Baer and Karen down uncharted roads, exposing a wounded psyche intent on healing itself and the 17 personalities she had created to do so. Switching Time is the first story on multiple personality disorder told directly by the treating physician, and Dr. Baer doesn't squander the precedent. An engrossing first-person view of a rare psychological malady.

At first I didn't like this book b/c I felt as though the doctor (also the author) focused a little bit too much on himself. After he revealed to Karen that she had multiple personalities then it got good...they even figured out a way to integrate the personalities back into herself. Very interesting!!

Shutter Island

Summer, 1954.

U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels s come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Along with his partner, Chuck Aule, he sets out to find an escaped patient, a murderess named Rachel Solando, as a hurricane bears down upon them.

But nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is what it seems.

Is he there to find a missing patient? Or has he been sent to look into rumors of Ashecliffe's radical approach to psychiatry; an approach that may include drug experimentation, hideous surgical trials, and lethal countermoves in the shadow war against Soviet brainwashing ...

Or is there another, more personal reason why he has come there?

As the investigation deepens, the questions only mount. The closer Teddy and Chuck get to the truth, the more elusive it becomes, and the more they begin to believe that they my never leave Shutter Island.

Because someone is trying to drive them insane ...

Well I was really hopping to see the movie b/f writing this blog...however its been in between the big theater & dollar movie for at least two weeks now...I'm sure since I'm going to go ahead and post this it will most likely appear at the dollar when they update this Thursday.... So anyways I really had a hard time getting into this book...ask everyone at work I think I carried it around for like 2months only on page 26. Once I finally sat down and got into it, it became hard to put down. I will say there is a twist you don't (or I didn't) see coming at the end!! I really enjoyed it and can't wait to see the movie!!

Toodle-oo!! 

  

Magical Thinking

It begins with a Tang Instant Breakfast Drink television commercial:

"Yes, you, Augusten. You were great. We want you." I can now trace my manic adult tendencies to this moment. It was the first time I felt deeply thrilled about something just a fraction of an instant after being completely crushed. I believe those three words "we want you" were enough to cause my brain to rewire itself, and from then on, I would require more than other people... --- from "Commercial Break," in Magical Thinking.

A contest of wills with a deranged cleaning lady. The execution of a rodent carried out with military precision and utter horror. Telemarketing revenge. A different kind of "roof work." Dating an undertaker who shows up in a minivan. This is the fabric of Augusten Burroughs' life: a collection of true stories that are universal in their appeal yet unabashedly intimate; stories that shine a flashlight into both dark and hilarious places. With MAGICAL THINKING Augusten Burroughs goes where other memoirists fear to tread.

This is the third and not the last of the Augusten Burroughs books that I have read. Well actually this was my first audiobook and at first I thought I may have a difficult time paying attention but i was proven wrong. Augusten's way of telling his stories is amazing. I had downloaded the audiobook to my iPod and listened while I did dishes, or just laid in the bed or couch ... I found it so relaxing that I actually fell asleep a few times and would have to go back and relisten to chapers. But I would highly suggest this book and this author!! If you want something funny, shocking and almost unbelievable check out his first memoir Running With Sissors.

 

Her Last Death

Her Last Death begins as the phone rings early one morning in the Montana house where Susanna Sonnenberg lives with her husband and two young sons. Her aunt is calling to tell Susanna her mother is in a coma after a car accident. She might not live. Any daughter would rush the thousands of miles to her mother's bedside. But Susanna cannot bring herself to go. Her courageous memoir explains why.

Glamorous, charismatic and a compulsive liar, Susanna's mother seduced everyone who entered her orbit. With outrageous behavior and judgment tinged by drug use, she taught her child the art of sex and the benefits of lying. Susanna struggled to break out of this compelling world, determined, as many daughters are, not to become her mother.

Like many memoirs this book is a story of a girl growing up w/ a dysfunctional parent and tried to survive w/ what she was given. She has to decide if she should keep the negative parent as an influence in her new life and family or cut them out completely.

The Shining

just in case you live under a rock this is the synopsis....

 

Terrible events occur at the isolated Overlook Hotel. It's a place where the guests are deceased but not necessarily departed, high in the wintry Rocky Mountains in the off season. A family checks in so the father can write, and terror lurks behind every door. Their son, who has psychic powers but does not know he has them and does not know how to use them, struggles to hold his own against the forces of evil that are driving his father insane.

 

I was intrigued to read this book after our trip to Colorado where we visited the Stanley Hotel which is where Stephen King got the inspiration to write The Shining while staying in room 217. I had seen the movie many many years ago and couldn't recall the details of the story so reading the book was an adventure. This was my first Stephen King novel to complete and I enjoyed it very much!! I highly suggest reading the book to anyone that is a fan of his work and also a fan of the movie staring Jack Nicholson. Now my goal is to stay a night at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park CO. which is said to be truly haunted .  Below are some photos that we took while walking around the ground level of the hotel. And for more information on the history and the hauntings check here.

The Stanley Hotel opened in 1909

The original owners piano located in the ballroom and is said to still be heard playing with nobody sitting at it.

 

Brad's dad standing in front of the creepy elevator... I looked inside and it was way creepy...and is still running.

Me, in front of the grand staircase!!

Beautiful Boy

What had happened to my beautiful boy? To our family?What did I do wrong? Those are the wrenching questions that haunted every moment of David Sheff ’s journey through his son Nic’s addiction to drugs and tentative steps toward recovery. Before Nic Sheff became addicted to crystal meth, he was a charming boy, joyous and funny, a varsity athlete and honor student adored by his two younger siblings. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who lied, stole, and lived on the streets.David Sheff traces the first subtle warning signs: the denial, the 3 A.M. phone calls (is it Nic? the police? the hospital?), the rehabs.His preoccupation with Nic became an addiction in itself, and the obsessive worry and stress took a tremendous toll. But as a journalist, he instinctively researched every avenue of treatment that might save his son and refused to give up on Nic.
Beautiful Boy is a fiercely candid memoir that brings immediacy to the emotional rollercoaster of loving a child who seems beyond help.


This was a really good book...it explains all the different emotions that a father or family member may go through when dealing w/ a loved one who has an addiction problem. There's blame and then anger and grief BUT always hope.

I would give this a 4 out of 5 bookmarks...it was hard for me to get into it.

Alex Kava

A Necessary Evil
An Introduction

Detective Tommy Pakula is handed the case of his career when a Catholic monsignor is found knifed to death in an airport restroom. When Pakula learns that other priests have been murdered in other cities in the same ritualistic manner, FBI Special Agent Maggie O’Dell is called in to profile the case. As Pakula and Maggie drill down into the facts they discover a disturbing Internet role-playing game for youths who have been victims of abuse by Catholic priests. With the first real lead in the investigation, they wonder if this group has turned cyberspace justice into reality by dispensing their own brand of vengeance. As the ritualistic killings leave America’s heartland reeling, Maggie gets a second lead--one that leaves her stunned. For the past four years she has been driven by blind determination to find Father Michael Keller, the human monster whose acts of brutality continue to hnt her to this day. Sick and twisted, the priest seems to have vanished without a trace. But with an irony that only life can offer, now he has become a target. When Keller offers to help Maggie solve the crimes in exchange for protection, she has no choice but to ally herself with the elusive child killer-- the person she despises with a conviction that’s almost religious in its fervor. Maggie must cross a dangerous line into a world of malevolence and evil from which she may not return unscathed. Maggie knows the bargain is a necessary evil…one that may be made in blood...

EXPOSED
An Introduction

. Agent Maggie O’Dell and Assistant Director Cunningham believe they’re responding to a threat made at Quantico. Instead they walk into a trap. Before they realize it, they’ve both been exposed to a killer who can strike at anyone, at anytime, and no one can predict who might be next...until it’s too late. Maggie knows dangerous minds -- from hauntingly perverse child predatirs to cunningly twisted serial killers. Now she faces a new opponent from inside an isolation ward at a biosafety containment hospital. Maggie must help Agent R.J. Tully find clues to catch the killer -- while waiting to see if the deadly strain is already multiplying in her body. With every new exposure there’s the potential for an epidemic. And Maggie knows she and Cunningham may not live long enough to discover who is the deadliest, most intelligent killer they’ve ever profiled.

Thanks to Lindy who just picked A Necessary Evil randomly off the bookshelf I have now found a new author that I love. Alex Kava has a few books staring FBI agent Maggie O'Dell and her crew -- I love this author!! I have read 2 books so far and haven't been disappointed one bit...She does a great job at tying all the pieces together at the end.

I give these books a 5 out of 5 bookmarks!!

SMASHED a story of drunkin girlhood

From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, twenty-four-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes "the usual." With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at fourteen, alcohol poisoning at sixteen, a blacked-out sexual experience at nineteen, and total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at age twenty-two, when she realized she had to stop, and all the depression, rage, troubled friendships, and sputtering romantic connections in between. Zailckas's unflinching candor and exquisite analytical eye get to the meaning beneath the seeming banality of girls getting drunk. She convinces us that her story is the story of thousands of girls like her who are not alcoholics—yet—but who use booze as a short cut to courage, a stand-in! for good judgment, and a bludgeon for shyness, each of them failing to see how their emotional distress, unarticulated hostility, and depression are entangled with their socially condoned bingeing.


This book was ok...I probably wouldn't suggest it b/c there was no real climax or "Ah.Ha" moment. She also rambled from time to time about statics and things about drinking that really had nothing to do w/ the story. Just kinda like a page and 1/2 of her opinion on the commercializing of alcohol products or something randomly thrown in every now and then.

I give this one & 1/2 bookmarks mainly for the subject matter.

Dream House

Dream House is a riveting debut novel that tells the story of a domestic drama that will forever change the lives of two families.

One terrible night. One outraged act. What price will people pay to hold their homes and dreams together?

When Kate and Stuart Kinzler buy a run-down, historic house in Ann Arbor, Michigan, they're looking for a decent remodeling investment and a little space in which to rekindle their troubled marriage. Instead they discover that their home was the scene of a terrible crime many years ago—a revelation that tips the balance of their precarious union.

When a mysterious man begins lurking around her yard, Kate—now alone—is forced to confront her home's dangerous past. Hers is not the only life that has crumbled under this roof. But the stranger who has returned to this house—once his own childhood home—is in search of something Kate may never fully understand.

This books was really good -- and made me realize how life can take you through unexpected paths. Some you choose and some you don't. The only thing I didn't like was the last paragraph I didn't think it fit but maybe thats b/c it was 1am when I read it hehe :0)

I give it 4.5 out of 5 bookmarks.

Kiss

After a car accident puts Shauna McAllister in a coma and wipes out six months of her memory, she returns to her childhood home to recover, but her arrival is fraught with confusion. Her estranged father, a senator bidding on the White House, and her abusive stepmother blame Shauna for the tragedy, which has left her beloved brother severely brain damaged.
Leaning on Wayne Spade, a forgotten but hopeful lover who stays by her side, Shauna tries to sort out what happened that night by jarring her memory to life. Instead, she acquires a mysterious mental ability that will either lead her to truth or get her killed by the people trying to hide it. In this blind game of cat and mouse that states even the darkest memories in the face, Shauna is sure of only one thing: if she remembers, she dies.


I totally recommend this book if you are interested in twist and turns and not knowing who the bad guy REALLY is!!! I posted the info shared on the back of the book b/c I don't want to say anything that would ruin it -- and make sure you read the prologue - or you may miss some info.

I give it 5 out of 5 bookmarks!


Current wonder....How old is the Queen of England?? Seriously she gotta be at least 80! or 100?

Spook

I could not get into this book - in fact I didn't even read it. I ordered it from amazon and when I told Brad about it he reminded me that I had tried to read it b/f and I didn't like it. You see when I ordered it this cover is different than the one I tried to read b/f so I didn't believe him. So I can't give much of a review - sorry people - I only got through chapter 1.

Snappy - if your interested you are welcome to have this book - you just have to meet me for dinner one night and I'll be more than happy to pass it along to you :)

This author did wright stiff which is about the different things that happen to your body after you die - now that book is REALLY good and interesting - I highly suggest it!

Auschwitz

This is a must read for anyone who is interested in the history of the Holocaust. I myself am a big fan so when I came across this book on amazon it was a must buy. Auschwitz gives you a personal account of Dr. Miklos Nyiszlei a Jew who worked as a forensic doctor for Dr Josef Mengele in the crematoriums. Dr. Mengele is known as the "Angel of Death", the man responsible for killing millions of Jews and for performing experiments on thousand others. I have read a few other personal stories from survivors of the camps and this one told a story that I had never heard before. It turns out that those who worked in the crematorium lived a completely different life then those who who lived in the other parts of the camp.

I give this book 5 out of 5 bookmarks!

If I Am Missing or Dead

So I found this book on the Barnes & Noble bargain rack the other day and read it in about 2 1/2 days. I was completely sucked in from the start. It is a true story about how the author deals w/ her struggles w/ men through out her life only to have her sister killed by an abusive lover in the end. Honestly this book was not what I expected. I was drawn to it b/c of the title thinking that it would be more of a murder mystery. Even the inside cover is directed more towards the murder of her sister then the story of her life.

I did think it was a good book!!

The author takes you through her life from childhood to her adult years growing up in a family of 4 girls & 1 boy. The strain that her father puts on her and the family along w/ the physical and mental abuse that she suffered w/ most of her relationships w/ the men in her life.

I would suggest this book!!
I give it 3.5 out of 5 bookmarks