Manic Monday

Just getting home from a glorious vacation followed up by an annual work weekend that is more fun than work!! :)  School starts for me today though (I'm teaching two summer school classes left on the schedule by a retiree) so I've got to get back in the swing of things and back on schedule!

Reading: 

Over the long 4th of July weekend I read Janet Evanovich's Finger Lickin' Fifteen, Sizzling Sixteen, Smokin' Seventeen and Elisa Lorello's Faking It - I decided not to review Fifteen and Sixteen since I 'literally plowed through them to get to Smokin' Seventeen...I was not disappointed in any of them.. Before getting started, I read some reviews that were not so positive of Finger Lickin' Fifteen, but I really enjoyed it...Lula's character really begins to take more shape (ha) at this point in the series and I've really enjoyed getting to know her even better. 

Reviewing:

I've made notes on Smokin' Seventeen and Faking It for later reviews, and scheduled all of my reviews...I decided to actually put a date on each of them...in the order that they were finished.  I may bump some up depending on time, etc. but it helps me to plan on getting my backlog up in a timely but also quality fashion.  I am behind on Wicked Lovely this week because of time off so I'll bump it in this week somewhere. 

New Books:

Amazon and Barnes and Noble offer free Kindle and Nook reads here and there...some books are free all the time, but at various times, both stores will offer certain ebooks free for a limited amount of time.  I usually find out about these in one of three ways: emails from Frugal Girls, Freebie Blogger, and/or Friday's Free Books on Lena Sledge's Blog.  I've got four freebies ebooks waiting on me...This Fine Life, Solitary, Boys, Bears and a Serious Pair of Hiking Boots and In the Belly of Jonah.

Solitary and In the Belly of Jonah are both firsts in a series so I chose This Fine Life and Boys, Bears etc. to read first.
I also found a sequel to Faking It but actually decided NOT to read it...unless somebody can convince me otherwise...I'm actually ok with Faking It ending just as it did...more on that in my review later.

There were tons of giveaways in the last couple of weeks and I entered quite a few.  I wanted to enter others, but the bloggers required a "follow."  Usually to follow someone, all I have to do is click FOLLOW and GFC knows me and asks me if I want to follow.  I said yes, and it's a done deal.  However, I'm now having problems with my Google Friend Connect ...when I click to follow someone's blog, GFC acts like it doesn't know me and won't let me sign in???  Anybody have any idea why that's happening? 

I actually won two books this week!!!

The Bird Sisters from Kathy @ BermudaOnion.

and Jerusalem Maiden from Audra @ Unabridged Chick
NOTHING is more exciting than receiving books for FREE!!! I can't wait to get started on these!!!

Posting Schedule

Tuesday:  Top Ten Authors I Would Die to Meet

Wednesday - Book Review of Wicked Lovely instead of the usual Wordless Wednesday

Thursday - Book Review - Water for Elephants

Furry Friday - Beneigt and Uh-Oh

Saturday - Saturday Snapshot

Sunday - Weekend Cooking - Hungry Girl experiment #1

Menu

I don't have a menu plan yet this week...tonight we'll be having a easy family favorite, Shepherd's Pie and maybe I can figure out the rest between classes today and Show Choir meetings tonight :(