Summer Lovin' III

Who doesn't love this song?  I haven't seen Grease in so long!  It makes me want to download it right now!  I almost said, "go out and rent it right now" but I guess no one rents movies anymore, do they?  Regardless, I would love to see this again.  I suppose though, it is more of a "back to school" movie, isn't it?  We'll Always Have Summer is definitely a summer book.  It is the last book in what some places have referred to as The Summer I Turned Pretty Trilogy by Jenny Han.  The Summer I Turned Pretty and It's Not Summer Without You were the first two and I absolutely loved them.  Tore right through them, even though I never considered myself a summer romance kind of girl.  This final book in the series was no less powerful than the first two.  You really need to read them in order and try to read them slowly, because you will be sorry when they are over.  Heck, it really isn't possible to read them slowly though....they are just too darn good.  Belly must make a choice between Conrad and Jere.  At first I was team Jere all the way, then I was Conrad, and back and forth.  Wow what a pleasure it was to read these books!  Loved them!

Summer's End

So summer ends officially in a few days. I wanted to read It's Not Summer Without You before fall started and I was actually able to do
it. It's was a great book for me to read now. Not just because it's about summer but because it's about closure. Endings and memories.
and making sense of the past, letting it go and finding a way to live now.
For millions of people, September will always have one common remembrance. The day when the world stopped turning for us, as individuals, as a nation. September 11, 2001 was yet another day that will live in infamy. Every September 11, like every December 7 will be tainted by the blood that was shed by the actions of incomprehensible people. We will not, we must not ever forget and let these days become just pages on the calendar, just another day.
Each of us probably has our own individual days when it seemed like the world stopped turning. On Friday, September 16, 2005 I lost my dear friend, Joanie. She lost an earthly battle with cancer, but won her place in Glory Land.
I was nearly half way through It's Not Summer Without You on September 16 this year and so perhaps the book was more powerful to me than it might have been on a different day, in a different month, but I'm not sure.

A moving sequel. I recommend this whole-heartedly. But keep a tissue nearby.

Summer Lovin...

So I thought before summer officially ends I would read The Summer I Turned Pretty, which I half-remembered from a review of its sequel, It's Not Summer Without You (which I haven't read, but put on hold at the library). I spotted it on the library shelf a couple weeks ago and wanted to finish it before summer's end. Well I finished it in one day, pretty much. About fifty pages in I put it on my goodreads.com shelf and quickly scanned a few reviews. Now that I've finished it, I am pretty confused by what a few of the readers had to say about Summer. First there was the comment that the main character, fifteen/sixteen year old Belly, is unlikable and spoiled. The reviewer had all kinds of bad things to say about her. All I can think is that there's no way in heck the reviewer ever met Margaret Simon in the pages of a book, or in a nightmare, for that matter. Belly (Isabel) is a normal teenage girl who is pretty self-aware when it comes to her equally normal shortcomings. Another criticism of the book was that it didn't seem to be "about anything". Which is also way out there.The book is about young love, first love, sibling rivalry, and loss.The folks who ripped on this book probably have never been in love or something. I also don't know how they could have experienced great loss and not really felt something for this book. Dare I say that I was almost brought to tears near the end? Yes. I will say it. I never read Jenny Han before but I've seen Shug around and will probably read that after the sequel to this one. Excellent book, for summer or anytime. This was more than a beach read, though. And I was surprised to see that the cover has a quote from Sarah Dessen on it that reads, "This book has what every girl wants in a summer." Indeed, it has a ton of things in it that every girl wants to experience. But it has a couple things, that every girl probably will experience, but will hurt to the core. Great, great book.