Monday

In entertainment news today, People Daily reported on the happy engagement of Hugh Hefner, 84, to Crystal Harris, 24.

{Below, an excerpt from the article}.

Although she cried with happiness, Harris says, "There wasn't any 'down-on-one-knee' or anything like that, because we are not traditional."

Apparently, this sentence was then accidentally omitted from the article:
"Another reason to forgo the 'down-on-one-knee' bit, of course aside from the fact that we are not traditional, is that we would have had to contact LifeAlert to help me raise him back up to a standing position seein's how he's 84 and all."


Next on the docket, happy birthday today to my dear old young! mom:

In other news, let's talk books.

I had a big reading month in December, and would like to share in case you need some options.

Little Bee

British couple Andrew and Sarah O'Rourke, vacationing on a Nigerian beach in a last-ditch effort to save their faltering marriage, come across Little Bee and her sister, Nigerian refugees fleeing from machete-wielding soldiers intent on clearing the beach. The horrific confrontation that follows changes the lives of everyone involved in unimaginable ways. {Amazon.com review}

I liked this book, and it offered up ample conversation for our book club.

'Katie.com

This is a memoir written by a girl now in her 20's, but who was 13 at the time she became involved with a man she met on the internet. Her encounter became the first internet predator case to be prosecuted. This was very interesting and a quick 3 hour or less read.

Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah's harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip-hop music and dance to an internal refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces.  {Amazon.com review}

I like to read books that expand my horizons beyond my own little sphere, and I think it's important to learn about and understand what is going on in our world, so although sad and disturbing at times, this was really eye opening.

Half a Life

“Half my life ago, I killed a girl.”

So begins Darin Strauss’ Half a Life, the true story of how one outing in his father’s Oldsmobile resulted in the death of a classmate and the beginning of a different, darker life for the author. We follow Strauss as he explores his startling past—collision, funeral, the queasy drama of a high-stakes court case—and what starts as a personal tale of a tragic event opens into the story of how to live with a very hard fact: we can try our human best in the crucial moment, and it might not be good enough. Half a Life is a nakedly honest, ultimately hopeful examination of guilt, responsibility, and living with the past. {Amazon.com review}

This was also a very quick read, 3 hours or so. I loved the honesty of this author and his ability to admit to all of the true feelings and emotions he endured as a result of the accident.