Well With My Soul

by: Gregory G. Allen

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Synopsis:
Jacob and Noah Garrett are brothers harboring a lifelong resentment towards each other while dealing with their own compulsive obsessions. One is a liberal gay man who forsakes his family and moves to New York City from Tennessee where he travels deep into a labyrinth of sex and drugs while fighting the fear over his homosexuality. The other is a southern conservative who is left at home holding the proverbial family bag.

The story follows their loosely intertwined lives through the wild times of the late seventies and the restraint of the Reagan years in which one brother ends up becoming a minister and preaching his doctrine while the other believes there are some things people are born with and not meant to change. Well with My Soul is told through the perspective of both brothers and shows how misguided choices can drastically affect those around you for years to come; and family may be all that one has when looking for peace to stifle the embers that smolder beneath the surface.

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I'm pretty sure the guy on the cover is Jacob Garrett. He's a good looking gay-man who believes he is destined for greatness. He talks his boyfriend into moving from Tennessee to New York so he can be famous. He is successful as a male model, but can't catch a break in acting. Actually if he'd bother to tone down his ego and lay off the booze and pills, he may have made it.

Noah, on the other hand is a good ol' boy who stays back in Tennessee with their mother, who dies of lung cancer after a few years. Noah, not wanting to be in that small town either, moves to Nashville and finds work. He also starts writing, and turns out he has a great deal of talent. When his career takes off, Noah ends up in New York as well, happy to be living closer to his brother. Family is a big theme in this book.

After nearly dying, Jacob trades coke for Jesus. The going back and forth between brothers highlights what a self centered person Jacob really is, even after sobering up. It's who he was from the beginning, and he breaks the hearts of everyone around him. The addiction was played out perfectly here, because he never truly is cured. He gives it up, but the behavior that led him there remains.

Truly this is a heartbreaking story, but I couldn't put it down. So even though it made me sad, it is a great story.

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Head over to Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom to enter the contest to win this baby!

Good luck!

11/22/63

by: Stephen King

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Synopsis:
On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? Stephen King’s heart-stoppingly dramatic new novel is about a man who travels back in time to prevent the JFK assassination—a thousand page tour de force.

Following his massively successful novel Under the Dome, King sweeps readers back in time to another moment—a real life moment—when everything went wrong: the JFK assassination. And he introduces readers to a character who has the power to change the course of history.

Jake Epping is a thirty-five-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students—a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. He enlists Jake on an insane—and insanely possible—mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.
A tribute to a simpler era and a devastating exercise in escalating suspense, 11/22/63 is Stephen King at his epic best.

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Man - hard to call that a synopsis. But considering the book is over 800 pages, I guess it's fitting. The cover is epic. On the front is the newspaper from the assassination of Kennedy. On the back is a new paper where Kennedy escapes assassination. Which one will it be?

Jake Epping is the central character in this story about time travel and changing the past for the great good, but is it really better? Jake was moved by a story from one of his adult students whose family was brutally murdered by the father, and he was the only one to survive. Jake tested the effect of changing the past by saving this mans family and coming back to see what happened. Turns out the man, without the handicap inflicted by his father, was sent off to die in Vietnam.

But it's possible to change the past, so he steps back into September 1958 to try it over. He saves the little girl shot in the woods, he saves the man and his family, and then moves to Texas to start working on saving Kennedy. He is ready to follow...stalk...Oswald, but since there are so many years to kill, he accepts a job teaching in a small town not too far from Dallas. He also falls in love.

The main lesson, the past does not want to be changed. It's an amazing tale following Jake's time in the past, a time he comes to really enjoy. And he thinks that by saving Kennedy the future will be better. You'll have to read the book for yourself to see if he wins over the past and succeeds in his mission...and if he does...was it really for the better?

It will take you awhile to read it, but hundreds of pages will fly by without you even noticing. I loved it, and would recommend it to any Stephen King fans.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Due to illness (my boys) and holidays (Thanksgiving), I am taking the week off. This week is going to be spent catching up on my new job, taking boys to the doctor and driving all over Mid-Michigan for turkey day.

Feel free to go through the archive and check out some of my Hidden Gems there on the right.

See you all next week. Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers!

And if you go out for Black Friday...good luck and godspeed!

(image from Slap Upside The Head)

Sunday Stealing: The TV Meme

Cheers to all us thieves!

1. Name a TV show series in which you have seen every episode at least twice: Roseanne

2. Name a show you can't miss: Raising Hope

3. Name an actor that would make you more inclined to watch a show: Brendan Fraser

4. Name an actor who would make you less likely to watch a show: Tom Cruise...guy kinda creeps me out. Has for years!

5. Name a show you can, and do, quote from: Scrubs

6. Name a show you like that no one else enjoys: XX Kids and Counting...seriously where are they at now?

7. Name a TV show which you've been known to sing the theme song: Malcom in the Middle - "YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME NOW!"

8. Name a show you would recommend everyone to watch: Once Upon a Time

9. Name a TV series you own: I have no idea what the point of this question is...

10. Name an actor who launched his/her entertainment career in another medium, but has surprised you with his/her acting chops in television: I guess it would be John Lithgow...I reviewed his book here. Actually I was more surprised to learn he is a regular Broadway actor...tv I knew he was on.

11. What is your favorite episode of your favorite series? I can't answer this...I don't have a favorite episode...it's hard enough to pick a favorite show.

12. Name a show you keep meaning to watch, but you just haven't gotten around to yet: The Tudors and TrueBlood.

13. Ever quit watching a show because it was so bad? You know, I'm really not keen on that new show Broke Girls, but it's right there between my Monday night favorites.

14. Name a show that's made you cry multiple times: I don't know, I can name some that have made me cry once...

15. What do you eat when you watch TV? my husband's Pepper-Bacon Fat Popcorn. YUMMY!

16. How often do you watch TV? Daily...thank God for Netflix.

17. What's the last TV show you watched? Warehouse 13

18. What's your favorite/preferred genre of TV? sitcom

19. What was the first TV show you were obsessed with? The Muppet Show...my mom and I watched it together.

20. What TV show do you wish you never watched? The Young and the Restless...my brain is eternally fried...and I still want to know what's going on!

21. What's the weirdest show you enjoyed? I don't know...ok, you tell me what you think is a weird TV show and I'll tell you if I've seen it or not.

22. What TV show scared you the most? I can't think of one, so either there isn't one or I blocked it out.

23. What is the funniest TV show you have ever watched? Malcom in the Middle...I just love that show.