Black Cat by V.C. Andrews (spoilers)

While babysitting last night I finished reading an awesome book. It is called Black Cat . It is the second book in the Gemini Series by V.C. Andrews . It is 375 pages.

I think this was better then the first book. In this book it starts with baby Celeste being 2 1/2 years old. Mother realizes she wont be able to hide the baby forever so she comes up with a plan and starts seeing the late Elliot's father Dave. Mother tells everyone that baby Celeste's parents died in a car accident and she has come to live with them. She knows the busy bodies in town with thing that Dave and her have had an affair over the years and that this is his child.

Dave and Mother get married. Dave and his daughter Betsy move in with them. Betsy winds up pregnant and runs off. Dave gets sicker and sicker everyday and I think its pretty obvious that mother poisoned him. Dave dies and 2 months later Betsy returns with her son which she has named Panther.

Betsy sneaks into Celeste's room one night and discovers that Celeste is not really Noble as she pretends to be. She figures everything out about who baby Celeste is. She confronts mother and tells her that she wants her inheritance money and then she wants to leave. Mother goes into a vegetable state and Betsy tries to dumb boiling water on her to get her to snap out of it. Celeste grabs the pan of boiling water and blocks Betsy from getting to mother. During this Betsy falls down the stairs and dies. Celeste buries her in the garden.

Soon after mother dies. Celeste contacts her mothers only friends and the police arrive. Baby Celeste tells them that Betsy is in the garden. Celeste is taken away I believe to a psychiatric ward. The story ends in a way that seems like it is the end of the story but since I know this is a three part series I cannot wait to get to the library tomorrow and request the final book!

I originally wrote this post on personapaper.com on February 15, 2015. The site is shutting down and I never earned any payment. I have transferred this post here on this awesome new blog site and deleted the article on personapaper.

Celeste by V.C. Andrews (spoilers)

I just finished reading a really good book last night by V.C. Andrews called Celeste. It is the first book in the Gemini Series. Its a fiction book of 406 pages.

I am a huge fan of V.C. Andrews books but when I started this book it didn't seem very good. I'm very skeptical about supernatural things. Most things about it just irritate me so I avoid reading about it or listening to things on the topic. I was hooked about 1/3 of the way through the book though.

Noble and Celeste are twins and have a mother who either truly can communicate with spirit or is just completely insane. Its really hard for me to tell which possibly both. Soon into the story their father dies and that's when things start to get pretty crazy.

Noble is always favored by mother. He is stubborn and a typical boy with a very controlling mother. On the night of their 9th birthday the man their mother is seeing is killed in a car accident on the way home from their house. The following morning mother tells them they have to get rid of the train set that Mr. Kotes had given them. He refuses to and climbs a tree and breaks his leg when he falls out. Celeste is made to take care of him and entertain him. Everything is made to seem like her duty!

Mother winds up sick in bed and Celeste is made to watch over her brother. Noble decides against mother and Celeste's orders to go fishing. Celeste doesn't want to get in trouble for her brothers actions so she goes after him. They get in a argument over the fishing rod and Noble falls in and drowns. Yes its horrible but what happens after is crazy. Mother buries Noble and tells Celeste she has to take over her brothers spirit and pretend to be Noble. The extremes of what she has to do to pretend to be her brother are just unbelievable. They then call the police and say that Celeste is missing.

New neighbors move in across the woods. They have a boy Elliot who is a year older then Celeste. He winds up discovering Celeste lying naked by the pond and rapes her on her 16th birthday. A few days later Elliot winds up drowning in the same creek that Noble drowned in years before. Celeste becomes pregnant. After giving birth to the baby she is made to dress as a boy again and pretends to be the babies brother. The baby is named Celeste.

Man what a crazy story but it was a great read. I can't wait to start on the next book in this series.

I originally wrote this post on personapaper.com on February 2, 2015. The site is shutting down and I never earned any payment. I have transferred this post here on this awesome new blog site and deleted the article on personapaper.

If I stay book by Gayle Forman & movie Review (spoilers)

The 11th book I have read this year was " If I stay " by Gayle Forman. It was 234 pages.

I saw the DVD on the shelf at our local library in the section for new movies they have. Then while looking down the aisles in the junior section I saw the book to it. I grabbed both and decided to read the book first. I am glad that I did because I think the book was slightly better and if I had watched the movie first I wouldn't have been as excited to read the book because I would have already known what happened.

Now the book was copyrighted years before the movie came out which was surprising to me because the movie was so similar to the book that I thought the book had to have been adapted exactly from the movie.

The book starts out with school being cancelled because of the weather. The family of 4 decides to go visit friends. On the way there they get in an accident. The mother and father die and Mia is in a coma and having an out of body experience. Her brother who is 7 and is in critical condition as well dies within a day or so. That part was the saddest in the movie and the book.

Mia's boyfriend Adam is in a band and in college and they struggle to decide what their future will be like with her going to a college soon across the country. They have an absolutely beautiful romantic relationship. She plays the cello and I wonder if the girl who plays Mia in the movie is really that good at the cello in real life or if they had someone else playing it. She makes such a weird face in the movie when she plays that I can't help but laugh.

I struggled with reading this book because the scenes of her in the hospital reminded me so much of when my husband was in the hospital dying.

In the end she is about to give up and let herself die when her boyfriend does something that brings her out of the coma. I believe she is choosing to live but I guess we will have to find out in the next book.

I originally wrote this post on personapaper.com on February 24, 2015. The site is shutting down and I never earned any payment. I have transferred this post here on this awesome new blog site and deleted the article on personapaper.

Particulars of My Life by B.F. Skinner (spoilers!!)

I just finished reading book 12 of 2015 called Particulars of My Life by B.F. Skinner . It is 319 pages. On doing the 2015 reading challenge I was able to check off another one on the list as this was written by a man who grew up in the town of Susquehanna as I did. More then half of the book is about the town.

This is an old hardcover book that has been borrowed from the local library more then 95 times. It was copyrighted in 1976. What caught me as funny while reading this is that it was donated to the library and whoever owned it before obviously did not care for Burrhus as she had written not so nice comments along the edges of the pages.

If it weren't for the fact that it had so much interesting information written about the town that I grew up in I would not have liked this book. I don't feel like it was written that well. There are lots of things written in french or other languages and not translated so I have no idea what they say. I felt like most of the book just rambled on and I struggled to stay focused. It leaves off at the end with him going back to college for a second time to study psychology which is how he became famous. I was disappointed it ended like that. I wanted to find out more about what happened to him as he grew up and to his family and friends. I wanted to find out how and when he met his wife.

B.F. Skinners real name is Burrhus Frederick Skinner. Such a strange name until we learn that his mother gave her maiden name as his first name. I know the house where he grew up as I walk by it on my walks to town. I have heard that he is a very distant cousin to me. I know that he is no longer alive but I do not know when he died. He had a younger brother who was very close in age named Ebbe. Not long after the family moved to Scranton PA both boys were in college and Ebbe died.

I found such interesting things in this book. One of the shops in town (my exes friend owns) someone commited suicide in the basement. A very good friend of mines relative from way back was one of Burrhus teachers and was spoken of a lot in the book. There was a cottage in the area called "Linger Longer" and an ice cream place called the "Sugar Bowl".

I have not been able to figure out yet where Beebe's Flats was or what is referred to as Little Italy.

Another interesting thing for me in this book was the mention of Burrhus going to Bread Loaf in Vermont. Another book I read by another local author talked about going to the same place. It was a place for writers to take summer classes.

The most interesting thing I discovered while reading this book was the name of my ex. It wasn't him of course in the book but one of his relatives from way way way back with the same name. He was murdered and Burrhus's father was a lawyer and represented the man who killed him supposedly in self defense.

I originally wrote this post on personapaper.com on February 25, 2015. The site is shutting down and I never earned any payment. I have transferred this post here on this awesome new blog site and deleted the article on personapaper.

Where She Went by Gayle Forman (with spoilers)

The 13th book I have read this year is called  Where She Went by Gayle Forman. It is the sequel to "If I stay". This is a fiction book with 260 pages.

This book is from Adam's point of view where as the previous book was in Mia's. Adam's band has made it really big. He lives in Los Angeles and has been dating a girl named Bryn for a year. Adam has not seen Mia since she left for college 3 years ago.

As Adam leaves an interview that does not go well at all he see's that Mia is giving a performance and he pays for a seat and listens. As he is leaving afterwards an usher tells him that Mia wants to him to come backstage. They get together and catch up a bit. They are both leaving the following day to go on Tour. Mia is going to Tokyo and Adam is going to London. Mia talks Adam into going around the city and seeing some of her favorite places.

Adam is full of hurt and rage and anxiety throughout this book. It has a very beautiful ending though with Mia and Adam working things out and getting back together. It is what I had hoped would happen.

I originally wrote this post on personapaper.com on March 3, 2015. The site is shutting down and I never earned any payment. I have transferred this post here on this awesome new blog site and deleted the article on personapaper.

Geocache find #70 Mamie & Eva (spoilers!!!)

On Wednesday March 16, 2016 my son had a dentist appointment at a new office. I am not familiar with the area and  the gps was not working correctly after having to reboot my phone. When we finally found the office we had some time to go geocaching. 

Just down the road was one called Mamie & Eva at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Cemetery. 

The first thing I noticed when I pulled in was a beautiful angel statue on the left. 

From where we parked it was the cache was abut 500 feet away. We walked along the edge of the cemetery and saw a few old trains. If the bank had not been so steep I would have walked down to take a closer look at them. 

When we got to ground zero we saw the geocache laying there down the bank. 

My son and I traded two erasers for rubber stamps. One for him and one for my daughter. Looking up at a large tree in front of us I think that the geocache might have been in the tree and fallen out. I have never seen a cache just sat on the ground unhidden. It was on its side and I replaced it to the same spot but placed it the right way so no water will leak into it. Everything was nice and dry right now. 

As I headed back up the bank to the cemetery to leave I noticed the two graves with the names Mamie & Eva on them. This geocache find brings my total to 70. 

Christopher's Diary : Echoes of Dollanganger by V.C. Andrews

I liked the first book in this series but this was the better of the two. It was more mysterious and interesting especially the ending! If you liked the Flowers in the attic series you will definitely want to read both of these books in The Diaries Series.

This book starts us off where we left off where we left off in the first book with Kane and Kristen deciding to read Christopher's diary together in Kristen's attic and to act out of the roles of Christopher and his sister Cathy. Kristen starts to get a little creeped out the way Kane is acting and his strong interest in the diary. He arranges the diary to look like the attic at foxworth hall and even creepier he takes some hair out of Kristin's hairbrush and has a wig made to match her hair color.

Kristin's father was hired to rebuild a house at the site of the old foxworth hall. Weird things are discovered such as not knowing who the actual owner of the house will be and who will live in it since it is all done via a secret trust.

At the end of the story is a very interesting and surprising ending. I thought we would find out that Kane was somehow related to Christopher but that was not the case at all. What we did find out was that Christopher's little twin brother Cory did not die as we had thought in reading the Flowers of the attic series. Instead he was dropped off at an emergency room and lived. He was wheel chair bound from the grandmother poising him but lived and had a wife and two children. He was the one who was to move into the new house at foxworth that was being built.

I was shocked at the ending I actually had to read it twice to really grasp it. This was an awesome ending that makes me want to go back and read the whole Flowers in the Attic series all over again. It has been about 12 years or so since I read the whole series. I had the original books and sold the lot on ebay when I was done reading them.

This is book 2 in The Diaries Series. It is fiction and has 357 pages. It is the 14th book I have read in 2015.

I originally wrote this post on personapaper.com on March 9, 2015. The site is shutting down and I never earned any payment. I have transferred this post here on this awesome new blog site and deleted the article on personapaper.