Happy 4th of July!

Enjoy your Independence Day!

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Check out the wikipedia entry for the US Declaration of Independence. Makes you wonder if some of the officials have even read it.

The Actor and the Housewife: A non-spoilerish review

I'm a huge Shannon Hale fan. Let's just get that out in the open. It's shameful. Well not really shameful but obsessive. I've read every published work. Some multiple times. I'd like to say that I own them all as well but after my recent book buying kick I think I'm on a budget. I dragged my family 12 hours from Denver to Phoenix back in April to see Shannon Hale and Stephenie Meyer at the Project Book Babe event.

I follow Shannon's blog and when I heard a few months ago that she had a new non-YA novel coming out I was very happy. The last non-YA novel she published was Austenland. I waited for that book to be released. And then I devoured it in 4 hours. It must have taken months to write, edit, etc. And it took me almost no time to rip thru it and really want some more. It was good. I liked the idea alot. The plot drew me in. Good stuff.

The Actor and the Housewife was a good book. I really enjoyed it. I'm going to be as descriptive as possible without giving anything away. I hope. This book was a slow starter. By that I mean it didn't immediately draw me in. I knew the basic premise of the story from the blurbs I'd read and the discussion on Shannon Hale's blog.

There's an actor and a housewife obviously. They become friends. They have life. They have laughs. People think they are weird. They are weird. Things happen to them. Life events bring them together and apart. They made me laugh and cry.

NOTE: Thanks a lot by the way, Shannon. My husband had to come comfort me at the end of Act 2. I was a mess. But I continued reading anyways.

The story take some surprising twists and turns. I really didn't see some things coming. Others were more obvious to me. In the end, I can look back on this book and say I really enjoyed it. My favorite lines from the whole book (and it's hard to pick just one) are:

Felix: "I don't know how you persist in being so stubborn---"
Becky: "It's a superpower. I was bitten by a radioactive mule."

I woke my husband up about 15 minutes after he fell asleep last night to read that to him and he fell back to sleep with a laugh.

This book brought out emotions from me that I didn't want to experience. To me that says something about a story. That you experience emotions with the characters. It means you made a connection. It really did start kind of slow. However, like most good stories if you stick with it for the first couple of chapters you won't be sorry.

And by the way, if like me you've already devoured this yummy book there is a great "behind the scenes" of how this book came about. Here's the link: http://www.squeetus.com/stage/books_housewife.html