Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me

Lucia Van Der Post has been writing for decades and I'm so glad I got to see her work in print - since I'm not much a peruser of The Financial Times  or  The Times of London. Her writing is glib and informative and never ever pushy. This is seriously my kind of book!

"Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me; A Guide To Living With Impeccable Grace and Style".  Has all kinds of advice from what kinds of clothes to wear to which skin products work to where you can find nice stuff for cheap prices (oh yes, she mentions Target more than once) and where you can find outrageous stuff for outrageous prices ($40,000 for a made-for-you perfume, anyone?).  It's like having 368 pages of a girly magazine that you'll never want to throw away. 

She goes into love and marriage (I appreciated her views) and keeping a home as well as the style section (I've only gotten through part 1 and a bit of part 2 - couldn't wait to blog about it!) and I've started picking it up each evening with a highlighter to mark favorite quotes and passages.  It's so much fun!

Pendragon Books by D. J. MacHale

I've always seen these books at the library and thought, "I'm not in the mood for another retelling of King Arthur". I thought this since Uther Pendragon is Arthur's father.

Anyway. These books are NOT about King Arthur. They actually remind me of Stargate. It is a story about a 14 year old boy named Bobby Pendragon, who discovers he is a Traveler. He travels to these different worlds via wormholes and it is a fight between good and evil. Some of the cultures are primative and some are quite technologically advanced. All in all, they are fun. There are 10 books in the series and I'm on the sixth one right now. The last book is due to be released in May 2009. The first one is not as strong as later ones in the series. They get progressively better.