Ghostwriter Anonymous by Noreen Wald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book, the first I’ve read by this author. The story revolves around a group of ghostwriters who’ve formed a group called Ghostwriters Anonymous to help them in their lives of anonymity.

Members of the group start to be killed and Jake, one of the members of the group, tries to figure out who. The story is about her sleuthing while trying to keep from being killed herself.

I loved the character of Jake. She’s smart and funny. The book has other really colorful characters including Jake’s mom and Gypsy Rose.

If you like a fun mystery that will keep you guessing until the end, this book is for you. 🙂

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Ashley Bell by Dean Koontz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was a crazy book and I loved it. There were lots of twists and turns and I didn’t know how it was going to turn out!

I’ve been reading Koontz for a lot of years. I always found the stories to be true enough to be scarier than more far flung stories that couldn’t possibly seem real. This book. like his last, is not as scary as those in the past but I’ve enjoyed the newer direction.

Bibi Blair is an author that has been writing since she was a child. She’s the daughter of surfer parents that have always had a live and let live mentality. She’s a little more down to earth, in her mind. Bibi is found to have brain cancer, a kind that cannot be treated, and is given a year to live. That’s where this story really takes off.

Bibi fights a war on two different levels and the book weaves well through both of them and the back story of her childhood.

If you want a book that will keep you on the edge of your seat guessing, here it is!

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Stars Over Sunset Boulevard by Susan Meissner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really loved this book. I love the way it wove between 1938, when they were making the movie Gone With The Wind, and today. I loved the unlikely friendship between Audrey and Violet.

Audrey is a gal with a mission to become a star in Hollywood. She has a bungalow that was left to her by an aunt and is working in the secretary pool at Selzniak Studios waiting to be discovered. Violet heads to Hollywood to get away from sadness and ends up working with, and living with, Audrey. The two become best friends.

The story travels through the making of the film Gone With The Wind and around a hat from the movie that was lost during filming but that Violet had really taken, hidden and sent back to Alabama in a box of clothes. Bert, has been Audrey’s best friend since she’s been in Hollywood and Violet finds herself falling for him. Eventually they get married and Audrey gets into the Hollywood scene as an actress on television.

I loved watching how Violet and Audrey’s friendship changed and grew over the years and I loved the people of this book. Highly recommend. 🙂

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Everybody Rise by Stephanie Clifford
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really loved this book and didn’t want it to be over. I really loved Evelyn and I wanted her to be successful.I was cheering for her!

Evelyn, isn’t from old money but, rather, new money. Her father, a plaintiff’s attorney has set the family up pretty well but Evelyn always feels on the outside looking in. She does have a few well placed friends from when she was in school and uses these connections to try and help her with her new job for a website called People Like Us, a sort of upscale facebook.

After talking Camilla Rutherford into joining the site, Evelyn becomes entranced with her world and becomes her almost instant best friend. Racking up thousands and thousands of dollars in debt trying to live up to people who have trust funds, her world starts caving in around her when she learns that her dad has been indicted.

I was happy at the end of the book that Evelyn seemed to have figured out what was important and was on her way back towards success.

Loved it, great book! 🙂

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Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love this book! What a great story about Beryl Markham, a horse trainer and aviator. I wasn’t aware of Beryl Markham before reading this book but in the author’s note at the end, she says that Markham wrote her own book which I’d like to read.

Beryl was raised in Africa by her father after her mother left, taking her brother, when she was 4. Her father was a horse trainer and she grew up learning everything at his side. She was friends with the local African children, her best friend being Kibii.

The story takes us through Beryl’s life which wasn’t an easy one. She married at 16 after learning that her father was losing his farm and horses and taking a jo elsewhere. She felt it was the right thing to do but she didn’t know her husband at all and it was a very difficult relationship which she eventually fled taking almost nothing with her but her horse.

She went to a family friend and learned how to be a horse trainer under his tutelage and was the first woman ever to hold a license to train horses.

Beryl eventually marries again but it also ends on a sour note after her baby. Gervase, is born with defects. Her husband and the babe stay behind in London while she eventually goes back.

Throughout her life, there is Denys who she comes together with periodically until his death.

Eventually, Beryl learns to fly and becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from East to West.

This is a wonderful story that will suck you right in. I didn’t want it to be over and I highly recommend it! 😀

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We have recently gotten Play Doh for the Glambaby. I loved Play Doh when I was a kid and, at almost three years old, I felt it was time to share that love with her.

We started out with just four cans of it: pink, purple, green and blue. I like those colors and so does she. I was worried about them getting mixed up so we would play with them one color at a time at first. 

We rolled them into snakes and bracelets, rings and cats. Her favorite thing to make with it is a birthday present. And if she’s being really fancy she’ll add a bow on the top of it. Then we hand it back and forth and open it, talking about what the birthday present is and commenting about how lovely it is. 

She also turned it into a birthday cake one time. It was entirely her idea to use the crayons as candles and I got a laugh out of that, thinking how clever she is.

I’ve loved how having only the PlayDoh stimulated her imagination. But once we started playing with it, she found some videos on YouTube where they have other Play Doh accessories they use to make dresses for Disney Princesses. So I started looking at other things we could get to go along with the Play Doh we already had. 

For Christmas, we ended up getting two different Sofia the First sets and one big set of cut out tools and shapes, like cookie cutters. 

With the Sofia sets, we also got the much desired Sparkle Play Doh! Sparkle Play Doh is available in a six color set for the price of $3.50 but it was completely sold out before Christmas. I still could have gotten that same $3.50 set for $40 if I had wanted to pay that to the guy who was selling it on eBay. But I decided we’d take what we got with the Sofia sets and hope that the other set was available by her birthday in February. It’s very nice and sparkly and we weren’t disappointed with the ones we got. 

The day after Christmas we were playing. It’s amazing to me how long this busy little girl will sit and play with the Play Doh. The Sofia sets are nice. One makes jewels and one makes treats. We’ve begun opening more than one color at a time and we haven’t had too much mixing of the colors. 

The glambaby has never been one to put things in her mouth that don’t belong there. Several months ago, we were coloring and she randomly stuck the orange crayon in her mouth. It was so weird because we really never had to watch out for that sort of thing with her. She was surprised that it didn’t taste good but something about it must have looked good to her for her to decide she wanted to taste it. I teased her about eating the orange crayon and we laughed about it. She hasn’t tried to eat another crayon since. 

Imagine my surprise when she decided to taste the blue Play Doh. The look on her face was priceless. Clearly, it wasn’t as tasty as she thought it was going to be and we had to brush her teeth to get the look off of her face. 

The first time we baked cookies, I felt sure she would eat the dough. But we were almost completely finished rolling and cutting out cookies before she finally decided she should sample the dough. She liked it and I think it’s possible she ended up eating more of the unbaked dough than actual cookies. 

I have to believe that the Play Doh reminds her of cookie dough. Especially since we now have what look like cookie cutters to use with the Play Doh. Sadly, Play Doh will never taste as good as cookie dough no matter how brilliant and tasty looking its colors are. 

Playing with the glambaby lets me be a kid again and I love introducing her to toys and songs from my past. I can’t wait until she’s big enough for a pogo stick. I think that would be a lot of fun and I never had one when I was a kid. I figure by the time she’s heavy enough to work a pogo stick, I’ll be about 60. 😉