Before we left for vacation, I was looking for a new book to read on my Kindle. I tired of the “Fifty Shades” series and wanted something light and fun. Then I found “Confessions of a Scary Mommy” and it was the funniest thing I’ve ever read.

Jill Smokler started a blog called Scary Mommy after she had her first child a few years ago. She didn’t know that “mommy blogging” was a thing, and her blog took off. There was a confessionals part where moms could anonymously write in things like “I pretend I’m asleep when my husband calls me to put the other baby to bed.” or “I encourage my children to bite their nails so I don’t have to trim them.”

Anyway, she ended up writing a book all about parenting and included confessionals in every chapter. The book had hundreds of them. They were laugh out loud funny. Another favorite was about a woman who spent too much time in the bathroom secretly reading magazines. Her husband kept nagging her to see a GI doctor.

The chapters ranged from how she picks favorites of her kids, time at the pool, the infant years, mealtime, how even her dog suffered from having new babies in the house, how you don’t steal a babysitter, etc.

It was a light and fast read, very relatable, and really LOL funny. I encourage you to pick it up!

I finally read a new book that I enjoyed! It had been a while. You can always count on Jennifer Weiner for a good read. Her latest, just out in July, is about four women with separate lives who are interconnected. They are different ages, live in the same general geographic area, and are from different backgrounds. The book alternates chapters about each woman until they start to get woven together.

I really enjoyed the stories of each woman–one a college student who donates her eggs, one a middle class woman who becomes a surrogate for extra money, and one a woman trying to have a baby. The fourth is the step-daughter of the woman trying to have a baby who didn’t like the step-mother and her motives for wanting a child.

I found each woman intriguing and likeable and I wanted to keep reading. Although it wasn’t a smashing ending, I still thought it was a page turner that I enjoyed and didn’t want to end. It’s always the sign of a good book when I want to keep reading but stop so it won’t end.

What have you read lately?

Hooray for Friday! This has been a light week on the blog with three days of vacation posts! I hope you enjoyed them and didn’t get too bored.

I really liked my post on swimming yesterday as a nice change.

This weekend I will be spending a lot of time in the kitchen for entertaining! I am a host of a baby shower tomorrow and have two dishes to make, and then we are hosting Father’s Day dinner at our house on Sunday. I hope the recipes turn out great and I have a lot to share next week!

For today, another book review. I started and finished Bossypants by Tina Fey last week.

What a fun summer read. Tina Fey’s book of short stories from her life was truly laugh out loud funny from the start. She tells stories of where the scar on her face came from, how she started comedy in improv on Second City, why she wanted more than one child, and lots of behind the scenes interesting facts about Saturday Night Live, including her jaunt as Sarah Palin. I also loved her honeymoon cruise to Bermuda story.

I really liked the SNL stories, especially about Palin, because I loved her in that role and was interested to see how it happened.

It was one of those books that you don’t want to end, mostly because it was so darn funny.

Bossypants was written Chelsea Handler style, but this one was just as funny and less raunchy than Handler.

Read it this summer. She is just so smart and witty.

What are you reading or what’s on your list?

Pssst–for the fun photos, see the bottom.

I finally have another book review to post. It has taken me forever to read this book, Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult, and I was in a reading rut before this one with finding something I enjoyed. The last book I read was The Hunger Games. After that one, I started the second in the series and stopped about 15% in, then I started a book called “One Day” and was incredibly bored. After that, the new Jodi Picoult book came out so I thought it’d be a sure win. I love Jodi’s books. They are always page turners and really make you think.

Unfortunately, it took me two months to read this one and I was pretty bored with it too. Have no fear, I started Tina Fey’s book “Bossypants” and am already LOLing.

Sing You Home

Jodi Picoult always takes on something controversial in her books, and usually they either have a legal or medical plot, or sometimes both. This one was legal based and about homosexuality and the right to have children. The story was about a married couple who were unable to have children, and after three rounds of IVF, they divorced. The woman became a lesbian and got married, and they wanted to use leftover embryos to get pregnant. The husband filed a lawsuit to stop her from being able to use them. The rest of the story is about what happened. There were side plots about the importance of music therapy and a lot about Christianity.

My problem with the story is that it dragged on and on. I read it on my Kindle, so I didn’t know how many pages had gone by at a time, but the 480 pages went on forever. Jodi Picoult’s books are usually long, and I usually like it because I’m so engrossed that I don’t want it to end. This was opposite. It dragged and spent too much time on stories that weren’t really that interesting. Her husband was unlikeable, it jut wasn’t a page-turner, unless you were turning the page to get to out of a storyline.

I would pass on this one, but if you read it, I’m curious to know what you think. See this post for some info about other Jodi books. My favorite Jodi books are Nineteen Minutes and My Sister’s Keeper.

What are you reading this summer?

To see my other book reviews, view my Books page.

Melt, Dip and Roll

This is an easy and family friendly dessert treat. It’s good for adults too! For Memorial Day, we didn’t have any outdoor BBQ plans, or anything special in particular, so I jazzed up a weeknight dessert. If only I were better at melting white chocolate, these would look even prettier, and less like a 2nd grader did them.

(how cool is this zoom on the sprinkles?)

I bought a pack of strawberries, a bag of white chocolate chips, and blue sprinkles and got to work. I also had some pretzel sticks in the pantry that I thought sounded fun too for a sweet + salty treat.

Ingredients:

(for about 6 strawberries plus 6 pretzel sticks)

• 1 C white chocolate chips*
• 6 strawberries plus 6 pretzel sticks
• blue sprinkles

Instructions:

*First, the chocolate I used was not the best for this little experiment. I used regular ol’ Nestle Tollhouse white chocolate chips. The melting process was very temperamental and wouldn’t really melt into a drippy form that I wanted. I tried the microwave stirring every 15 seconds, then on the stovetop, then a double boiler. My conclusion is to use better chocolate. I had this problem back in December when I made bark, and must have forgotten that this white chocolate doesn’t work well. You should use a better quality white chocolate like Ghiradelli or Lindt.

• In the microwave or stovetop, carefully melt white chocolate over low heat. A double boiler should work well too.
• Quickly dip your strawberries in the white chocolate and then dip the tip in the sprinkles.
• Set on parchment or wax paper to harden. Refrigerate until ready to eat. Be careful that the pretzels will stick to each other if you don’t separate them.

What a cute and nice guy. He came to Sur La Table in our neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon, so I waited in line to meet him! I also wrote about it for CultureMap with more details than this post. Link here.

Here are some pictures too.

This is his new book called “Bobby Flay’s Throwdown!” with over 100 recipes from the show. The store also made his winning Mac and Cheese for the people in line to sample.

What a nice way to spend your Tuesday morning when it’s 90 degrees in the middle of October. At least it was shaded until we turned the corner.

What a nice guy! He signed books and took pictures. His hair is more red than I realized. I feel short.

Did you know he’s a runner? He’s running his third New York Marathon on November 7. I brought the article from this month’s Runner’s World and he signed that too!