Igor Chak's got a bad case of Donkey Kong {Bookshelf love}

{Igor Chak}

Friday 56 and #BookBeginnings: A Frightful Recipe

For Book Beginnings:

On Tuesday evening Toby, the caretaker of Chatswood Manor, called a meeting. All three Chatswood Manor ghosts were there, as well as two crows and a stone gargoyle.

For Friday 56:

"Oi!" Jingo drifted down to the bed and pulled Ivan's big toe. "Wake up! I can't scare you if you don't wake up!
(- p. 21, the book doesn't get up to page 56, so I just chose one randomly)

This is such a fun book ... heck this entire series is fun! It's great for some good laughing bedtimes with the kids. After all, it is Children's Book Week! Why not celebrate by joining in this giveaway and the giveaway hop! (Just check out my original post and the giveaway stops HERE)

A Frightful Recipe (The Chatswood Spooks #1):  Paperback | Kindle Edition

Sheets and Ladders (The Chatswood Spooks #2): Paperback | Kindle Edition

The Halliday's Maladies (The Chatswood Spooks #3): Paperback | Kindle Edition

Don't forget to join the giveaway!

Or you can enter directly in Rafflecopter below.

Open International. Winner gets all three e-books

a Rafflecopter giveaway

It's Nothing Personal by Sherry Gorman

It's Nothing Personal by Sherry Gorman MD

Amazon.com: Paperback | Kindle Edition

Oh, it's very personal.

Synopsis of It's Nothing Personal: Anesthesiologist, Dr. Jenna Reiner, was blindsided on a January morning by an incident that would forever change her life. A scrub technician at her hospital was stealing narcotics from anesthesiologists, injecting those same narcotics into her veins, and returning the contaminated syringes, knowing they would be used on patients. The scrub tech was infected with hepatitis C, a deadly virus. Unknowingly, anesthesiologists at St. Augustine Hospital were injecting their patients with hepatitis C laden syringes. When Dr. Jenna Reiner administered anesthesia, she was holding a murder weapon in her hands. Dr. Reiner was about to find out that not only was her hospital at risk, but her entire life was about to be turned upside down. 

My two cents: I went through a Robin Cook phase of medical thrillers; Coma set me off. I've never had illusions about being a doctor but I find medicine a fascinating subject -- the minute details of our amazing bodies, how medicine affects its processes, and how doctors can make a difference.

It's Nothing Personal is far from Cook's medical conspiracies; it is more a psychological study of a doctor who is sued for malpractice -- how litigation affects one on a personal level, including one's family, and the impacts on one's professional life.

Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Path in New York, Summer 1953 by Elizabeth Winder

Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953

by Elizabeth Winder

Amazon.com: Hardcover | Kindle Edition 

Moments define us.

Synopsis: On May 31, 1953, twenty-year-old Sylvia Plath arrived in New York City for a one-month stint at "the intellectual fashion magazine" Mademoiselle to be a guest editor for its prestigious annual college issue. Over the next twenty-six days, the bright, blond New England collegian lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended Balanchine ballets, watched a game at Yankee Stadium, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She typed rejection letters to writers from The New Yorker and ate an entire bowl of caviar at an advertising luncheon. She stalked Dylan Thomas and fought off an aggressive diamond-wielding delegate from the United Nations. She took hot baths, had her hair done, and discovered her signature drink (vodka, no ice). Young, beautiful, and on the cusp of an advantageous career, she was supposed to be having the time of her life. Drawing on in-depth interviews with fellow guest editors whose memories infuse these pages, Elizabeth Winder reveals how these twenty-six days indelibly altered how Plath saw herself, her mother, her friendships, and her romantic relationships, and how this period shaped her emerging identity as a woman and as a writer. Pain, Parties, Work—the three words Plath used to describe that time—shows how Manhattan's alien atmosphere unleashed an anxiety that would stay with her for the rest of her all-too-short life.

My two cents: Having this biography in my TBR has literally pushed me to read The Bell Jar. (Check out my review here.)  

Before reading The Bell Jar, my extent of Plath knowledge: brilliant poet, committed suicide. I was on the verge of buying a secondhand copy of The Bell Jar and someone saw me and said: that's depressing reading. It seemed that entering into the world that is Plath was one of angst and of darkness.