I have been a fan of Sophie Kinsella since her very first book. So when Sophie Kinsella mentioned few back back that she was working on another Shopaholic. I was elated, almost went into hyperspace. Her Shopaholic series were my favourite series I ever read. Now I can’t wait for it to be dued on 16th September and I already so looking forward to you. The synopsis is also finally up and here you go – get your heads around this:

Becky Brandon (nee Bloomwood) thought motherhood would be a breeze – but it’s trickier than she thought. Two-year-old Minnie is a little tearaway who has created havoc everywhere from Harrods to Harvey Nicks to her own christening. She hires taxis at random, her favourite word is ‘Mine’, and she already has a penchant for Balenciaga bags. Becky is at her wits’ end.

On top of this, she and Luke are still living with her Mum and Dad, there’s a big financial crisis so everyone’s having to Cut Back – including all her personal shopping clients – and her husband Luke is feeling low after the death of his beloved stepmother. To cheer Luke up, Becky decides to throw him a surprise birthday party – on a budget – and that’s when things become really complicated. As Becky tries to keep the arrangements secret, misunderstandings and excuses sprout everywhere, and soon she’s told so many fibs she can’t keep track of them. Will Becky pull off the surprise? Will Minnie give everything away? Will Minnie’s godparents ever stop arguing? Who will end up on the naughty step and who will get a gold star? And what will happen when Becky discovers Luke is keeping a big secret too?

I’m really counting down. Approximately 1 mth and 2 days to go!

My Sister’s Keeper is a book by Jodi Picoult that tells the story of a young girl who sues her parents for medical emancipation when she is expected to donate a kidney to her dying sister.

My Sister’s Keeper is a fictional novel written by Jodi Picoult. The story follows the life of 13- year-old Anna Fitzgerald, who enlists the help of an attorney, Campbell Alexander, to sue her parents for rights to her own body. Kate, Anna’s older sister, suffers from leukemia, and their parents conceived Anna through in vitro fertilisation to be a genetic match donor for her sister Kate. Anna donated genetic material throughout her life, such as blood and bone marrow. Now, their parents want Anna to donate a kidney to Kate, but Anna instead files a lawsuit against her parents for medical emancipation so she will not be forced to donate one of her kidneys to her sister.

Her parents, Brian and Sara Fitzgerald, have different reactions to the suit. Brian has mixed feelings while Sara feels that Anna should donate the kidney to save Kate’s life. Sara is a lawyer turned housewife and decides to represent the parents’ side in the suit. Sara attempts to get Anna to drop the suit, but Anna refuses and moves out of the house and into the fire station where her father works.

After Kate’s cancer diagnosis, Jesse, Brian and Sara’s oldest child, grows up to be a troublemaker involved in alcohol, drugs, theft, and arson. There has been an arsonist setting fires in the area that Brian and his fellow firefighters have been putting out. The arsonist is revealed to be Jesse, and Brian finds out the truth after finding clues. Brian confronts Jesse and learns how badly Kate’s illness has hurt him. Brian vows to keep Jesse’s arson a secret. Jesse eventually straightens himself out and becomes a police officer.

The judge at the hearing, Judge DeSalvo, is a parent who lost his child in a drunk-driving accident. The guardian ad litem assigned to Anna as her representative is Julia Romano, an old girlfriend of Campbell’s.

Julia and Campbell met in a private high school. She was a scholarship student from a poor background while he was a rich kid. They fell in love and enjoyed a relationship until Campbell broke up with her at graduation. Julia never knew the reason but felt it was because of her social class. Although they try to conduct court business, their attraction to each other is obvious.

Campbell has a guide dog named Judge even though Campbell seems to have no disabilities. He keeps the purpose of the dog a secret. Julia and Campbell spend the night together with Campbell being the first one to leave. Feeling abandoned again, Julia is frustrated about her relationship with Campbell. But when Campbell has a seizure during Anna’s testimony, the purpose of the dog is revealed: he is seizure dog. She discovers Campbell developed epilepsy after a wreck before graduation, and he broke up with her because he did not want to be a burden. She supports him, and they reunite. They eventually marry.

Campbell and Sara bring in their witnesses and battle over whether Anna is mature enough for medical emancipation. Julia, who is supposed to deliver a report about who she thinks should win, is undecided. Anna, who has refused to testify, is the last witness to speak. She reveals that Kate told her that she did not want Anna to go through with the transplant. That is why Anna started the lawsuit. The judge decides in favor of Anna and gives Campbell medical power of attorney over her.

Anna dies in a car wreck soon after she is emancipated from her parents. Her kidneys, and other organs, are donated to Kate, and other patients that might need them.

Kate thinks the reason she survived is because someone had to go, and Anna took her place. She grows up to be a dance instructor and it is said that whenever Kate missed her sister, she’d look at the scars from the kidney transplant and believe she took Anna wherever she went.

Extracted from Wikipedia.
The Lost Symbol, formerly known under the working title as The Solomon Key, is an upcoming novel by American writer Dan Brown. The Lost Symbol will be the third book to involve the character of Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon, after 2000’s Angels & Demons and 2003’s The Da Vinci Code.

Ever since I bought my 1st copy of Vivi magazine from Hong Kong international airport, I have converted myself to a Vivi magazine fan.

Currently, I have 4 copies already. & I don’t dump them after reading. I prefer to keep. This is so unlike me. I normally dump my Her World, CLEO etc…….

ViVi (ヴィヴィ^?) is a Japanese fashion magazine published by Kodansha. ViVi is one of Asia’s top fashion magazines, and is published in Japan, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The target age group are teens and young women between 17-27 years old, the main demographic of readers are college students and young office ladies.

The magazines ‘cover queen’ is Ayumi Hamasaki, who has been featured on the cover 24 times since 1999, and also runs her famous Deji Deji Diary in each issue. Other artists frequently featured on the cover include: Namie Amuro, and Kumi Koda

Extracted from Wikipedia.

NO. I didn't go missing in action. Nor did I go out shopping during this Great Shopping Sales. I merely just refused to on the laptop cos I was reading.

I managed to finish Cecilia Ahern's Thanks for the Memories in just 2 days.  Justin Hitchcock has moved to England to be closer to his daughter, after he and her mother divorced. He travels to Ireland to work as a guest lecturer at Trinity College. It is there that he is persuaded to donate blood for the first time.

The dedication in the front of the books is to her grandparents and includes photographs. I could see her Grandfather Ahern as Henry.

 I am currently reading The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. GREAT BOOK! I am totally engrossed in it!Take a look at the review done by W. R. Greer.

What do you do when you meet the love of your life when you're six years old? And he's 36, but he's really only eight years older than you are? If you're Clare Abshire, you wait for each of his visits throughout the years until you meet him in real time.

Henry DeTamble is a time traveler, although not by choice. A genetic mutation causes him to spontaneously travel through time, disappearing from view, leaving behind his clothes and possessions, and arriving naked in another time and another place. For the most part, this is a curse. Henry often has to turn to petty crime to feed and clothe himself when he travels, and must run from people, thugs, or the police. Eventually Henry returns to his present time, bringing only the bodily injuries he's suffered back with him. Sometimes he travels back in time and visits an earlier version of himself. One of the places to which he travels often is the meadow behind Clare's house, and throughout her younger years, Clare meets him there and falls in love with him.

This is the basic outline for the story of Henry and Clare in Audrey Niffenegger's remarkable debut novel, The Time Traveler's Wife. This is far from a science fiction exploration of the space-time continuum, but a heartfelt love story of two people who must live with this curse as part of their lives. Ms. Niffenegger has thought through all the ramifications of the time travel, and sewn it seamlessly into the storyline. Once you accept that time traveling is a part of Henry's life he can't control, nothing that happens to him seems farfetched or out of character.

The Time Traveler's Wife follows the story of their lives mostly in a straightforward chronology, at least from Clare's perspective. She's a child and then a teenager with their secret rendezvous throughout the years in the meadow. Henry first visited her at an older age, so he knew the dates that the earlier versions of himself would visit the older versions of Clare. She kept clothes hidden for him in the meadow and sometimes hid him in a basement room of her house. He was her big secret that she always kept to herself. How could she explain the presence of an older man who traveled through time to be with her? As a teenager, she was rumored to be a lesbian since she had no romantic interest in boys.

In those early days of her life, Henry knew much about her future, but declined to tell it to her. Not that she could have done anything about it. Henry often knew things that were going to happen, but nothing he could do would stop them. They still happened. Once Clare became an adult, she knew she had to wait to meet Henry in real time, and that he would be her lover. When they did finally meet, Henry in the present was a younger man, who had not yet traveled to the meadow to meet Clare. At this point, she knew parts of his future that he did not. As Clare and Henry merge lives, his time traveling excursions become times that he is absent from her life, even if he's traveling back to meet a younger Clare. Clare explains after living with Henry for a while:

 

Our life together in this too-small apartment is punctuated by Henry's small absences. Sometimes he disappears unobtrusively; I might be walking from the kitchen into the hall and find a pile of clothing on the floor. I might get out of bed in the morning and find the shower running and no one in it. Sometimes it's frightening. I am working in my studio one afternoon when I hear someone moaning outside my door; when I open it I find Henry on his hands and knees, naked, in the hall, bleeding heavily from his head. He opens his eyes, sees me, and vanishes. Sometimes I wake up in the night and Henry is gone. In the morning he will tell me where he's been, the way other husbands might tell their wives a dream they had: "I was in the Selzer Library in the dark, in 1989." Or: "I was chased by a German shepherd across somebody's backyard and had to climb a tree." Or: "I was standing in the rain near my parents' apartment, listening to my mother sing." I am waiting for Henry to tell me that he has seen me as a child, but so far this hasn't happened. When I was a child I looked forward to seeing Henry. Every visit was an event. Now every absence is a nonevent, a subtraction, an adventure I will hear about when my adventurer materializes at my feet, bleeding or whistling, smiling or shaking. Now I am afraid when he is gone.

Time travel has its advantages as well. Henry's mother died in a car accident when he was a small boy. He often goes back in time to see her, although all he can do is watch from a distance. At the same time, he's traveled back often, too often, to the fateful day that took her from his life. As Henry gets older, he learns more about his disease, and that stress and watching the flickering images on television can trigger an episode. He can't drive a car since he might disappear while behind the wheel, nor can he fly in a plane since it won't be at the same place in the air when he returns from his travel. Once Henry convinces a leading geneticist that he can time travel, he enlists the doctor's help is isolating the genetic problem and trying to control it with different combinations of drugs.

The novel is titled The Time Traveler's Wife, but as Clare realizes, her life is so intertwined with Henry's that it's his story also. The story is told in first-person narration from both Henry and Clare. Each section begins with the date and the ages of Clare and Henry, and sometimes multiple ages for Henry when more than one version of him is present. This allows us to see their lives from both their perspectives, to see Clare's fear every time Henry leaves or how his actions in the past or future affect her life in real time, and to see Henry's struggles to cope with his "illness" while trying to remain safe and keep the secrets that he shouldn't reveal to anyone.

At its heart, and a very big heart at that, The Time Traveler's Wife is a love story, one populated by realistic characters. Even with the time travel and its effects on their lives, Henry and Clare are people you intimately know and empathize with, their fears and flaws common to us all. Everyone has a cross to bear, and Henry's is unique. Ms. Niffenegger does an admirable job portraying their life together, and exploring a love built over a lifetime that courses deep through both of them. Even through their rough stretches of their life, the lifelong fear of something terrible happening to Henry while time traveling, their anguish at the miscarriages when Clare wants a baby more than anything else, the moments where they'd just rather be alone, their love for each other is never questioned and their hope is never extinguished.

The time travel, while not completely an original idea, does bring a spark of freshness and suspense to the love story. Knowing that stress can trigger an episode, Henry plans carefully and worries often during potentially stressful situations, like his wedding to Clare or meeting her family for the first time. It also adds to the suspense of the story, not knowing when Henry will arrive or leave during any important part of their life together. Although, at times it's obvious where the story is headed in the larger sense, Ms. Niffenegger is astute enough to throw in surprises with Henry's travels that either fills in lost knowledge about their pasts, or sets the stage for some part of their future. Often it's these small portents of the future that keep the pages turning in the hope that they mean something other than what they seem to suggest.

The Time Traveler's Wife is also more than a love story between two people. It explores all the relationships of their lives: their parents, families, friends, and ex-lovers. My only complaint is that, whether a realistic depiction or not, love in this novel is something from which recovery never seems to happen. Henry's father mourns his beloved wife to the point that it cripples and debilitates him. Ingrid, Henry's old girlfriend, despairs to the point of suicide about losing Henry to Clare. Everyone loves with such a passion that there is no middle ground, no loved and lost and grown from the experience.

This is a minor complaint in a wonderful novel. This book will make you glow as you share the love between Henry and Clare, it will make you laugh, it will leave you on the edge of your seat while Henry time travels, and it will make you cry. Once you're buried within this novel and fully immersed in their lives, you have to suffer their pain as well as celebrate their joys with Henry and Clare. This is a testament to the literary skill of Ms. Niffenegger.

Henry summarized his love for Clare in a letter to her after they've been for married for many years:

 

Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.

Grab a copy of The Time Traveler's Wife and throw yourself headlong into their story. It's time well spent. This is a highly recommended read, and I know it will be a gift I'll offer generously to others on my holiday list this year.

Now I am off to continuing reading The Time Traveler's Wife. 

Hmmmm… Thinking of dropping by Kinokuniya this week since there is a 20% discount for members. It has been days since I left home. -_-"

The Lost Symbol, formerly known under the working title as The Solomon Key, is an unreleased novel by American writer Dan Brown.

The Lost Symbol will be the third book to involve the character of Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon; the first two were Angels & Demons (2000) and The Da Vinci Code (2003).

The book's story will take place in Washington, D.C. and focus on Freemasonry. The book has been in development for several years; originally expected in 2006, the projected publication date has been pushed back multiple times. The book will be published on 15 September 2009 with an initial print run of 5 million copies, which will be the largest first printing in publisher Random House's history.

he book has been on pre-order lists for a few months and is being heavily ordered both in the U.S. and Canada. Brown's US publisher Sonny Mehta described it as "a brilliant and compelling thriller" which was "well worth the wait".

Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog is a New York Times bestselling autobiographical book by journalist John Grogan, published in 2005.

Told in first-person narrative, the book portrays Grogan and his family's life during the thirteen years that they lived with their dog Marley, and the relationships and lessons from this period. Marley, a yellow Labrador Retriever, is described as a highly strung, boisterous, and somewhat uncontrolled dog. He is strong, powerful, endlessly hungry, eager to be active, and often destructive of their property (but completely without malice). Marley routinely fails to "get the idea" of what humans expect of him; at one point, mental illness is suggested as a plausible explanation for his behavior. His acts and behaviors are forgiven, however, since it is clear that he has a heart of gold and is merely living within his nature.

During his escapades he makes a two-minute credited appearance in the movie The Last Home Run (filmed in 1996 and released in 1998).

The strong contrast between the problems and tensions caused by his neuroses and behavior, and the undying devotion, love and trust shown towards the human family as they themselves have children and grow up to accept him for what he is, and their grief when he finally dies in old age, form the backdrop for the biographical material of the story.

Recommendation: 4.5/5 Very good! The 1st book that makes me SOB like mad! I wish I have a dog. 

Marley & Me by John Grogan is an engaging book that uses the story of a crazy dog as a framework to talk about life, love and struggles of beginning a marriage, starting a family and making the most of every moment. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever loved a pet. Marley & Me, however, is for more than pet people. I recommend it for anyone who enjoys a good story.

Credit to wikipedia. 

Since Sandy Shortt’s childhood classmate disappeared twenty years ago, Sandy has been obsessed with missing things. Finding becomes her goal- whether it’s the sock that vanished in the washing machine, the car keys she misplaced or the graver issue of finding the people who vanish from their lives. Sandy dedicates her life to finding these missing people, offering devastated families a flicker of hope.

But when Sandy goes missing too, she stumbles upon the place – and people – she’s been looking for all her life. A world away from her loved ones and the home she ran from for so long, Sandy soon resorts to her old habit again, searching. Though this time, she is desperately trying to find her way home.

Recommendation: 7.5/10 An interesting theory on where our missing things went to. =/ Even for missing humans.