After losing my ipod touch, I decided to replace it with the much-cheaper nano. However, that meant that I wouldn’t be able to use it for email or game apps. I survived, but when the Kindle Fire came out, I wanted it! I could use it to watch my Amazon Prime free video content; I could get some game apps from the android market, I could use it for email and web on the go, and well — yeah, I might use it to read.

I put it on my Christmas list and lo and behold, my wish was his command. After using it for over a month, here are some of the ways that the Kindle Fire has surprised me:

1. I actually enjoy reading on it! I honestly thought that the Fire would be my tablet toy, but I’d still use my old Kindle with the e-ink screen for reading. Boy was I wrong. The backlit screen doesn’t bother me at all. I generally keep the brightness turned way down (about 25%), and it doesn’t bother my eyes at all. Believe me, this had been a concern. I spend enough time staring at screens, and the thought of a glossy backlit screen didn’t appeal to me at all (though I thought it would be good for nighttime reading in the car, and it is).
2. However, it really won’t do for outside reading. This weekend my husband and I got away to Florida with some friends. I brought my “new toy” (as my husband calls it), but it did NOT do for reading on the back patio or by the pool. I do a lot of reading outside on vacation and at home, so I’ll probably choose to bring the traditional Kindle, E Ink Display when that’s going to be the case.
3. The game apps aren’t nearly as great as those available for Apple devices (no Diner Dash! No Chocolatier!), but that’s probably fine. I’ve amused myself with Sally’s Salon and kept my son entertained with Angry Birds.



4. It’s heavier than I would have thought. Especially holding on to it and trying to play games, I noticed the weight. However, I bought the Marware jurni Kindle Fire Case Cover that has a sort of pocket you can slip your hand into without gripping it so tightly, and I love it. It does make a difference.

Have you been surprised — either positively or negatively — by your ereader or tablet purchase?

*Here are all the posts I’ve written about my Kindle:

• My thoughts on the Kindle (5/09)
• A month of e-reading (6/10)
• Hello, Kindle, my old friend (2/11)
• My Kindle got skinned 9/11

This collection of original sayings began as email messages to my daughter, Sarah, during her years of college. I encouraged her to believe in herself, to stare hardships in the eye, and to know that kindness is not only to be given, but to be graciously accepted as well.

For me, chocolate is a metaphor for confidence, courage, and compassion. Life isn’t always easy. It is, however, a great deal more rewarding when you have a good attitude, a genuine relationship with your Creator, and a little “chocolate” with breakfast.”

I love that!

This cute little hardcover gift-book contains little sayings such as “Appreciate who you are today. Discover, with joy, the beauty of all you are yet to become,” and “A misstep is not necessarily a mistake. It could be a pivot point for a new direction!”

They are divided into sections on attitude, confidence, courage, and compassion, and have a few colored drawings (like the one on the cover) included throughout.

What a great Valentine’s Day gift (with a bag or box of chocolate, of course!!) for a daughter, friend, or teacher.

Jennifer Donovan loves her chocolate ooey and gooey, or paired with peanut butter. She’s definitely not averse to chocolate for breakfast. She blogs at Snapshot.

But other then having an overactive worrying imagination, he’s a perfectly normal kid. He and his best friend Gigs have a made-up language and made-up games that, along with time, has cemented their friendship. He’s waiting for the switch to turn on that will make girls interesting and attractive, and that might be happening when free-spirit Sydney moves to his class and they are partnered up on a project.

No one really talks about Ma — not his siblings, not Uncle George (who is really his father with just an odd name that has stuck), but Frankie worries about her too. He worries why she doesn’t leave the house, and begins to wonder if he might end up like her. But Sydney asks a lot of questions. At first he does everything he can to avoid them, but in the end letting himself get to know her and be known by her, helps him to figure himself out a little bit more.

I can’t put my finger on why exactly, but this book feels firmly like a book for middle schoolers and above. It doesn’t have a lot of swearing or any activities that would worry the parent of a child younger than 13, but there are some mature themes mentioned. I love that there is a true coning-of-age YA book that should appeal to ages 13 and up out there that isn’t full of explicit language and sex.

It’s also one sure to appeal to adults who are fans of the coming-of-age tale (like me!). I like that it has a boy protagonist, but because the emotional quotient is very high it will also appeal to girls (and of course he has a girl best friend/perhaps more than a friend).

And if you like quirky — this one has just enough to keep you smiling, though not enough to annoy you if you don’t like quirky (although if that’s your opinion, I strongly feel you are missing out). A father called Uncle George? A cat named the Fat Controller? A made-up language? It’s all there.

AUDIOBOOK NOTES: The accented reader Stig Wemyss added to that element of place (New Zealand) that resonated loudly with this American listener.

Jennifer Donovan realized that she was addicted to audiobooks when she knew she had to replace her lost/stolen ipod within weeks — and not so she could get her groove on. She blogs about other likes at Snapshot.

I would imagine that everyone out there has heard of The Hunger Games, in some fashion. At least “I sure hear a lot about this, but I don’t know what it is.” You might know that the Hunger Games movie releases March 23. You might not know that it’s a wildly popular Young Adult series by Suzanne Collins, that has fans from tweens up through adults. You might not know that it’s dystopian literature. If you don’t know any of this, I’d suggest you brush up, because I think that this movie and these books are going to continue down their path of wild success, and you don’t want to be the last one in the know.

Keep reading my review at 5 Minutes for Mom, where you can enter to win a copy….

For me, variety is good — both food wise and in my literary pursuits. I love reading fiction that makes me think, and feel, and cry. I return to deeply-drawn characters again and again in my mind. I also am affected by reading people’s true stories in memoir or biography form, learning from both their successes and failures. Interesting nonfiction presents information in a way that rewards my time with knowledge. Books help strengthen my faith or my knowledge of the things of God.

But sometimes I just want to be entertained. I want to read a page-turning suspense novel or a mindless romance. They are often formulaic and won’t likely stick with me for longer than the handful of hours that it might take me to finish it. But they are enjoyable. Like candy, they sometimes leave me craving more. Like candy, they are easy and pleasant to digest.

We were staying at my in-laws’ house at Christmas. They are both readers, and so there are newspapers and magazines, paperbacks, and library books all over the house. I noticed a Dean Koontz title in a stack of my father-in-law’s books. It looked interesting, and I used to enjoy his books, so I picked it up. Pretty soon I was immersed in The Good Guy.

It was suspenseful, interesting, and entertaining — perfect for sitting in the living room with the family and reading a chapter here or there.

My father-in-law’s mother is also a big reader, and usually gives books at Christmas. This year she gave me a Nicholas Sparks book, Safe Haven. I have read a few of his novels, but it’s been a while. I was actually pleasantly surprised by this one, because like Koontz’s novel, it had some danger and suspense and was a bit of a thriller, instead of 100% romance.

There was a time in my life that these types of books made up the vast majority of my reading diet. They became routine and expected. Can you eat too much candy? Maybe. All I know is that after not having read anything like these two in a while, I genuinely enjoyed them.

What’s more, just like the sweet and delicious chocolately goodness, they left me craving more.

Jennifer Donovan blogs at Snapshot about life in Houston in her house full of bookworms.

I think that Big Miracle fits in this “interesting non-fiction category.”

The Big Miracle movie is based on a true story. Reporter Tom Rose was one of the people who went to Barrow, Alaska to cover the event. He wrote a book called Freeing the Whales: How the Media Created the World’s Greatest Non-Event, which has recently been republished as Big Miracle, movie tie-in.

The original title shows a bit of his tongue-in-cheek philosophy (and honestly, this almost satirical view does come across a bit in the movie, too), but in reality, Rose’s book is pretty balanced. He gives information about Alaskan Eskimo whale-hunting (and how the subsistence hunting legislation actually caused more whales to be killed than before), the culture in Barrow, Alaska, the way news media works, what makes a story popular and why, the oil business of drilling in Alaska (correctly expressed in Texas vernacular as the “all bidness”), and so much more.

Set in the Cold War era of 1988, politics come into play as well, when a Russian ship is the only one available that can reach that area to break the ice.

If you see the movie (and I do recommend it for you and your whole family — I loved it), don’t expect the book to be a story like this is, but if you want to know more about the people and culture in this small remote Alaskan town and how this even affected them (and didn’t affect them), I can highly recommend this book. I haven’t quite finished it, but it’s a very readable look at this one event and the real-life characters who were principals in the action.

Truly a movie for the whole family

Big Miracle opens February 3.

I can’t wait to share it with my family, because I know that they’ll all love it, which is rare to be confident that my 13-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, not to mention my husband, will all enjoy the same movie!

**Universal Studios took care of my travel expenses for this lovely trip to Santa Monica, California for the Big Miracle press junket, in exchange for coverage of the movie, however, I was not told what to say. My opinions are completely my own.

Check out all the Big Miracle movie coverage over at 5 Minutes for Mom:

• Drew Barrymore and John Krasinksi
• Behind the Scenes on the Big Miracle Set and Blogger Interviews (Kristen Bell)
• Ted Danson and Dermot Mulroney

Marley is a sweet and likable character. Unlike her friends who are hanging out with high school kids, she’s still plotting out the ultimate water balloon attack – a tradition they’ve had for years. Her dad’s next-door neighbor is cute, but is there something romantic going on or are they just friends? She sure feels weird when she sees him – weird in a good way – but is she ready for all that stuff?

Things go awry when she launches her attack at a drama party at her friend’s house that they invite her to in spite of the fact that she hasn’t been hanging with that crowd, but it ends up being about more than high school boys and a case of bad timing. Marley finally realizes that maybe they’ve grown apart. Maybe the friendship has run it’s course.

The lesson is one that girls learn as they get ready to transition into high school. It’s painful, and it can be hard to break out of your past and forge forward with new friends but the author expresses the difficulty and the necessity of it so well. I loved our young heroine, who though her friends paint her as babyish, was really just a good kid with a good head on her shoulders.

Water Balloon by Audrey Vernick is a sweetly dramatic novel, which also had many moments where I laughed out loud. It would be a great book to share with your 11 – 14 year old daughter and use the situations as a springboard to talk about things. Or better yet – DON’T beat her over the head with conversation about “What if your friends invited you to a party where people were drinking and you felt uncomfortable,” or “Don’t you feel like you and Friend X are interested in different things now?” Save the shared experience of the book to pull out of your arsenal to talk about some difficult situations when the time comes.

This book was a Cybils nominee in the Middle Grade Fiction category, and I’m glad I had the chance to read it. It’s definitely more appropriate for the older tween segment of this category and young teens as well, but I wouldn’t recommend it to 9-year-olds as the description on amazon says.

Jennifer Donovan had fun in middle school, probably because she too had a pretty good head on her shoulders and didn’t rush to grow up too fast. She’s glad her own 8th grade daughter lives in a similar way. Jennifer blogs at Snapshot.

Julia Scheeres masterfully weaves together of the letters, journals, and recordings that the FBI recently released of the mass murder/suicide that took place in Guyana. She adds to it the television coverage, print articles, and stories of those who had been involved with Jones over the years in one way or another.

When I read about the upcoming release of A Thousand Lives and had the opportunity to get a copy via NetGalley, I was fascinated. I’m not usually a bad-news junkie, a reality train-wreck watcher, or a rubbernecker, but for some reason the premise captured me. The depth of the stories and the horrific truth of the situation, coupled with Scheeres’ fantastic narrative nonfiction “storytelling” made this a book that I couldn’t put down. I also felt as if I read the book with a look of jaw-dropping awe on my face — I become that immersed in the story.

If you are the kind of person who finds yourself reading random well-written non-fiction and enjoying it, you’ll definitely like this book. If you are interested in what draws people into cults and inspires loyalty to charismatic — though obviously flawed — leaders, you’ll find some answers here.

Highly recommended.

Jennifer Donovan loves it when she can gain knowledge and be entertained (perhaps engaged is a better word in this circumstance) at the same time. She blogs at Snapshot, where she strives to inform and entertain, with no guarantee of results.