I'm a vegetable gardener, and started canning as an alternative to freezing my harvest. I've been obsessed with fermenting vegetables - love the idea of preserving food, adding healthy probiotics to my food, and all without heating up my kitchen - but like I was with canning as first, I was so intimidated by the process.

I'm not, any longer. This is a great how-to guide, filled with amazing recipes that think outside the box. Everything is explained so this fraidy-cat isn't quite so afraid anymore. I also appreciate the small batch size, for my small sized family.

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received a free copy in exchange for my honest review

Wally Lamb is a relatively local author to me, he lives about an hour and a half away. I actually really love his books, though he writes contemporary fiction, which normally is NOT my thing at all. As a matter of fact, he's the only author I'll read in that genre!

This was actually a reread for me, which I enjoyed almost-but-not-quite as much as I did the first time, which was when the book first came out.

It's a coming of age story about a gal who grows up in a household with a distant father, a grandmother who cares but doesn't know how to show it, and a mother who battles her own mental illnesses and demons. Of course she can't help but to grow up to be a mess, too.

As I said, it's definitely not my usual read, but I enjoyed it all the same. You can't help but share Dolores pain, and you can't help but compare what she goes through with issues in your own life (which is why I don't like contemporary fiction; it can sometimes be too close to home, and I read to "forget" my life).

The whole time I was reading this book, I kept feeling like I had read it before. I mean, I have read it before, but years and years ago, as a kid and as a teen. I kept reading, and I kept telling myself what was going to happen next, and it finally dawned on me, I had recently re-read the book - I just didn't update goodreads with the info, or bother to write a review!

So this book, so far, is my favorite in the series. I love the imagery that Ingalls uses throughout the book to describe the scenes, and I love how Pa does everything he can to take care of the family, even leave them for months. Ma struggling through the snow to take care of the animals, her fear for her husband (while making sure her kids aren't scared), is amazing.

My dad's been trying to get me into this series for more than twenty years, so I guess it's time I finally read them. My all-time favorite book is the Stand, and he keeps telling me I'll "get" the Stand even more if I read this series.

So I'm still not really sure what happened in this book.

I'm not good with all that symbolism stuff, so most of the book went over my head, I think. After discussing the book, in great detail, with a few others who love the series, I think I "get" it a little more, but I still don't get it. I have more questions then answers, and perhaps that's the point?

Is the Gunslinger the good guy or the bad guy? Why didn't Jake just leave the gunslinger, if he knew he was going to die (again)? What was the entire point?

Like any long-running series that's out there, this one is starting to really go downhill. I haven't enjoyed the previous books as much, but still really enjoyed them & appreciated them for what they (tried) to be. I really struggled to enjoy this one as much, and it's definitely my least favorite so far.

So, thoughts? Well, Betsy's changing all right, and not for the better. All of a sudden she can talk about things her character would never care about, and instead of being smart-but-nobody-knows-it, now she's just spitting out trivia and facts. She has a few character-enlightening moments, which is swell, but the book just really drags on without much of anything happening. I don't read the series for the romance (yuck), and there's not a lot of it in this one.

Another quick, fast, re-read.

I definitely enjoy this book more than the first book, but this is the book that got me into the series, so I enjoy reading it just for that reason. Harry, Ron, & Hermoine really start to become fast friends, and you start to see small mentions of other characters that we'll really get to know in later books. Of course, we start to meet Tom Riddle, get some backstory, see new magic, start to get to know Dumbledore, etc.

There's lots more character and world building in this one, but the story arc starts to really develop as well.

Just a great, fantastic read, though this book is in the middle as far as my favorites are concerned (5-7 are my absolute favorites; 4 was my least favorite, followed by 1) - this one ties with #3, I think.

What a fantastic ride!

I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed this. It is similar to the movie - which I am a huge fan of - but is definitely different enough to hold your interest. There's a lot of science mumbo jumbo which I admittedly didn't understand half of, but it was fascinating all the same & I'm sure they dumbed down the science as best they could. I was greatly amused by all the computer talk, as computers have changed just so, so much in the last twenty five years. I definitely got my geek on reading this book! I wasn't enough finished reading this one, and I had already requested the next one from the library.

It's ironic, too, because I remember when the movie first came out, I tried getting through the book & hated it - I hated all the science and computer talk, and that was what amused me so much this read through.

I just couldn't believe how confident everyone was throughout the book, just so damned smug that they knew what they were doing - and then the dinosaur ate them. Good times.

Definitely a must read for dinosaur fans!

I don't know much about the women's right's movement. I should know a lot more, being a women, but I don't. And I admitably probably take our rights for granted, while complaining about how the boy's get favored where I work all the time, even though there are 5 times as many girls, and we do 99% of the same heavy lifting that the boys do.

This book, to me, is more a book about the women's rights movement then about Clarina herself, though naturally, since the book is named after her, there is a lot about her, too, but it's mostly about her role in the women's movements, then about her life as a whole (for example, the author talks a lot about Clarina's first marriage, but everything she writes about the marriage she relates to Clarina's future role in the movement). I wish there was more about Clarina's personal life, but the focus of the book isn't about that.

I was greatly surprised & interested in read about how in some small way, the women's right movement started in Worcester, which is where my husband grew up & my in-law's still live!

I also thought it was very cool that Clarina, a lifelong knitter, received yarn from her fans, after helping a woman on the train to keep her children!

I am only giving the book four stars, because (like I said) I wish there was more info about her personal life, but also because after a while, all of her talks and speeches and the various organizations she belonged to started to run together in my head...

So far, this is my least favorite of the series.

Laura moves quite a few times in this book - from the last homestead (where Mary loses her sight), to a shanty where her father works for the railway company, to the prospector's house for the winter, to their half a house as they are staking their claim. That's a lot of moves for one person in a year, and it was frankly boring to read about. This book is also the saddest one to boot, between Mary losing her sight, and the family dog, Jack, dying.

Nothing really happens during the books - it was fun / fascinating reading about the family's trip by train to meet Laura's father, but that was first thing in the beginning of the book, and then the rest of book drags.

Pa sings a lot during this book - complete with song lyrics - and this just felt like filler to me, like Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't have enough to write about during the year, so she added a bunch of songs. Which stinks, because there was a ton of things she could have written about that would have been fascinating!

Cricket in the Hearth - every time I hear that name, I always think of the animated Christmas special, though I never really realized it was meant to be a Christmas story until I did a little research about the story after I finished reading it.

At under 100 pages, the original Cricket in the Hearth was published as a short novella in 1845, unlike his usual serial formats for his longer works.

Cricket in the Hearth is a whimsical tale of lost love and found again, and the Cricket is the spirit of the season.

I can definitely say the book wasn't what I was expecting, and is probably the least favorite story / book I've ever read by Dickens. It was a nice story, but I found something lacking in the book.