The Princess Diaries By Meg Cabot

About the Book:

She's just a New York City girl living with her artist mom...

News Flash: Dad is prince of Genovia. (So that's why a limo meets her at the airport!)

Downer: Dad can't have any more kids. (So no heir to the throne.)

Shock of the Century: Like it or not, Mia Thermopolis is prime princess material.

Mia must take princess lessons from her dreaded grandmére, the dowager princess of Genovia, who thinks Mia has a thing or two to learn before she steps up to the throne.

Well, her father can lecture her until he's royal-blue in the face about her princessly duty--no way is she moving to Genovia and leaving Manhattan behind. But what's a girl to do when her name is Princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo?

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My Thoughts:

The movie was better is all I have to say! 

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Memorable Lines:

Lilly says I have an overactive imagination and a pathological need to invent drama in my life.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the ladies’ room at the Plaza, but it’s like totally the nicest one in
Manhattan. It’s all pink, and there are mirrors and little couches everywhere, in case you look at yourself and feel the urge to faint from your beauty or something.

Lars is here, too. He isn’t checking the clock, though. He keeps checking his ammunition clip to
make sure he has enough bullets. I suppose my dad told him to shoot Josh if he makes a move on me.

Gone Girl By Jillian Flynn

About The Book:

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer? 

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My Thoughts:


So I just finished reading this yesterday, and I absolutely loved it, and haven't stopped raving about it since!!
I'm trying to get everyone to read it by telling them its about the ups and downs in a marriage in its early years; if only they knew!!

I loved each and every twist and turn although the final U-turn left me a little disappointed, but I guess I wouldn't understand unless I was in that very position, faced with the decision of whom to destroy; your spouse or yourself!

Loved the writing style, with hers and his versions of the story, usually its always one-sided, but this was different and refreshingly so.

The best book I've read in a really long time. READ IT!!!

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Memorable Lines:

I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?

There’s something disturbing about recalling a warm memory and feeling utterly cold.

People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.

He comes when I call, and look how well groomed! Wear this, don’t wear that. Do this chore now and do
this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely, give up the things you love for me, so I will have proof that you love me best.

I don’t know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dogeared script.

The older women keep swirling around me, telling me how Maureen has always said what a wonderful couple Nick and I are and she is right, we are clearly made for each other. I prefer these well-meant clichés to the talk we heard before we got married. Marriage is compromise and hard work, and then more hard work and communication and compromise. And then work. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

For so many years, my husband has lauded the emotional solidity of midwesterners: stoic, humble, without affectation! But these aren’t the kinds of people who provide good memoir material. Imagine the jacket copy: People behaved mostly well and then they died.

My mother had always told her kids: If you’re about to do something, and you want to know if it’s a bad idea, imagine seeing it printed in the paper for all the world to see.

I was the guy who left the bar early if a woman was getting too flirty, if her touch was feeling too nice. I was
not a cheater. I don’t (didn’t?) like cheaters: dishonest, disrespectful, petty, spoiled. I had never succumbed. But that was back when I was happy.

Love makes you want to be a better man— right, right. But maybe love, real love, also gives you
permission to just be the man you are.

She should have just left, bundled up what remained of her dignity. Take the high road! Two wrongs don’t
make a right! All those things that spineless women say, confusing their weakness with morality.

There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child—you grow up knowing you aren’t allowed to disappoint, you’re not even allowed to die. There isn’t a replacement toddling around; you’re it. It
makes you desperate to be flawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.

One should never marry a man who doesn’t own a decent set of scissors. That would be my advice. It leads to bad things.

I turned my back to her, and then I pictured her with a knife in her hand and her mouth growing tight as I disobeyed her. I turned back around. Yes, my wife must always be faced.

Love should require both partners to be their very best at all times. Unconditional love is an undisciplined love, and as we all have seen, undisciplined love is disastrous.

And Now, Nightmares!!

Found this post lying in my drafts for quite some time now, so put the finishing touches and posted. Enjoy..

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So, I haven't really been sleeping well for the past few days, almost a week actually! I fall asleep, and then get up in a couple of hours with a terrible tooth ache - wisdom tooth acting out - and then when I think I'll be awake for the rest of the night, I fall asleep again; only to awaken in a few hours again! And that leaves me really tired in the mornings.

And that's not all, to make things worse, I've been having very realistic nightmares! Some days back it was about a school friend I hadn't seen in years. I dreamed that she gets kidnapped and is tortured, and I see the whole thing. It was so realistic, I got up and almost called Ma to check with her if all was ok with her (the friend).

Anyway, last night was a whole different nightmare, which literally had me in the front seat!! So, it must've started off pretty normal, I can't remember! The only scene I do remember, and which played out like a movie trailer on loop, was the most scariest scene ever! here goes:

I'm sitting in the front passenger seat of a car, which is traveling at an average speed, neither too fast, nor too slow. I don't really know the driver, in the sense that I'm not really aware of him. I mean I know that somebody is driving since the car is moving, but don't really 'see' the person, or maybe there want anybody in the driver's seat! So, I have to rely on some unknown person to be my driver, who might not even be there. So we're going down the Chicalim slope towards Vasco. When suddenly at the first sharp turn, a huge bus comes right at us! We were going in the wrong lane, I realized later. So anyway, the bus comes and the front engine part of our car goes under the bus, and we're stuck in a position where the bus driver can look down and see us sitting in our car below him, and he does! Our eyes meet, and we look at each other, and the next thing I know, he falls back and the whole bus rolls down and falls into the valley!
Thats when I woke up in a sweat!

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So I told the whole nightmare to Adi and he was shocked at me getting off that easy without a scratch in an accident, even in a nightmare! It apparently proved his statement that I love myself too much to let anything untoward happen to me, even in such unreal situations! And I agree, for a change!