Friday, October 1, 2010

RedBox

I use RedBox for nearly all my movie rentals nowadays. It's easy to use-like a vending machine.


1. They're easy to find in my area and online the site (www.redbox.com) will tell you where the movie you want is located-maps and all!! In Chattanooga, they are located at all the Walgreens and Walmarts. I've heard that in Louisville, Redboxes are at all the McDonalds.

2. The best part is I don't have to pay a monthly fee and it's only a $1/day. FANTASTIC!!!

Thanks to BzzAgent for my free code but this is my honest opinion folks, I was using RedBox way before I knew about www.bzzagent.com. The only downside to RedBox is that it is only the most current releases, I mean, the machines will only hold so much, right?

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Gingham Mountain by Mary Connealy

Hannah and Grant meet in this installment of Lassoed in Texas (#3). The main difference about this book and Calico Canyon(#2) is that this book talks about the orphan trains. Orphan trains thankfully, are a thing of the past where orphans were taken up to the end of the rail lines, if needed, to adopt them out. I loved Hannah for the way she thought about education.The angst starts immediately as Grant meets the orphan train to collect his new children not knowing that Hannah is following the children. Hannah immediately assumes that Grant is expecting 'slave' labor from the children. Although, they both have a huge heart for orphans, they each have seemingly polar opposite ways of caring for the kids.

Learning was the important thing. If only she could educate them so they'd never be forced into mill work or, because of illiteracy, have no prospects of any jobs. She believed giving them an education could be the difference between life and death for some of them. It might be the difference between keeping their own children or sending them off to orphanages. With a kind of desperate urgency, Hannah taught them words and numbers to put them one step further from the awful fate that could await the uneducated (italics mine).

I enjoyed this read for a different reason than my usual love for 'all things Mary Connealy' and that is the orphan trains. I'm sure I'd learned about them somewhere along the line as I love  american history. Mary, however, put names and faces on those kids for me though, which made them seem real and therefore more memorable. The social impact of illiteracy is just as important today as it was in any time before us. Thanks for another great read Mary!!!!!

The Lightkeeper's Daughter by Colleen Coble

This is a suspenseful story about a young girl that is washed onshore after being shipwrecked. She's raised by a doting adoptive father and cruel mother and she finds herself full of intrigue and in danger. This story has many twists and turns in it. Just when I thought that I'd figured it out, something would change. The romantic side of the story should've been a bit more tense for me but it was a romantic mystery, afterall, not a mysterious romance! Semantics, I know but, there it is. I liked this story and the characters were well written. I couldn't put it down, so it was a good read.
Thanks to Angie for lending me the book!