The Fates Will Find Their Way - Hannah Pittard

The Fates Will Find Their Way
By Hannah Pittard

I just realized that I never posted my review of The Fates Will Find Their Way.  I finished it weeks ago and wrote my review immediately but somehow (I blame it on the fact that I started a new job so my routines are all out of whack) it never made it to posting.  It was a great book and I actually want to go back and read it again after rereading my review because I remember different things I loved about it.  


The Fates Will Find Their Way is about the disappearance of a girl named Nora and how it affects a group of boys who knew her, as well as their lives years later. They are so tied to what may or may not have happened to Nora that they imagine different scenarios which could have happened on the night Nora went missing. All the scenarios are so real you forget you are reading about their hopes and fears.

The story itself is so tragically real. It is what I think would happen to the friends of a teen who goes missing. They would imagine the worst case scenario but also imagine the things she could be doing if she were alive after that night. The boys ponder various stories which always lead to the loss of her and they allow their hope to leave them grasping at straws. They live for the unknown, for the possibility that she may be alive and happy or even alive and regretting leaving (if she left by choice).

This book was like an adult, male version of a Judy Blume story. If you took Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret and extended it through the adult years and then made it about boys instead of Margaret you would have The Fates Will Find Their Way. This is a story that makes you look at what you are focused on in your own life as you read about what the boys begin to learn about themselves.

I loved the entire story but something more specific that I can’t not mention is that I LOVED the ever-present phone tree.

**Source: ARC from publisher

Harry Potter Party - Games

Couples hard at work, they took it VERY seriously.

My biggest concern while I was planning my Harry Potter party was that everyone would arrive in their awesome costumes and we would end up sitting around staring at each other until midnight so I came up with some trivia as an ice breaker.  I knew I wouldn't be good at thinking up the trivia questions so I turned to my good friend google, and google came through.  There are a ton of sites out there with questions and after quizzing myself (I did amazingly well, thanks for asking) I picked my favorite questions and put them on a single sheet of card stock which I rolled up, tied with black ribbon, and placed in every HP favor wine glass. 

Awesome Luna glasses.

Everyone was excited to start the trivia...until they started reading the questions.  They immediately started complaining that the questions were too difficult.  Well...I was so excited in my making of the trivia that I didn't think about the fact that the questions I answered had a multiple choice option that I failed to include...oops!  They don't know that, so don't tell.  So we decided that they would team up as couples and complete it that way. 

Trivia winners!

Luckily, I had prizes for both a girl and a boy (the girls prize was WAY better).  Team Ron/Ginny and Luna/Tom Riddle tied (or were undecided on the winner due to a technicality so they agreed that Ron and Luna would collect the prizes (which was perfect because I picked up the girls prize with Luna in mind).  Ron received a homemade Head Boy badge and Luna won a pair of awesomely perfect Luna glasses that I found at Party City!

 The other thing I had planned was a Harry Potter themed version of celebrity (my new favorite party game!).  I have heard of many different ways to play it so allow me to tell you they way that I play (aka the correct way).

1. Every player is given 3 slips of paper on which they will write the name of a famous person/character (for this game they were restricted to HP people
2. The slips are placed in a hat/bowl/jar and people divided into 2 teams (we did girls vs boys)
3. Each player has one minute to give clues to help their team guess as many names as possible, each name is 1 point
4. There are 3 rounds, each going through all the names once 

Round 1: say anything you want except for what is written on the slip
Round 2: charades, act it out, no sounds
Round 3: you can say 1 and only 1 word so choose wisely, by this time you have already gone through all the names so it isn't impossible but the stickler is if you pick a word that sucks and they can't figure it out you have to stand there until your minute is done.  Some people play that you can skip it and count that point against you but I think my way is more fun 

Ginny getting down and dirty with round 2 I think she was doing a crab for Crabbe and Goyle...Goyle was the word

Lupin...no one can remember what he was acting out!

As you can see from the pictures above, I had the Harry Potter movies playing in the background which was actually really fun during the trivia because couple answers came up. 

"Waiting On" Wednesday

Jill at Breaking the Spine hosts "Waiting on" Wednesday, a place where we can voice the books we are patiently - okay probably impatiently - waiting to be released.




 Deliverance From Evil: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials
by Frances Hill
Pub. date: March 3, 2011

From publisher's website:

Salem, Massachusetts, Winter 1692: In the parsonage of Reverend Samuel Parris, two young girls are seated by the fire and play at fortune-telling as snow falls softly outside. What starts as a game sends one of the girls into a hysterical trance, and a small town begins its descent into madness. Accusations of witchcraft would destroy lives and old scores would be settled. Over 150 people would be arrested and imprisoned, with even more accused of consorting with the devil.


In Deliverance from Evil, Frances Hill brings her deep historical and political understanding together with her honed skills as a novelist to produce a picture of the Salem witch trials both realistic and emotional.



FRANCES HILL is a historian, novelist and journalist whose previous books include Out of Bounds, A Delusion of Satan, The Salem Witch Trials Reader, Hunting for Witches, and Such Men Are Dangerous. Frances Hill lives in Connecticut.

Harry Potter Party - Food

Oh delicious food...I decided to keep the food simple and not stress too much about the Harry Potter theme.  I just chose a few things to highlight and the rest were your normal party munchies.

My friend Tonks was amazing enough to make chocolate eggs for the occasion and they were so happy...all that was missing was the Dumbledore card.

This picture was taken the next morning, which is why there are bananas on the table...I couldn't let my guests go without breakfast.

Of course I had a bowl of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans.  I was actually surprised that people actually ate them.  I kept hearing random comments after someone was daring enough to try..."yeah, that color is safe, its apple" and "blech, that was dirt! How do they actually get it to taste like dirt?"

Sample if you dare.  And yes, those are HP trading cards.  I had no idea where they came from, I just found them in a closet right before the party and decided to throw them out there.

I picked up some white chocolate (even though I hate white chocolate but it was to only one with a gold wrapper) Lindt chocolates and added wings to make them snitches...

Catch them before they fly away...

And finally, I re-watched the first movie before the party and it gave me the idea for the cake!  Don't judge how messy the writing is.  It is hard to write with the tiny frosting tubes and I didn't write the words until just before serving it (so a long time after I had started drinking...). 

Homemade ice cream cake!

And now I really want some more of that cake...

"Waiting On" Wednesday

Jill at Breaking the Spine hosts "Waiting on" Wednesday, a place where we can voice the books we are patiently - okay probably impatiently - waiting to be released.




Bossypants
by Tina Fey
Pub. date: April 5, 2011

From Amazon:

Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin" -- Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.

She has seen both these dreams come true.

At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately half-hearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

Mailbox Monday

Mailbox Monday was created by Marcia at The Printed Page.

Thank you Library of Clean Reads for hosting this month's Mailbox Monday blog tour.

Check out the blog and post all the new books you acquired last week.

My Mailbox Monday this week is a little off the normal format.  Technically only 2 books arrived in my

mailbox last week, however, Friday was such an awesome day that I have to show you everything I picked up.  I went to the library after work because I got the email that I had a book and an audiobook on hold and while I was there I checked out the audiobook shelf they had set-up and found 2 more audiobooks that I wanted to I left the library with 1 book and 3 audiobooks.  I thought I would check the mail on the way into the house and my mom had told me the day before that I would be receiving a package from her but I had no idea what it was so when I saw the package from BN I knew it was from her.  There was also a package from my mother-in-law that I was not expecting.  THEN, when I finally got to my front door, with my arms full, there was a book from a publisher on my porch.

My awesome MIL sent me See's dark chocolate (even thought I hate V-Day).  And my mom borrowed Eat Pray, Love from me forever ago-in fact I talked about it in my original post-and apparently she has given up on ever giving it back to me because she bought me a new one.

I also received...

Radio Shangri-La: What I Learned in Bhutan, the Happiest Kingdom on Earth  by Lisa Napoli (publisher)

From publisher's website:

Lisa Napoli was in the grip of a crisis, dissatisfied with her life and her work as a radio journalist. When a chance encounter with a handsome stranger presented her with an opportunity to move halfway around the world, Lisa left behind cosmopolitan Los Angeles for a new adventure in the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan—said to be one of the happiest places on earth.

Long isolated from industrialization and just beginning to open its doors to the modern world, Bhutan is a deeply spiritual place, devoted to environmental conservation and committed to the happiness of its people—in fact, Bhutan measures its success in Gross National Happiness rather than in GNP. In a country without a single traffic light, its citizens are believed to be among the most content in the world. To Lisa, it seemed to be a place that offered the opposite of her fast-paced life in the United States, where the noisy din of sound-bite news and cell phones dominate our days, and meaningful conversation is a rare commodity; where everyone is plugged in digitally, yet rarely connects with the people around them.

Thousands of miles away from everything and everyone she knows, Lisa creates a new community for herself. As she helps to start Bhutan’s first youth-oriented radio station, Kuzoo FM, she must come to terms with her conflicting feelings about the impact of the medium on a country that had been shielded from its effects. Immersing herself in Bhutan’s rapidly changing culture, Lisa realizes that her own perspective on life is changing as well—and that she is discovering the sense of purpose and joy that she has been yearning for.

In this smart, heartfelt, and beautifully written book, sure to please fans of transporting travel narratives and personal memoirs alike, Lisa Napoli discovers that the world is a beautiful and complicated place—and comes to appreciate her life for the adventure it is.

Harry Potter Party - Butterbeer

Cheers!!

Ahh Butterbeer!  You can't have a Harry Potter Party without it!  I was torn between wanting to make the recipe similar to the park (although ours would include alcohol), making it how I imagined it to taste, and making it drinkable for a wide range of people.  What we ended up with was a bit of a compromise between all three but less of how I imagine it when I read the books because I don't think I will ever come close to that without magic.

I mentioned that I was going to be trying recipes to my step-brother and his wife (Ron/Vaughn and Ginny/Ryanne) and they invited my husband (Mike) and I over to have a sample party.  I couldn't say no to that!  I searched many, MANY sites trying to plan the recipes that we would sample and finally thought I found the one that we would use.  It was simple (only included club soda and butterscotch schnapps) but knowing that we would want to sample a few I brought a variety of possible mixers to their house.  There was one recipe that I was going to stay away from because it was too detailed and I didn't have the brain capacity after all the other planning (I mean, it included using a candy thermometer...come on!).  When I got over to their house, Vaughn had made the the recipe I was trying to avoid and I ended up having to make it at the party because we altered it but still used all the parts of the recipe.

Making the whipped cream topping

The best site that I found for the recipes is Wizarding World Park.
Scroll down to the bottom and "Butterbeer Recipe #1" is the one we used - minus the cream soda (you'll see) and substitute dark rum for the rum extract (it was New Year's...we weren't wasting our time with extract).  The "brown stuff" that I refer to later is the brown sugar/butter recipe and we topped it with the whipping cream and rum and then stirred it in to make a nice frothy head.

And now...this is how we created the recipe that I made for the party...with our super special secret ingredient...

Once upon a time...sometime in November...4 people stood around an island in a kitchen sampling beverages.  It had been a long night, full of mistakes and bad horrible mixtures.  Until...

Mike: Aak this is nasty
Jess: It's too sweet
Vaughn: What if we take out the brown stuff and add only 1 shot of schnapps but added some rum...

Before the whipped cream topping

*stir*taste*sip*

Mike: This tastes like ass
Jess: Add whipped cream?
Vaughn: No, add some more schnapps
Jess: Vaughn, you're drinking out of Mike's cup
Vaughn: Which is my cup...oh who cares...
Jess: Yours is the 49er one, Mike's is this bluish one
Mike: They are all bad, let's dump them out and start over
Jess: It needs more carbonation, but not something too sweet
Ryanne: How about champagne?

At this point we'd had enough to drink to think this would actually turn out well.

*stir*taste*sip*

After the whipped cream topping

 Jess: Oh God no!
Mike: That's just not good at all

Jess and Ryanne drink some straight champagne to clear the palette.

Jess: It's still too sweet.  We need something with carbonation but we need to be able to add the schnapps and some brown stuff and not have it be too sweet.  What if...hey...guys...what if we use beer?
Ryanne: That's what I said in the beginning!!
Jess: Just...like Coors Light
Vaughn: Hang on, I have some in the garage
Jess: Shocking...
Mike: Oh I'm excited about this...

*stir*taste*sip*

Jess: This is it
Mike: This is actually good
Ryanne: And I said beer from the beginning.
Vaughn: What if we add some of the cream stuff to the top?
Jess: That's even better!

And there you have the extremely scientific way we created our recipe for Butterbeer.

Final recipe:
1 can beer
2 T "brown stuff"
1 heaping scoop whipped cream mixture
stir

The secret ingredient.