Jimmy

*** DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS!***  I did like it though as it kept me turning the page and I hoped that Jimmy would make the right decision.  But I also knew he couldn't because he had already allowed the girls to see him and know who he was.

Talk about a book where one person's actions cause a HUGE ripple effect.  This was it.  It is a graphic and explicit book and one not to be read by anyone sensitive to bondage/sexual assault issues.  It was pretty strong stuff.   Let me see if I can sort out the characters and what happens.

Jimmy is a high school Senior with no real plans in life.  He is smart, funny, good looking and likeable....if you know him.  To others though he is an outcast of sorts.  Up until the past few years he had been picked on and bullied by a group of boys. Jimmy has developed a taste for bondage though and decides it is time to act out his most secret fantasies of kidnap, rape, and ultimately, murder.

Brett, the leader of the boys that have bullied Jimmy, is merciless and does not know that some of the other boys have had confrontations with Jimmy and are tired of picking on him and bullying him because they fear him.  They don't know why they fear him but he has started standing up to them and there is just something in his eyes that is not right.  But not Brett. He keeps on and keeps on.  He does not know about Jimmy's darkest secret though.

Alan is Jimmy's younger brother and looks up to Jimmy.  He starts to see that something is NOT right. He sees Jimmy go on bike rides at all hours of the day and night.  He sees that there is something in his eyes that is not right and his behavior is just off.  But he does not say anything to anyone.

Tina is a long time friend of Jimmy and likes him a lot.  He likes her too and they begin a sexual relationship just prior to going to the Prom together.  It is the first time either of them have been in a serious relationship and they are both enamored and in "love" with each other.

Samantha is the first girl that Jimmy kidnaps and hides in the storm shelter of an abandoned house.  He does not really have a good plan but is fascinated with hanging her from her wrists.  He has not considered the whole plan though.  He just knows he is going to keep her there til he is done with her and then kill her.

Meagan is Samantha's best friend and is the ONLY one other than Samantha's mom that believes she has been kidnapped.  Meagan's father is the Sheriff but they don't have a good relationship so Meagan does not go to him with her fears and theories.  Instead she sets of on her own search and ends up running into Jimmy.  He actually set it up where she would run into him so he could kidnap her as well and take her to the shelter.  This is where Jimmy's plan goes terribly wrong for him.  He cannot control Meagan like he controlled Samantha.  She fights him and causes him to panic.  During one of their fights he hits her in the face with a metal bucket and ends up killing her.

It all unravels on Prom night.  Jimmy made the mistake of throwing away all his bondage videos that he had been collecting in a trash can at school.  Brett and his friend find them and decide to use them to lure Jimmy to the old house where they can beat him up.  Jimmy beat Brett's friend almost to death and goes to the house where he shoots Brett, shoots his brother by mistake, and allows the police to shoot and kill him.

Now for the ripples that spread from there.....  As I said, Meagan died.  She was not even supposed to be there in the first place.  Jimmy dies, leaving behind a girlfriend who is confused and wonders if there was anything she could have done.  Samantha lives but finds out she is pregnant and at the end of the book is getting ready to down a whole bottle of sleeping pills.  While recovering, Alan is trapped in the house when someone firebombs it and he is burned to death.

So one boy's decision to kidnap one girl ended up tearing apart a whole community and causing a family to lose both their sons.  This was a dark book but shows that one person's decision for good or bad can cause a world of difference in everyone else's lives.

I Was A Brooding Teenage Vampire by Demitri Mitchell

This was a refreshing vampire read for a change....lol.  It was a complete satire and farce of what all these weepy, teenage vampire books out now are all about.  Poor Demitri is a teenage vampire that feels like his life is pointless.  He goes to school, meets a girl who is uncontrollably drawn to him, they have sex, she has an accident of some sort that draws blood, he dismembers her, drains her blood, burns down her house and moves to another town.  He can't help himself.  It happens over and over and over.  Finally he meets Alina and something is different.  She wants nothing to do with him and he is obsessed with her.  But she has a stalker who is a vampire hunter.  Of course, he has a stalker too.  It is just one silly situation after another with everyone stalking everyone else and all sorts of teenage angst.  It was pretty silly and funny and a great change of pace.  There are vague references to different books and movies and it was a short, quick read.

Sunday, November 6

It has been a LONG time since I have posted here.  It has been super busy around here.  Maddie has been doing great in band but we have stayed busy running with that.  So I am back now, I hope.  Work is good and super busy.  I just got back from a two day conference in Tuscaloosa.  I learned a lot about the bookkeeping system and hope it helps me do my job better.

Okay, that is all for now.  I am going to head to bed and hope to sleep tonight.

Farm of Dead Things

Farm of the Dead Things: the Glenda Barker Story by Tennessee Hicks

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


It seems that zombies are all the rage now. This is a fast paced story about a news crew that goes in search of their big break story. Nearby there has been a disturbance at a rundown, out of the way graveyard. So off they go, cameras in hand, hoping to find evidence of graverobbers. What they find is much much worse. They find out rather quickly that it is zombies coming out of the graves. They witness the zombies break free from the graveyard, killed a luckless motorist and finally, while they are following the zombies, they are trapped at a farmhouse with Glenda Barker, who admits that she called them forth in hopes of being famous and making money by raising dead people for their families. But that does not work out for poor Ms. Barker. In the end, the film crew hides out in the bathroom while the zombies eat Ms. Barker. Later, the government officials show up and "clean up" the mess. This was a super quick read but did amuse me.



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Recalculating

Recalculating by Jennifer Weiner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Interesting quick story about a woman who finally has enough of her abusive husband and takes advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself to "help" him out of this world so to speak. But sometimes the dead have other plans and don't want to stay dead. In the end, the woman learns to take control of her own life and does manage to rid herself of her husband AND his evil little gift that he left behind for her. Cute and quick and different.



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Georgia Bottoms

Georgia Bottoms, is a 30 something Southern "lady" from Six Points, Alabama. From all outward appearances she has it all together. She is single by choice and takes care of her aging and increasingly forgetful mama, and her brother, who is always getting into some sort of trouble. She wears fashionable clothes, is friends with the female mayor and attends church EVERY Sunday because that is what good Southern ladies do. However, appearances can be deceiving. Ms. Georgia Bottoms has a side life that no one in town is aware of, even her own Mama who lives in the main house. Georgia entertains a different influential man in town one night per week, six nights out of the week. One is the bank manager, one the sheriff, and one is the preacher of her church. She has never asked them for money for her company but they all leave her a gift when they go. Until....it all comes unraveled. Just when Georgia thinks she has a handle on the next crisis, something else happens. Her secrets keep popping out all over and before long she is swimming in a pool of lies and carefully engineered plans and schemes. She cannot seem to keep it together and then it gets worse. The biggest secret of her entire life is exposed and she has no choice but to step up to the plate and figure a way out of the fallout.

I loved the characters because they are familiar to me. I have lived in a small Alabama town and even now, live in a larger town but with the same kind of people. My ABSOLUTE favorite part is when Georgia gets Eugene Hendrix "re-assigned" by the Baptist Convention and then calls the moving truck to show up on their steps and move Eugene and Brenda, just out of spite. I would do that. Great, fast read that had some unexpected twists and turns and kept me turning page after page.

I think that this is a book that you will either like or hate. There were parts of Georgia that I did not like at all. But she is a scrapper and found a way to take care of her family in her own way. If you are easily offended by adultery, lies, vapid females with no real sense of the outside world, etc. then this book is not for you.

Where the Wild Things Are

One of my most favorite books EVER! As a mom, I have had these kind of days-- you get the house clean and suddenly here comes your child, fork in hand, terrorizing the dog, pretending to be a wolf and telling you he won't eat what you are cooking because he is a cannibal. Oooookay! Enough! Go to your room (and you add the threat about not getting dinner just out of spite). If Max had a bad mom his dinner would not have still been warm on the table when he woke up from his nap or whatever you want to call his trip. :)

Max does get sent to his room and while there a wild and magical forest grows and grows and grows. Out of the forest comes a herd of wild animals. Now here is Max...a human among wild, man eating animals, so he has to improvise and posture a little. Yep, laws of survival kick in. Max has to step up and be the biggest and the baddest and let those animals know who is boss. So he makes himself their king. And they let him. They could have gobbled him up but let's face it, they were ALL having too much fun. But all fun things have to end sooner or later. Max is sleepy and he misses mama and he IS still hungry. So he tells his monster friends goodbye and sails away back home where momma has his supper waiting on him and it is still warm.

Max had a great imagination whether he was asleep or awake. He was content to play by himself and make up a whole story about what was happening. He did not need video games or expensive play things. He had a wolf suit and a fork and he was good to go. Bravo, Max!

[book:Where the Wild Things Are|19543]