It isn’t too often that I read a book and think to myself “that would make a great movie” but that’s exactly how I feel about the trilogy of books by Tim Sandlin that starts with the book Skipped Parts. I think that I felt this way because the characters in these books are so unique and the escapades they get themselves into are so funny. It’s one of those rare books that actually made me laugh out loud for how silly it was.

The first book (Skipped Parts) is the story of a teenage boy with a too-wild mother who is living in an uncomfortably small town in the Midwest. The only person who doesn’t shun him is a wild teenage girl who is a bit more mature than he is. The two kids get curious about the “skipped parts” in books and movies (the sex scenes that are insinuated but not defined) and decide to explore sex together which results in the girl getting pregnant. It sounds like a tragedy but the author finds the humor in this whole situation and puts it right on the table for you to laugh at.

The story continues in the second book of the trilogy, Sorrow Floats, which explores the life of the girl in more depth. She’s in her early twenties by this point and involved in some crazy problems with drinking, losing her child and meeting up with some schemers who are willing to take her cross country. This is another story where there’s a lot of tragedy but we as readers get to laugh at it because of the silly way that it’s presented.

And finally, the story wraps up with the third book, Social Blunders, which takes us back to the story of Sam as an adult. He has learned that his too-wild mother lied about the details surrounding his birth and he’s decided to try to find his birth father. Predictably, ridiculous shenanigans surround this attempt and provoke laughter from the reader.

The story is a simple one but the trilogy does a great job of looking at the horrors of humanity and finding the part of those horrors that are rather funny. Life is tragic; we might as well laugh at it!

Incidentally, the first book was turned into a movie (starring Drew Barrymore) but the movie turned out not to be nearly as good as I’d imagined it could be when I was reading the books.

Tags: books, grovont trilogy, kathryn vercillo, reading, reviews, skipped parts, social blunders, sorrow floats, tim sandlin

EEK – I just realized that one of the articles that I wrote was featured in a blog carnival a few weeks ago and I forgot to post a link to it here. Better late than never!

The article was my review of Buxr, a coupon code site that I checked out recently to save money on online shopping. It was included in the Review Bloggers Monthly Carnival.

Other reviews that were included in this carnival were about:

• Cool cheap cars and fuel efficiency standards
• Cloths for drying wet babies
• Summertime learning
• Tutoring
• Camcorders
• Fruit Trees
• Skin care products
• Traveling to Mexico
• Cigar humidors
• Spring cleaning
• Garlic
• And wedding proposals

There are also a lot of good book reviews including reviews of:

• Getting Out of Debt
• Why Evolution is True
• Midnight in Madrid

Reviews are fun to read sometimes aren’t they? Share any links to your own recent reviews in the comments here!

Tags: blog carnival, blogs, book reviews, buxr, buxr review, kathryn vercillo, links, reviews

I recently had the opportunity to do an in-depth review of the Samsung s8000 Jet. This is a new mobile phone that received more pre-orders than the iPhone did in its early days. That says something about the kind of attention that it’s getting.

While doing my research for the review, I kept coming across four main reasons that this new phone is so popular:

1. Speed. It’s one of the fastest phones available on the market today.
2. Display. It also has one of the most impressive screen resolutions out of any mobile phone line.
3. Advanced web browsing. The new web browser allows you to easily open multiple web pages and perform other fairly advanced mobile web functions.
4. Cool user interface. The main reason people love this new phone is that it has a user interface with lots of neat features. This includes fun shortcuts, transition effects and a neat “smart unlock” system that lets you program each letter key to simultaneously do its own function whil unlocking the phone.

It seems like a cool new phone. I think it’s worth taking a look at if you’re into smartphones (although it’s technically not a smartphone, I suppose). Also, if you’re interested in new mobile phones, you might want to follow these 20 mobile phone Twitterers.

Tags: cell phones, kathryn vercillo, mobile phones, news, reviews, samsung features, samsung jet, Technology, Wireless