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So, since this blog is unofficially relegated to contest announcements until I start working on my fiction or freelance again…

Check out my NaNoWriMo blog for contest details. You want to. There’s coffee and candy involved. I almost kept some of it.

Otherwise, still prepping two professional blogs for launch… Fingers crossed, because I may be entering one into Blogging Idol 2. What’s that you say? I only want to win for the $1000 cash? Why, yes, yes I do.

Apparently, I have subscribers to this blog! I mean, I knew Wolf subscribed because he said so, but when another friend asked me to change my feed to full, I saw my feed stats. I’ve got subscribers!

There will be no living with me, now.
moar funny pictures

I know that this isn’t my normal fare for reading. For one thing, it’s a memoir, at least of sorts. For another, it’s the memoir of the mother of Britney Spears.

I admit that I’ve been one of those people who rolled my eyes and talked disparagingly of both Britney and her mother. Though, I had slightly more to back me up as I was once friends with someone who was friends with NSYNC.

There have been a lot of rumors about this book. The one that seems to be the most common, is also the one that I was the most familiar with- that it was a parenting book. Remember how that was the big rumor just before Jamie Lynn got/announced that she was pregnant? Turns out that was wrong. No instructions or advice included at all, unless you count the unspoken “do not repeat after me”.

The other big rumor was that Through The Storm (by Lynne Spears and cowritten by Lorilee Craker) was a tell all. Or a memoir that still had racy, behind-the-scenes info on one or another of Lynne’s kids. Again, not so.

She does talk about her children at length. Mainly, what they were like as youngsters. Surprisingly, there’s more in the book about her marriage, and her family life when Britney and Jamie Lynn were toddlers (her oldest, Bryan, seems to have come at a time when she was the most obsessed with her marriage). A more accurate description of Through The Storm would be as the memoir of someone who survived marriage with an abusive alcoholic. And even then, details are spared.

Since this is a writing blog, and most of you guys are writers, you’ll probably understand when I say this. The single annoying thing in this book, is that the ending of almost every single section had a variation on “but that would change all too soon”. Grating. Seriously. Had I not received this book direct from a publisher that I highly respect in exchange for a review? It would have been against the wall. We know it all changed! We all know what happened! We just don’t know why!

Nevertheless, Through The Storm was interesting, and eye opening. I do have a bit of compassion for Britney and her mother (though in B’s case, it’s more the kind of caring that you have for a friend that perpetuates the cycle of having abusive boyfriends and then complains about it- ya just wanna smack ‘em) now that I’ve read it. And I can recommend it to those who are interested in people’s lives (all of you, since you all read blogs- it’s kinda the same thing), but not for those looking for gossip worthy info, or an interesting read in itself. It is interesting, but for $25 you can get Starbuck’s for a week while you scan your feeds.