A friend insisted read this book because the lead character reminded her of me, and I could NOT put it down! The story alternates between present day and the narrator's memories - her childhood in England, her teen years in New Jersey, and her rise to stardom as the bass player in a world famous rock and roll band.
As the story begins, the narrator is in the hospital recovering from a terrible accident and reflecting upon her life. The interesting twist is that each event in her life is deeply linked to a song, and each chapter revolves around that theme. It's alternately fluffy, introspective, hilarious and sad, but always, ALWAYS entertaining. If you like chick lit or pop culture, this book is not to be missed.

Full shipping order:
Allecia, Oregon, USA
jenvince, California, USA
SCOUT-FINCH, California, USA
sharalsbooks, Arizona, USA
zombiebooker, Las Vegas,USA
LaurieS, New Hampshire, USA
twinkpuddin, New York, USA
Lorelei03, New York, USA
narfinmagic, New Jersey, USA
Beachlover2003, Virginia, USA
SpikesMom, Pennsylvania, USA
bookczuk, South Carolina, USA
WarEagle78, Alabama, USA (can ship int'l)
vicki9170, Florida, USA
meshe, Georgia, USA
jendudley, Texas, USA (can ship int'l)
Suefitz, California, USA (int'l)
surmisez, Massachusetts, USA
tbeckross, Washington DC, USA (int'l)
Marlene-TC, Netherlands (can ship int'l)
vi0let, Finland (FYI - That's a zero in her name, not an "o")
LeighBCD, the UK (int'l)
angellica, UK (int'l)
hathyia, Malaysia (Asia/Australia shipping)

...
and back to me!

I got this book in a bookring hosted by Midwinter (THANKS!!!) and I just LOVED it. A great story and a wonderful read. Helena and Sams relationship remind me of me and my best friend (soulmate, really). I was touched and moved and cried, and it was just a wonderful story. I am a HUGE 80's music fan, so it was neat to get a glimpse into what life is like for famous pop stars. (I know it's fiction, but I still enjoyed it. She made it real enough for me.) :-)
A real treat to read, and I hope the next person enjoys it as much as I have.

Sincerely,

Lisa
BC=Allecia

The book arrived yesterday. I have another bookring to finish ahead of it, will then read this and get it to the next person. It looks good! :)

I thought this was a great book. Well-written, loved the sarcasm. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

Am mailing to Scout-Finch 2/23. Enjoy!

Book Ring Karma - I completely stopped signing up for them because of the backlog I was accumulating..relented, signed up for just 2, and they arrive within 2 days of each other..am finishing up a book, this is next in line and will journal as soon as I'm done.

It didn't work for me...guess I like my Bridget Jones's fluffy and slightly flabby, not recovering from tragic, disfiguring accidents partially caused by drug ingestion..maybe I'm getting old, maybe the whole subplot about the friend with cancer (not giving away anything you won't see on the bookjacket) was too hard as my mom is fighting cancer..seems like since my mom got sick I've leaned strongly toward light and easy, and this wasn't it...
As the previous readers all loved it, I'm either a big old curmudgeon or just in the minority. On to
sharalsbooks!

Received in the mail today. I hope to read it very soon. It sounds really good.

I found this book enjoyable, what I was able to read. Perhaps it's my mood, but I just couldn't focus on the story.

I sent a second PM to zombiebooker requesting a mailing address today. I never received a response to the first PM, sent on 4/2.

Released on Monday, April 26, 2004 at Mailed to a fellow Bookcrosser in n/a, n/a Controlled Releases.

This book is on its way to LaurieS. Happy Reading!

Just received in today's mail. I have a few ring books ahead of this one (they seem to arrive in waves) but I'll get to it as soon as I can. Please take a peek at my profile page where I keep all of my reading lists updated. Thanks for passing on to me Sharal!

I started this today and didn't want to put it down which is a very good sign! The beginning is off to an intriguing start. Never read a chick lit title where the heroine had a less than perfect face (never mind a face that was badly damaged). I'm very interested to see where this goes & will write more as I read.

Helena Nicholls was once a successful and well known rock star. Now in her early thirties, her star has faded a bit since her glory days and she’s working as a morning DJ in London and creating quite a buzz with her all-request format highlighting important glimpses into her listeners lives. While Helena’s working life seems to be in order her emotional life is quite another story. After meeting up with a former band member at an awards ceremony Helena is coerced into temporarily mending her woes with a dose of cocaine. This poor choice leads to a horrifyingly stupid and very public accident that leaves her badly disfigured and makes all the tabloids. Her weaselly boss visits her hospital bed with news that he intends to give her plenty of time to heal and that she can come back to work doing the graveyard shift (what a guy, eh?). She’s furious and terribly depressed and comes up with “The Plan”. “The Plan” will be her ultimate goodbye to the world in which she’ll write up a request list of her own. Each song she plays during her final show will remind her of a special memory from her past which she’ll share with her listeners.

This book tackles some weighty subjects; serious illness, imperfect selfish parents and suicidal thoughts but it is also just witty enough to keep one from feeling thoroughly depressed. 30ish Helena is a broken, jaded, lonely and emotionally drained young woman who, being on the road for a good chunk of her life, never took the time to form close friendships outside of her male bandmates and her childhood friend Sam. As she’s recovering from her accident she meets Toby, a cute guy with a young daughter and a comatose wife. Toby and Helena make an immediate connection, becoming fast friends and nearly falling in love (all while Toby’s wife lies helpless just a few doors away). If this were the only version of Helena I’d have put the book away in disgust.

Fortunately, Helena’s life is doled out chapter by chapter (alternating between current day and the past) and we get to know her intimately. We watch her suffer all of life’s little and much larger hurts as she stumbles through life. Helena is easy to relate to as a chubby heartbroken youngster pulled ruthlessly away from her best friend Sam when her parents relocate from London to America. Her awkwardness and desire to fit in are realistically described and are often painfully funny. Eventually Helena finds her own niche in the world as she discovers her passion, bass guitar, and meets up with and becomes bandmates with Justin (an unlikely match since he’s the school hunk and she’s still chubby and thought of as a bit odd). The two begin a band called “Blue Idea” and become incredibly famous but Helena’s life is filled with an impending sense of doom when Sam becomes ill. The band eventually breaks up and when Helena doesn’t quite know what to do with herself and wallows in complete self-despair it is easy to sympathize with her pain and feelings of hopelessness.

Helena’s playlist for the “The Plan” highlights the most important points in her life and once I started I found it extremely difficult to put the book down. “To Be Someone” is often painful to read (I dare you to get through this without wetting a few tissues) but it’s very real and filled with life, emotion and humor. I’m nearly as jaded as Helena (but not nearly as famous!) and very few books move me to tears or laughter these days but this book involved me emotionally from beginning to end and I’m very glad I took the time to read it.

Released on Monday, June 07, 2004 at Bookring in n/a, Bookring Controlled Releases.

Mailing off to twinkpudding

Just got this yesterday! About half way through another book right now, and expect to be able to start this by next week.

An entertaining read. Helena and Sam's relationship was very touching. But, overall I didn't really connect with the story in a way that I thought I would. At times, it all was a bit contrived.

Thanks midwinter for including me! Have Lorelei03's address and will be getting the book off this week.

Released on Tuesday, July 13, 2004 at USPS in Bookring, postal release USA.

Dropped at the post office this morning. Enjoy!

This was an entertaining read - good train ride material!

Arrived in today's mail. Thanks for passing it along. Will be next on my TBR list so I can send it off to the next person on the ring as soon as possible. Looks very interesting.

I really enjoyed having the opportunity to read this book. I loved the development of each character and especially Helena's relationships with Sam and Toby. The story of Helena and Sam moved me to tears a few times through out the story. I related best to this story in terms of the relationships among the characters although the "behind the scenes" look into pop culture was also interesting.

Thank you midwinter for sharing this book with us all. It was well worth reading. I have the address of the next person on the ring and plan to mail it out as soon as I can. Hope everyone else enjoys it as much as I did.

Just received from narfinmagic. I had forgotten I was part of this ring until narfinmagic PM'd me for my address. What a nice surprise! I will read and pass on to the next person. Thanks!

I too was struck by the intensity of the relationship with Sam, but I also found myself questioning my own ability to embrace my life. I was very moved by this book, not just by what was on the page, but by the lesson: enjoy life, embrace life, recognize how valuable you are. Thanks for including me in this ring. I'm sending out to SpikesMom today. Hope you all enjoy it!

Holy long list of folk after me, Batman!

This just arrived less than an hour ago and I'm working today but will start reading as soon as I'm done writing my own, sorta similar book. At least for today.

Kitch 'N Sync.

I fell on the floor laughing.

Should finish today or this weekend and will write more later, but am not sure really what to add. Love it? No, not 100%. Think it's really really really darn good and am glad Mid thought to include me in this ring? Damn straight.

Whoa. Sorry about the lack of an "I'm finished" entry. The book went off two days ago, headed to Bookczuk.

This book has stayed with me a bit, although not as much as I'd hoped it would. Helena's a neat character, even if I didn't fully understand her all of the time. I love how she learned to live within her new reality; it's such a great lesson to us all.

A few little things have stuck with me the most. One is that I keep wondering how vital Helena's rock-and-roll past is to the story. Could the same set of circumstances (her travelling too much to be with Sam, mainly) have happened if she was a ... salesman for a huge corporation? Or even a small one? In essence, how vital was the music angle? That bugs me; I'd wanted it to be more important to Helena than just the songs that were playing during these events in her life.

However, THAT part of things is horridly true. Ask anyone who takes certain classes with me at the gym; I'm legendary for slipping off into my own little world, where I'm jamming so hard, my spin bike is trembling or where I'm so far gone that although my body's following the weight-lifting routine, it's obvious I'm sitting in Veteran's Stadium, the summer of 2003, enjoying the warm day, Linkin Park onstage, and an air conditioned skybox full of fellow Metallica fans (who got our own private bathroom!) awaiting me at the end of the band's set. Totally true. Totally real.

I just wish that authenticity hadn't been countermanded with stereotypes of the music scene. Not ALL producers are stoners, or stoned all the time, as Voss writes. Yeah, I know, her music biz resume is longer than mine, but boy, did a friend of mine (whose resume is longer than hers) hit the roof when I asked him if that was as much of a stereotype as I suspected. The manager who bilked the band -- why couldn't he have just been a bad manager who had a band succeed on a grand scale despite him?

Overall, though, I'd tell anyone to spend some time with this book. I hope Voss writes more; despite her stereotypes, I'll buy them. And if I see a copy of this for my shelves (let alone the girlfriend of the above friend, whose resume is yet longer), I'll be nabbing it.

To Be Someone has turned up safe and sound in South Carolina. I think my brain has gone on vacation, because, even thoughI knew it was coming, I had completely forgotten by the time it got here. And if any ONE of you dares to say it might be age related, I will hiss and boo at you (which may be appropriate as Halloween is coming.)

Anyhow, I am finishing up a MArgaret Atwood book and should be able to start this in a ffew days. In the meantime, here is a picture of downtown Charleston that I took just a day or two ago. South Battery, to be exact, at the tip of the peninsula. When the firing started on Fort Sumpter, people in these homes went out on their porches and roofs to watch.

Finished this today,while waiting for number 1 son to finsih up some reserach he was doing at the library for a paper.

On the whole, I thought this worthwhile reading. I don't know much about 80's music or about the music industry, so it was interesting to look at that world through Voss colored glasses. I knew roughly half of the songs on Helena's play list. I don't know if that is good or bad.

Anyhow, I liked the alternating between Helena's current life and her memories. Some of the characters were well developed, some very cliche, but the good stuff outweighed the less interesting (to my taste.) I must admit, that even when Helena was at her lowest, I kept rooting for a happy ending. The descriptions of Santorini made me go look it up on the internet. (Pictured) I am putting it on my "try to see someday" list.

Thank you midwinter! Off to the next person as soon as I get an address.

This book arrived safely in Alabama - I'll journal again when read. I think I'll build the playlist and listen to it in my Rhapsody account...

Well - an interesting book. I'm old enough that I knew very few of the songs in Helena's playlist, but I've found and listened to many of them now and have enjoyed them. In fact, I have Ann Peebles' "I Can't Stand the Rain" playing right now.

There's not much to say that the others have not already said. I loved the relationship between Helena and Sam. I also thought that author Voss did her best work with the girls of the book. Not all the females, but the young girls. Ruby is an adorable apparition, and the young Helena and Sam were so beautifully articulated.

To Be Someone is ultimately an readable excursion into fame, friendship, and what's left when that's all gone.

Thanks, midwinter, for sharing! I've PMd for the next address, and will mail as soon as possible when I have it.

In mail today to vicki9170.
Thanks again!

received today

starting this one tonight, PM'ing meshe for their addy

meshe asked to be skipped, so PM'ing Jendudley

there were enjoyable parts to this book, but overall was just fairly depressing...could have been my mood too.....thanks for sharing!

Will read over Easter Weekend *at the beach*

YAY!

Wow. This book is great. I love the story line, and the songs, and the 80's bits.

I am not *quite* finished with it, but will be by tonight and will send it on to Suefitz tomorrow. Thanks for sharing midwinter!

Looks great. Have a little more time to read since I got layed off a month ago.

I found another copy of this book to re-start the stalled ring. Please look to http://bookcrossing.com/journal/3369887 to follow the rest of the bookring's journey.

Suefitz - when you're done, please send the original copy back to me.

Happy reading everyone!

RELEASE NOTES:

Returning home to Midwinter - sorry you had to start the ring over.