The Picture of Summer

As soon as I saw this picture, I knew it was my picture of the week.

It has all the elements of summer - the pool, the green grass and leaves, and the hubby reading a story to the grandbaby on the deck. He's reading her one of her "Walter the Farting Dog" books (yes, there is a series of them) and he has yet to be able to make it through an entire book. He laughs until he cries and he just can't finish. LOL

I'm glad I was able to immortalize this summer memory for the pair of them.

What I'm Reading

I've definitely stopped binging on the books. As fun as it is, I can't keep it up forever - real life has a way of intruding. ;-)

Electronic Books

You know, I really have to start writing down the names of the books as I start reading them on the Kindle. My memory is sketchy at best and I don't keep them unless I really, really think I might read them again. So then, when it comes time to do this post I can't remember what I've read.

So I read a short book that I thought was a Y/A and turned out the point of the story was for the main character to hook up with her stepbrother. Then I read about two pages of what I thought was erotica but turned out to be bad porn. Next was a period piece called Under the Mistletoe (I think) which was actually quite good, followed by a vampire story that really wasn't.

Meanwhile I finished The Zombie, the Cat, and Barack Obama by Christopher Antony Meade. It wasn't exactly bad, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. It was a little wordy, like it was trying too hard, and some of the parts that were supposed to be funny ... weren't. You know how sometimes you watch a movie that's so bad it's good? This wasn't like that.

Currently I'm reading book one of a two book set called The Last Sunset by Frank Montgomery. It's a science fiction set in 2040, about a lawyer named Darius who would do anything to get his wife and unborn child off the planet before a meteor hits the Earth. He succeeds in getting her a seat on one of the shuttles headed for the moon base, but he could only get one ticket so he stays behind. He takes refuge in a mini bus filled with supplies that he parks in an underground parking structure when the meteor hits. I've just got to the part where he ventures out of the shelter for the first time in two weeks. I normally like disaster books, but this one is kind of ... meh. Maybe it's because I can't quite like the main character, Darius, who's somewhat of a shifty lawyer. But I'll probably keep reading, for a while at least, to see if he redeems himself.

Tree Books

Slowed right down to a crawl here.

I've been slowly plugging away at From the Dark by Michele Hauf. I'm still not very far into it, but I do like the two main characters and the way they interact with each other. It'll be interesting to see what happens when he finds out she's a witch and she finds out he's a vampire. :-)

Re-Reads

I have finished exactly one story in Liavek, edited by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull. This is a swords and sorcery fantasy with the stories taking place in the exotic city of Liavek, which is the central theme that ties them all together.

So ... what have you been reading lately?

What I'm Reading

My binge reading seems to be tapering off and I'm settling in to a nice, steady reading pace. Maybe it has something to do with running out of new Lynsay Sands books to read. But whatever the reason, I'm back to a nice, normal, two or three books a week again. :-D

Electronic Books

I'm still working on the boxed set of Looking For Love, by Rita Herron. I finished the first book Husband Hunting 101, and the second one, Here Comes the Bride, but I'm having trouble getting into the third one, Under the Covers.

Here Comes the Bride was just as hard to put down as Husband Hunting 101. The story starts out with identical twins, Kimberly and Marci who are are totally different in every other respect. So when Marci coerces Kimberly to do a 'twin switch' with her to pose as a hunky architect's fiancée and go home with him for a friend's wedding, Kimberly's not sure she can pull it off. I won't say much more to avoid spoilers, but it was another great read.

Under the Covers is about a marriage counselor whose book on marriage advice has just made the best seller list as a sex guide. The man she thought she was married to (turns out the preacher wasn't licensed) has just run off with another man, and she becomes involved with a reporter who's looking to make a name for himself by proving her to be a fraud. I haven't given up on this one yet, given that I enjoyed the other two so much, but the idea of this guy hooking up with her to seek revenge (he blames her for the break-up of his marriage) just doesn't float my boat.

So in the meantime, I've started reading The Zombie, the Cat, and Barack Obama by Christopher Antony Meade. I'm not too far into this book, but so far it's pretty funny and puts me in mind of Beers in Heaven by the irreverent Ford Forkum. We've met the cat and the zombie (who wants to try for a spot on Britain's Got Talent), I can't wait to see how Barack Obama fits into all this.

Tree Books

Only a slight binge here this week. I ran out of Lynsay Sands and Kerrelyn Sparks books to read, but found a couple of Katie MacAlister books on my to-be-read bookcase. I think the thing I like best about her books, aside from the steamy sex and humour, is that her heroines are real women. They're not perfect - they have a few extra pounds, they speak without thinking, they even have some pretty obvious flaws. They're probably the most realistic characters I've ever read.

Ain't Myth-behaving is actually two books in one. First we have Stag Party which surprised me by being from the man's point of view. Dane Hearne (aka the Irish god Cernunnos) needs to find a bride, and fast. He needs to be married by Beltane, which is a week away, and his old goddess has run off with a salsa dancer. He's found the perfect woman in travel writer Megan St. Clair, but can he convince her in time? This book is fast paced and hilarious, and Dane is forever spouting lines that would be insanely cheesey under any other circumstances. I couldn't read it fast enough.

The second book was Norse Truly, about a group of Vikings who are forced to forever sail the same stretch of coastline unless they can find a way break their curse. Enter Brynna who's in Sweden visiting relatives. It turns out that not only is her great-great (great) grandmother the one who laid the curse on Alrik and his men, but Brynna is a hereditary Valkyrie. Brynna becomes their last, best hope for leaving the earthly plane and going to Valhalla. But Brynna's fallen in love with the hunky Viking Alrik and dreads the thought of facing the future without him, which is what will happen if she breaks the curse.

I couldn't stop there and the next book I wolfed down was It's All Greek to Me, also by Katie MacAlister. I really loved the heroine, Harry, in this book. She has a temper and she's not afraid to defend herself, not even against the brother of the hunky Greek billionaire playboy whose house she's staying in while she runs herd on the band who're there to perform for a birthday party. She's actually a writer, but she's watching the band as a favour to a friend. I loved the chemistry between her and Iakovos, right from the start, and how she wasn't afraid to act on it. I loved the way she kept deliberately mispronouncing his last name, and I loved the way she never played coy, she always said exactly what she thought. She just might be one of my favourite characters of all time.

Next I decided to start working on the 20 or so unread Silhouette Nocturnes I have my shelf. I'm starting with From the Dark by Michele Hauf, but I haven't got very far into it yet. All I know is that it's about a vampire.

Once upon a time, Silhouette had a series called Silhouette Shadows, which were paranormal romances, and the first category romances I ever subscribed to. The series was up to about #66, I think, when Silhouette was bought out by Harlequin. I guess Harlequin didn't realize how popular paranormal romance had become, because they axed the series. Then, realizing their mistake, they started the Dreamscape series, which was pretty much the Silhouette Shadows re-released under the new banner with new covers. I guess I wasn't the only outraged fan, because the series didn't last long. Shortly after that, we were presented with Silhouette Nocturne, which was just what we readers were waiting for.

Re-Reads

I started re-reading an anthology called Liavek, edited by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull. This is a swords and sorcery fantasy with the stories taking place in the exotic city of Liavek. And I have to admit I haven't even made it through the first story yet, but I'm sure it won't take me long to pick up the pace.

So ... what have you been reading lately?

What I'm Reading

Sad to say, but I haven't got a lot of reading in lately. I've been busy doing other things, like editing and crocheting.

Electronic Books

I haven't given up on my electronic reading, honest! Though I haven't made it to the treadmill or exercise bike yet, for added incentive I was given a copy of Flame and Stone, Book One of the Dunning Manor series by Jamie DeBree. You can find out more about it in last week's post. But George is all charged up and ready to go and I can't wait to re-read it!

Tree Books

I'm a little further along in Horns, by Joe Hill. I don't know that I particularly like this book, but I paid full price for it and I'm curious to find out how Ig ended up with the horns. Those two things are just enough motivation to keep me going. Ig has discovered a couple of new abilities, and for some reason snakes are really attracted to him. So there's some interesting stuff going on. And it seems like his ex-friend Lee has a couple of abilities of his own, which make him impervious to Ig's influence.

A friend of mine passed along a copy of The Minister's Daughter by Julie Hearn. I haven't got very far in it but it appears to be part historical, set in the time of the Salem witch trials, and part fantasy. Should be an interesting read.

Re-Reads

The reading is going slowly on The Fantastic Imagination II. This is not a book of light reading, this is high fantasy at its best and needs to be savoured.

So like I said, the reading has been a little on the light side lately. But the weather's been very wintery lately, cold and snowy and perfect for reading. So hopefully I'll be able to pick up the pace in the week ahead.

And also in the week ahead I'm hoping to update my Goodreads. I really need to do this before it gets ahead of me like it did last year.

So . . . what about you? Read any good books lately?

What I'm Reading

A few of you out there might remember how in the late spring I had the bright idea of converting the closet in my office into a reading nook. I'd seen a picture of one on Facebook and thought it would be a perfect use for the space behind my desk. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, and it took forever to catalogue the science fiction and fantasy books I filled it with, but the nook is finally done. And man, was it ever worth the work!

It's even more comfy than it looks and I don't have to fight the cats for it any more - they don't like the extra cushion I have in it for my back. :-D

Electronic Books

Still nothing to report here, sad to say. However things should pick up this coming week because I plan to get back on the exercise bike. And while the hubby likes to listen to music while he rides, I much prefer reading. And my Kindle is much easier to hang onto than a tree book.

Tree Books

I'm not quite to the halfway point in Horns, by Joe Hill. And to be perfectly honest, my interest in it is waning. It's divided into sections - the first section had the main character, Ig, waking up with a hangover and the horns starting to grow out of his head, and then as he learns about the new powers these horns give him, we also get some back story about him and the death of this girlfriend. The second section was a flashback to when Ig was a boy and how he first met Merrin. I'll probably keep reading, if nothing else than to satisfy my curiosity. So far I have rather mixed feelings about it. The story definitely pulls you along, but I'm not sure how I feel about Ig, and the situation he's in has no explanation so far.

I may have ignored my writing yesterday in favour of reading Blue Dahlia, by Nora Roberts. Yes, the whole thing in one sitting. It's the first in the In the Garden trilogy. It centered around a woman named Stella, who loses her husband in an accident and now has to raise their two young sons alone. She ends up moving from Michigan to Tennessee to be closer to her father, and finds a job working in a garden center. Of course there's a lot more to it than that, like the fact that the woman she works for is a kindred spirit, there's a hunky co-worker whom she's attracted to but who irritates the crap out of her, and there's a ghost who's seriously attached to Stella's two boys. Obviously it was a great read, and I can't wait to start the next one.

Re-Reads

I started reading Captivated by Nora Roberts, book one of the Donovan Legacy. I've read these books before, but after finishing Blood Magick, I was in the mood for more of her magical books, and this was the first one I laid my hands on. I haven't got very far in it though, I kind of got distracted by Blue Dahlia.

I finished reading The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine Volume 2. I think what I liked best about this anthology was the variety of stories. Unlike her Swords and Sorceress series, they didn't revolve around a central theme. Not that I didn't enjoy that series, but sometimes it's nice to have some variety.

Considering the size of my to-be-read pile - more like a bookcase - I really shouldn't be indulging in re-reads. But sometimes the brain wants what the brain wants.

So . . . what about you? What have you been reading lately?

What I'm Reading

Regular readers of this blog will know that I kind of slacked off in the reading department over the holidays. Sometimes it was just too hard to fit time to read in. Plus I had issues with tiredness, as in it was hard to keep my eyes open some nights.

But I'm back, and further more I've been getting some reading in. One of my resolutions was to read for an hour a day and so far I've been sticking to it. Not always all at once, mind you. Sometimes I spread the hour out in bits and pieces over the course of the day.

Previously I had a bunch of books I was pretty much neglecting, so I think in honour of the new year I'm going to start fresh and only discuss books I'm actually reading.

And as promised in my 'goals for the year' post, I'll be doing a book review once a month, probably at the end of the month.

Electronic Books

Poor George. He's been very neglected as of late. Part of the problem is that I have a lot of crap on George. In the beginning I went a little crazy downloading free books. Any and all free books. And it turns out that there's a reason most of those books were free.

And another problem is that when I open a book on George it's pretty much a crap shoot. There's no blurb on the back of the book to check, so you're pretty much judging a book by its cover. Unless you have a computer nearby so you can look the book up and then make an informed decision on whether you want to read it or not.

Now a smart person would take a day (or two, or a whole week) and go through the books they have stored, checking out whether they were really worth downloading, putting them in categories to make it easier to choose a book to fit their mood . . . But no one every accused me of being overly smart. Besides, I started moving the books I was keeping into categories as I finished reading them, just to keep them separate.

So in other words, I have not been reading much in the way of electronic books lately.

Tree Books

I've got two books on the go here. The first is Horns, by Joe Hill. There was a movie starring Daniel Radcliff made from this novel, which was what attracted me in the first place. So far it's a very strange story about Ignatius Perrish, a man who's girlfriend was raped and murdered about a year before the story takes place. Ig was suspected of the crime, but there wasn't enough proof to support the claim. The story begins the morning after a night of drunkenness when Ig wakes up with a horrific hangover and a set of horns beginning to grow out of his head. And then he discovers the people he encounters tell him exactly what's on their minds. If he touches them he can learn their deepest, darkest secrets. And if he tells them to do something, they do it.

The other book is Blood Magick, by Nora Roberts, Book Three of the Cousins O'Dwyer trilogy. I'm trying to make this book last, I really am, but it's not easy. It's warm and witchy and full of romance and suspense. A friend has been lending these books to me, but I just might have to break down and buy my own set, they're that good.

Re-Reads

I finished reading Hunting the Corrigan's Blood by Holly Lisle. This was an excellent book - science fiction at its best. It was fast paced and full of twists and turns. Cadence Drake is a character you can really root for, especially after all the obstacles she's forced to overcome. My only complaint is that it's not part of a series. I wanted the adventure to continue, even after the end.

I finished reading The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine Volume 1 and now I'm working my way through Volume 2. The title is pretty self explanatory. Marion published her own fantasy magazine from 1988 through 2000, and these two collections of the best of that magazine.

And that's pretty much it for now. A small list compare to some of the ones last year, but I think I have a better chance of finishing what I start if I keep it short.

So . . . what about you? What have you been reading lately?