The baby wants pineapple again.
This is problematic only because I have to pace myself. I love pineapple, but if I eat too much of it, I'll give myself mouth sores. But I'll let you guess what I just had as an afternoon snack.
(Also, sausage balls may be the perfect food. Protein, dairy, and carbs, all wrapped up into one. And so delicious.)
Anyway, in what has actually happened this week, versus a post that is me complaining about my neighbor. I finished conferences with my 1301 students last week, so conferencing is finally done this semester (yay!) I have no idea what I'm going to do about conferences for next semester, except perhaps have them when I get back to catch up with my students.
My Brit Lit students have done Milton the last few class sessions, which has been great fun and in which I've been able to show off a bit. We're getting into the realm of literature that is my expertise. This class runs through the long 18th century, which is one of my areas, so from here on out, I should be able to do a lot with the material. Certainly, I won't have to prep so much. (Though we're doing Dryden tomorrow, and that I will have to bone up on a little.)
Mogo did her jumping about thing in church again Sunday, though more so, and I suspect it had something to do with the brass quintet we had for Easter. I think the organ, and the brass (and her daddy's voice) resonate at a frequency that she can hear, and she gets very excited. Of course, that meant I was once again trying not to laugh through the homily. But Easter service was very nice--the church was packed, and I hope our priests took a well-deserved post-Holy Week day off yesterday.
Of other interest has been a continuing argument that's been going on on the Victoria listserv, centering around a manifesto put forth by something known as the V21 Collective. If any members of the V21 Collective are on the listserv, they've been curiously quiet as their manifesto has been--well, not torn to shreds...Victorians seem to absorb some of the manners of the era...but certainly debated strenuously. With the exception of a email at the beginning of the argument (which I really didn't say much in), I've stayed out of it and just watched as scholars far more important than myself have been debating this for the last two weeks. It's been quite an eye-opener, and it is very interesting that not many are jumping to defend this manifesto.
I've also sent a paper abstract out to a journal with an eye for their special issue. Wish me luck.
I've mentioned that I'm on the program review committee for the department, and that has continued to be an enlightening experience. My section is fairly easy, as it deals with curriculum mobility and integration--basically, how do our classes fit in to other programs at the college and across the state and can people transfer to a 4-year university easily and with minimal loss of credit (the answer is yes, as Texas has a state-mandated core curriculum, and all but one of our classes have been approved as core courses.) My other colleagues have been dealing with trickier issues, like cost-effectiveness and personnel management. It's been interesting to hear their reports about how our program is running--which it's running just fine--but it really gives you an inside look at how the nuts and bolts of this stuff really work. Most faculty, I don't think, ever give much consideration to the actual dispersal of funds and where they go (other than to perhaps complain about funds going places we think they ought not go). So learning how the finances of not just the department but the college itself has been very enlightening. I'm not sure I ever want to be an administrator, but it's good to know these things. The more knowledge the better, and certainly, the more the faculty knows about these sort of things, the better we can support our faculty administrators (like department chairs).
(I just realized how very academic-sounding that last sentence was.)
I have an appointment with maternal fetal medicine on Monday to do the anatomy scan for the baby, so say a prayer that everything continues as it has gone--just fine. I have been feeling dizzy and weak here and there--standing for too long can really make the room swim--so it's something I want to discuss, but my reading says that it's not uncommon for that to happen in the second trimester, particularly for women who have low blood pressure (which I always have), because your blood pressure actually lowers in pregnancy (because you have to make more and sometimes it doesn't keep up, etc.). Anyway, I'm now trying to keep a snack and some water with me at all times, so if it's a blood sugar thing, I can spike it back up, and if it's a dehydration thing, I'm combating that constantly--and that's all I can do. But I should have new pictures of Mogo on Monday.
There was also no joy in Mudville this week--or I should say, couches were set on fire in Lexington when my Wildcats lost, and we were quite upset here. (Duke winning the championship only added insult to injury, though Dear Husband said that if we had to lose, better to Wisconsin than Duke, and I think he's right.) In any case, it's now baseball season, and my Reds won their first game yesterday, and I get MLB at Bat free through T-Mobile, so I can listen to all the games--and listen to them from WLW, so I'm getting Marty and Jeff (and listening to the same commentary that my daddy is). And baseball is so calming after the excitement of basketball season. (Some would say boring, but they don't know what they're talking about.)
So now you see why yesterday's post was cut in two. It hasn't seemed eventful, but looking back, a lot seems to have happened. But since it's Tuesday when I'm writing this, maybe next week's will be shorter? (I doubt it.)
Showing posts with label sci-fi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sci-fi. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Book Review: Leaving Mundania
Stark, Lizzie. Leaving Mundania: Inside the Transformative World of Live Action Role-Playing Games. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2012. Paperback. +272 pages. $16.95. Release Date: 1 May 2012.
Full disclosure: I received an advance digital copy of this book for reviewing purposes.
Leaving Mundania was one of the more interesting books I've read in a while. Being a geek myself, I'm familiar with live action role-playing games. Many of my friends in college played, and while I never made it to an actual LARP event, I knew the basics of how to play, had my own boffer sword (think a homemade Nerf sword--a pool noodle carefully duct-taped around a PVC pipe), and enjoyed practicing beating the crap out of my friends with it.
I never went to a LARP event, because when you got right down to it, it meant camping and tromping through the woods, and well, I didn't want to go. I've always been much more of a table-top gaming girl myself (which I loved doing with these same friends). In the intervening years, the LARP that I knew has gone under, unfortunately, so my husband and his brother don't spend weekends "playing whoop-ass" (as my mother-in-law likes to refer to it).
This is the LARP I knew--going out, dressing up in funny costumes, and beating the crap out of your best buds with a Nerf sword while traipsing through the woods after "treasure." It meant many weekends making swords and sewing costumes (We learned how to make spider legs out of pantyhose) and a lot of fun. While I never went, I knew exactly what was going on, whose characters had done what, and what the plot was.
What I didn't realize until reading Leaving Mundania, is that is only one kind of LARP.
I suppose, in retrospect, I should have realized that. After all, I've played more than one table-top RPG and they all come together different. Star Wars and Star Trek play on two different systems (d20 and d6, respectively), while Dungeons and Dragons takes a different approach, and anything involving Cthulhu is completely different. Stark moves through several different kinds of LARP, from the boffer weapon LARP, to one that exists in a Nexus and allows people to play any kind of character they want, to the Society for Creative Anachronism, Cthulhu, and the more intense and strange Scandinavian LARPs.
First of all, Stark gets credit for being a nerd herself, though she obviously didn't start out as a LARPing nerd (few of us do, after all). She recognizes someone playing Susan from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, she cracks Star Trek and Star Wars jokes, and one of her chapters is titled "Cthulhu fhtagn!" So what I really liked about this book was that Stark went into it with respect. She even devotes an entire chapter to the misconceptions people have about LARPs, Dungeons and Dragons, and even Magic, after the 1980s and 1990s when parents were all told that these kinds of games were converting their children to devil worship, not realizing that a D&D game looks more like the 8-Bit re-enactment than something out of a bad Johnny Depp movie.
Despite her respect, there are a couple of problems--she highlights the polyamorous relationship of three players, which has very little to do with the actual game and is something that people who might be uncomfortable with LARPing to begin with could then use an an excuse not to get involved, if they were just exploring it based on Stark's book. But I am assuming that the people in this relationship said it was okay to use their full names, as Stark respects the wishes of those she interviews and withholds their names, as they don't want to be outed as LARPers. In the United States, she notes, LARPers can be outcasts even in the geek community.
What's of more interest to me was Stark's journey through LARP in history, which points out that entertainments put on for queens and kings of Britain mimicked LARPs. She also spends some time with the military and the exercises they use to immerse soldiers as much in a real world combat simulation as possible. And then she goes to Scandinavia to take part in more artistic LARPs that focus much more on emotional character development than anything else.
For all the time that Stark spends playing in LARPs and her conclusion, I'm still not sure that she would consider herself a LARPer, though. This still feels very much like the tale of an outsider, carefully trying to negotiate her way through a strange, new society. While granted, this may be true, I think I was hoping for an ending where she hadn't just gotten more comfortable with herself because she'd been around all these weirdos who had no problem dressing up, but an ending where she actually still felt like LARP would be part of her life. For all the tales of acceptance and fun of the LARP community, it still sounds like she's not entirely comfortable with it.
And granted, that's okay. LARP isn't for everyone. And overall, this book really does open LARP up to more people. If you're interested in learning about the different forms of LARP and LARPing, this is a great book to get you started.
Leaving Mundania - B+
Full disclosure: I received an advance digital copy of this book for reviewing purposes.
Leaving Mundania was one of the more interesting books I've read in a while. Being a geek myself, I'm familiar with live action role-playing games. Many of my friends in college played, and while I never made it to an actual LARP event, I knew the basics of how to play, had my own boffer sword (think a homemade Nerf sword--a pool noodle carefully duct-taped around a PVC pipe), and enjoyed practicing beating the crap out of my friends with it.
I never went to a LARP event, because when you got right down to it, it meant camping and tromping through the woods, and well, I didn't want to go. I've always been much more of a table-top gaming girl myself (which I loved doing with these same friends). In the intervening years, the LARP that I knew has gone under, unfortunately, so my husband and his brother don't spend weekends "playing whoop-ass" (as my mother-in-law likes to refer to it).
This is the LARP I knew--going out, dressing up in funny costumes, and beating the crap out of your best buds with a Nerf sword while traipsing through the woods after "treasure." It meant many weekends making swords and sewing costumes (We learned how to make spider legs out of pantyhose) and a lot of fun. While I never went, I knew exactly what was going on, whose characters had done what, and what the plot was.
What I didn't realize until reading Leaving Mundania, is that is only one kind of LARP.
I suppose, in retrospect, I should have realized that. After all, I've played more than one table-top RPG and they all come together different. Star Wars and Star Trek play on two different systems (d20 and d6, respectively), while Dungeons and Dragons takes a different approach, and anything involving Cthulhu is completely different. Stark moves through several different kinds of LARP, from the boffer weapon LARP, to one that exists in a Nexus and allows people to play any kind of character they want, to the Society for Creative Anachronism, Cthulhu, and the more intense and strange Scandinavian LARPs.
First of all, Stark gets credit for being a nerd herself, though she obviously didn't start out as a LARPing nerd (few of us do, after all). She recognizes someone playing Susan from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, she cracks Star Trek and Star Wars jokes, and one of her chapters is titled "Cthulhu fhtagn!" So what I really liked about this book was that Stark went into it with respect. She even devotes an entire chapter to the misconceptions people have about LARPs, Dungeons and Dragons, and even Magic, after the 1980s and 1990s when parents were all told that these kinds of games were converting their children to devil worship, not realizing that a D&D game looks more like the 8-Bit re-enactment than something out of a bad Johnny Depp movie.
Despite her respect, there are a couple of problems--she highlights the polyamorous relationship of three players, which has very little to do with the actual game and is something that people who might be uncomfortable with LARPing to begin with could then use an an excuse not to get involved, if they were just exploring it based on Stark's book. But I am assuming that the people in this relationship said it was okay to use their full names, as Stark respects the wishes of those she interviews and withholds their names, as they don't want to be outed as LARPers. In the United States, she notes, LARPers can be outcasts even in the geek community.
What's of more interest to me was Stark's journey through LARP in history, which points out that entertainments put on for queens and kings of Britain mimicked LARPs. She also spends some time with the military and the exercises they use to immerse soldiers as much in a real world combat simulation as possible. And then she goes to Scandinavia to take part in more artistic LARPs that focus much more on emotional character development than anything else.
For all the time that Stark spends playing in LARPs and her conclusion, I'm still not sure that she would consider herself a LARPer, though. This still feels very much like the tale of an outsider, carefully trying to negotiate her way through a strange, new society. While granted, this may be true, I think I was hoping for an ending where she hadn't just gotten more comfortable with herself because she'd been around all these weirdos who had no problem dressing up, but an ending where she actually still felt like LARP would be part of her life. For all the tales of acceptance and fun of the LARP community, it still sounds like she's not entirely comfortable with it.
And granted, that's okay. LARP isn't for everyone. And overall, this book really does open LARP up to more people. If you're interested in learning about the different forms of LARP and LARPing, this is a great book to get you started.
Leaving Mundania - B+
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
I'm Guest Blogging!
For anyone who's interested, I have a guest blog post over at Tosche Station this morning on an academic defense of fanfiction.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Book Review: Knits for Nerds
Full Disclosure: I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher.
Take a
look at what's out today, everyone! Toni Carr's Knits for Nerds was published today, and never, in my life, have I regretted being a crappy knitter before.
Until today.
The first thing I noticed was from the introduction--all the pictures were taken at NEIL GAIMAN'S HOUSE.
I can has?
There are only five patterns labeled "Easy" out of the 30+ patterns in the book, three of which are scarves--but really cool scarves. One is an easier version of the classic Dr. Who scarf:--basically this, but skinnier (and perhaps a little shorter). Unfortunately for me (but fortunate for all those who are more skilled knitters out there), there are some truly awesome patterns in here.
If I'm going through what I desperately want to add a +5 modifier to my knitting skill for, the number one thing is Carr's "Aim to Misbehave Brown Jacket." It's gorgeous, and I want it! Based on Firefly's Browncoat pattern, I couldn't help but think that River Tam would have had a Browncoat in this pattern. And as long as I'm on the Firefly themed patterns, the cunning scarf (one of the easy patterns) and the cunning socks might go well with the Jayne hat I crocheted for my brother-in-law a few years ago. Yeah. You know you want one (and knit patterns for the hat can be found all over the internet).
Other beautiful things I loved? The "Secret Beaded Bag." Done in purple tweedy yarn and embellished with some really pretty beads, it's inspired by Herminone Granger's Bag of Holding from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The "Light of Earendil" shrug is delicate and beautiful, and way beyond my skill level. It features a leaf pattern and beading, and makes me wish I was the kind of English teacher who could get away with the ethereal kind of clothing (all I can get away with is my tie-dyed skirt). One particular strength of this collection is the number of bags--including a laptop bag which can be spread out to make a chessboard.
My enthusiasm for these patterns not withstanding, there are a few bombs, which one would expect. The Princess hats (all based on Star Wars hairstyles) are a bit silly (though I can definitely see how "Padme's Battle Cape" would work for roller girls), and the Catwoman hat is patently ridiculous. And to be honest, I wasn't much of a fan of many of the patterns in the third section of the book that dealt with comics and manga, but that's more of a style thing on my part than a reflection on the patterns. Also, the sci-fi trivia used to fill in blank spaces at the ends of patterns is a bit hokey--if you've bought this book, you know the answers to these questions.
There is a fairly good how-to section at the back of the book to assist those novice knitters, like myself. Now if I can just get to where my purling doesn't look like a cat has taken its claws to my yarn.....
Overall, there is more good than bad in this book, and the "Aim to Misbehave Brown Jacket" is worth the price of admission alone. If you're a geek crafter, this is definitely a book for you. Grade: A-
Take a
look at what's out today, everyone! Toni Carr's Knits for Nerds was published today, and never, in my life, have I regretted being a crappy knitter before.Until today.
The first thing I noticed was from the introduction--all the pictures were taken at NEIL GAIMAN'S HOUSE.
I can has?
There are only five patterns labeled "Easy" out of the 30+ patterns in the book, three of which are scarves--but really cool scarves. One is an easier version of the classic Dr. Who scarf:--basically this, but skinnier (and perhaps a little shorter). Unfortunately for me (but fortunate for all those who are more skilled knitters out there), there are some truly awesome patterns in here.
If I'm going through what I desperately want to add a +5 modifier to my knitting skill for, the number one thing is Carr's "Aim to Misbehave Brown Jacket." It's gorgeous, and I want it! Based on Firefly's Browncoat pattern, I couldn't help but think that River Tam would have had a Browncoat in this pattern. And as long as I'm on the Firefly themed patterns, the cunning scarf (one of the easy patterns) and the cunning socks might go well with the Jayne hat I crocheted for my brother-in-law a few years ago. Yeah. You know you want one (and knit patterns for the hat can be found all over the internet).
Other beautiful things I loved? The "Secret Beaded Bag." Done in purple tweedy yarn and embellished with some really pretty beads, it's inspired by Herminone Granger's Bag of Holding from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The "Light of Earendil" shrug is delicate and beautiful, and way beyond my skill level. It features a leaf pattern and beading, and makes me wish I was the kind of English teacher who could get away with the ethereal kind of clothing (all I can get away with is my tie-dyed skirt). One particular strength of this collection is the number of bags--including a laptop bag which can be spread out to make a chessboard.
My enthusiasm for these patterns not withstanding, there are a few bombs, which one would expect. The Princess hats (all based on Star Wars hairstyles) are a bit silly (though I can definitely see how "Padme's Battle Cape" would work for roller girls), and the Catwoman hat is patently ridiculous. And to be honest, I wasn't much of a fan of many of the patterns in the third section of the book that dealt with comics and manga, but that's more of a style thing on my part than a reflection on the patterns. Also, the sci-fi trivia used to fill in blank spaces at the ends of patterns is a bit hokey--if you've bought this book, you know the answers to these questions.
There is a fairly good how-to section at the back of the book to assist those novice knitters, like myself. Now if I can just get to where my purling doesn't look like a cat has taken its claws to my yarn.....
Overall, there is more good than bad in this book, and the "Aim to Misbehave Brown Jacket" is worth the price of admission alone. If you're a geek crafter, this is definitely a book for you. Grade: A-
Friday, December 30, 2011
Year-End Wrap-Up
It's that time again--the time of year to review what's gone on in the reading world as it revolves around me. The official book total for the year: 68 new books read. (I don't count the number of books I read over and over again, otherwise Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards! would be on the list a hundred and fifty times by now). Most of these books were for school, and since I had to transfer from LivingSocial to Good Reads, I can only accurately describe the books that I read from July as books from this year. In any case, the best books (that I read) of 2011 (in no particular order except for the first one):
1. Snuff - Terry Pratchett. As I said in my review before, while this is not the funniest or my favorite Terry Pratchett book, it is, without a doubt, the best book he's ever written.
2. Heir to the Empire - 20th Anniversary Edition - Timothy Zahn. Okay, so I realize that this kind of skirts my rules on books, but you know what? There's so much new stuff in this edition that it qualifies. It's amazing to go behind the scenes and get a glimpse of Zahn's thought process as he relaunched Star Wars for the next generation--and I'd like to point out that it's a sight better than anything else that has come out of Del Rey for Star Wars in a long time. I've quit reading the Fate of the Jedi series, as I discussed with a friend via texting today.
3. Choices of One - Timothy Zahn. The above statement, of course, does not apply to anything Tim Zahn writes. Thrawn being badass? Yes, please.
4. Ghost Story- Jim Butcher. It's not my favorite Dresden book--and things have gotten a whole lot darker. But it was still great and I'm still panting for more.
5. Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin. I read this for my American expatriate novel class, and I'm still struck by how hauntingly beautiful it is.
6. Gabriel's Ghost - Linnea Sinclair. I'm continually disappointed that I can't find more of her books in the bookstore. Though this is a romance novel, I'm amazing at her world-building ability.
7. Twilight's Dawn - Anne Bishop. Black Jewels' verse short stories. This is one that I've kept coming back to since I got it--especially the last story, set after Janelle's death.
On the other end of the spectrum, books I hated this year:
1. Knockout - Catherine Coulter. STOP WRITING PARANORMAL NOVELS WHEN THE SERIES HASN'T BEEN PARANORMAL BEFORE.
2. Death Echo - Elizabeth Lowell. I usually love Elizabeth Lowell, but this was just painful to read.
3. Just Like Heaven - Julia Quinn. It's not that this book was bad, necessarily. But when I look back, it really was one of the biggest disappointments--I had much higher hopes for this book than there was material to fulfill it.
Lastly, the discovery of the year? Eloisa James. I can't wait to read more of her stuff.
What's that? I'm posting before the end of the year? I have time to read a book tomorrow?
Buahaha. My husband bought me a WoW subscription for Christmas and my sister-in-law updated my subscription to Just Cross Stitch magazine. Yeah, right, I'm going to read anything but cross stitch patterns tomorrow.
1. Snuff - Terry Pratchett. As I said in my review before, while this is not the funniest or my favorite Terry Pratchett book, it is, without a doubt, the best book he's ever written.
2. Heir to the Empire - 20th Anniversary Edition - Timothy Zahn. Okay, so I realize that this kind of skirts my rules on books, but you know what? There's so much new stuff in this edition that it qualifies. It's amazing to go behind the scenes and get a glimpse of Zahn's thought process as he relaunched Star Wars for the next generation--and I'd like to point out that it's a sight better than anything else that has come out of Del Rey for Star Wars in a long time. I've quit reading the Fate of the Jedi series, as I discussed with a friend via texting today.
3. Choices of One - Timothy Zahn. The above statement, of course, does not apply to anything Tim Zahn writes. Thrawn being badass? Yes, please.
4. Ghost Story- Jim Butcher. It's not my favorite Dresden book--and things have gotten a whole lot darker. But it was still great and I'm still panting for more.
5. Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin. I read this for my American expatriate novel class, and I'm still struck by how hauntingly beautiful it is.
6. Gabriel's Ghost - Linnea Sinclair. I'm continually disappointed that I can't find more of her books in the bookstore. Though this is a romance novel, I'm amazing at her world-building ability.
7. Twilight's Dawn - Anne Bishop. Black Jewels' verse short stories. This is one that I've kept coming back to since I got it--especially the last story, set after Janelle's death.
On the other end of the spectrum, books I hated this year:
1. Knockout - Catherine Coulter. STOP WRITING PARANORMAL NOVELS WHEN THE SERIES HASN'T BEEN PARANORMAL BEFORE.
2. Death Echo - Elizabeth Lowell. I usually love Elizabeth Lowell, but this was just painful to read.
3. Just Like Heaven - Julia Quinn. It's not that this book was bad, necessarily. But when I look back, it really was one of the biggest disappointments--I had much higher hopes for this book than there was material to fulfill it.
Lastly, the discovery of the year? Eloisa James. I can't wait to read more of her stuff.
What's that? I'm posting before the end of the year? I have time to read a book tomorrow?
Buahaha. My husband bought me a WoW subscription for Christmas and my sister-in-law updated my subscription to Just Cross Stitch magazine. Yeah, right, I'm going to read anything but cross stitch patterns tomorrow.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Thoughts. I has them.
But they'll have to wait for now. I'm contemplating a post based on something I heard on NPR yesterday and the subsequent conversation I had with my husband about the future of the publishing industry. However, the storm system rumbling in has left me with a blistering headache that renders me incapable of a coherent conversation. I'll get to it though.
More importantly...book roundup!
My reading time of late has been drastically reduced. Let me rephrase that--my pleasure reading time has been drastically reduced, thanks to a directed reading that started off with a lot of reading and is continuing apace (but I am learning SO MUCH and Dr. L has made me feel SO MUCH better about taking my preliminary examinations. I could just sit and listen to him talk about the long 18th century for hours and take notes until my hand fell off because he knows everything, and it's absolutely marvelous!).
Anyway. Book roundup. Stop digressing. Hastings was having a sale this week--any 2 paperbacks priced $7.99 or below were 2 for $10.00. So, naturally, I ended up with two paperbacks I've been waiting excitedly on- Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue by Stephanie Laurens and Canyons of the Night by Jayne Castle. I've not started either yet, but I can't wait. If I ever have time!
Things got better, as I found part of a gift card to Barnes and Noble in my purse this morning. I had wanted to get Linnea Sinclair's Hope's Folly, but they didn't have it. So I had picked up Joanna Lindsey's That Perfect Someone instead.
But then I found something better. Something that several of my friends had been blogging about.
Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, 20th Anniversary Edition. Complete with--get this--ANNOTATIONS. And it's so very, very pretty. Here, let me show you it:
Could this get any more perfect? It's so understated. All you have is Star Wars, the title, the announcement of the anniversary edition, his name, and the Imperial cog. It's perfect.
Did I mention that there's a new Thrawn short story in the back? One that partly picks up on things from Choices of One? Did I mention that Grand Admiral Thrawn is badass every day?
So, yeah. I can't wait to get started on that either.
But first up...Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett. Because 18th century literature waits for no woman.
ETA: Well, I was going to add something, but then I forgot. Maybe it will come back to me.
More importantly...book roundup!
My reading time of late has been drastically reduced. Let me rephrase that--my pleasure reading time has been drastically reduced, thanks to a directed reading that started off with a lot of reading and is continuing apace (but I am learning SO MUCH and Dr. L has made me feel SO MUCH better about taking my preliminary examinations. I could just sit and listen to him talk about the long 18th century for hours and take notes until my hand fell off because he knows everything, and it's absolutely marvelous!).
Anyway. Book roundup. Stop digressing. Hastings was having a sale this week--any 2 paperbacks priced $7.99 or below were 2 for $10.00. So, naturally, I ended up with two paperbacks I've been waiting excitedly on- Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue by Stephanie Laurens and Canyons of the Night by Jayne Castle. I've not started either yet, but I can't wait. If I ever have time!
Things got better, as I found part of a gift card to Barnes and Noble in my purse this morning. I had wanted to get Linnea Sinclair's Hope's Folly, but they didn't have it. So I had picked up Joanna Lindsey's That Perfect Someone instead.
But then I found something better. Something that several of my friends had been blogging about.
Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire, 20th Anniversary Edition. Complete with--get this--ANNOTATIONS. And it's so very, very pretty. Here, let me show you it:
Could this get any more perfect? It's so understated. All you have is Star Wars, the title, the announcement of the anniversary edition, his name, and the Imperial cog. It's perfect.Did I mention that there's a new Thrawn short story in the back? One that partly picks up on things from Choices of One? Did I mention that Grand Admiral Thrawn is badass every day?
So, yeah. I can't wait to get started on that either.
But first up...Humphrey Clinker by Tobias Smollett. Because 18th century literature waits for no woman.
ETA: Well, I was going to add something, but then I forgot. Maybe it will come back to me.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
This is me cackling.
Why am I cackling?
Because yesterday, I sat down and read Ghost Story. And then I read Choices of One.
Cackle, cackle, cackle.
I won't spoil anyone for these, but let's put it this way:
Ghost Story - A-
Choices of One - A
When does the next Jim Butcher book come out?
Because yesterday, I sat down and read Ghost Story. And then I read Choices of One.
Cackle, cackle, cackle.
I won't spoil anyone for these, but let's put it this way:
Ghost Story - A-
Choices of One - A
When does the next Jim Butcher book come out?
Friday, July 22, 2011
Grrr.
So, LivingSocial is shutting down its Facebook application where it allows you to keep track of the books you've read.
This is disappointing.
I've been keeping track of my reading habits for the last three and a half years (I had to go back and check LiveJournal to figure out exactly how much I'd read). I kept track of all the new books I'd read, not any of the books I'd re-read. Nor does any of this include all of the articles I read for school. I read comparatively few full books, and I only count books I've read the whole way through--right now, that is 572 total.
In 2008, I read 267 books.
In 2009, I read 187 books.
In 2010, I read 99 books.
According to LivingSocial, that means I've read 19 books this year.
It's July. That can't be right. I can only see 15 on the first page, because apparently, functionality has gone by the wayside, and, well, yeah.
Of course, I've only talked about 12 via my blog (these would be fun books, rather than schoolbooks). And while I know I've been re-reading a lot...I know I've read more than this.
In any case, LivingSocial suggested importing collections to GoodReads. Right, I have a .csv file, so it shouldn't take long for it to put this up, should it?
time to completion (loose estimate): 3763 min, 16 seconds
Wait, what? It's going to take two and a half days? I could upload the books manually faster than that. IF LivingSocial would let me see the rest of my collection!
Oh, right. LivingSocial apparently said "Screw you" to the Facebook app some point last week. Now that I've logged in to the main site....apparently, they've said screw you to that as well.
Okay. Fine. Maybe I've only read 19 books so far this year, which in and of itself is somewhat horrifying to me, because I can't remember when I've read so little for pleasure--I know it's not because I wasn't reading for school. But then, I had French last semester, rather than a literature class, and the literature class I did have was mostly focused on poetry. Then in May, when I did have time to read, I didn't. So, 19 books might not be too bad.
It does seem that GoodReads is backlogged with people importing, and it does seem to be importing without me needing to have the import thing open--I think? I have no idea. I'm not leaving the thing open for two and a half days, much less leaving my computer on, especially considering the heat it puts out and the weather we're having.
So, let this be a record of how many books I have read, if not the actual books (though I do have the .csv file if I get really, really bored one day) should GoodReads fail me in adding books.
And actually, it's 20 books, gosh darn it. The first book to be manually added to Good Reads will be Linnea Sinclair's Gabriel's Ghost. Which is awesome. And you should go read it. Because it's awesome. And definitely worthy of the RITA award it won.
This is disappointing.
I've been keeping track of my reading habits for the last three and a half years (I had to go back and check LiveJournal to figure out exactly how much I'd read). I kept track of all the new books I'd read, not any of the books I'd re-read. Nor does any of this include all of the articles I read for school. I read comparatively few full books, and I only count books I've read the whole way through--right now, that is 572 total.
In 2008, I read 267 books.
In 2009, I read 187 books.
In 2010, I read 99 books.
According to LivingSocial, that means I've read 19 books this year.
It's July. That can't be right. I can only see 15 on the first page, because apparently, functionality has gone by the wayside, and, well, yeah.
Of course, I've only talked about 12 via my blog (these would be fun books, rather than schoolbooks). And while I know I've been re-reading a lot...I know I've read more than this.
In any case, LivingSocial suggested importing collections to GoodReads. Right, I have a .csv file, so it shouldn't take long for it to put this up, should it?
time to completion (loose estimate): 3763 min, 16 seconds
Wait, what? It's going to take two and a half days? I could upload the books manually faster than that. IF LivingSocial would let me see the rest of my collection!
Oh, right. LivingSocial apparently said "Screw you" to the Facebook app some point last week. Now that I've logged in to the main site....apparently, they've said screw you to that as well.
Okay. Fine. Maybe I've only read 19 books so far this year, which in and of itself is somewhat horrifying to me, because I can't remember when I've read so little for pleasure--I know it's not because I wasn't reading for school. But then, I had French last semester, rather than a literature class, and the literature class I did have was mostly focused on poetry. Then in May, when I did have time to read, I didn't. So, 19 books might not be too bad.
It does seem that GoodReads is backlogged with people importing, and it does seem to be importing without me needing to have the import thing open--I think? I have no idea. I'm not leaving the thing open for two and a half days, much less leaving my computer on, especially considering the heat it puts out and the weather we're having.
So, let this be a record of how many books I have read, if not the actual books (though I do have the .csv file if I get really, really bored one day) should GoodReads fail me in adding books.
And actually, it's 20 books, gosh darn it. The first book to be manually added to Good Reads will be Linnea Sinclair's Gabriel's Ghost. Which is awesome. And you should go read it. Because it's awesome. And definitely worthy of the RITA award it won.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Lead me not into temptation....
....especially bookstores.
There's a reason I have shirt that says that. It's always dangerous to take me in a book store, because quite honestly, I want everything.
Today, however, I was in search of one book in particular--Timothy Zahn's newest Star Wars book, Choices of One, which I will not start until this evening at the earliest, because I have to get through my homework first and if I don't read my homework first...I'll end up Sparknoting it instead. Bad English graduate student!
But the problem with bookstores is that you then realize that there are more books that you want. For instance, Sherrilyn Kenyon is coming out with a new Dark-Hunter book on 2 August--Retribution--and apparently, another one comes out in paperback in November--The Guardian.
And then Joanna Lindsey has a new book out, When Passion Rules, set in the Regency era. Julie Garwood is coming out with The Ideal Man, Mary Balogh just released The Secret Mistress last week, Stephanie Laurens has two new books,Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue in August, and In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster, due in September (The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae comes out in January 2012), Nora Roberts has one set for November, The Next Always, and Catherine Coulter just put out a new FBI thriller today, Split Second.
Oh, but wasn't my last Catherine Coulter review abysmal? Yes, it was, and I found the next book, now in paperback while I was at Barnes and Noble and looked at the blurb in the cover. Here's the blurb listed on Amazon, attributed to Publisher's Weekly:
In Coulter's fab 14th FBI paranormal romantic thriller (after KnockOut), FBI special agents Dillon Savich and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, look into the possible haunting of a U.S. senator by his dead wife as well as a more earthly crime: Germany's Schiffer Hartwin Pharmaceutical, which has its U.S. headquarters in Connecticut, might be deliberately withholding an inexpensive cancer fighting drug, Culovort, to force cancer patients to require the far more expensive Eloxium, in short supply. The FBI probe dovetails with one by PI and part-time ballet teacher Erin Pulaski, who's hired by a Yale professor worried about his cancer-stricken father being affected by the shortage. In a wild coincidence, Bowie Richards, the FBI special agent in charge of the New Haven field office, also hires Erin—to babysit his daughter, a ballet student of hers. The attraction between Bowie and Erin grows as they help Dillon and Lacey crack a complicated double case. Coulter fans will want to see more of this new crime-fighting duo.
WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT THE PARANORMAL STUFF IN BOOKS THAT WEREN'T PARANORMAL?
So, Whiplash has been taken off the wish list. I don't want to read it anymore. And as for Split Second:
A serial killer is on the loose, and it's up to FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock to bring him down. They soon discover that the killer has blood ties to the infamous and now long-dead monster Ted Bundy. Savich and Sherlock are joined by agents Lucy Carlyle and Cooper McKnight, and the chase is on.
At the same time, Agent Carlyle learns from her dying father that her grandfather didn't simply walk away from his family twenty-two years ago: he was, in fact, murdered by his wife, Lucy's grandmother. Determined to find the truth, Lucy moves into her grandmother's Chevy Chase mansion. What she finds, however, is a nightmare. Not only does she discover the truth of what happened all those years ago, but she faces a new mystery as well, a strange ring that holds powers beyond her ken.
As the hunt for the serial killer escalates, Savich realizes he's become the killer's focus, and perhaps the next victim. It's up to Lucy to stop this madness before it's too late.
That sound you hear is me banging my head against the wall.
Oh, and then I got home, and UPS brought Twilight's Dawn and Gabriel's Ghost. I finish The Reef tonight, and then start in on The Sun Also Rises for class. I'm editing a novella for a friend. I'm buried in books and books that I want to read.
Just the way I like it.
There's a reason I have shirt that says that. It's always dangerous to take me in a book store, because quite honestly, I want everything.
Today, however, I was in search of one book in particular--Timothy Zahn's newest Star Wars book, Choices of One, which I will not start until this evening at the earliest, because I have to get through my homework first and if I don't read my homework first...I'll end up Sparknoting it instead. Bad English graduate student!
But the problem with bookstores is that you then realize that there are more books that you want. For instance, Sherrilyn Kenyon is coming out with a new Dark-Hunter book on 2 August--Retribution--and apparently, another one comes out in paperback in November--The Guardian.
And then Joanna Lindsey has a new book out, When Passion Rules, set in the Regency era. Julie Garwood is coming out with The Ideal Man, Mary Balogh just released The Secret Mistress last week, Stephanie Laurens has two new books,Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue in August, and In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster, due in September (The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae comes out in January 2012), Nora Roberts has one set for November, The Next Always, and Catherine Coulter just put out a new FBI thriller today, Split Second.
Oh, but wasn't my last Catherine Coulter review abysmal? Yes, it was, and I found the next book, now in paperback while I was at Barnes and Noble and looked at the blurb in the cover. Here's the blurb listed on Amazon, attributed to Publisher's Weekly:
In Coulter's fab 14th FBI paranormal romantic thriller (after KnockOut), FBI special agents Dillon Savich and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, look into the possible haunting of a U.S. senator by his dead wife as well as a more earthly crime: Germany's Schiffer Hartwin Pharmaceutical, which has its U.S. headquarters in Connecticut, might be deliberately withholding an inexpensive cancer fighting drug, Culovort, to force cancer patients to require the far more expensive Eloxium, in short supply. The FBI probe dovetails with one by PI and part-time ballet teacher Erin Pulaski, who's hired by a Yale professor worried about his cancer-stricken father being affected by the shortage. In a wild coincidence, Bowie Richards, the FBI special agent in charge of the New Haven field office, also hires Erin—to babysit his daughter, a ballet student of hers. The attraction between Bowie and Erin grows as they help Dillon and Lacey crack a complicated double case. Coulter fans will want to see more of this new crime-fighting duo.
WHAT DID I SAY ABOUT THE PARANORMAL STUFF IN BOOKS THAT WEREN'T PARANORMAL?
So, Whiplash has been taken off the wish list. I don't want to read it anymore. And as for Split Second:
A serial killer is on the loose, and it's up to FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock to bring him down. They soon discover that the killer has blood ties to the infamous and now long-dead monster Ted Bundy. Savich and Sherlock are joined by agents Lucy Carlyle and Cooper McKnight, and the chase is on.
At the same time, Agent Carlyle learns from her dying father that her grandfather didn't simply walk away from his family twenty-two years ago: he was, in fact, murdered by his wife, Lucy's grandmother. Determined to find the truth, Lucy moves into her grandmother's Chevy Chase mansion. What she finds, however, is a nightmare. Not only does she discover the truth of what happened all those years ago, but she faces a new mystery as well, a strange ring that holds powers beyond her ken.
As the hunt for the serial killer escalates, Savich realizes he's become the killer's focus, and perhaps the next victim. It's up to Lucy to stop this madness before it's too late.
That sound you hear is me banging my head against the wall.
Oh, and then I got home, and UPS brought Twilight's Dawn and Gabriel's Ghost. I finish The Reef tonight, and then start in on The Sun Also Rises for class. I'm editing a novella for a friend. I'm buried in books and books that I want to read.
Just the way I like it.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Review: Finders Keepers by Linnea Sinclair
Sinclair, Linnea. Finders Keepers. New York: Bantam, 2008. Paperback. 2005. +453 pages. $6.99
I meant for this to be a review of In Too Deep and Quicksilver, but I picked up Finders Keepers at lunch today, and it was just dying for a review. So In Too Deep and Quicksilver will have to wait, because this was just too good not to review.
To be honest, I almost put it down when I picked it up. For several reasons. First of all, I had a sneaking suspicion that Sinclair had read too many Star Wars book. Why?
Well, the ship our heroine, Trilby Elliot, owns is called the Careless Venture. Now, Trilby makes some illegal runs. Her ship is falling apart. Doesn't sound like anything we know, right? Like a Imperial Star Destroyer that Booster Terrik conned out of Airen Cracken and renamed the Errant Venture?
Then there's this, the second paragraph of the book: "She bolted for her freighter's rampway. Overhead, a nest of sleeping bloodbats burst out of the rocky crevices like small, leathery missiles. The panicked bats spiraled in front of her. Screeching, they fled through the wide mouth of the cavern into the lavender twilight" (1).
That didn't remind me of a mynock at ALL. (I wish I could find the video from The Empire Strikes Back, but I gather that Lucasfilm allows no Star Wars material to survive on YouTube.) Then there's an overly talkative droid (spelled with an apostrophe before the word - 'droid- doubtless to also keep from ensuing the Wrath of Lucas who copyrighted the term "droid").
About seventy pages in, I declared to my husband that I wasn't sure that I could go on. There was too much "freighter lingo" that Sinclair was trying far too hard to get across. First, while a certain amount of lingo would be acceptable, we aren't short order cooks. Second, when I hear the word "trike," I don't think of a span of three days, and when I hear the word "deuce," I most certainly don't think of a two-day span. Surely, the Romance Writers of America had to be joking by naming this book as a finalist for the Best First Book prize, or 2006 had been particularly bereft of good first romance novels.
My husband convinced me to keep reading, at least just to enjoy how bad it was. So I kept on.
And realized that the book was actually pretty damn good.
Once you get past the lingo and the first Star Wars-like moments (not that there aren't other moments, but we'll get to those), what you have is a distinctively original (at least, I thought so, though there could be something else she's riffing on that I'm not familiar with) universe with a complicated power struggle. The plot is incredibly dense, so I won't outline it here, but I was impressed with the detail (including a new language, which does, at times, also become distracting, like the freighter lingo). And the romance was incredibly understated, which was somewhat confusing to me, given how this was marketed (as a paranormal/sci-fi romance). It was far more sci-fi than romance.
More than this, it was populated with very memorable secondary characters. The military officers that work for our hero, Rhis Vanur, are amazingly intricate in their own motivations and personalities, and I really wanted to know more about them (sometimes more than our heroine, though not our hero). I really felt drawn into this very detailed universe that Sinclair had created.
Mostly.
There were a few places where I was pulled out. One was another Star Wars reference: DZ-9 (Dezi), Trilby's droid, was blasted into pieces and put back together by Vanur. Dezi is C-3PO without a doubt:
"They made the first landing of stairs before Mitkanos could insert a comment. 'You built this 'droid, Tivahr?'
Rhis shook his head, grinning in spite of his pain. 'He's Trilby's. I was just putting him back together for her after he had a slight accident.'
Mitkanos grunted. 'Did you have to hook up his mouth?'" (418).
On the VERY NEXT PAGE, a 'Sko, an alien, who apparently doesn't speak Standard very well addresses Trilby, and we understand why her last name is Elliot. It's so Sinclair can make this joke:
"'El. Li. Ot'" (419).
Yes. That's right. It's an E.T. joke. It's an E.T. joke that was bad enough that it not only threw me out of the novel, but I got up from where I was sitting, came into the office, and pointed it out to my husband. Who immediately understood why I had gotten up.
Now. To be fair, I liked the book a lot. And it's clear that this was Sinclair's first novel, so I'm willing to be more forgiving that I might otherwise have been. And I decided that I definitely wanted to read more of her books, if for no other reason than to see what would happen in the universe she'd created. The events of the novel had to have repercussions, and I could see lots more happening.
So off I went to Sinclair's website. First of all, my comments regarding Jayne Ann Krentz's website stand? Sinclair's website could use an upgrade, as it was hard to navigate and needs some real design help. But imagine my disappointment when I discovered that Finders Keepers is the only novel Sinclair as written (at least as far as I understand) in this particular universe. She does have one series (known as Dock Five), but that's it. Everything else is a one-shot. And I do find that disappointing, because someone as gifted in world-creation as Sinclair is really needs to fully explore the universe they've created, and this one was particularly compelling.
I do intend to start Sinclair's Dock Five series when I have more time and money--since the Kindle version is the same price as the paperback (which infuriates me since there is no additional outlay for the publisher once the book is put into ebook format)--I will go get a hard copy. That way, when I get tired of them, I can make at least some small money from Half Price selling it back.
In the meantime, however, this hard copy is going to do something else hard copies are good for--and go visit our favorite Snarky Writer, as I'd like to see what she has to say about it.
Linnea Sinclair's Finders Keepers: B
----
In other news, I would like to blame Snarky Writer for some of my confusion. Her recent posts on the internet traffic her blog gets caused me to look at mine for the first time. And I do not know where some of these links came from, and I cannot find links on those sites to my blog to discover! Arg!
I also have a post about writing that I'd like to put up, and of course, the upcoming reviews of In Too Deep and Quicksilver. But out of respect for everyone's news feeds, I'll leave it for another day.
I meant for this to be a review of In Too Deep and Quicksilver, but I picked up Finders Keepers at lunch today, and it was just dying for a review. So In Too Deep and Quicksilver will have to wait, because this was just too good not to review.
To be honest, I almost put it down when I picked it up. For several reasons. First of all, I had a sneaking suspicion that Sinclair had read too many Star Wars book. Why?
Well, the ship our heroine, Trilby Elliot, owns is called the Careless Venture. Now, Trilby makes some illegal runs. Her ship is falling apart. Doesn't sound like anything we know, right? Like a Imperial Star Destroyer that Booster Terrik conned out of Airen Cracken and renamed the Errant Venture?
Then there's this, the second paragraph of the book: "She bolted for her freighter's rampway. Overhead, a nest of sleeping bloodbats burst out of the rocky crevices like small, leathery missiles. The panicked bats spiraled in front of her. Screeching, they fled through the wide mouth of the cavern into the lavender twilight" (1).
That didn't remind me of a mynock at ALL. (I wish I could find the video from The Empire Strikes Back, but I gather that Lucasfilm allows no Star Wars material to survive on YouTube.) Then there's an overly talkative droid (spelled with an apostrophe before the word - 'droid- doubtless to also keep from ensuing the Wrath of Lucas who copyrighted the term "droid").
About seventy pages in, I declared to my husband that I wasn't sure that I could go on. There was too much "freighter lingo" that Sinclair was trying far too hard to get across. First, while a certain amount of lingo would be acceptable, we aren't short order cooks. Second, when I hear the word "trike," I don't think of a span of three days, and when I hear the word "deuce," I most certainly don't think of a two-day span. Surely, the Romance Writers of America had to be joking by naming this book as a finalist for the Best First Book prize, or 2006 had been particularly bereft of good first romance novels.
My husband convinced me to keep reading, at least just to enjoy how bad it was. So I kept on.
And realized that the book was actually pretty damn good.
Once you get past the lingo and the first Star Wars-like moments (not that there aren't other moments, but we'll get to those), what you have is a distinctively original (at least, I thought so, though there could be something else she's riffing on that I'm not familiar with) universe with a complicated power struggle. The plot is incredibly dense, so I won't outline it here, but I was impressed with the detail (including a new language, which does, at times, also become distracting, like the freighter lingo). And the romance was incredibly understated, which was somewhat confusing to me, given how this was marketed (as a paranormal/sci-fi romance). It was far more sci-fi than romance.
More than this, it was populated with very memorable secondary characters. The military officers that work for our hero, Rhis Vanur, are amazingly intricate in their own motivations and personalities, and I really wanted to know more about them (sometimes more than our heroine, though not our hero). I really felt drawn into this very detailed universe that Sinclair had created.
Mostly.
There were a few places where I was pulled out. One was another Star Wars reference: DZ-9 (Dezi), Trilby's droid, was blasted into pieces and put back together by Vanur. Dezi is C-3PO without a doubt:
"They made the first landing of stairs before Mitkanos could insert a comment. 'You built this 'droid, Tivahr?'
Rhis shook his head, grinning in spite of his pain. 'He's Trilby's. I was just putting him back together for her after he had a slight accident.'
Mitkanos grunted. 'Did you have to hook up his mouth?'" (418).
On the VERY NEXT PAGE, a 'Sko, an alien, who apparently doesn't speak Standard very well addresses Trilby, and we understand why her last name is Elliot. It's so Sinclair can make this joke:
"'El. Li. Ot'" (419).
Yes. That's right. It's an E.T. joke. It's an E.T. joke that was bad enough that it not only threw me out of the novel, but I got up from where I was sitting, came into the office, and pointed it out to my husband. Who immediately understood why I had gotten up.
Now. To be fair, I liked the book a lot. And it's clear that this was Sinclair's first novel, so I'm willing to be more forgiving that I might otherwise have been. And I decided that I definitely wanted to read more of her books, if for no other reason than to see what would happen in the universe she'd created. The events of the novel had to have repercussions, and I could see lots more happening.
So off I went to Sinclair's website. First of all, my comments regarding Jayne Ann Krentz's website stand? Sinclair's website could use an upgrade, as it was hard to navigate and needs some real design help. But imagine my disappointment when I discovered that Finders Keepers is the only novel Sinclair as written (at least as far as I understand) in this particular universe. She does have one series (known as Dock Five), but that's it. Everything else is a one-shot. And I do find that disappointing, because someone as gifted in world-creation as Sinclair is really needs to fully explore the universe they've created, and this one was particularly compelling.
I do intend to start Sinclair's Dock Five series when I have more time and money--since the Kindle version is the same price as the paperback (which infuriates me since there is no additional outlay for the publisher once the book is put into ebook format)--I will go get a hard copy. That way, when I get tired of them, I can make at least some small money from Half Price selling it back.
In the meantime, however, this hard copy is going to do something else hard copies are good for--and go visit our favorite Snarky Writer, as I'd like to see what she has to say about it.
Linnea Sinclair's Finders Keepers: B
----
In other news, I would like to blame Snarky Writer for some of my confusion. Her recent posts on the internet traffic her blog gets caused me to look at mine for the first time. And I do not know where some of these links came from, and I cannot find links on those sites to my blog to discover! Arg!
I also have a post about writing that I'd like to put up, and of course, the upcoming reviews of In Too Deep and Quicksilver. But out of respect for everyone's news feeds, I'll leave it for another day.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Burning Lamp and Midnight Crystal Review
Quick, Amanda. Burning Lamp. New York: Jove, 2011. Paperback. +423 pages. $7.99.
Castle, Jayne. Midnight Crystal. New York: Jove, 2010. Paperback. +406 pages. $7.99.
I might call this review Jayne Ann Krentz, part 2. In any case, I'd been looking forward to these two books since I'd picked up Midnight Crystal earlier this week, and today, after completely and utterly bombing a 17th Century Poetry and Prose final, I decided it was about time to settle down with something fun to read and that wasn't going to make me crazy. So I picked up these two wonderful books and read them this afternoon. (Stop looking at me like that. Yes, I realize that I read faster than any human being alive. It's a survival trait among English majors.)
Burning Lamp gets a B. It's definitely above average, and quite a page turner. I didn't want to put it down and sped right through it. It was definitely a worthy follower to Fired Up and I appreciated the way that things were meshing together.
There are two main families competing in the Arcane Society. The Joneses, whose investigative branch, Jones and Jones, does much of the dirty work of policing the psychic community for the Arcane Society, and the Winterses, who often hold themselves outside of the psychic community. The Jones ancester, Sylvester, tried to supplement his psychic power through chemistry and something called the founder's formula, which has the lovely effect of making people who use it go crazy. The Winters ancester, Nicholas, decided dealing with metal and crystals through alchemy would be the way to do and he would destroy the Jones family. A curse goes down through his family, hitting generations here and there, and unless the heir can find the lamp and a woman who can work dreamlight energy (a special form of psychic energy), well, they're screwed.
The Dreamlight Trilogy (Fired Up, Burning Lamp, and Midnight Crystal) all have to do with Winters heirs and their individual searches for the lamp. Burning Lamp brings in some previous characters from other Arcane Society novels who play slightly more than a bit part, and gives a good look at the somewhat seedy underside of Victorian society. It's entertaining and page turning. There were a few places where I felt like the plot jumped ahead without any real logical reason--characters making assumptions that they really didn't have the information to make. Hence the B.
Midnight Crystal, however, gets an A. I'm giving it an A for one particular reason. Krentz's world of Harmony is one of the best exercises in world building I've seen in a romance novel. For those unfamiliar, Harmony is a world colonized by Earth, but which lost contact with the planet not long afterwards. There are alien ruins which put forth psychic energy--everyone on Harmony has some sort of psychic power which they can use through a substance they call amber. But some people on Harmony have an additional power that has been hinted at in books not affiliated with the Arcane Society--but which is the psychic power of the Arcane Society nonetheless. The story itself is fairly straightforward--Winters heir looking for the lamp and the dreamlight reader being a Jones. The plot fairly writes itself. But there is a lot of humor involved.
Part of this humor comes from the world-building. Each book, we discover something new about the alien civilization that once lived on Harmony long before humans arrived and who left lots of psychic ruins. We also learn more about the intricate society Harmony developed in its separation from Earth, including an interesting way to deal with marriages, and a complicated Guild system that operates outside of the government with extraordinary power due to their members' ability to shut down energy storms known as "ghosts." It follows its own rules regarding psychic energy--use too much and you have between an hour and a half hour before you conk out dead asleep to recharge.
But the best humor comes from the dust bunnies.
Well, here. Watch this trailer for one of Krentz's other Harmony novels, Silver Master.
First of all....aren't they CUTE? Second, the dust bunnies aren't only cute. They're also devious little troublemakers who pick out their own people. You don't go to the pet store and get a dust bunny. A dust bunny finds you and decides you belong to it. They're also hunters. When danger comes around, their fur flattens out, their first set of eyes (which are blue) close and their second set open (amber). And they can get mean.
They also have their own distinct personalities. Some like to dress up. Others don't. They like to entertain others. Each of the Harmony books, however, ends on the book's dust bunny doing something hysterical. In the case of Midnight Crystal, Gibson, Marlowe's dust bunny, steals energy bars out of the cookie jar and distributes them to all of his dust bunny friends. Then he takes the wrappers and collects them. Because they're shiny.
How do you not love that?
Perhaps I am a little biased. But the dust bunnies are hilarious, and they alone are worth buying the book. But Midnight Crystal also tied up several loose ends quite neatly, ended up with a great romance, and again, was an absolute page-turner.
I know I've railed against some paranormal books before, most notably Catherine Coulter's KnockOut. Here's the difference. Krentz actively markets her books now as paranormal. If you pick up a book that says it's an Arcane Society novel, you know what you're getting into. There hasn't been a massive change from one series to another. Characters who were quite mundane aren't suddenly showing up as psychics. That's why this works--we expect it, so disbelief is suspended at the beginning of the book, not halfway through. It's why Janet Evanovich can get away with her Between-the-Numbers Stephanie Plum novels--we expect those to be a little kooky (not that the regular Stephanie Plum novels aren't kooky, but these are kooky in a paranormal way).
Anyway, it's getting late. Final grades:
Burning Lamp - B
Midnight Crystal - A
And on to In Too Deep. I can't wait to get started.
Castle, Jayne. Midnight Crystal. New York: Jove, 2010. Paperback. +406 pages. $7.99.
I might call this review Jayne Ann Krentz, part 2. In any case, I'd been looking forward to these two books since I'd picked up Midnight Crystal earlier this week, and today, after completely and utterly bombing a 17th Century Poetry and Prose final, I decided it was about time to settle down with something fun to read and that wasn't going to make me crazy. So I picked up these two wonderful books and read them this afternoon. (Stop looking at me like that. Yes, I realize that I read faster than any human being alive. It's a survival trait among English majors.)
Burning Lamp gets a B. It's definitely above average, and quite a page turner. I didn't want to put it down and sped right through it. It was definitely a worthy follower to Fired Up and I appreciated the way that things were meshing together.
There are two main families competing in the Arcane Society. The Joneses, whose investigative branch, Jones and Jones, does much of the dirty work of policing the psychic community for the Arcane Society, and the Winterses, who often hold themselves outside of the psychic community. The Jones ancester, Sylvester, tried to supplement his psychic power through chemistry and something called the founder's formula, which has the lovely effect of making people who use it go crazy. The Winters ancester, Nicholas, decided dealing with metal and crystals through alchemy would be the way to do and he would destroy the Jones family. A curse goes down through his family, hitting generations here and there, and unless the heir can find the lamp and a woman who can work dreamlight energy (a special form of psychic energy), well, they're screwed.
The Dreamlight Trilogy (Fired Up, Burning Lamp, and Midnight Crystal) all have to do with Winters heirs and their individual searches for the lamp. Burning Lamp brings in some previous characters from other Arcane Society novels who play slightly more than a bit part, and gives a good look at the somewhat seedy underside of Victorian society. It's entertaining and page turning. There were a few places where I felt like the plot jumped ahead without any real logical reason--characters making assumptions that they really didn't have the information to make. Hence the B.
Midnight Crystal, however, gets an A. I'm giving it an A for one particular reason. Krentz's world of Harmony is one of the best exercises in world building I've seen in a romance novel. For those unfamiliar, Harmony is a world colonized by Earth, but which lost contact with the planet not long afterwards. There are alien ruins which put forth psychic energy--everyone on Harmony has some sort of psychic power which they can use through a substance they call amber. But some people on Harmony have an additional power that has been hinted at in books not affiliated with the Arcane Society--but which is the psychic power of the Arcane Society nonetheless. The story itself is fairly straightforward--Winters heir looking for the lamp and the dreamlight reader being a Jones. The plot fairly writes itself. But there is a lot of humor involved.
Part of this humor comes from the world-building. Each book, we discover something new about the alien civilization that once lived on Harmony long before humans arrived and who left lots of psychic ruins. We also learn more about the intricate society Harmony developed in its separation from Earth, including an interesting way to deal with marriages, and a complicated Guild system that operates outside of the government with extraordinary power due to their members' ability to shut down energy storms known as "ghosts." It follows its own rules regarding psychic energy--use too much and you have between an hour and a half hour before you conk out dead asleep to recharge.
But the best humor comes from the dust bunnies.
Well, here. Watch this trailer for one of Krentz's other Harmony novels, Silver Master.
First of all....aren't they CUTE? Second, the dust bunnies aren't only cute. They're also devious little troublemakers who pick out their own people. You don't go to the pet store and get a dust bunny. A dust bunny finds you and decides you belong to it. They're also hunters. When danger comes around, their fur flattens out, their first set of eyes (which are blue) close and their second set open (amber). And they can get mean.
They also have their own distinct personalities. Some like to dress up. Others don't. They like to entertain others. Each of the Harmony books, however, ends on the book's dust bunny doing something hysterical. In the case of Midnight Crystal, Gibson, Marlowe's dust bunny, steals energy bars out of the cookie jar and distributes them to all of his dust bunny friends. Then he takes the wrappers and collects them. Because they're shiny.
How do you not love that?
Perhaps I am a little biased. But the dust bunnies are hilarious, and they alone are worth buying the book. But Midnight Crystal also tied up several loose ends quite neatly, ended up with a great romance, and again, was an absolute page-turner.
I know I've railed against some paranormal books before, most notably Catherine Coulter's KnockOut. Here's the difference. Krentz actively markets her books now as paranormal. If you pick up a book that says it's an Arcane Society novel, you know what you're getting into. There hasn't been a massive change from one series to another. Characters who were quite mundane aren't suddenly showing up as psychics. That's why this works--we expect it, so disbelief is suspended at the beginning of the book, not halfway through. It's why Janet Evanovich can get away with her Between-the-Numbers Stephanie Plum novels--we expect those to be a little kooky (not that the regular Stephanie Plum novels aren't kooky, but these are kooky in a paranormal way).
Anyway, it's getting late. Final grades:
Burning Lamp - B
Midnight Crystal - A
And on to In Too Deep. I can't wait to get started.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Author Websites
I have to say, author websites with clear demarcations of what books are in what series are delightful.
Case in point? Jayne Ann Krentz's website.
Let me back up a moment. I haven't written in a while because I've been inundated with a 17th Century Poetry and Prose class that has been taking up quite a lot of attention and most of my time. While I've read a great deal (and learned a surprising amount about alchemy and John Donne), I haven't had time for anything fun, and my recent acquisition of Midnight Crystal (written under one of Krentz's pseudonyms, Jayne Castle) meant (I thought) that I had all three of the Dreamlight trilogy books and I could happily settle down to read an entire trilogy. I had In Too Deep (Jayne Ann Krentz), Burning Lamp (Amanda Quick) and the aforementioned Midnight Crystal. (Jayne Ann Krentz is the author of all, but each name connotes something different. Krentz is contemporary, Quick is historical, and Castle is sci-fi/fantasy. All of it is romance.)
I picked up In Too Deep ready to dig in when I noticed a little phrase on the front: "Book One of The Looking Glass Trilogy." It is, indeed, an Arcane Society novel. It's just not the one I was looking for. Off to the site I went, where I happily discovered that the first book in the Dreamlight trilogy was Fired Up, which I've already read. (I thought the dreamlight stuff was vaguely familiar!) A website that is well ordered (especially when the author is juggling three different pseudonyms) is delightful.
So, I have two books in the Dreamlight trilogy to read, the first of the Looking Glass trilogy, and the second in Looking Glass is out--the third will be out at the end of August and since it's written under Jayne Castle, it should be in paperback. I'm thinking that the Amazon gift certificate my brother gave me for my birthday may go towards Quicksilver (Amanda Quick).
After my last post, I was kind of bummed out about reading, but something about having several book to read (or thinking I had all the books in a series) means that I have something to genuinely look foward to. Since I'm also reading Pamela (and oh, there will be an epic post on how much this book frustrates me later) and need to start The Ambassadors for my American expatriates class because Henry James is SO long-winded, something light and fluffy is called for.
Also important to note what is coming out/has come out recently. Kim Harrison's came out in February, and I didn't know about it until my favorite Snarky Writer published a review of it. (Did you buy it for your Nook or did you buy a hardcopy, because I'd like to borrow it if the latter is true?) Also this month, Timothy Zahn's Choices of One and Jim Butcher's Ghost Story. I can barely wait. Lots of fun reading ahead, and I hope I can get some of it done before things get crazy this summer again.
Case in point? Jayne Ann Krentz's website.
Let me back up a moment. I haven't written in a while because I've been inundated with a 17th Century Poetry and Prose class that has been taking up quite a lot of attention and most of my time. While I've read a great deal (and learned a surprising amount about alchemy and John Donne), I haven't had time for anything fun, and my recent acquisition of Midnight Crystal (written under one of Krentz's pseudonyms, Jayne Castle) meant (I thought) that I had all three of the Dreamlight trilogy books and I could happily settle down to read an entire trilogy. I had In Too Deep (Jayne Ann Krentz), Burning Lamp (Amanda Quick) and the aforementioned Midnight Crystal. (Jayne Ann Krentz is the author of all, but each name connotes something different. Krentz is contemporary, Quick is historical, and Castle is sci-fi/fantasy. All of it is romance.)
I picked up In Too Deep ready to dig in when I noticed a little phrase on the front: "Book One of The Looking Glass Trilogy." It is, indeed, an Arcane Society novel. It's just not the one I was looking for. Off to the site I went, where I happily discovered that the first book in the Dreamlight trilogy was Fired Up, which I've already read. (I thought the dreamlight stuff was vaguely familiar!) A website that is well ordered (especially when the author is juggling three different pseudonyms) is delightful.
So, I have two books in the Dreamlight trilogy to read, the first of the Looking Glass trilogy, and the second in Looking Glass is out--the third will be out at the end of August and since it's written under Jayne Castle, it should be in paperback. I'm thinking that the Amazon gift certificate my brother gave me for my birthday may go towards Quicksilver (Amanda Quick).
After my last post, I was kind of bummed out about reading, but something about having several book to read (or thinking I had all the books in a series) means that I have something to genuinely look foward to. Since I'm also reading Pamela (and oh, there will be an epic post on how much this book frustrates me later) and need to start The Ambassadors for my American expatriates class because Henry James is SO long-winded, something light and fluffy is called for.
Also important to note what is coming out/has come out recently. Kim Harrison's came out in February, and I didn't know about it until my favorite Snarky Writer published a review of it. (Did you buy it for your Nook or did you buy a hardcopy, because I'd like to borrow it if the latter is true?) Also this month, Timothy Zahn's Choices of One and Jim Butcher's Ghost Story. I can barely wait. Lots of fun reading ahead, and I hope I can get some of it done before things get crazy this summer again.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Hm.
I swore that I would not abandon this blog.
She says a month and a half from the previous entry.
To be fair, things have been nuts. Teaching, taking classes, wedding planning, dealing with my mom being sick, etc. Absolutely insane. There hasn't been a whole lot of time for reading for pleasure; to be honest, there hasn't been much time for reading for school either. Articles here, articles there, library books scattered everywhere with Post-it notes in the margins.
And in the meantime, Bergie is howling. I think he's lost in the house somewhere. But why should that be any different than normal?
Anyway. First, a couple of updates on the Kindle - I figured out how to turn off the highlighting feature, so it doesn't show other people's notes. However, I can't make the highlighting feature work consistently for my own highlights. More meddling to come. Also, the battery lasts way longer than the previously discussed three weeks. Which is awesome. I will say that, since I am using many of the free books, it paid for itself within 24 hours of me having it.
Still, some of the pricing on new books is ridiculous. I'd been looking forward to The Reckless Bride for sometime. I checked on Amazon to see how much it was for the Kindle--the same price as it was for the regular book - $7.99. (btw, what is up with book prices these days? Honestly, it's ridiculous!)
So, I bought the book at Walmart for $5.84. Much more reasonable, and I have a solid, actual book that I can loan out, read in the bathtub without much risk, and resell to Half Price Books at a later date and actually get money out of. (This is why the Kindle won't kill the book market completely.)
Speaking of, The Reckless Bride was a decent close to Stephanie Lauren's Black Cobra Quartet. It wasn't spectacular, by any means; the ending was sort of contrived. There was a nice twist to the end that I never saw coming. Also, unlike The Brazen Bride, I didn't stop and go, "Wow, there's a ridiculous amount of sex in this." More than her other novels, certainly, but not eight scenes in the first 150 pages.
Also recently read, Side Jobs by Jim Butcher.
Excuse me while I squee a little bit.
First of all, there were a ton of stories that I'd never read. Mostly because I'm too cheap to go buy an anthology of short stories when I really only want one--namely, Dresden. Second, because there was an all new novella that took place forty-five minutes after the end of Changes.
Have I mentioned that Murphy kicks copious amounts of ass?
Also, there was a little bit of Harry/Murphy romance, and that made me happy. Buy it. Read it. Now.
The only other book that I've read completely (for the first time) was Jack Stillinger's Reading The Eve of St. Agnes. It's a scholarly work on Keats' poem and was decently interesting. The man is a scholarly genius and basically did all the work for my Keats presentation for me (no joke, it has everything you could possibly want to know. I wanted to take the book to class, say "read this" and have that be my presentation). Of course, I also have to find a new way to go about writing my paper, because Stillinger has done a lot of the work already, and if there's one thing hammered into your head in English programs is to be original and to contribute to the conversation. (I'm giving you my strained grin right now. It's hard to be original and to contribute to a conversation when your head is ready to explode with all the stuff you have to do.)
(By the way, College of Graduate Studies? You suck.)
I did also finally finish Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and was immensely disappointed when I got to the end...and it was the end. The woman didn't have the decency to finish the book before she died! The main character pissed me off, because she was a doormat. She could have had everything she ever wanted if she just grew a pair and stood up for herself. No, in all seriousness, I looked it up on Wikipedia, and apparently, Gaskell had a happy ending planned, so at least it didn't end on a completely depressing note. Still, all she was teaching her gentle readers was to be a doormat and everything will come to you.
It's a miracle we ever got the vote.
Anyway, that's a quick run down of the last month and a half of reading. Time for me to go to bed.
She says a month and a half from the previous entry.
To be fair, things have been nuts. Teaching, taking classes, wedding planning, dealing with my mom being sick, etc. Absolutely insane. There hasn't been a whole lot of time for reading for pleasure; to be honest, there hasn't been much time for reading for school either. Articles here, articles there, library books scattered everywhere with Post-it notes in the margins.
And in the meantime, Bergie is howling. I think he's lost in the house somewhere. But why should that be any different than normal?
Anyway. First, a couple of updates on the Kindle - I figured out how to turn off the highlighting feature, so it doesn't show other people's notes. However, I can't make the highlighting feature work consistently for my own highlights. More meddling to come. Also, the battery lasts way longer than the previously discussed three weeks. Which is awesome. I will say that, since I am using many of the free books, it paid for itself within 24 hours of me having it.
Still, some of the pricing on new books is ridiculous. I'd been looking forward to The Reckless Bride for sometime. I checked on Amazon to see how much it was for the Kindle--the same price as it was for the regular book - $7.99. (btw, what is up with book prices these days? Honestly, it's ridiculous!)
So, I bought the book at Walmart for $5.84. Much more reasonable, and I have a solid, actual book that I can loan out, read in the bathtub without much risk, and resell to Half Price Books at a later date and actually get money out of. (This is why the Kindle won't kill the book market completely.)
Speaking of, The Reckless Bride was a decent close to Stephanie Lauren's Black Cobra Quartet. It wasn't spectacular, by any means; the ending was sort of contrived. There was a nice twist to the end that I never saw coming. Also, unlike The Brazen Bride, I didn't stop and go, "Wow, there's a ridiculous amount of sex in this." More than her other novels, certainly, but not eight scenes in the first 150 pages.
Also recently read, Side Jobs by Jim Butcher.
Excuse me while I squee a little bit.
First of all, there were a ton of stories that I'd never read. Mostly because I'm too cheap to go buy an anthology of short stories when I really only want one--namely, Dresden. Second, because there was an all new novella that took place forty-five minutes after the end of Changes.
Have I mentioned that Murphy kicks copious amounts of ass?
Also, there was a little bit of Harry/Murphy romance, and that made me happy. Buy it. Read it. Now.
The only other book that I've read completely (for the first time) was Jack Stillinger's Reading The Eve of St. Agnes. It's a scholarly work on Keats' poem and was decently interesting. The man is a scholarly genius and basically did all the work for my Keats presentation for me (no joke, it has everything you could possibly want to know. I wanted to take the book to class, say "read this" and have that be my presentation). Of course, I also have to find a new way to go about writing my paper, because Stillinger has done a lot of the work already, and if there's one thing hammered into your head in English programs is to be original and to contribute to the conversation. (I'm giving you my strained grin right now. It's hard to be original and to contribute to a conversation when your head is ready to explode with all the stuff you have to do.)
(By the way, College of Graduate Studies? You suck.)
I did also finally finish Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and was immensely disappointed when I got to the end...and it was the end. The woman didn't have the decency to finish the book before she died! The main character pissed me off, because she was a doormat. She could have had everything she ever wanted if she just grew a pair and stood up for herself. No, in all seriousness, I looked it up on Wikipedia, and apparently, Gaskell had a happy ending planned, so at least it didn't end on a completely depressing note. Still, all she was teaching her gentle readers was to be a doormat and everything will come to you.
It's a miracle we ever got the vote.
Anyway, that's a quick run down of the last month and a half of reading. Time for me to go to bed.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Wraiths in the Night....
Aaron Allston is writing a new Wraith Squadron book, set for 2012.
Consider this me flailing about in joy. When I sold almost all my Star Wars books to Half-Price, the only ones I kept were the new Fate of the Jedi ones (because I may need to go back and read all of them again to figure out what's happening in the new one), the ones by Tim Zahn, and the X-wing books, by Allston and Mike Stackpole. Of course, Allston's books from the NJO and Fate of the Jedi have really been the saving grace of a series that includes Troy Denning (I shake my fist at you, Denning, and your absolute lack of respect for established canon. This is the man who came up with the abhorrent idea of Jedi bug sex. I never made it through the first four chapters of the last Swarm War book because I THREW IT ACROSS THE ROOM).
ANYWAY. Allston joy!
Consider this me flailing about in joy. When I sold almost all my Star Wars books to Half-Price, the only ones I kept were the new Fate of the Jedi ones (because I may need to go back and read all of them again to figure out what's happening in the new one), the ones by Tim Zahn, and the X-wing books, by Allston and Mike Stackpole. Of course, Allston's books from the NJO and Fate of the Jedi have really been the saving grace of a series that includes Troy Denning (I shake my fist at you, Denning, and your absolute lack of respect for established canon. This is the man who came up with the abhorrent idea of Jedi bug sex. I never made it through the first four chapters of the last Swarm War book because I THREW IT ACROSS THE ROOM).
ANYWAY. Allston joy!
Sunday, June 13, 2010
All kinds of Fae
So, despite the fact that I have been inundated with Yeats homework and focusing mainly on the 50 entry annotated bibliography I have due in little over a week, I took a break from focusing on poetry, symbolism, Rosacrucians, hermetic orders and other seemingly endless references this afternoon and read Charlaine Harris' Dead and Gone.
Still some faeries there, but whatever. I wasn't looking for a complete un-faery-related read, just something non-academic but not quite as fluffy as the stack of romance novels. Not that there wasn't plenty of romance in Dead and Gone (thank goodness!). I think I may have to watch True Blood for no other reason than to have Alexander Skarsgaard firmly in my brain when reading the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries, but I have to admit that I've been on Team Eric since the beginning, as I find Bill kind of skeevy.
Not that Eric's that much better, mind you, but I do also keep wondering in the back of my mind when Sookie's going to realize that the vampires aren't going to do it for her and get together with Sam. But that's beside the point. I was very pleased with the developments of this particular novel (Team Eric woo!).
Yes, I realize that there has been a new novel released since then: Dead in the Family. But I showed remarkable restraint in not buying Dead and Gone in hardcover--and in fact borrowing the paperback from my favorite Snarky Writer instead--and now we are both waiting for Dead in the Family to come out in paperback or to at least show up at the library. It's not that Charlaine Harris isn't worth putting the money out for--I just don't have it.
And to be honest, there are a couple of novels that are ahead on the list, money-wise, the first being Christine Golden's Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Allies (it's something when a book title requires three colons to get through). I do have a friend who has read it already and was pleased with Golden's addition to the Star Wars author roll (I enjoyed her first in the series as well, Omen, much more than anything Troy Denning has ever written, though Aaron Allston remains the best writer in the trilogy, hands down).
I've also got Star Wars: Crosscurrent on the to-read list, but I do actually have a copy of that, as it came out in paperback. I'm also waiting for Mary Balogh's newest, A Secret Affair to come out in paperback, which I imagine will be sooner rather than later, since it is a romance novel (but a much higher quality than the romance novels I have been reading--yes, I've been reading Harlequins. Leave me alone. Or go take it up with the gals at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.) Also waiting on Stephanie Laurens' newest (in paperback) to come out at the end of the month: The Brazen Bride. It will be my "Yeats is over, hallelujah!" treat to myself, I believe.
Also still on the list? Charlotte Bronte's Vilette, which SW gave me a copy of, but which I haven't gotten to. I need to get a few more of the preliminary exam books on the to-read list, as I now have to provide an accounting of my summer "research project" to the graduate school, and I don't suppose "I read. A lot." is going to suffice for that particular report. (It should.) Certainly, "I had classes in Yeats and Comp/Rhet, went to my brother's wedding and played World of Warcraft" is not going to suffice, no matter how true it might be of my summer activities....
But for now, I will take Virginia Moore's The Unicorn: W.B. Yeats' Search for Reality to bed with me, along with my notes and hope I don't dream of faeries. You never know when they might take off with you.
Still some faeries there, but whatever. I wasn't looking for a complete un-faery-related read, just something non-academic but not quite as fluffy as the stack of romance novels. Not that there wasn't plenty of romance in Dead and Gone (thank goodness!). I think I may have to watch True Blood for no other reason than to have Alexander Skarsgaard firmly in my brain when reading the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries, but I have to admit that I've been on Team Eric since the beginning, as I find Bill kind of skeevy.
Not that Eric's that much better, mind you, but I do also keep wondering in the back of my mind when Sookie's going to realize that the vampires aren't going to do it for her and get together with Sam. But that's beside the point. I was very pleased with the developments of this particular novel (Team Eric woo!).
Yes, I realize that there has been a new novel released since then: Dead in the Family. But I showed remarkable restraint in not buying Dead and Gone in hardcover--and in fact borrowing the paperback from my favorite Snarky Writer instead--and now we are both waiting for Dead in the Family to come out in paperback or to at least show up at the library. It's not that Charlaine Harris isn't worth putting the money out for--I just don't have it.
And to be honest, there are a couple of novels that are ahead on the list, money-wise, the first being Christine Golden's Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Allies (it's something when a book title requires three colons to get through). I do have a friend who has read it already and was pleased with Golden's addition to the Star Wars author roll (I enjoyed her first in the series as well, Omen, much more than anything Troy Denning has ever written, though Aaron Allston remains the best writer in the trilogy, hands down).
I've also got Star Wars: Crosscurrent on the to-read list, but I do actually have a copy of that, as it came out in paperback. I'm also waiting for Mary Balogh's newest, A Secret Affair to come out in paperback, which I imagine will be sooner rather than later, since it is a romance novel (but a much higher quality than the romance novels I have been reading--yes, I've been reading Harlequins. Leave me alone. Or go take it up with the gals at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.) Also waiting on Stephanie Laurens' newest (in paperback) to come out at the end of the month: The Brazen Bride. It will be my "Yeats is over, hallelujah!" treat to myself, I believe.
Also still on the list? Charlotte Bronte's Vilette, which SW gave me a copy of, but which I haven't gotten to. I need to get a few more of the preliminary exam books on the to-read list, as I now have to provide an accounting of my summer "research project" to the graduate school, and I don't suppose "I read. A lot." is going to suffice for that particular report. (It should.) Certainly, "I had classes in Yeats and Comp/Rhet, went to my brother's wedding and played World of Warcraft" is not going to suffice, no matter how true it might be of my summer activities....
But for now, I will take Virginia Moore's The Unicorn: W.B. Yeats' Search for Reality to bed with me, along with my notes and hope I don't dream of faeries. You never know when they might take off with you.
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