Teaser Tuesday: Magic by the Book by Nina Bernstein

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read, open to a random page, share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page and BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) then share the title & author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Tease?

When Will answered, his voice sounded thin and lost echoing out over the stony vastness.

“How will I know what to bring back?” he asked, as he had many times already that day.

 

“Face your foes, Will, and the rest will follow…”.

p. 112, Magic by the Book by Nina Bernstein

Dangerous Pleasures by Bertrice Small

( 92 )

Graphic, and once it got going the writing got better—the all-plot & no action setup at the beginning of the story was a little rough–choppy dialogue, excess adverbs, etc.

Ms. Small excels at the erotic portion for the most part, but is weak on the writing of the non-sex elements.

I’m actually starting to think there is not truly good erotica out there. Either it’s a romance with sex thrown in for spice, it’s just graphic sex with no plot, it’s paranormal and not intended as erotica, or it’s just out and out bad. Would it kill publishers to edit this stuff a little more, “Hey, your main love interest sounds like the male lead in an adult film–” “Horny and nonverbal with really bad dialogue? You mean I have to fix it?”

Ugh.

Overall a silly premise and a goofy/weird ending, but well, it is pr0n for women, not classic literature.

Bound by Sally Gunning

( 91 )

I always read more the last half of October–it’s prep for November when I read very little due to NaNoWriMo.

This book had moments of great darkness, sufficient to make me wonder, even now that it’s over, if I like the main character. If what she suffered excused what she did–whether she realized it or not.

It also, especially toward the end, had moments of incredible lyricism.

There was enough action (I like action — check and see how few entries there are in the “Literary Fiction” category) to make me finish this one, eventually, but not enough to stop me from setting aside intermittently when something more interesting came along over the past three weeks.

I never would have picked it up on my own.  Would I recommend it? Probably not, it wasn’t THAT good.

I thank my book club for broadening my horizons. And give thanks that MY chosen book comes up in January, lol.

Nefertiti by Michelle Moran

( 90 ) 10/25/09

One of the questions asked during Book Blogger Appreciation Week last month was if you’d ever read a book after seeing it on mentioned on someone else’s blog. My answer at the time was “no.”

I did not read this book because of other book bloggers’ comments, since they were all discussing her newest book, but I did discover this author that way. Don’t get me wrong, I ~tried~ to get my hands on Moran’s latest, but the library didn’t have a copy yet. So I read this one instead and have no regrets.

I really liked this book. I was familiar with Akhenaten as history sees him, with rough details cobbled together from world history, art history in college, and too many of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody books. It was fascinating to see his reign in the context of the time period, with politics and the like included. He is taught in the West as a revolutionary early monotheist in a land of polytheism on an epic scale. Interesting, and logical, to see it as more about finances than faith.

I liked it, and will devour the next one, about Nefertari, niece of Akhenaten, as soon as I finish my overdue library YA.

Darkfever by Karen Moning

( 89 ) Chronicles of Mac O’Connor, book 1

Too tired to type – read all afternoon/evening/night.  Liked it, sent note to library asking them to hold book 2 in the series since only the 1st was free from B&N

Irresistible Forces by Brenda Jackson

( 88 )

This was my first e-book, read via the Kindle app on my new favorite toy, my iPhone.

I’m poor, having just bought said toy, so it was a freebie. And yet I still paid too much, in my time if nothing else. The sad thing was it had potential. It was a nifty premise, something that never would have occurred to me, but it fell short on the intent front. Too much sex to be a straight romance but the sex scenes were too uninteresting (and too ‘off-camera) to qualify properly as erotica.

The writing was unappealing—lots of adjectives, so many that they began to detract from the plot rather than enhance it. Perhaps even more offensive to me, the copyediting was abysmal.  Sadly, it was free for a reason.

I hope the print version, if there is one, got a better editorial eye than the Kindle version.

Keep your peepers peeled, kids. I’m reading another e-book using the Barnes & Noble e-reader app so I can do a compare & contrast review in a few days.

Tuesday Teaser: Nefertiti by Michelle Moran

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read, open to a random page, share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page and BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) then share the title & author so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Tease?

But I wouldn’t let my father defend her. Not this time. “And she allowed it, ” I accused. “One word from Nefertiti and Akhenaten  would have overlooked anything we’d done.”

p. 252, Nefertiti by Michelle Moran

Chasing the Bear: A Young Spenser Novel by Robert B. Parker

( 87 )

This is supposed to be a YA book, and was shelved by the library as such. I’ve been a bit in love with Spenser (does he even HAVE a first name?!) since Robert Urich played him on TV and the books never discouraged me. So I picked it up.

As a Spenser fan it was a satisfying little read—a nice glimpse into the heretofore only vaguely mentioned youth of my favorite PI. As a YA book it is–hate to say it–a miserable failure.

To start, it is framed as Spenser telling Susan about his youth. They make enough lovey-dovey comments that you get the high points: they’ve been together a while and she’s a Jewish princess turned shrink. From a YA perspective: boring. No tween/teen wants to read about someone talking about their childhood adventures, especially not in Parker’s spare, dialogue-driven style.

There is action, and a decent amount of it, but it is strung together loosely and lacks a solid narrative framework. Basically, it’s a series of incidents strung together with questions from Susan, like a brief Q&A in book form.

I also found the young Spenser unbelievable. He sounded too much like the adult Spenser. Almost no one sounds the same as a kid and an adult. If they do, it’s usually a childish pattern that stuck rather than an adult-too-young persona.

I liked it, but I don’t think it succeeded as a teen book, it just relies too heavily on the reader already having a solid idea of who these people are.

This sounds mean, and I hate that because I did enjoy the book. I just don’t think the story ended up being what it set out to be.

Teaser Tuesday – Farscape Forever!

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read

• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Tease?

“While you may have enjoyed the party, a First Contact should never constitute knocking up representatives of a Royal Family, even if you were absent during the marriage consummation. And still, this was not enough for you.”

p. 91, Farscape Forever!: Sex, Drugs, and Killer Muppets edited by Glenn Yaffeth

Wonder Woman: The Contest by William Messner-Loebs

( 86 )

I enjoyed this so much I’m debating buying the next volume re: Artemis so I can read it, since my library doesn’t have it

Great issue about the morality of WW’s role in society, both human and Amazonian. Also a nifty sneak-peek at the Amazon’s genealogy.

The 8yo loved it, too. There were one or two violent scenes, only one, really, that I wish she hadn’t seen, but I think my making a big deal out of it would have made it stick in her head more so I left it alone.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

( 85 )

This was a re-read for me since my book club read it for October.  I read it for another book club about 5 years ago, and just as I finally bought my own copy last December, someone picked it as one of our 2009 books.

I loved this book the first time I read it. I still really, really love it, but not quite as much. After a second reading I see why some people consider it a romance, but it never struck me that way. I was always obsessed by the time travel aspect of it (caught a continuity error this time—the editor in me is simultaneously gloating and disappointed).

Still, I recommend this book to people all the time and will continue to do so.

Teaser Tuesday-Bound by Sally Gunning

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read

• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Tease?

“She didn’t. She couldn’t. Why should he wish to help her, after she had caused him such great trouble? Why not see her hanged, and then he and the widow could keep in one bed all the night long?”

p. 173, Bound by Sally Gunning

The High King by Lloyd Alexander

( 84)     The Chronicles of Prydain, book 5

A neat ending, and a decent (for a change) explanation for why there is no longer any magic in the world. Definitely want to encourage the girl to read this series in a year or two.

The Brass Bed by Jennifer Stevenson

( 83 )

I read this one based on a friend’s positive review. My feelings were not as positive.

I always complain about the lack of plot in erotica (it would be nice to have more of one most of the time.) This had a decent plot, but the overall poor writing overshadowed it. While kids are taught in elementary writing to use vivid dialogue tags, the bottom line fact of the matter is 90% of the time it’s better to just use “said.”  That little word disappears where the others stand out and are often the weaker choice. Also: adverbs are weak writing. -ly is NOT your friend. .

Just sayin’

For me this book was also lacking in the relationship department. Too unromantic to be a paranormal romance, too tame to be erotica. It was barely R-rated. Which is fine, but not what I was expecting based on how it was advertised. Throwing in a few dirty words does not erotica make.

I checked out the whole series from the library, but the other two are going back unread.

Taran Wanderer by Lloyd Alexander

( 82 ) The Chronicles of Prydain, book 4

To me, this felt forced. Like something was needed to show Taran growing up a bit more before the final battle in book five—filler. Or maybe that’s just because I’m no longer the target audience for this series. It irked me that the boy could do no wrong. He may not have done things RIGHT the first time, but he is just so darned noble and righteous, but for one brief scene that is so out of character it, too, feels forced. Like someone told the author to throw something in to make him a little less of a goody-two-shoes.

Still a quick read, and had to get through it to get to the last book.