( 94 )

I enjoyed this, though I’m not entirely sure what the hype about it was.

It was more novella than novel and just as the characters started becoming interesting, it ended. Which may be lifelike, but makes it a less than satisfying read.

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?

I had never known how Cornelia managed to get to the attic to steal the madder that stained my apron red. It was in her nature to be sly, to slip away when no one was looking.

p. 125 , The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier — I’m reading this one for my book club and we meet Sunday, so there should be a regular review/commentary early next week.  Or not. It is NaNovember…

I have a confession. I didn’t read last week’s book. I carried it around for day, intending to start it, but I never did. Then it was overdue at the library and I took it back, abandoning hope. If I’m honest, the skimming I did looking for an at least vaguely interesting tease kind of turned me off the book.

( 93 ) a V.I. Warshawski novel

Overcommitted this month with volunteer projects, NaNoWrimo, and the upcoming holiday season. I read it, I liked it, and I finally got to finish it today. How? By turning off my computer at 5pm tonight at work, closing my office door, and hiding in there for an hour so I could read in peace with no committees, no rough drafts, and, yes, I am gonna say it, no family commitments to interfere.

Besides, J has been fussing at me for picking her up from daycare, “too early.” I’ve gotten old. In my twenties when I was late to pick up it meant I’d gone with the office pack for a happy hour margarita. Now it’s quality alone time with a book. I think I like this age better

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

( 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.

( 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.

( 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.

( 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

( 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.

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