33 posts tagged “books”
I’m a fairly voracious reader (though I’ve discovered not nearly as voracious as some people—DAMN, y’all), and I enjoy reading series; however, there are few that I really try to keep up with these days. I've mostly fallen off with all but a few of them, and then there's that one that I've actually stopped reading. The Dresden Files is one of them that I do keep up with. I’ve been waiting for Turn Coat to be released for at least three months, if not longer. I’ve been counting down to it. I bought it the day it was released.
So you’d think, after pointing all of this out, that I’d be disappointed in the book once I sat down to read it. Well, you’re wrong. I loved every single page of it.
If you’re familiar with the series, you know how it goes: shit goes wrong, Harry Dresden gets involved, investigates the weirdness, figures shit out, get the ever-loving fuck beat out of him at least once, if not more than, calls on a few allies, saves the day but juuuuust barely.
I won’t pretend that the series isn’t at least somewhat formulaic at this point. We’re eleven books into a projected 20 or so (insert me jumping up and down squeeing and clapping *here*), but at this point, for me at least, there's a certain comfort to the formula. Reading a new Dresden book for me is like catching up with an old friend, who I don't get to see nearly enough of. They're comfortable, the characters are all familiar and well-loved, and the settings are often familiar. I have a clear picture, for example, of Harry's little apartment in my head. I know where Mister hangs out, I know where Mouse sleeps. I always feel bad that Harry can't even take a hot damned shower because of being a wizard.
Not only is it familiar, but Butcher doesn't pretend that there isn't a certain routine to these cases. I don't know how far ahead he's got this thing planned, but it looks to me that he's got more than just the next several hundred pages in mind. Part of the major problem that Harry is dealing with in this book is something that's been building over the course of the last several. I love that-- that sense that there's more going on than just what is presented to the reader in each book. I love that there is more to this story than just what meets the eye. I keep thinking of Murder, She Wrote. Everywhere poor Jessica Fletcher went, people died, and she never thought that was weird? Harry flat out says at one point that weird shit has been going down around Chicago and the world at large over the last several years, and he wants to know what is behind it.
Jim Butcher ably handles his cast of characters. People tend to feel fleshed out at this point, including Harry himself. He's not static; if you look back over the series thus far, you can chart an actual character arc for him, unlike certain other main characters who shall remain nameless but only seem to gain more invincibility and a more voracious and weird sexual appetite as her "adventures" continue.
I'm not going to go into much detail regarding the plot here,
because I want you to read these books, and I want you to start at Storm Front,
and when you've torn through them all, I want you to thank me
profusely. I don't even want to talk too much about some of the more
recent character additions, for fear of giving something from a
previous books that's awesome away (and if you ask me, it's all pretty
fucking awesome). So, the basics are thus: Morgan (no, I'm not going to
explain to you who this is) shows up at Harry's door asking for help.
Harry is the last person ANYONE would ever expect Morgan to go to, and
being Harry, lets the poor half-dead guy in. Turns out, Morgan stands
accused of killing one of the Senior members of the White Council of
Wizards. Harry knows that Morgan is innocent, and sets out to find out
who really did the deed. Sounds pretty simple, but there's a whole
helluva lot more to it than that. And I'm not going to give any of it
away; sorry.
If you aren't at least somewhat familiar with the series, I do not recommend starting with this latest book. Yeah, there's some explanation for the uninitiated scattered throughout, but for the most part, Butcher dives right in. This is a book for the regular readers. And, shit, after eleven books, I'm glad he doesn't spell everything out anymore--it would drive me insane.
I won't deny that there are flaws in this series. But they've all been fun to read so far, and I really heart Harry at this point. So, get to reading already.
(cross-posted here.)
"Now there's some nice light reading you could indulge in, Self," I said to myself. "You thought you'd read all of her books, but you're wrong. Go ahead, buy them. Do it. DO IT."
So of course I gave in, because we're talking about books and I'm a sucker.
The Nightworld series is one of those series that is more about the place/setting than the characters, and I like that. I suspect if I had to deal with Poppy for much more than the length of a 200ish page YA novel, I'd have thrown the damn thing across the room.
As it was, this book's a good intro to the whole Nightworld landscape. It's pretty basic: the Nightworld, land of witches and vampires and werewolves (oh my) exists alongside our own. And it, of course, has but few rules: humans may never be told of the Nightworld (you don't talk about Nightworld), humans can never be a part of Nightworld (you don't talk about Nightworld), and for the love all things Nightworld don't you dare fall in love with a human (YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT NIGHTWORLD).
LJ Smith manages to create that melodrama that is so inherent to teen novels and to teen life in general, without going quite overboard with it (I'm looking at you, Lurlene McDaniels and your stupid "dying girl finds love" books. Did anyone else read those?), and without feeling condescending. It's pretty clear that she cares about her characters, even when they're making really dumb decisions.
The book starts out at the beginning of the fateful summer. Poppy is looking forward to spending the school holidays hanging out with her best friend James and her twin brother Phillip. Poppy's the flighty one in the family--how can you not be with a name like Poppy? Phillip is the uber-student lettered in three sports superkid of the family. (Seriously, do jocks like that still exist?)
James is, not surprisingly, a vampire. He's a lamia, a born vampire. In Smith's version of things, a born vampire stops aging whenever they decide to. They can have kids. But they still aren't allowed to fall in love with humans. So James has been denying that he's in love with Poppy pretty much his whole life.
And of course Poppy is desperately in love with James as well.
Ah, teenagers. *rolls eyes*
Poppy finds out shortly into the book that she's got cancer. The not fun stage 4 pancreatic cancer, if I recall correctly. Contrived? You betcha. Did I care? Not really. I was already along for the ride at this point.
I'm sure you can probably fill in the blanks on the rest of the book yourself: James reveals his vampire-ness and his love to Poppy. She jumps at the chance to not die. Her brother, being essentially a good guy, gets in the way, but eventually is won over, Poppy is turned into a vampire.
That's where the sickeningly sappy teenaged-style romance comes in. I rolled my eyes more than once. But like I said, I knew what I was getting into. So it made me chuckle more than it made me cringe. It was sweet. There was lots of souls meeting and thoughts merging, and other metaphors for sex that wasn't actually happening.
However, that's not where it ends! Wait! There's more. Since James was never actually allowed to tell Poppy about Nightworld, and never got permission from the Nightworld Elders to make her a vampire, she's an illegal vampire (hence the title). If the Elders find out about her, they'll kill both of them out of hand. Because you must not talk about Nightworld.
So they decide to run off together, so they can be together and in love and all that other cool stuff. More complications ensue, involving both Phillip and James's cousin. However, things are of course resolved in the end, and we find out that Poppy and Phillip were already a part of the Nightworld, they just didn't know it! So she's legal after all! They can live happily ever after, and of course they do. Because that's how all these books end.
Look, I won't pretend this was literature. Or even that it was great. It was a fun, fluffy, silly little read that got me through a day when I didn't feel like reading anything serious, though. And if you've got kids who want something better written than Twilight but with some of that melodrama and vampires, LJ Smith is probably a good way to steer them. (But tell them to avoid Lurlene McDaniels. Yes, I have it out for that woman and her horridly depressing books that always made me cry.) RL Stine or Christopher Pike might also be a good idea, depending on their age.
So, I finally got through one of the three books I've got sitting about waiting to be finished. Yay me.
The one I just finished is The Summoning, by Kelley Armstrong. It wasn't bad. It had some dry spots, but I enjoyed it overall. I think part of my problem is that I've got a lot of distraction or something going on at the moment, so a book has to be really phenomenal to keep me properly engrossed. It seems I either finish a book in a day or two, or a week or two right now.
And I've gotta get my head back in the game if I have any hope of making it to 100.
Anyway. This particular book is about Chloe Saunders. She sees ghosts. Only no one believes her when she has a royal freak-out at school, and she gets sent to a home for disturbed kids. It's a little place, and as it turns out, it's filled with other kids who have supernatural abilities. There's the girl who might be a shaman, the guy who's a sorcerer.
As this is a YA novel, there is the mega-bitch who instantly hates the main character.
A lot of it is fairly stock. I picked this up because I've read most of the author's adult books, the Women of the Otherworld series. Those are better. I'm not sure if it's that this is her first YA novel, or if she tried way too hard to dumb her writing down for the kids, but I felt a bit like this book was a little too dumb. Normally I don't find the YA novels to be too much of this, which is why I enjoy them--they're easy to read but don't tend to do much condescending to the kids. I just know that most of this stuff didn't exist when I was the proper age to be reading it, so I'm catching up now.
The ending of the book redeemed the whole thing for me. It doesn't tie things up neatly or end on a particularly happy note. Chloe's been betrayed and is trapped. She doesn't know where any of her friends are, or what she's going to do to save them or herself.
Obviously this is the start of a new series. I probably won't rush out to buy further entries sight unseen, but I will try to read them. I'll either wait for the paperback versions, or else I'll do what I've been meaning to do and start going to the library again.
I really need to start going to the library again.
It's foggy as hell today. I've not seen it this foggy in ages. There were a few tense minutes when I literally couldn't see much further than the front end of my Betty.
went for a drive this afternoon. up to Bel Air to the BN up that way. picked up a nice pile of books.
because what i need now is more books. oh who am i kidding, i'm completely addicted to books. and the past few weeks, to spending money i've not got, as well. three cheers for retail therapy.
i decided that i wanted something different from my usual fiction and fantasy. so, when i was puttering about on amazon this afternoon before leaving, i started looking first at Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. He also wrote The Tipping Point, which I would also like to pick up, depending on how I feel about this book. It's about, according to the blurb onthe back: "Drawing on cuttng-edge neuroscience and phsychology to reveal that the difference between good decision making and bad has less to do with how much informaton we process than with our ability to focus on a few, particular details, Gladwell shows how we can all become better decision makers--in our homes, in our offices, and in everyday life."
Because these are things I wonder about. Good decision making. How the brain works, and how to make mine work better. That said, I also picked up On Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins, with Sandra Blakeslee. Hawkins is the guy who invented the PalmPilot and the Treo. My mom owns a Treo. This one is about a new theory on intelligence and how the brain works, and how this theory might lead to building "intelligent" machines. Hopefully I'll understand it.
I also got Your Brain: The Missing Manual. This one is about getting more out of your own brain. It sounded interesting online, again. We'll see if it has anything in it that I find truly helpful.
I think the book I'm most excited about though, is The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. I was *supposed* to read this back in high school, but never managed to do so. And I've been meaning to for years, because I have mad respect for Joseph Campbell. So I picked it up.
Also picked up two fiction books, A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer. I'm anticipating total fluff, but it sounded interesting enough. The other one is Od Magic, by Patricia McKillip. It sounds like numerous shades of Harry Potter in a couple of ways, but with enough obvious differences to make it sound really good. Also, it was probably written before any of the HP books.
The final second to last book I picked up is Your Aura & Your Chakras. This one was written by Karla McLaren. Maybe it was the massage training that did me in, but i'm interested in the "energetic" side of life as well. I'm not necessarily into the woowoo stuff, so i'll stick with calling it energy.
The final book I picked up is Domiknitrix, by Jennifer Stafford. It's... what it sounds like. A different sort of take on learning to knit. I like her approach, to taking control of your knitting and making it work for you. I'm still learning, but I want a variety of options to learn from.
Anyway. I bought books. I'm going to read them. I'm also going to reorganize the books i've got strewn about my room sooner rather than later as well.
tomorrow, mom and I are going to hit the gym by the house and hopefully get me set up with a membership. I'm actually kinda excited about this. getting into a workout habit is one of my goals for the upcoming year.
i hate making New Year's Resolutions. Really, I do. it's setting yourself up for failure, if you ask me. Especially the way most people word them. I'm going to lose twenty pounds this year. I'm going to cut out all sugar and white flour this year.
I don't make resolutions. I do, however, like to give myself a few goals to work towards during the year. i am a work in progress, and so are my goals. I don't beat myself up when i fall short of them, but i try to pick myself back up and get back on the right track.
that said, a few of my goals for 2009 are:
- 100 Books. Actually, for Cannonball Read, I think I should be to 100 by September or so. I'm not entirely sure it's going to happen, but I'll be damned if I don't work my ass off towards this one. hooray books. on that note, i've got at least three books in various stages of read right now, and i really want to get through them before i start the next one.
- be able to run 10 miles. at least. this is where the gym membership comes in. i look at it the same way Harry Dresden does. to paraphrase, i don't run because i like it, i run so that when someone is chasing me i can get away. well, i won't be running because i like it, i'll be running because i like the endorphins. and i like that it lowers by blood sugar and my heart rate and my blood pressure. i run because i want to get my HbA1C down to 6.5%. i run because i don't want my kidneys to crap out on me. I run because i want to be healthy. i also want to swim, and erg, and do eliptical machining as well.
- knitting. i want to make for myself a hat, a scarf, arm warmers/fingerless gloves, and a sweater or top of some sort. i also owe a few people scarfs.
- apply and be accepted to the University of Delaware. move to Newark, get a job, and go back to school.
- write. write write write write write.
my goal for the rest of the weekend? clean my damned room. this usually involves me picking everything up off the floor and dumping it on my bed, then going through it all and putting a lot of it back on the floor, but in different piles. maybe i'll do something different tomorrow. we'll see.
first of all, if you can name that song, i <3 you.
anyway.
maintaining the posting format from yesterday--that's how i roll, bitches:
-it's taking me forever this week to get my BB posts written. don't know what my problem is. but you should be off reading BitchBuzz right now.
-wait, finish this first!
-i managed to, not once, not twice, but at least three times step over the puked up hairball the cat left me in the middle of the floor. she's been doing that fairly close to often lately. maybe i should get her shaved? is there any way i could possibly traumatize my already skittish cat anymore? advice?
-my mom makes pretty kickass cookies. they're cakey enough for me; however, they are also rather moist. rather too moist. i think she's putting too much sweet potato in them. or not quite enough flour. i'm not sure which.
-i've not watched Heroes from Monday yet. I don't really care. i've not watched Fringe for the past two weeks. I don't really care. i think i'm two episodes behind on True Blood now. I think I'm done with that. I am getting the first two discs of The West Wing from Netflix next. I couldn't be happier about that. Where has all the good TV gone, and why is there none of it left?
-i am fascinated by characters who are completely unsympathetic, yet somehow are sympathetic and also kinda creepily relatable. is it because i'm one of those delusional girls who wants to fix the bad guy (or girl; not that i swing that way, despite the all-girls catholic high school)? good god, i hope not. i think mostly of Dexter here. dude's a fucking serial killer. yet, you sympathize with him. he's the main character of the show. he HAS NO FEELINGS, but you cheer him on. the same can, at least to a certain extent, be said of House. there's those hints that he used to be a human being. but now...he's just House. discuss?
-holy shit, batman. R Lee Ermey is the corpse of House's dead father. rock.
-at this point in my evening, i leave the computer (finally) to go try to finish The Lies of Locke Lamora. This is another one you need to read. i finally figured out why i hesitate to finish it (and I might be repeating myself or someone else); i don't want it to end. and this is despite having Red Seas Under Red Skies waiting to be put into my next pile of books. i continued to sit in front of the fucking thing for at least forty more minutes, then crash. no reading of books that i highly recommend to all and sundry was done.
-decided to join in on the Cannonball Read challenge from Pajiba. 100 books in one year. i look forward to the challenge. i'm a bit behind... need to catch up. look for the "review" of Small Favor, my first read, to be up in a day or two.
-i am so frakking queasy this morning. i nearly gagged when i was brushing my teeth in the shower this morning (yes, i brush my teeth in the shower). partly i guess because my toothpaste is disgusting, but partly due to the queasiness getting the better of me. i keep telling myself i should eat SOMETHING, but i can't quite handle the notion right now.
-of course, i stepped on the scale this morning, and according to it, i've lost nearly five more pounds. so that's nice. i don't know where they went. please don't worry, however. i am still eating, still testing my blood sugar nearly as much as i should be, and still taking my insulin. i'll let you know when i start mainlining 5 Hour Energy shots, or go on a white powder and white milk diet. then you can start worrying. 'kay?
-i don't match today, and I didn't realize it until i was in the car on my way in. i'm wearing a royal blue t-shirt (You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning), with pants that are roughly the same color of my eyes (ie, kinda blue grey. i call them cadet blue, because they seriously remind me of the crayon). just thought i'd point that out.
So, I decided to make a pile of books to be read. All of them I culled from the bookshelf of books to be read. There are, to be honest, an awful lot of them. So I figured it might be good to make a pile, to narrow it down a bit and get in some of the books I've been looking forward to. Or something. I was going to keep it to ten, but that didn't work.
Maybe I just wanted to be able to publish a list on here. *shrug*
In no particular order:
- King's Dragon, Kate Elliott
- Iron Kissed, Patricia Briggs
- Sebastian, Anne Bishop
- Furies of Calderon, Jim Butcher
- The Summoner, Gail Z. Martin
- A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin
- Dead to the World, Charlaine Harris*
- Deja Dead, Kathy Reichs
- Pretties, Scott Westerfeld
- Untamed, P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
- Small Favor, Jim Butcher
- Breaking Dawn, Stephanie Meyer
As you can see, I don't have the most highbrow or literary taste in books. Oh well.
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