So, I have been very bad about reading books lately, which I think makes me more stressed and crazy. I tried remedying that this week, but those are not the books I am here to talk about. (they were good, but mostly just series mysteries (Ellie Haskell and Meg Langslow) and a YA i had lying around.)

So:

Book the first. I started reading NorseCode. I really wanted to read it and like it, but I find that Norse myths are a little too depressing for me. Or perhaps a lot too depressing. So I only made it about 60 pages in, I think, and I had to stop. That said, it was a good book, and i do recommend it to people who like Norse myth and Ragnarok and all that.

Book the second, which actually I read and loved well before NorseCode but which I have been thinking about for a while. Magic Thief: Lost. This was a sequel to the Magic Thief. It will not be nearly as good if not read after that book. In fact, if you have read the first book, it might help to re-read it before you pick up this one, as there were some bits where I had to remember very hard what had happened in the first book. The first book has Con save the city. (okay, first he steals something from a magician, and becomes sort of an apprentice, and gets magic classes and *then* saves the city. But the important bit for the next book (well, I suppose other than all the rest of it) is that he saves the city, and in doing so he loses his means of doing magic.

So, this book, MT:L, starts off with Conn trying to find ways to do magic, or at least communicate with what he thinks was communicating with him before. And since he believes that the magic was talking to him in an explosion before, he decides this will be a good place to start. Things go boom, things fall down, he discovers a plot that he thinks traces back to a neighboring city, more things fall down (I think--I may be getting my things fall down out of order), and he is kicked out of the city.

This book was a lot more about growing up than the first one. Conn has to make a lot of very hard decisions in the book, particularly about doing things which will get him in trouble, but may save the city. And there were a lot of places where he could have faltered over the decisions he had to make--the right thing for the city vs the safe thing for himself, for example. The fact that he never has to--and it never feels wrong--is a testament to the clarity of his character, I think, and one of the reasons I deeply loved this book.

Also, unlike the last one, I went to the trouble of translating the notes at the bottom of the messages and journal pages. They're not necessary for the story, but they add nice little hints of emotion to it, and are easy to translate (by the end of the book, I could read boy and at least one other word without looking them up).

Tags: books read

this book just referred to "big metal railroad ties from the train tracks." FAIL.

FAIL FAIL FAIL.

The word the author is looking for is RAILS. Ties are wooden. (I am also not 100% sure where the ties came from since I don't remember any explanation why grandma has several hundred/thousand pounds of railroad stuff lying around, but whatever. We had a ton of wooden ties out back of the garage for a good 15 years or so, simply because one of my dad's friends built a bridge out of railroad ties and had some leftover.)

I am not the target audience for this book: it's YA, and while not sucky overall, it was a book which i think would have a different impact at 15 than having read all of the various influences to this already.

Basically: Zara's stepdad--the guy who raised her--dies, she goes a little bit sad-crazy, and her mom sends her to Maine to live with her stepgrandmother. In Maine she sees a strange guy on the side of the road who she's seen twice before--when her dad died, and at the airport. Her grandmother also sees the guy, so she knows she's not crazy. She goes to school, makes friends and enemies, and discovers that kids--boys--are disappearing, as they did ages and ages ago, just before her mom got pregnant, married her stepdad, and moved to Charleston. Zara and her friends do some research, discover that the creepy guy is a Pixie who is looking for his queen. For 'pixie' in this book read 'Unseelie Court Fae' since that's basically the definition we're given. Oh, and from their they find out that the only natural enemy of the Pixies are the Were. So naturally it makes sense that this little town is a big old enclave of both *and* that even the Were kids don't know about Pixies. The girl of course is all "I totally believe in Pixies leaving gold dust all over the place, but Weres? That's just crazy talk." Of course, her hot new friend is a were, as is her grandmother, one of her other new friends, and possibly large portions of the town. Things transpire, another boy disappears, she gets kidnapped by a fringe group of Pixies looking for a hostile take over, they die, her mother comes up, the strange guy is revealed to be her Biodad, more things transpire. There's a showdown, the good guys win, and lock the bad guys up in their house with no way to escape and apparently nothing to do but wait to die. It is unclear as to how long this will take. I am forced to wonder if the repeated mention of amnesty international--and the symbol for it--is supposed to be a significant image since they essentially wrap the house up in barbed wire because the pixies can't cross iron, and leaving people imprisoned and waiting to die seems kinda...counter the whole AI thing.

Oh well. It wasn't a bad book. I mean, i finished it. It just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. Like I said, if I had been 15, I think I wouldn't have seen as many of the flaws in it, and would have enjoyed it for what it was--faintly dark but entertaining, like Holly Black's stuff.

Tags: books read

"To say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching on upon the floor."

Silent in the Grave

That was a fabulous book, more than living up to the promise of its first two lines (it did suffer slightly from the tell-the-characters-but-not-the-reader behavior that sometimes afflicts mystery novels, but redeemed itself by only doing so for a few pages, so it barely matters.) And pretty much everything under the sun was packed into the book, made even more impressive given that it is basically a romantic mystery series set in 1889 or so--all the basic Victorian trappings plus syphilis, homosexuality, gypsies, doctors, poisoning, pornography, talking ravens, fashion, retired prostitutes, music, literature, travel, etc. Granted, very little of that was relevant to the plot--it certainly could have been much shorter--but I think the extra complexity was well worth it. We will have to see if the sequels are as good as it was.

Also, it had a typeface invented for it. Now I want to write a novel just so they will make me a typeface

Tags: books read

I was reading book covers, and all the author blurbs there on, and I've decided I'm willing to stop pretending that I write, at least for a while, if people will just send me books to read. Come on! Surely 'not as sucky as I was betting," would be good blurb material! I'll even try to write reviews that could be cut into pseudo-appealing chunks.

I'm nearly done with the 'not nearly as sucky as I'd been expecting' Working with the Devil. It took me a very long time to get past the fact that the author is Lilith Saintcrow (who is also going to Dragoncon, which is why I finally got around to reading it.), but now I'm embarassed that I've been carrying it around so long without reading it. 60 more pages, and while it's not perfect, it's been a lot more enjoyable than a number of other urban fantasies lately, including Coyote Dreams. I've still got 60 pages left, so it could decline into suckitude, and there *was* one instance of 'husked' refering not to corn or coconuts but rather someone's voice. (Oddly enough, I have no problem with people saying things "huskily" or "in a husky voice", but husking anything is RIGHT OUT. No verbing!) But I think what gets me most is that I love the world building. It's not perfect, but it's very cyber-future or alt-future, which I ADORE from my SF background. (True fact: through HS and into college I read Asimovs, Analog, and FSF every month, and Analog was consistently my favorite.) Reminds me very much of...damn. They weren't Alan Dean Foster, they just had the same covers. Simon Hawke. His "Wizard of" stuff. Beyond the world building, I like the way the character interacts with her surroundings, how she moves things along in her wake. It's very fast moving, and it may be a good thing--if I had longer to think over the details, they might fall apart (though I don't think so--other than husking, nothing has even grated on my nerves)--but it's definately how I like my books to go. I *like* to finish books without even realizing I haven't put the book down at all. And a number of my books lately I've put down for weeks on end. So I got the sequel out while I was at the library (along with a couple of mysteries of varying degrees of coziness, and Magic Lost, Trouble Found.)

And since I bad mouthed it (sort of) I should say that I want very much to like the C. E. Murphy books, but I think I don't like her focus in them. I think Joanne/Siobhan is a wonderful character, and that the background characters are very interesting too, but I feel like the books are ALL ABOUT Joanne's inner psyche, and frankly, three books is too much time to talk about how broken she is without trying to fix herself, and I don't see that at all. And thus, I am bored because really, anyone can make up an evil monster and battle it, so why should I pick this book over any other book? So I read Coyote Dreams, and I might like it the best since she seems to be finally maybe starting to interact with someone other than Gary--and I love Gary, I'm just thinking that since she's in the real world maybe she should be interacting with others as well as him. But still, I got royally bored in the middle of it and forgot to pick it back up until I was trying to clear out space in my book bag. (This one is an ARC from Wiscon, so if anyone wants it, let me know.)

Tags: books read

Having finally read Blood Bound, I would just like to say that my ideal 3rd book will involve her kicking all the rest of the boys out of her space and dating Ben.

Okay, that's probably an oversimplification, but I DO NOT LIKE the way Adam treats her, and I want her to actually do something about that (instead of just thinking to herself about how she doesn't like the way she acts around him.) Samuel, while certainly guilty of bad behavior in the past, gets off lighter in my eyes because he a) has the advantage of a shared history and b)doesn't seem to exercise his bad behavior as much as Adam does (his bad behavior is usually what I would describe as protective--focused beyond the two of them at outside 'threats', whereas Adam's bad behavior is directed at Mercy.)

Knowing my luck, she'll end up with Stefan (Don't do it! he's evil!).

So, outside of the romance, I liked it. She kept up with the things I liked about it--Mercy's still nicely done, her interactions with the wolf pack I still like. I like the characters of pretty much everyone in the book. I'm a little surprised by the talking-to-ghosts bit since I don't remember that in the previous book, but okay. It's well done, it was just a little surprising (and opens up questions like, does this mean there weren't any ghosts from the whole werewolf fight? really? No places where a ghost would have been useful in the last book?) This, incidentally, is all the special powers she is allowed to get. I will burn things if there is a vampire related superpower in the next book. (Unless it's a smart, finite power like in Sunshine, come to think of it, but I don't think it can be because of the whole set up of powers in this world. Also, I should re-read Sunshine.) Also, I will waive the special powers moritorium if they also cripple her

I just read several other people's reviews of this and other books, and just realised that when I 'review' books that I like, I don't even try to actually write about the book, just what I liked about it and why. I really don't like talking about things like plot when I write about a book. I think it's because i really really love reading books/watching movies without knowing the back cover copy. I like not having any idea what will happen in the book, and just trust the author to not do stupid things. And so that's the sort of thing I usually write--if you like other things i read, you can trust me to have the same opinions of the books. And if you don't trust me, a) why are you reading me? and b) you can go read the reviews on amazon. :)

Tags: books read
Current Music: MCR - Famous Last Words on 99x.com

I read His Majesty's Dragon yesterday, along with a horde of mysteries. I liked it. Also, for heaven's sake, could the dragons *be* women any more? (Truly the most annoying bit of the book? the fact that he kept calling Temeraire "my dear," which, since i've been reading regencies lately, is totally what a guy says to his female loved ones. I mean, I don't know about you, but I've never heard a (straight) guy say, "My dear" to another man, or even a male pet. Between that and the jewelry, total women.) Also, is it just me, or is there no mention of the female dragons at all? I mean, someone must be laying the eggs, but other than Lily all the dragons are male. (And even Lily, I'm not sure if it's just a male dragon with a girly name.)

I also got confused by how many people they have on the dragons during the flights and battles. They seem to be holding about 14 people at all times.

Still, it was good--others have said "Master and Commander with dragons" but I haven't read Master and Commander books, (and I'm not going to, if they're just like this but no dragons!), so I'd say it's like McCaffery, but for boys. (boys apparently don't get firelizards, so haha!)

Tags: books read
Current Music: Keane - The Frog Prince

UPS still hates me. THey claimed to have tried again yesterday, but since I know for a fact there were at LEAST 4 people in the house at 6:11, and probably closer to 10, I know this just means they knocked quietly on the #6 door instead of ringing the doorbell at the #8 door. One of the girls in the house is worried that a package she was expecting has been rejected and sent back, but we haven't seen any infonotices, so if that's the case, that's just extra mean. I have posted a note. My brother suggested a poem, and I was thinking a haiku of shaming that would point out that the postal service didn't have any trouble delivering my packages might be nice, but you know, too much effort. Hopefully it will be there today. I want my video card! (Not just because I'd like to be able to do things other than the very basics and have my machine crash on the screen saver, but also because I'd like to make sure there are no other issues with the set up. The machine is running hot (50C), but I'm hoping that's mostly the overstressed video card. (I'm also really hoping there won't be any issues installing this thing, but I did check it with my brother explicitly, so hopefully not.)

I of course wasn't at home at the time UPS was trying to deliver the packages because I was--ta-da!--at the gym! Go me! I'll be hawt in no time. Okay, probably I should work on getting to more strenuous things like the elliptical trainer, but I did a yoga class and then 20 minutes on the bike, which made me plenty wobbly. I'm less in pain than I thought I would be--I'm not in *bad* shape, I know, so once I get used to actually, you know, doing things with my muscles, they should snap into shape. I'm also slightly more flexible than I probably deserve to be, given how long it's been since I did yoga. Must be the belly dancing last year.

I have oh, the best looking horrible books lately. (granted, given that I'm currently reading a novel with a human lie detector and a psychic 'hunter', you'd all probably count this as a paranormal romance too, but it's Jayne Ann Krentz, which means it's paranormal romance that actually makes real money, so that doesn't count.) Anyways, the two on tap right now are The Becoming and The Quest (no relation). The woman on the cover one is clearly a vampire/vampire hunter novel, and I know I promised myself no more Tor novels, but.... And the one with the half naked guy (still a less scary cover than Sighs Matter, which scared the whole chat room, and which I am NOT planning to read, fyi) is aliens! Okay, actually it's far-future space romance, but ALIENS is more fun.

And in case you were wondering if I ever read anything else but crap, I'll give you the list of the good (well, better, anyways) books I've got out waiting to be read too. In the Company of Ogres, Breakfast with the Ones You Love, Farthing, His Majesty's Dragon, A Fistful of Charms, Love Walked In, The Rabbi's Cat, A Rather Lovely Inheirtance, Sleep with the Fishes, and You Suck. I am more excited by soem of these than others, but oh my god, I am *SO* excited about one of them that I may not read it for fear it will suck. (You can guess, but you'll probably be wrong)

I have new music, the latest Badly Drawn Boy, by which I mean the only CD of his that I've ever considered buying, but alas, this was not enough to make yesterday not suck. It did at least come with the extension cables for my headphone jacks, so I can listen to music at home and at work, which is good because the cords on my headsets aren't long enough to reach either here or at home, and the headset with a longer died messily yesterday. I may have to actually invest real money in a pair of headphones. Stupid things! Makes me wish I had the skills to make my own! Alas, I doubt even the Boston Center for Adult Education teaches electricity.

Tags: books read, i suffer so you don't have to, music makes everything better
Current Music: Badly Drawn Boy - The Long Way Round

I read Flora Segunda last night, and I just have to say, I love it. I'm sure it's got it's flaws and all that, but I don't care enough about finding fault to bother, so I'm just greatly enjoying the good-book buzz. (Though it made it CRAZY hard last night to find the next book to read. Luckily I'd taken out The Merlin Conspiracy as well, so I made do just fine eventually.)

Today is the 4th day of messing about with flawed content, trying to make it work properly. Yesterday we got informed of a corporate 'restructuring' which was code for 50 positions cut across our division. Most were just empty job reqs, but about 10 were people, including two of my coworkers. Of the two, one was going to medical school this fall anyways (and I think planning to leave this job in June), the other is my least favorite person ever due to his complete uselessness at work, and thus his loss is acceptable.

Despite the fact that it's 35 outside or so, the tree sex is apparently starting since my GOD I'm congested. (I was last week as well at one point, but that was directly related to the fact that I am obligated to stop and smell the hyacinths, even though it means that I promptly can't breathe. mmm, hyacinths. (PLease note: I can't imagine actually buying one of those little potted plants even, since there can definately be too much of a good thing, particularly in a small room, but they smell so much like spring that I have to smell them when I walk by.)

My computer is having power issues. Actually, I suspect graphic/video card issues--the screen every so often locks up, goes black, and then puts up little blue lines in a nearly random manner. I think there may be additional power issues (I come back to the room now and then and discover it's restarted itself), but until I figure out the card issues, it may just be side effects of that. And the stupid firewall at house won't let me run the windows updater, which I really would like it to do, since I don't know what I may be missing that might make the card run better.

Tags: books read

I am bad! I was doing so well on the reading books front, and then I went and took out another 6 or so. Anyways. Since I posted last.

"Who's Sorry Now," a Grace and Favor mystery. It's set in the Depression, a formerly rich pair of "kids" (well, mid twenties, I think) who inherit a big old mansion in middle of nowhere New York, and the prospect of several million if they make it 10 years on their own. While I tend to really like the series, this particular mystery was not nearly as good as the others were. I was sadly disappointed. I'm hoping it was setting things up for the next book, because otherwise, there was a lot of wasted stuff in it.

I started a book, but put it aside for the night, and instead finished off the last 40 pages of "Secrets of the Night," a Georgian romance re-read. Usually the series amuses me, but I've read like, 8 of them recently, so I'm a little burned out right now (the book I put aside, for example, was one of that author's Regencies.)

"Queen Geek Social Club." Pay attention, all you who like YA books. This one was *excellent*. I ended up saying up till 2 to finish it. It's two new best friends who decide to start a club for girls like them--smart, and tired of HS boys. Their first project was Calories for Supermodels, for example, and while I found some parts of it over done and less than believable, overall, it was really really good, and well worth reading, so there's a bunch of you out there who I expect to look it up.

"Ready or Not" and "How to Be Popular" both by Meg Cabot, who the more I read of her, the more i think she must be a very fun person. Her books always have popular teenage culture stuff in them, but at the same time, I get the feeling that she includes it because *she* likes it. So her books are always wonderfully fluffy and just so damn *fun*.

"Heart's Desire" which is the sequel to Beginner's Luck, the YA I raved about a couple of weeks ago. This one may not have been *as* fun, but it was still very good, and well worth the read.

"Charlie Bone and the Hidden King." I don't really recommend these books--they're immiation Harry Potter books, and while they do manage to pull off some differentness, they're also much lighter than the Potter books, have much less happening, and much less developed world. I don't know that they were inspired by Potter, or just coming from the same source material and lucking out in the industry because of Potter, but the fact remains that there are definately better books than this out there, and there's really not much reason to read these books, since there's so many others out there. Except that i started reading them, and now I'n vaguely curious as to how they'll resolve. I don't expect it will be anything really exciting in the resolution, but since I'm taking them out of the library anyways, why not.

---

And now I'm off to watch the fireworks over the harbor.

Tags: books read

I'm up to 32 books out of the library (the first thing anyone says when I tell them that is, "They let you take that many out?" Apparently, yes.), so my goal for this weekend is to read my ass off. :) I'm up to 5 books finished thus far, but one of them (the Fly Guy) I didn't finish reading, just got too bored with. I've also read:
"I'm the Vampire, that's Why," which was very cute--the paranormal stuff was pretty much same old, same old, but the story around it was different--a large number of people (11) in a small town all get turned into vampires overnight due to an unfortunate accident, and the town itself gets turned into a paranormal 'village' with werewolves and others coming to live there as well. New Author. I'll read the next in the series.
"Dead End Dating," which is a vampire running a dating service who helps solve a serial kidnapper case. Also cute, a little more annoying, but I'll still read more by the author.
"The Go-to Girl," which was a re-read, but I love her stuff. In England it was called Monday's Child, and so I also have Tuesday's Child as well, but it's in DC. Woe! But maybe I'll get it with my xmas present from a friend.
"Dumping Princes" which is a YA by a woman who also writes Chick-lit (there's a bunch who do it, and I pretty much like them all). It's the 4th in a series of an American girl in boarding school in england--a very posh school, with mostly rich, old money british girls. Very cute.

Tags: books read