Ad of the Week

The 52 Book Resolution: a year's reading, part three

A continuation of a year of reading in review. 


24. Anya's Ghost, Vera Borsgol. A great YA graphic novel which deals nicely with both being a teenage girl today and the immigrant experience in a then-and-now sort of way. Anya falls down an abandoned well and meets another girl who fell down the same well ... some eighty years prior.

25. The Demon in Me, Michelle Rowen. Did I even read this book? I have it written down on my list of "books I read" so I must have done so. However I don't recall anything about the novel at this time. Huh.

26. Dark Destiny, Christine Feehan. 2011 brought us the closing of Boarders stores across the country and a great urge for me to spend all the money I carried around in Boarders gift cards. Since this was essentially frivolous, must-spend-now money, I purchased several romance novels that I never would have bought otherwise. I'd heard about Feehan before -- namely that she was a best seller -- so I decided to see what the novels were like. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that this was something like book nine of the series. So I went to the library and tried to read book one, Dark Prince, and I absolutely could not finish it. The damn ditzy heroine doesn't realize that she's essentially been kidnapped and that her "hot vacation fling boyfriend" is manipulating her because he thinks she's dumb, sexy, and utterly incapable of doing anything from walking alone at night to feeding herself, and to this end, he keeps magically making her fall asleep anything she contradicts him. But it's luuuuuuuv. I got disgusted and returned it to the library unfinished. Dark Destiny is a little bit better in the sense that the heroine, Destiny, isn't as cowed or easily manipulated and she'd not immediately secluded from all of her friends and family inside the hero's lair upon first meeting him. Feehan's male characters take "dominating alpha male" to a level that is beyond what I can tolerate.

27. The Bride and the Beast, Tersa Medeiros. The intelligent, overly plump, hardworking if somewhat waspish Gwendolyn is the last virgin of age left in the Highland village of Ballybliss, so when a dragon moves into the old castle, the villagers offer her up as sacrifice -- and aren't the least bit sad to see her go. The dragon, however, doesn't eat her on the spot; he takes her into the castle, locks her in a comfortable tower room and plies her with fine food and as many books as she could possibly crave. This turns into a warm, witty romance that sort of breaks my rule about not liking historical romances.


28. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke. Amazing. The premise (and the ending) was so cool. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and have it turn into any of the melodramatic sci-fi blockbuster movie plots that I'm familiar with, and (blissfully) it never did. The majority of the narrative is precisely described in a manner that is realistically scientific but never dull. And the description was easy to follow -- a real feat when the author is describing reorienting the character's plane of reference in a low- or no-gravity situation. I didn't know if I'd like it -- I'm often leery when approaching things which are considered "canon" or written by the "classic" within any genre -- but I absolutely fell in love with this sci-fi adventure.


29. Accidental Demon Slayer, Angie Fox. There was such great potential here. A demon shows up in Lizzie's toilet bowl on her birthday. Her terrier starts talking. She joins a gang of biker witches against her will/better judgment. The entire novel was fun but not fun enough to get me to read the next book in the series. In premise, tone and set up, it reminded me a lot of a Katie MacAlister novel, but it lacked the storytelling elements that don't just tug on my heartstrings, they wrap themselves around my heartstrings and ensnare my soul. Accordingly, my unensared soul went out and immediately got a Katie MacAlister novel to fill the void.


30. Love in the Time of Dragons, Katie MacAlister. This novel continues on the narrative that threads that started in the Aisling Grey, Guardian series and continued in the Silver Dragon series. Most, if not all, of those series' character make return appearances in this closely tied but separate series that starts to answer the overarching crazy questions of the dragon world: what the hell happened to Baltic and Ysolde? Why'd they die five hundred years ago? Why did the black dragon weyr shatter? And how the hell are they both alive again? Katie MacAlister is an insanely witty writer and has great unique characters that clash brilliantly with each other. And the elements of her narratives, the stories she tells and the way she tells them always manage to hook me. If you find yourself interested in this novel, I highly recommend starting seven books back with the start of the Aisling Grey series,  You Slay Me, because it's a much better way to be introduced to the world.

The 52 Book Resolution: a year's reading, part two

see part one here

14. River Marked, Patricia Briggs. This is the sixth book in the Mercedes Thompson urban fantasy series. Mercedes -- or Mercy, as she's called -- is a car mechanic and coyote skinwalker. Books 1-3 of the series were awesome. Like curl-up-on-the-floor-and-cry-because-I-want-to-write-books-like-that-and-I'm-afraid-I'll-never-be-that-good awesome. Books four and five were nice, but by comparison they were a giant let down. They went off on pointless tangents and didn't include the wonderful full cast of quirky characters. Of course, when your "full cast" grows to the size that these books has, it's understandable why you don't include all of them in every novel ... understandable but not happy. Book six gets better than books four and five though not as fabulous as 1-3. Mercy finally gets married and we finally get light shed on Mercy's unique coyote skinwalker abilities. This will probably be the last book I read in this series (unless book seven has a great hook) because all my questions have been answered, Mercy's origins were the last question I had, even Stefan's ever-worsening state might not be enough to draw me back.

15. The Wierd Sisters, Eleanor Brown. Absolutely awesome. In spite of its name, this novel is not fantasy (urban or otherwise) and it has little to do with Shakespeare. The novel follows three grown sisters who come crashing back into their childhood home under less-than-ideal circumstances. The narrative was intriguing and compelling; it pulled me right along. But the use of point of view was perhaps the coolest part of this novel. Mainly told in a limited third person point of view that alternates between the three sisters, there would also occasionally be moments when the point of view switched into first person plural omniscient -- the all-knowing, unified consciousness of all three sisters. These passages functioned sort of as the novel's Greek chorus.

16. The Search, Nora Roberts. Some Nora Roberts novels are fluffy little things that you can read in a day if you've the time and read fast enough; this was one of her more meatier reads. It follows a young widow (I think she's a widow, now I can't recall) who had narrowly escaped being the next victim of her husband's serial killer murderer. The heroine now lives on the outskirts of a small island community in the Pacific Northwest training search and rescue dogs. I'm not a huge fan of crime fiction -- although I do watch a lot of NCIS and Bones on TV, and I loved Silence of the Lambs though I doubt I could ever make myself read the novel -- but this novel was fascinating for me: intriguingly touching on that world of surviving-out-the-serial-killer's-next-move without the creepypants chill factor. And besides, it's readily apparent that Nora Roberts loves, loves, loves and respects dogs.

17. A Discovery of Witches, Deborah E. Harkness. This was fascinating in the sense that it was a very familiar urban fantasy but it was approached with a very different mindset. The heroine wasn't a PI or a slayer, she was a professor of medieval history on an obscure research quest about alchemical texts. In June I wrote an entire blog post about the book here. It's a good read but beware: it's a series with absolutely no promise of when book two will be finished.

18.  Something Borrowed, Emily Griffen. The movie trailer looked so cute; the book so disappointed me. Still haven't seen the movie. Read my June blog post about why I was weirded out.

19. As You Wish,Gabi Stevens. A young woman who owns a bakery gets the delivery that will change her life: the old guard of fairy godmothers deliver her a wand -- a sure sign that she is part of the new guard of fairy godmothers of which there are only three per generation. That was cool ... beyond that I have no recollection of what happens in this novel. There was an incredibly sweet garden party though. Not that I remember what happens at the garden party but I still would love to get invited to a swankypants affair like that.

20. Warprize, Elizabeth Vaughan. Addictive. This series suffers from truly horrible covers (they seem to get worse as the series progresses) but the world/characters are fabulous. As is the culture clash conflict that Vaughan has created between what I would describe as the "traditional medieval European-based" fantasy culture that the protagonist comes from and the Other that shows up at her city's door intent on warring with them until they surrender. The "Other" is a mix of historical elements from Middle Eastern and American Plains Indians and a bunch of other twists and turns the author has thrown in to make them truly unique and interesting. I highly recommend this series if you're interested in romantic fantasy. These novels have a richness of culture that could have easily lent itself to 400 pages of narrative per novel but they're only around 200 or 250 pages each, so accordingly the pace really clips along. (I'm still rather sad that they weren't longer; I had so much fun getting lost in this world!)


21-22. Warsworn, Elizabeth Vaughan. Book two of the Warprize trilogy -- told ya the covers keep getting worse. Book two is when the three book story arc sort of mires itself down in the muck and we literally get stuck on the journey to book three but it's worth wading through the sticky part to get to the end of the trilogy which concludes with Warlord. There are other related novels in this world which I've not read. You can't get Warsworn and Warlord in paperback anymore; they're tragically out of print, but Warprize isn't. So if you're like me and get hooked on the damn series, the good news is that you can get them as Kindle or Nook editions. And I was addicted. So addicted that I was willing to read both novels, in their entirely on my iPod touch -- not an iPad, an iPod ... so basically a blindingly white little screen that may or may not be the size of your phone. It was worth it.


23. When Blood Calls, J.K. Beck. This was one of those vampy, crime fightery type books. I think there's the supernatural sister agency of the FBI and the heroine works for them and she has to at some point arrest the hero or something. The good news is that this is available as a $0.99 download right now ... the bad news is that I definitely bought it as a paperback and shelled out full price for something that felt much more like a cheap read than a full price read.

The 52 Book Resolution: a year's reading, part one

For the past few years, I've made one and only one New Year's resolution: to read (and finish) at least 52 books in the coming year. I made it in 2010 and again this year in 2011. Last year I did a round up of my reads at the end of year and I'd like to repeat that this year. Something I'd like to note is that the numbers next to the titles are not the order in which I "rank" them by any criteria, it's merely the order in which I read them.

1. The first book I read in 2011 was something from Harlequin ... but beyond that I have no clue what it was or who it was by.  Both this and last year, the first thing I read was published by Harlequin. This is quite likely because it's this time of year when Harlequin offers up a dozen or so free ebooks for anybody to download off their website (usually one from each of their lines in hopes of getting you interested in a new type of romance novel). And, hey, I'm a big fan of free.

2. Darkfever, Karen Marie Moning. I really love this series. I started reading it because I'd liked other Karen Marie Moning romances (I read her Highlander time travel series and, particularly in the later novels, found her to be great with all that reflective, internal angst which makes me love the characters without thinking of them as whiny, stupid, or unrelateable). Book one was mildly interesting, but by the end of book two I was pretty much hooked: staying up reading all night, going to my local bookstore the next day for the next book in the series and then falling asleep with the light on trying to eek out another chapter before sleep claimed me. This novel is set in the same world of Fae as her Highlander novels but starts off with a fresher take. The protagonist is a young, spoiled, somewhat ditzy blond from Georgia who rushes to Dublin, Ireland, after news of her sister's grisly murder in the Irish city. The police have given up on the investigation but the protagonist won't in spite of knowing no one in town, having no evidence, and having ... well ... no fricking clue. By virtue of stubbornness (and the fact that the people she's searching for are searching for her) she stumbles upon a world she never knew existed and teams up with assorted sexy-but-annoying males. First book in the five book Fae Fever series. And super cool, the first book's Kindle edition is only $1.99 right now.

3. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin. Quite possibly the best book I read all year and definitely the best second-world fantasy / high fantasy that I've read in many years. Jemisin gives us a world of political intrigue which turns into a war between gods -- gods that have been made almost-human against their wills. Not only is the story interesting and the characters are fabulous, but the novel is written in an intriguing literary style. Parts of the novel are in scene, parts are being narrated to some entity that is (at first) unknown, and some are a conversation between the narrator and the unknown entity.  The net effect is gorgeous. There are two more books in the series but this first book has a completely contained plot and can be read as a satisfying one-off.

4-7. Where Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning was interesting it was Bloodfever that got me addicted and made me start putting off everything else in order to read the next scene, the next chapter, the next book until I'd rapidly consumed them all. In rapid succession I finished Bloodfever (book two), Faefever (book three), and Dreamfever (book four) in rapid succession and then had to wait a whole twenty-four painful hours for the digital release of Shadowfever (book five). I'm insanely glad that I started reading this series as the publisher was wrapping up the releases not as the books were first appearing, because those few hours I had to wait until Shadowfever's mid-January release date were insanely painful.
The worlds of fae and human have always had a "wall" between them preventing humans from knowing about the fae and preventing the fae from becoming too powerful -- but all that changes irrevocably in this series and the protagonist is smack-dab in the middle of it. Just about all of Moning's interesting characters of novels past (the MacKelters) make plot-related cameos in this series.


8-9. Irish Rebel and Sullivan's Woman are part of the Irish Dreams bundle by Nora Roberts. Irish Rebel  features the next generation of race horse trainers from Nora Robert's first every novel Irish Thoroughbred  and another imported-from-Ireland horse trainer. Yay for warm fuzzy books.

10. A Hunger Like No Other, Kelsey Cole. Kelsey Cole novels constantly make the paranormal best seller list, so I thought I should check it out. The harpies of New Orleans met the vampires of Europe. No, that's not a figurative statement: that's the plot. I was not moved to read further in the world/Immortals After Dark series.

11. Angels' Blood, Nalini Singh.  I read this book on a recommendation. And the world is quite fascinating. Then again I've not read another angel-based paranormal book (unless it's fallen angels at the fringes of demon civilization, i.e. not the main characters) so I found this world to be intriguing. It's an open-fantasy, meaning that in the modern here and now, all humans know about the existence of angels -- angels are mega-business tycoons, btw -- and about the existence of vampires. But I think what's most fascinating about this world is that vampires aren't made by other vampires, vampires are made by angels. The protagonist is a young, female human who gets sucked up into the twisted world of millennia old angel grudges, corporate espionage, and hunky winged men. Part of a three or four book series yet, while I enjoyed the novel and was fascinated by the world, I found at the end of book one that I felt that the storyline I was concerned about was complete so I wasn't feeling the need to go out and read further installments.

12. How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf, Molly Harper. An utterly fun and pointless romp. The best part is the interaction with the fun and quirky characters of small town Alaska. I was a little bit upset because the intriguing part of the novel which should be a major turning point in the character's relationships -- when the naked werewolf shows up on her front porch -- isn't revealed to the audience in chronological order, it's the freaking hook. The book starts with the naked werewolf and, if that's the highlight, it can't get better from there.

13.  Seducing the Governess, Margo Maguire. I really can't recall much at all about this novel. It's a historical romance (just in case the terms seducing and governess appearing in the title didn't already alert you to that fact), and as I'm discovering, unless you're Jean Ferris writing Into the Wind, historical romances just aren't my cup of tea.

Part two of my year in reading coming tomorrow morning! If you've read any of these titles leave me a comment -- I'd love to hear your thoughts.

News in the world of SFF

Just before Christmas, two very intriguing things happened: Brandon Sanderson announced via tweet that he had finished the first draft of the final novel of the Wheel of Time series -- yes, the series of doorstopper fantasy novels that could not be stopped even by original author Robert Jordan's untimely death is finally coming to an end after fourteen volumes -- and the first teaser trailer for The Hobbit dropped.

Season's Greetings

Best wishes to all during this festive time of year!

On Monday I'll start my recap of the year's reading. Check out last year's recap here: the new year's resolution is met, part one, part two, and part three.

(Holiday) Ad of the Week

If you're like me, you've already seen this one a few dozen times (or to be honest, a lot more than that). But this makes ad of the week because I thought for the first full twenty seconds of an only thirty second ad that it was going to be a car commercial. And for that fake-out-er-y, it wins ad of the week status!

Christmas in geekdom

Two absolutely awesome holiday projects to share with you today. And I can't take credit for making or even attempting either of them.

The first is this absolutely awesome gingerbread AT-AT complete with little gingerbread dude swinging from a rope beneath the belly ready for AT-AT destruction and a nice big boom.

(Found via.) At first I must admit that I got a little huffy because I thought the gingerbread dude was supposed to be an Ewok and, if this is an Ewok, then this is totally the wrong sort of Imperial walker (the Ewoks attacked the two-legged kind that were on the jungle moon of Endor). Then I looked a bit more closely at the gingerbread dude. No ears. A helmet. Sort of a snowsuit collar and boots. Oh, oh, oh! That's not an Ewok, that's Skywalker! Sorry, my bad. It's so hard to tell humans from annoyingly cute savages who like to roast their sacrifices over the fire while still alive.

This gingerbread walker is rightfully the four-legged kind from the ice planet of Hoth. Duh: Christmas = ice planet + gingerbread -- it took me a while, but now I'm on board.

The next exhibit I have from Christmas in geekdom is what the site BuzzFeed is calling DIY Holiday Nerdflakes. They're instructions/patterns for how to make paper snowflakes featuring shapes from all our favorite sci-fi shows. This one is the starship Enterprise.

They also have patterns for a Tardis, a Cylon, storm troopers and bounty hunter masks. But I think my favorite is the laughing Darth Vader because he looks a little like a malevolent Santa. And I bet that if you make that snow flake and showed it to your non-initiated friends (those who've never come to play in the land of geekdom), that they'd never realize that it wasn't Santa and then you'd have the joy of having pulled one over on them. Of course, they might start to wonder what that strange cog-like shape was in the middle of the flake, but just tell them it's a geometric pattern not the not the symbol of evil that made the galaxy shudder. Wha, ha, ha! Ahem, I mean, Ho, ho, ho!

Time to write

Having time to write after a long writing hiatus is like ... it's ... well ... I don't have a good analogy. Damn. What I do have is a very tidy apartment. I have a desk clear of everything but the essentials of what I'm working on right now and the tools I need to work on it. The "work," meaning the writing ... not going so well.

Actually, it's not going at all.

It's the curse of all the time in the world. Of course, I don't actually have all the time in the world, I have less than three weeks until semester starts again, so I know I will eventually get around to the whole writing fiction thing again soon. But in the meantime it's amazing how quickly my apartment can get clean. Which of course makes me feel like a slob for letting it slide for the past four months. Ah well, hindsight.

For now the goal is to keep the apartment this clean and tidy -- not make it cleaner, no seriously, it doesn't need to be cleaner, stop, put down the sponge now -- and get into the swing of writing. Writing a lot. Lots of a lot. Not just hours a day but many words per hour. Yeah. That's the goal.

I missed NaNoWriMo based on my crazypants schedule. Now's the time to go it alone, without several hundred other writers tagging along for the experience. I've also got several editing projects that I'm working on. This is how I work: lots at once. It's what I refer to as the academia model opposed to the logical model.

The logical model says work on one thing until it's finished -- don't split your energy or your focus.

The academia model says take five classes with five different projects and focuses and just alternate which you work on, have a bunch of small deadlines and you'll get through everything -- splitting your energy or focus doesn't matter so long as you focus on what is in front of you now.


No, it's not terribly logical, but what can I say? I do well in that academia/student-life model.

Not only do I do well with many projects, but what I've found myself having to explain to quite a few people lately is that it's not a hobby. When it's not a side project on top of all your other projects for work, family, life, personal hygiene and automobile maintenance, then it's your main project and you can put a lot into it. It's not an issue.

The issue, it seems, is getting started again after completely changing gears.

Photo credit: pOOfkAt (Katherine Choate)on flickr

(Holiday) Ad of the Week

Add one part adorable, one part disturbing, one part sheep. Mix well.  Garnish with scarves.

Thanks goes to theLiz for directing my attention to this ad.

Dear neglected,

Dear neglected, dear blog, dear--

How have you been? Are you having a happy holiday season so far? Are you enjoying your solitary trek through this long December? We should catch up -- it's been too long -- maybe get coffee or Chinese noodles, the good kind that are supposedly authentic. I'd like that.

I've been too busy for you. I've been selfish, I know. I haven't made time for you. But you've been too busy for me too. Or maybe that's just the line I tell myself to get by, that you're having another life, that you and other friends are updating and chatting, swapping RSS feeds and laughing without me. Facebook says you're in a relationship now; your new girlfriend looks nice, but I still hate her. I heard you've won awards, traveled the country, the globe, got a new job that doesn't actually suck. That's great, that's all great, it's amazing how much you've done when I've not been around.

I've been teaching.

It sounds so small when I say it.

Everyone tells me it's a noble job, but it feels small. The way people tell a bride that rain on her wedding day is a sign of good luck not a sign of miserable weather on the day of her celebration.

You ask what I'm doing now and I reply I've been teaching, and you reply  Oh really? Teaching what? (you've always been good with the follow up). I tell you it's creative writing and intro to composition, all at the college level.  That's great, you say. That stuff is really one of those building blocks.

Building blocks. Basics. Boring. One of those classes you were forced to take but didn't in a million years ever want to take.

Did you know, you say, I graduated from that school, the one you're teaching at. Now it's my turn to say Oh really? That's kind of cool. I smile.



But those are my problems, not yours, so instead I ask what you're doing now.

You're working for a DC think tank. You're writing code for internationally focused government organizations. You're months away from a high tech Ph.D. You're starting a consulting business. You're living in Portugal. You're meeting and greeting stars on Broadway, you're giving your business card to Sigourney Weaver. You're building engines for cars so advanced they don't even exist yet. You'ved moved to the East Coast.You've gotten married.You've had a baby, would I like to see pictures?

It's been too long.

I was reading my poetry students final portfolios today. And there's something about poetry, and those who are beginning to practice it, that is so raw and truthful and so fucking honest. And it really tripped me up. It got me agreeing with them that yes, there is something about poetry that is just so ... fragile. It shouldn't be any more fragile than any other form of writing -- after all, it's words on a page. Poetry should be no more fragile than the words its made up up. But it is. Our friendships, our cares, our complaints, our successes, our failures, how we communicate or don't, should be no more fragile than ourselves. I'm not fragile. I've worked hard to not be so. But our friendships are perhaps more fragile than I would have imagined. And they break softly, quietly, under the strain of a thousand days and a thousand words not said.

Because if you think I could be forgiven for this, I wish you would.

--No, not those of you whom I told to fuck off over the years. The crazymakers, drama queens, and liars, I've excised your from my life for a reason. I don't want your forgiveness. I don't miss you. I don't miss your drama. I don't miss the regret that inevitably came from hanging out with you and going along with the flow. I don't miss you lying to me about your other girlfriends, I don't miss you lying to me to make yourself look like a better person than you really are -- if you're mean behind your friends' backs, then be mean; if you're petty, be petty; if you're a sleaze, be a sleaze; just be honest about it. I don't miss you telling me btw, I'm single this weekend and expecting me to lie to your boyfriend, your fiance, about about what you did while visiting me in Chicago. No, for you I hold firm with my assertion that you should fuck off.--

The ones from whom I want forgiveness are the ones whom I just let ... drift. The ones whom I accidentally neglected and now I don't know if the connection still works, if the link remains unbroken.

Ad of the Week

Ad of the Week

It's a beautiful, whimsical, imaginative commercial ... but the thought of my house flying apart makes me a bit uneasy.

Grab bag of life presents this week's findings ...

Catherynne M. Valente demands better vampires.  Vampires that have actual angst, not black pudding enthusiasts.

Two lesbians raised a baby and this is what they got.

Writer Zoe Winters and the theory of the 10,000 word day.  Winters says she started writing fanfic before she started writing her own worlds -- and that writes faster and easier because you eliminate the time spent on invention. But then she did it: she set out to have a 10,000 word day, and eight hours later accomplished it.

This chick in Manhattan made $1200 a month in free food off of Match.com.  It's pretty amazing, but the through of doing that is utterly exhausting. I think that sooner rather than later I'd be like screw it, I'm not putting on another pair of heels, I'm just going to eat ramen.

A really fabulous (and interestingly difficult) holiday writing prompt from Professor Ogden -- open to students and non-students alike.

This week provided my area of the country with some crazy-pants weather. Warm rain, then ice, then ten inches of snow all within 48 hours. Now, pay mind that the ten inches of snow did not fall where I live, or where I work ... it fell on the city I must drive through to get from where I live to where I work. Crazy-pants snow fell all Tuesday afternoon. It fell all evening. It fell during my drive home. It fell during the time I gratefully drove twenty miles per hour down a major highway just to stay behind the safety of the plow. Crazy-pants snow fell as the plow decided it had gone far enough in my direction, made a quick U-turn and started plowing the other of the highway. Crazy-pants snow fell as I blindly groped to stay in my lane and praised whomever came up with the concept of rumble strips. It fell as I neared the bright road-illuminating lights of civilization ... then left civilization and plunged back into the dark. Crazy-pants snow fell as I contemplated what it would be like to spend the night in a hotel, at a roadside rest stop, in the ditch. Crazy-pants snow fell as I finally reached town, got off an exit early and discovered that the city streets were pristine -- it was just the highway that was a death-trap-waiting-to-be-sprung.  Just pants. Lots and lots of pants.

But I survived. And as this fabulous Oscar the Grouch (non-disney endorsed) image tells us: Shit could be worse.