ladydusk Posted July 11, 2013 Share Posted July 11, 2013 I finished Covenant Child by Terri Blackstock. A little fluff for summer. I'm starting Shadow in Serenity, also by Blackstock. Also fluff. I'm almost embarrassed to count them, but count them I shall. On the up side, I got a call today that I won a gift card from my public library's summer reading program. I think it's cool that there's an adult version, too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mlbuchina Posted July 11, 2013 Share Posted July 11, 2013 I have got quite a few books going at the moment, so I thought, "What the heck. What's one more?" So I started Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu, by J. Maarten Troost. So far, it has been very entertaining. My favorite quote so far: "It was as if the sensory overload that is American life had somehow led to sensory deprivation, a gilded weariness, where everything is permitted and nothing appreciated." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stacia Posted July 11, 2013 Share Posted July 11, 2013 I have got quite a few books going at the moment, so I thought, "What the heck. What's one more?" So I started Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu, by J. Maarten Troost. So far, it has been very entertaining. My favorite quote so far: "It was as if the sensory overload that is American life had somehow led to sensory deprivation, a gilded weariness, where everything is permitted and nothing appreciated." Hey, I just read his one about China. I enjoyed it well enough, but feel like I might enjoy his ones on the Pacific islands better (because he lived on the Pacific islands for at least a few years). Please be sure to post your final review of it too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted July 11, 2013 Share Posted July 11, 2013 On the up side, I got a call today that I won a gift card from my public library's summer reading program. I think it's cool that there's an adult version, too! Congratulations on your win! My library is having a bingo for adult readers. One claims squares by fulfilling assigned tasks such as : Read a memoir Read a mystery Read a book published in 2013 Visit the local museum and identify a display you saw Read a book recommended by a librarian (note book title and librarian) Read for an hour in a local park (note book read and park name) and so on ... The grand prize is a Kindle. Lesser prizes are gift certificates to the local park district. I have got quite a few books going at the moment, so I thought, "What the heck. What's one more?" So I started Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu, by J. Maarten Troost. So far, it has been very entertaining. I read his The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific some years ago. It was entertaining though I prefer Bill Bryson's travel stories. Regards, Kareni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ladydusk Posted July 11, 2013 Share Posted July 11, 2013 Last night I finished Shadow in Serenity by Terri Blackstock. It was awful. But now I'm to book 27 ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mumto2 Posted July 11, 2013 Share Posted July 11, 2013 I have finished a few quick reads. Lovely in Her Bones by Sharyn McCrumb--In this book Elizabth MacPherson goes on her first archaeological dig. Midnight Awakening by Lara Adrian--the third book in the Midnight Breed series. Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Pattillo--I couldn't resist the title. Almost done and enjoyable. After a bitter divorce the main character, an Austen scholar, travels to England in search of the start of a new life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 I read the first two books of a new fantasy/paranormal series by J. C. Daniels (a pseudonym for Shiloh Walker) and enjoyed them both. Blade Song Night Blade (Colbana Files) I was invested in the story and characters and cried at one point. Drats -- book three isn't due out until January and seems only to be forthcoming on the Kindle. Here's the blurb from book 1: "Kit Colbana—half breed, assassin, thief, jack of all trades—has a new job: track down the missing ward of one of the local alpha shapeshifters. It should be a piece of cake. So why is she so nervous? It probably has something to do with the insanity that happens when you deal with shifters—especially sexy ones who come bearing promises of easy jobs and easier money. Or maybe it’s all the other missing kids that Kit discovers while working the case, or the way her gut keeps screaming she’s gotten in over her head. Or maybe it’s because if she fails—she’s dead. If she can stay just one step ahead, she should be okay. Maybe she’ll even live long to collect her fee…" I also read and enjoyed Jennifer Ashley's Bodyguard: Shifters Unbound. Regards, Kareni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paisley Hedgehog Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JennW in SoCal Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 I feel like I am caught in an episode of the Twilight Zone where my life can't move on until I finish reading The Count of Monte Cristo, but the catch is that more chapters keep getting added to the end of the book. I could swear the table of contents ended at chapter 102, and I was doing a marathon read yesterday to finish but chapter 103 followed, then 104. Here I am at chapter 108 and now the table of contents lists a total of 117 chapters. This is a problem unique to reading an e-book as you have no sense of how long a book really is. It tells me I am 93% through the book but it doesn't give me any scale -- 93% of what?!! If I'm not done by Sunday y'all may need to send an extraction team to rescue me from 19th century France. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stacia Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 I feel like I am caught in an episode of the Twilight Zone where my life can't move on until I finish reading The Count of Monte Cristo, but the catch is that more chapters keep getting added to the end of the book. I could swear the table of contents ended at chapter 102, and I was doing a marathon read yesterday to finish but chapter 103 followed, then 104. Here I am at chapter 108 and now the table of contents lists a total of 117 chapters. This is a problem unique to reading an e-book as you have no sense of how long a book really is. It tells me I am 93% through the book but it doesn't give me any scale -- 93% of what?!! If I'm not done by Sunday y'all may need to send an extraction team to rescue me from 19th century France. Countception. ;) :lol: On amazon, a hard copy shows 117 chapters. I would check my hard copy too, but it's not nearby.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ariasmommy Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 Finished recently: #37 Buried in a Bog by Sheila Connolly - a new cozy mystery set in County Cork, Ireland. It was a fairly quick and enjoyable read, though the way it all turned out seemed a bit implausible, and I didn't really like the main character. But I think I might try the next in the series when it comes out. #38 Building Her House: Commonsensical Wisdom for Christian Women by Nancy Wilson - I found this collection of short essays very encouraging. #39 The Code of the Woosters: Jeeves to the Rescue by P. G. Wodehouse (audiobook) - Bertie's misadventures always make me smile, and I love Jonathan Cecil's renditions of the various characters, especially Jeeves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeganCupcake Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 I just finished Shouting Won't Help by Katherine Bouton, a very interesting mix of science and personal experience about hearing loss. I have seriously underappreciated my hearing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 Faust Part 2 is still occupying my reading, as it veers from one thing to the next. One moment it's a satire on governments' misuse of paper currency; the next, we're visiting the Land of Neoplatonic Forms to fish out Helen of Troy. I have the constant nagging feeling that I don't really understand what's going on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigMamaBird Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 I went on vacation this week so I relied again on good old Agatha Christie for a collection of short stories, The Golden Ball and Other Stories. She's always good for a fun tale and I needed something easy. I also read Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. It was so sad and beautiful at the same time. The point of view of a Japanese woman before, during and after WW2 was something I haden't read before. This year I have decided to read what is commonly decided to be the best of 20th Century Literature. I'm starting to have a hard time because my library doesn't seem to carry a lot of what is on the Top 25 lists I've found on the internet and I'm exhausting what they do have. I've started to rely a lot more in inter-library loans and have even had to buy some titles. Since we're only halfway through the year, I am forseeing this as a big problems in the next few months. 1 - All The King's Men – Robert Penn Warren 2 - A Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein3 - A Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood4 - Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger5 - Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury6 - The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck7 – Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie8 – The Illustrated Man – Ray Bradbury9 – The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald10 – The Hiding Place – Corrie Ten Boom11 – The Square Foot Garden – Mel Bartholomew12 - Catch-22- Joseph Heller13 - Heart of Darkness- Joseph Conrad14 - Partners in Crime - Agatha Christie15 - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams16 -O, Pioneers!- Willa Cather17 - Miss Marple - The Complete Short Story Collection - Agatha Christie18 - Ringworld - Larry Niven19 - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man- James Joyce20 - Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut21 - To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee22 - Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin23 - The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow24 - The War of the Worlds- H.G Wells25 - The Girl with the Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier 26 - The Golden Ball and Other Stories - Agatha Christie 27 - Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoot Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 Today, I finished Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor. While Traveling With Pomegranates might make an interesting family story, it just didn't feel like it really needed to be published. Nothing. ever. happened. At all. In the whole book. The two, beyond self-absorbed and overly-analytical, make a beautiful and fascinating place seem dull and desperate. I found Ann's endless whining about the rejection letter to be grating and frustrating. Additionally, Sue's constant need to analyze every. single. thing. wore thin. Every dream, every glance, every artifact, meant something important. More than once I felt like screaming, sometimes a dream is just a dream. Geez. In the end, I just didn't care about either woman. The writing felt far too sanitized and forced, like neither was even bothering to be honest with herself about... something. Also, Ann's bumbling epiphany that she is supposed to be a writer fell flat for me. It was as if she coerced the "signs" into telling her that's what she should have been doing all along. I wanted to tell her that if you want something, I mean really want something, you go after it with your whole being. Instead, for all her rationalizing that it wasn't the case, it still felt like she just tripped into writing because she didn't know what else to do after being rejected (by ONE stinking grad program, by the way). The two seem determined to create whatever internal drama that transpires in this book simply because their own lives and travels lack any of the real variety. For much of the book, I found myself wondering how the two would react in an actual crisis instead of the ones they fabricated for themselves in their own little heads. It was as if the Kidd's wanted this to be a mother-daughter version of Eat, Pray, Love but fell far, far from the mark. Completed So Far1. Best Friends by Samantha Glen2. Wesley the Owl by Stacey O'Brien3. The Gift of Pets: Stories Only a Vet Could Tell by Bruce Coston4. Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess5. Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine6. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim7. Beowulf by Seamus Heaney8. The Odyssey by Homer (Fagles translation)9. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield10. The Year of Learning Dangerously: Adventures in Homeschooling by Quinn Cummings11. Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson12. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery13. Tales of an African Vet by Dr. Roy Aronson14. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children15. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie16. Kisses From Katie by Katie Katie Davis17. Iguanas for Dummies by Melissa Kaplan18. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald19. Zoo by James Patterson20. St. Lucy's School for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell21. Russian Tortoises in Captivity by Jerry D. Fife22. Leopard Geckos for Dummies by Liz Palika23. The 8th Confession by James Patterson24. Leopard Geckos: Caring for Your New Pet by Casey Watkins25. The Ultimate Guide to Leopard Geckos by Phoenix Hayes Simmons26. 9th Judgement by James Patterson27. 10th Anniversary by James Patterson28. 11th Hour by James Patterson29. 12th of Never by James Patterson30. Chasing Science at Sea: Racing Hurricanes, Stalking Sharks, and Living Undersea With Ocean Experts by Ellen J. Prager31. Dolphin Mysteries: Unlocking the Secrets of Communication by Kathleen M. Dudzinski & Toni Frohoff32. The Greeening by S. Brubaker33. No Touch Monkey! by Ayun Halliday34. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl 35. Beating Dyspraxia with a Hop, Skip, and a Jump by Geoff Platt 36. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela 37. Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rosie_0801 Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 This sounds quite fascinating. What did you think of it? I enjoyed it, actually. It was quite readable, and she was able to paint a picture of the ugly without making your dinner turn sour in your stomach. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robin M Posted July 13, 2013 Author Share Posted July 13, 2013 I may get in trouble for this but here's a little friday Hubba Hubba. Enjoy your reads this weekend Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robin M Posted July 13, 2013 Author Share Posted July 13, 2013 Still in fluffy paranormal mode reading Kelly Meding's Dreg City Series and finished Three Days to Dead, As Lie the Dead and Another Kind of Dead in the past week. Currently reading the 4th book - Wrong Side of Dead. Maybe tomorrow I'll be ready to begin something substantial. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoot Posted July 13, 2013 Share Posted July 13, 2013 Today I finished The Stranger by Albert Camus. I hadn't read it before and I. Absolutely. Loved. It. I don't re-read very often but I'm already thinking that I want to read it again and marinate in it a bit more. Completed So Far1. Best Friends by Samantha Glen2. Wesley the Owl by Stacey O'Brien3. The Gift of Pets: Stories Only a Vet Could Tell by Bruce Coston4. Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess5. Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams & Mark Carwardine6. Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim7. Beowulf by Seamus Heaney8. The Odyssey by Homer (Fagles translation)9. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield10. The Year of Learning Dangerously: Adventures in Homeschooling by Quinn Cummings11. Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson12. Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery13. Tales of an African Vet by Dr. Roy Aronson14. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children15. The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie16. Kisses From Katie by Katie Katie Davis17. Iguanas for Dummies by Melissa Kaplan18. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald19. Zoo by James Patterson20. St. Lucy's School for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell21. Russian Tortoises in Captivity by Jerry D. Fife22. Leopard Geckos for Dummies by Liz Palika23. The 8th Confession by James Patterson24. Leopard Geckos: Caring for Your New Pet by Casey Watkins25. The Ultimate Guide to Leopard Geckos by Phoenix Hayes Simmons26. 9th Judgement by James Patterson27. 10th Anniversary by James Patterson28. 11th Hour by James Patterson29. 12th of Never by James Patterson 30. The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World by Eric Weiner31. Chasing Science at Sea: Racing Hurricanes, Stalking Sharks, and Living Undersea With Ocean Experts by Ellen J. Prager32. Dolphin Mysteries: Unlocking the Secrets of Communication by Kathleen M. Dudzinski & Toni Frohoff33. The Greeening by S. Brubaker34. No Touch Monkey! by Ayun Halliday35. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl 36. Beating Dyspraxia with a Hop, Skip, and a Jump by Geoff Platt 37. Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela 38. Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor 39. The Stranger by Albert Camus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robin M Posted July 14, 2013 Author Share Posted July 14, 2013 Link to week 29 - please continue conversation in new thread Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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