I should find a dog and book icon...
...now that we have dogs, and not a cat. Although I love cats, and at some point in the future will likely get a cat to live with us again. Just not presently.
So...dogs and books... :)
Heat Rises by "Richard Castle" is another entertaining semi-film-noir novel, written by the fictional Richard Castle (of ABC's Castle), and as delightfully, ridiculously over the top as the show can sometimes be. Cheesy? Yup, a little, but also highly entertaining.
Scones & Bones by Laura Childs; another fun installment in her Tea Shop Mystery series set in Charleston. Things are heating up in the South, and it isn't the weather or the tea. (Now please, Ms. Childs, PLEASE, could you make Delaine a murder victim? She's annoying.)
The Chocolate Pirate Plot by JoAnna Carl; fun, fluffy, and made me want chocolate. It had yachts, movie stars, kidnapping, murder, smaller boats, and chocolate trivia. What's not to love?
How Firm A Foundation is another David Weber novel (in the Safehold series) I didn't want to put down. Heat may rise in Castle's books, and the South may be warming up, but things are really starting to heat up for the inhabitants of Safehold. The Church - the Group of Four, specifically Clyntahn, is becoming more and more unhinged. The Empire of Charis is beginning to look less and less heretical to more people, and Merlin-who-was-Nimue has his fingers in entirely too many pies. I'm terribly afraid that in one of the upcoming books, Merlin will be too stretched and won't be able to prevent something horrible from happening to one of the characters I like. And, like GRRM, Weber has little compunction about killing off people I like (case in point, King Haarahld in the first novel). Want. Next. Book. And soon, please, to make nasty, nasty things happen to Clyntahn so he can experience some of what he's done to other people?
Finally, I'd started getting interested in reading The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, based on the buzz around the upcoming movie, but I was also a little afraid to read them. Much-hyped books sometimes fail, in my opinion, to live up to the hype. Case in point: anything and everything by Stephenie Meyer. Ugh.
I was never quite so delighted to be wrong in my anticipation the books wouldn't live up to the hype. (A friend's wife lent them to me, and I didn't really think she'd lead me astray, but it was nice to be right.) They're superb. Dark? Yes. Depressing? Slightly, and for nominally young-adult novels, there's quite a bit more dark and depressing depth than I was expecting. But there's also hope, and rebellion, and redemption, and beauty, and love, and compassion. The characters grow, learn, and change (some of them), and those that don't, lose either their lives or their wills to endure, which is almost as bad as dying. I was surprised when the trilogy didn't seem forced; at the end of The Hunger Games, there was a feeling that something else was coming down the pike for Katniss and the other characters. Collins wasn't done with them, and after three books, I don't want to be done with them either. Collins has finished the story, and anything else would be too contrived, but I want to read more about them anyway. And that is the sign of both a good storyteller and a good reading experience.
So...dogs and books... :)
Heat Rises by "Richard Castle" is another entertaining semi-film-noir novel, written by the fictional Richard Castle (of ABC's Castle), and as delightfully, ridiculously over the top as the show can sometimes be. Cheesy? Yup, a little, but also highly entertaining.
Scones & Bones by Laura Childs; another fun installment in her Tea Shop Mystery series set in Charleston. Things are heating up in the South, and it isn't the weather or the tea. (Now please, Ms. Childs, PLEASE, could you make Delaine a murder victim? She's annoying.)
The Chocolate Pirate Plot by JoAnna Carl; fun, fluffy, and made me want chocolate. It had yachts, movie stars, kidnapping, murder, smaller boats, and chocolate trivia. What's not to love?
How Firm A Foundation is another David Weber novel (in the Safehold series) I didn't want to put down. Heat may rise in Castle's books, and the South may be warming up, but things are really starting to heat up for the inhabitants of Safehold. The Church - the Group of Four, specifically Clyntahn, is becoming more and more unhinged. The Empire of Charis is beginning to look less and less heretical to more people, and Merlin-who-was-Nimue has his fingers in entirely too many pies. I'm terribly afraid that in one of the upcoming books, Merlin will be too stretched and won't be able to prevent something horrible from happening to one of the characters I like. And, like GRRM, Weber has little compunction about killing off people I like (case in point, King Haarahld in the first novel). Want. Next. Book. And soon, please, to make nasty, nasty things happen to Clyntahn so he can experience some of what he's done to other people?
Finally, I'd started getting interested in reading The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, based on the buzz around the upcoming movie, but I was also a little afraid to read them. Much-hyped books sometimes fail, in my opinion, to live up to the hype. Case in point: anything and everything by Stephenie Meyer. Ugh.
I was never quite so delighted to be wrong in my anticipation the books wouldn't live up to the hype. (A friend's wife lent them to me, and I didn't really think she'd lead me astray, but it was nice to be right.) They're superb. Dark? Yes. Depressing? Slightly, and for nominally young-adult novels, there's quite a bit more dark and depressing depth than I was expecting. But there's also hope, and rebellion, and redemption, and beauty, and love, and compassion. The characters grow, learn, and change (some of them), and those that don't, lose either their lives or their wills to endure, which is almost as bad as dying. I was surprised when the trilogy didn't seem forced; at the end of The Hunger Games, there was a feeling that something else was coming down the pike for Katniss and the other characters. Collins wasn't done with them, and after three books, I don't want to be done with them either. Collins has finished the story, and anything else would be too contrived, but I want to read more about them anyway. And that is the sign of both a good storyteller and a good reading experience.