I also put this information into goodreads.com. You can find me there with my gmail address (the.karend).

< < 2011

January 1, 2012 to Now: (latest finished on top)

Crouching Vampire, Hidden Fang, Katie MacAlister
I had to read this to get the ending that should have been in the previous book in the series (Zen and the Art of Vampires). The tone was still a bit too much on the madcap side for my taste though I did enjoy this more than the earlier book—until the very end, when I plot thread I’d hoped and assumed would get resolved did not. I’m not sure if there’s yet another book I need to read to find out how that turns out. Maybe I’ll just make up my own story for that part.

I’m Feeling Lucky, Douglas Edwards
This made a good companion to In the Plex, which I read at the end of last year; it gave me a personal perspective on some of the stories and events I remembered from the other book. I would have loved it if there were more reflection at the end—was it worth it to sacrifice so much family and personal time for an employer, even if it did make the author rich? I also hope Marissa Mayer writes her side of the story someday.

Play of Passion, Nalini Singh
This far into a series, it’s saying something that I’m still enjoying it as much as I am. The dominance issues rankle me a bit, but since they make sense in the world of the series, I can deal with it.

The Celery Stalks at Midnight, James Howe
Yay, Bunnicula’s back. This didn’t quite have the charm of the first book, but was much more enjoyable than the second one in the series.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 2: Cycles, Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, and Jose Marzan
Still liking this series, though I’m enough of a wimp that some of the violence shocks me.

Howliday Inn, James Howe
I liked Bunnicula so much that I picked up the next in the series right away. The problem is there’s no Bunnicula in this one. He’s mentioned briefly, but does not appear, and all the action is bunny-free. There’s also a plot point that seems needlessly emotionally manipulative.

Bunnicula, Deborah Howe and James Howe
I never read this as a kid because I was 17 the year it was first published. As an adult, I found it charming. I was slightly disappointed at the lack of female characters—seems like with three animals and four people there could have been more than just the mom, who’s not a major player. The edition I read has an afterword about the writing of the book which was way sadder than I was prepared for (it also had a photo of early notes for the book which mentioned a sister in the list of characters; I wonder what happened to her).

Viking: The Long Cold Fire, Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein
I had trouble getting into this; the dialog is so sparse and the cuts between scenes so frequent that it was hard for me to follow the story or connect with any of the characters. I never quite sorted out who was in who in some cases. Then it just sort of ended, rather than being resolved or cliffhung. There were some interesting images, at least.

Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1: Unmanned, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra
This one had me at the monkey on the cover. I do wonder how, in a world where food and fuel and other basics are scarce, the main character is able to keep his monkey in fresh diapers, but other than that minor quibble, I really really liked this. The premise is thought provoking, and there is some great art in here. I definitely want to see what happens in Volume 2.

< < 2010  2012 > >

Non-Fiction—Memoir, Autobiography, Biography:

Chocolate & Vicodin, Jennette Fulda
It feels heartless to say I enjoyed reading a book about the author’s chronic pain, but I did.

Half-Assed, Jennette Fulda
It took me a long time to finish this, maybe because I found it less engaging than Jennette is in person (I’ve talked to her at a gathering of online writers).

Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, Vicki Myron and Bret Witter
This was as much an autobiography of a small town librarian and a regional history book as it was the cat story I was expecting; I guess maybe a biography of a cat isn’t enough to fill a whole book. There were a few moments of snark in here that made me wish she’d written this as a novel instead, so she could have felt free to expand on those parts.

Love is a Four Letter Word, Michael Taeckens (editor)
Faced with a magazine story that is part anecdote and part educational information, I am very likely to just read the anecdotal bits. This book is all anecdotes, so I liked it quite a bit. I’d let it sit on my to be read pile for a long time because I feared a book of breakup stories would depress me, but that didn’t turn out to be the case, probably because by the time these authors wrote about the incidents, the pain was not still fresh.

Vietnamerica , GB Tran
I might have to read this graphic memoir again, as there were points where I got confused about who was who, since the story jumps back and forth in time. That said, I liked this a lot; it’s dramatic and touching and funny by turns.

Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian, John Elder Robison
Interesting view into life on one segment of the autism spectrum.

Non-Fiction—Everything Else:

The Upside of Irrationality, Dan Ariely
The one thing that stuck with me from this book was that from a happiness-maximization perspective, it makes sense to take more breaks during pleasant experiences than during unpleasant tasks. The subtitle of this book is “The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic”, but these benefits were never enumerated that I could see.

Flex Diet, James Beckerman
I kept waiting for the diet part of this diet book; it’s really a collection of eating, exercise, and lifestyle tips rather than any sort of formal plan. I wasn’t clear on how the author intended one to implement this “diet”, and I’d already been exposed to most of these tips before; perhaps if I were a newbie to diet and shape-up information this would have been more useful to me.

X Saves the World, Jeff Gordinier
It wasn’t until I read the acknowledgements at the back that I learned this book sprung from a magazine article, which makes sense, as it didn’t seem like there was enough meat here for a whole book. There were odd pages-long asides—like the author’s trip to see the Beatles Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas—that didn’t seem to add anything to the development of the main idea. In fact, I’m not so sure I know what the main idea is. Xers are going to save the world by using YouTube and MeetUp?

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, Sam Gosling
The subtitle makes a promise on which the text does not deliver. I don’t feel I ended up knowing what my stuff says about me or how to analyze other people’s stuff in any systematic manner despite the very academic feel to the book. I did like the anecdotes and the discussion of the Big Five personality traits.

Poor Man’s Provence, Rheta Grimsley Johnson
I liked that this included descriptions of things the author likes about Cajun country and things she doesn’t. I would have been happier to not hear about the cock fighting, but not hearing about it wouldn’t mean it didn’t happen, so I can understand why it’s in there.

In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, Steven Levy
It’s a rare day indeed that I don’t use a Google product, what with my Android phone and search and maps and Gmail and Google Docs and now Google+, and I work for a company that delivers our product over the internet, so I found the subject matter of this book quite interesting. I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot about the company. The only problem I had was keeping some of the players straight in my head; I think the author could have added a few reminders when people popped up again many chapters after they’d first been introduced.

Japan Home: Inspirational Design Ideas, Lisa Parramore, Chadine Flood Gong, and Noboru Murata
I learned some things about the Japanese aesthetic from reading the text, and enjoyed looking at all the photos, but don’t see myself using any of the ideas in my own home. I can appreciate the look, but it’s not one I want to live in myself.

Driving Mr. Albert, Michael Paterniti
I didn’t realize at first that this was non-fiction; by the end I wished it had been fiction so it could have been made more interesting. The premise is intriguing—a cross country road trip with the former doctor who stole Einstein’s brain and the brain itself. Not much happens, though, and I didn’t feel like I got to know the doctor or anyone else in the story. Nor did I understand why they had to take the road trip in the first place, since the doctor ended up flying home with the brain.

The Secret Lives of Hoarders, Matt Paxton and Phaedra Hise
Being the child of two people who had/have too much stuff and a person who has too much stuff herself, I couldn’t pass this up when I saw it at the library. I liked the case studies the best and wished for a lot more photos.

Matchbox Cars, Mac Ragan
This appealed to my collector’s spirit. I learned some things I hadn’t know before, and the photos made me want some of the cars even though they’re not a hobby of mine.

Woodframe Furniture Restoration, Alan Smith
I picked this one up at the library because a) I needed a W for my A-Z challenge and b) every time we pay hundreds of dollars to have a hand me down piece of furniture fixed up, I wonder if I could have done it myself. This book pretty much made me decide I’ll have to keep taking stuff to the professionals unless I’m willing to get a much more detailed book and lots of tools.

The Nordstrom Way, Robert Spector and Patrick D. McCarthy
I recognized some similarities between the Nordstrom Way and my employer’s way, and was heartened that such a big company as Nordstrom is able to succeed at giving individual employees a lot control over how they do their jobs. The later chapters of this book, which discussed the future of retailing as it looked around 1995, were really interesting as far as seeing what did and didn’t come to pass.

Fiction—Paranormal, Romance, SciFi, Fantasy:

Taken by Midnight, Lara Adrian
This book shows that it’s possible to keep a series going without ending up with messes like Lover Mine. There was no bloat here, quite the opposite; I wished for more—I wanted details about what’s going on with the heroine (I’m hoping we’ll see that in the next book, but we might not since the focus will shift to the next couple). I liked seeing the characters from the earlier books (though I confess I didn’t remember much about a few of them).

Deeper Than Midnight, Lara Adrian
Not my favorite installment of this series; the ending was entirely too abrupt and the main couple’s story was too removed from the rest of the story (also, I never quite got why they connected other than circumstance).

Love in Vein, edited by Poppy Z. Brite
I generally try to avoid reading reviews in depth before I dive into a book so I can be surprised and form my own opinion, but I should have skimmed a few more for this one, because it turned out to be much more horror than I have a taste for. I had to stop reading this just before bed, as some of the stories were graphic and intense enough to disturb my sleep.

Lost Souls, Poppy Z. Brite
These were most definitely not my kind of vampires, but I did think many of the characters were well drawn and settings well-described.

Pleasure of a Dark Prince, Kresley Cole
I’m not sure how I got this many books behind in this series, since I do like it a lot. This installment was no exception. Somehow the horrific things that go on here don’t bother me like those in Love in Vein did, perhaps because there’s an underlying humor there. I liked that the hero and heroine made a connection early on. I didn’t like that there were problems caused by them just not talking to each other, but that’s pretty standard for the genre, I suppose. The ending felt rushed to me, which is something this shares with other books in this series. Maybe it’s just that I don’t want them to end so soon? In this case, the main story wrapped up quickly, then there were some vignettes in the epilogue that felt like they really belonged in the next book; I wish those pages had been used to give me a bit more of the main characters from this book.

Demon from the Dark, Kresley Cole
This installment of the series was darker than most. I understand that this is book one of a trilogy within the series, so I guess I am stuck with the new bad guys I don’t like for two more books. Still, there were some good scenes in this, and I’m glad I read it.

Deep Kiss of Winter, Kresley Cole and Gena Showalter
I’ve had this sitting in my to be read pile for a while now, thinking it was a holiday book and I’d wait until winter to read it, but I needed a vacation book in October and it was handy, so I grabbed it. It turns out it’s not especially Christmas-y, so that worked out fine. The Kresley Cole story fits into the Immortals After Dark series, though trying to recall what happened in the other books this story overlaps with was making my brain hurt so I just ignored that issue after a while and enjoyed the characters. The fact that it wasn’t a full novel meant there was less of the action/adventure aspect typical to the series, which I was fine with. I was curious how the main obstacle for the pair would be resolved and am not entirely satisfied with how that got worked out, but I’m not sure what would have been better. The Showalter story is one of those that you just have to not take too seriously, like Twilight, because if you look to the plot as being an example of how a real life successful relationship gets started, it’s not on. There’s a crossover bit in here that seemed unnecessary, but again, I just glossed over it and enjoyed the good parts.

Elijah, Jacquelyn Frank
It’s been nearly two years since I read the second book in the series so I’d forgotten a lot about this world, including the things that bothered me. I don’t know if I’ve changed or this third installment is really that different than the first two, but I liked this a lot more than I recall liking the others. I got sucked in quickly and things that might otherwise niggle at me just zipped by as I kept reading to see what would happen next.

Damien, Jacquelyn Frank
This is one of those books that just grabbed my imagination and made me want to keep reading. I’m sure if I stepped back and tried to analyze it, I’d find things to pick at, so I’m not going to.

Dead Reckoning, Charlaine Harris
I’m reading this series more out of habit than anything else. This installment left me with a feeling of “that’s it?” People and non-people died, and a bunch of stuff happened, and I didn’t feel much about any of it. Oh look, more magic. Oh look, a fairy did something really dumb. Oh look, Bill said something completely out of character. Oh look, Sookie’s in peril, again. Oh look, something really forced happened in the plot, again. There’s just so much going on in this world now that there’s not enough depth to any of it for my taste.

Pleasure Unbound, Larissa Ione
First book in a new-to-me series, and we didn’t quite click. I liked some aspects of the world building and some of the characters were quite colorful and appealing, but the heroine was emotionally damaged in a way that made it hard to enjoy her connecting with the hero early in the book, and then the healing of that damage took place in a way that I couldn’t quite believe. There were a lot of hints and setup for future stories; I might read the next book to see if this world grows on me.

Dark Seduction, Brenda Joyce
I chose this book from the library shelf based on the theory that since it was beat up, a lot of people had read it and thus it must have something going for it. I probably should have put it back when I discovered it involved time travel, because time travel plots often make my head hurt. Sometimes they can be delightful, though, so I took the chance that this one would be. It was not, at least for me. This a romance novel, not science fiction, so the time travel aspect is not really explained or explored; it’s just a device to allow the contemporary heroine to hook up with the 15th century hero. I am willing to overlook a lot if I find a featured couple compelling, but these two didn’t do it for me, so the annoying parts seemed even more annoying. Most of the book is set in Scotland, so there’s repetitive dialect a plenty, except when the characters are speaking French (which is written in dialect-free English). The premise that sex can kill women (but not men, apparently) was not hot, and some of the language used in the sex scenes was just not sexy to me.

Zen and the Art of Vampires, Katie MacAlister
There are certain conventions in genre fiction (in this case paranormal romance) which are risky for an author to flout. In this case, the author decided she not to provide the expected HEA, and I was left quite annoyed. I might read the next book in the series to see if things conclude satisfactorily, but I’ve got the idea that this series really isn’t for me. (I read the first book way back in 2006 and almost didn’t finish that one. Maybe I shouldn’t have jumped back in at book six, but I needed the Z for my A-Z challenge.)

Dark Protector, Alexis Morgan
Another new-to-me series, and again, not quite a good fit. I might just need to take a break from the supernatural for a while and let my brain restock its suspension of disbelief reservoir. I might have connected better with this one if there’d been more introduction to the characters (I still don’t have a strong mental picture of the hero and heroine, though my brain was quite happy to use Daniel Craig as a stand-in for the hero) and better justification of the main conflict. (My brain also came up with some engineering-based ideas to shore up the barrier the hero and his compatriots were defending, and wondered why the people in that world hadn’t thought of the same things.) I did appreciate the nods to safer sex. This was obviously written with a series in mind, as there are tons of unanswered questions left, including some really big ones.

Bonds of Justice, Nalini Singh
I finished this book with a smile on my face. If this series hadn’t switched to hardcover, I’d order the next one right now. As it is, I’ll wait for the paperback (though maybe by that time I’ll have converted to an e-reader). I found her solution to the Psy’s issues in this one interesting and like the way her bad guys have some complexity to them.

Lover Mine, J. R. Ward
I’m not sure this really belongs on a “books I’ve read” list, as I most certainly did not read all the words in it. About a third of the way in, I started skimming the chapters covering the bad guys and skipping the flashback and haunted house chapters entirely (though I did go back and read those after I’d finished the main story). The various plot lines all jammed into one book felt chaotic and unfocused. The main couple didn’t click for me, and the sub plot that did really intrigue me (Blay and Quinn, for those of you who know these books) was the one least delved into. At least I didn’t buy this one so I’m not feeling regret at money as well as time spent on it.

Lover Unleashed, J. R. Ward
When the first chapter of this was an italicized flashback to centuries ago, I thought it was going to be another annoying mess like Lover Mine. To my great relief, that was the only flashback chapter in the whole book. Yes, there were still too many plot lines, and like with the last book, I started skipping chapters about halfway through to follow just the main couple’s story, then went back and read the other ones, but I enjoyed this book much more than the previous one in the series. I guess maybe the badness of the last one reset my expectations so low that this one was bound to be better. I am bothered that there was no payoff in here for one of the more tedious plot lines from that last book—those characters weren’t even mentioned, so I’m not sure why that material was there at all. There’s a similar seemingly unrelated plot line here, about human cops; evidently that’s a crossover from another series J. R. Ward is writing. Bah to that, I say.

Fiction—Everything Else:

The Art of Friction, Charles Blackstone & Jill Talbot, editors
This anthology explores the territory between non-fiction and fiction, including short stories and autobiographical essays and mixes of the the two. As someone who likes non-fiction to be factual, I wasn’t so sure about this concept, but the author commentary on each piece helped out greatly in shining a light on what was true (as the author saw it) and what was fictionalized. A couple commentaries did stray too far into high falutin’ academic analysis for my taste, so I skimmed those.

The Quilter’s Apprentice, Jennifer Chiaverini, read by Christina Moore
I’m not sure why I never picked up this series until now (this book was first published in 1999), since a novel revolving around quilting should be right in my sweet spot. The quilting parts were very good; the author either is a quilter or did really thorough research. The main character, Sarah, is an accountant who doesn’t want to be an accountant anymore, and that should resonate with me, too, but I didn’t connect with her, maybe because she acted unprofessional and unprepared for her job interviews (those didn’t seem realistic to me, either—cattle call interviews for an accounting position? I never ran into that in my years in accounting, nor do we do that at my current employer for any position). The character development seemed a bit lacking, and thorny interpersonal issues got resolved much more easily that I thought realistic. I did like the manor and quilting parts quite a lot, so I’ll probably read on in the series to see if the character development was saved for later books.

Round Robin, Jennifer Chiaverini
I liked that the structure of the quilt the ladies were making was reflected in the chapters of the book, with each character adding a border to the quilt getting the focus on her story for a time. I’m still not a big fan of the main character, but fortunately there’s a large supporting cast.

The Cross-Country Quilters, Jennifer Chiaverini
In this third in the series, most of the characters from the previous books got minimal screen time (page time, I guess that should be), which meant that the one I didn’t much like in the last two wasn’t around to annoy me, so that was good. What wasn’t as nice was how none of the stories of the new cast got quite enough attention; it felt like trying to cover a year in the life of so many women we’d just met was too much for one volume. The story arcs in the previous book, which also was built around a collaborative quilt framework, were shorter and more satisfying. I suppose I’d rather be left wanting more than the opposite.

Glyph, Percival Everett
There were parts of this novel that I didn’t understand at all, not being embedded in academia, but I liked the main character, a brilliant baby, so well that I could live with the frustration of missing out on some things. I got enough of it, and there was one moment maybe a third of the way through that really made me stop and think. The climactic scene verged on slapstick, which didn’t quite fit for me, but again, I could overlook that because it was followed with something quite satisfying.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer, read by Jeff Woodman, Barbara Caruso, and Richard Ferrone (A)
I liked this. The three different readers made it easy to know which narrator was in charge at any point, and also since it was audio, that meant I wasn’t exposed to the experimental text and layout aspects I’ve seen mentioned in reviews of the print version, which I suspect would have annoyed me greatly based on other books I’ve read that have incorporated those sorts of things. With the audio, I could focus on the characters and the story. I liked Oskar the best; whether he was a believable character was not really the point for me for a change. The dysfunction of the grandparents was beyond belief, but not in a way that made me want to pop the CD out of the player. This book left me with things to think about, and since Mr. K had listened to it just before I did, we could talk about those, which also added to the experience.

Yesterday’s Tomorrows, Rian Hughes
I couldn’t get into this. If I were a comic book geek and/or British, perhaps I could have. As it was, the stories didn’t pull me in, and a couple of them just wandered off instead of ending in any satisfying manner.

April Rising, Corine Lemaître
I almost quit reading this, so much did I dislike the protagonist (who was also the first-person narrator). I’m glad I didn’t. The eventual resolution was a tad forced but it left me feeling good, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The Kalahari Typing School for Men, Alexander McCall Smith, read by Lisette Lecat (A)
I don’t think this series is for me, at least not on audio; I nearly fell asleep more than once listening to this in the car.

Scratch Golfer, Wille Thompson
It’s definitely not necessary to be a golfer to enjoy this book; I’m not one, and I did. I smiled a lot while reading, laughed out loud at least once, and thought the ending was delightful. The sidenotes were educational and entertaining and not so numerous as to be intrusive.

< < 2009  2011 > >

Non-Fiction:

Nurture Shock, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
I was hooked by an early chapter when I recognized myself as the child praised for being smart who avoids trying new things for fear of failing at them. I found later chapters just as interesting, and liked the occasional personal anecdotes. I was left wanting more–about 1/4 of the pages are devoted to endnotes, most of which don’t have any additional information in them.

Feed Me, various, edited by Harriet Brown
This was a quick read, and I enjoyed most of the essays. I do wish it weren’t necessary to have so many books about female body image and dieting, but that’s a separate thing, not a reflection on this book.

The 5 Love Languages, Gary Chapman
I’m completely on board with the idea that people vary in what behaviors by their partners make them feel loved. I am not at all on board with the stereotypes and sexism that came through in the quizzes at the end of the book. There’s one for husbands and one for wives (my first question: why not just one quiz, worded gender neutrally?). Most of the questions are the same on both, with just husband or wife dropped into the wording as appropriate. But, and here’s where I got annoyed, the ones that differed appeared to support the “a good wife is a housewife” theory of marriage. For example, the quiz for husbands says “I feel loved when my wife does my laundry” while the wife’s version of that same question reads “I feel loved when my husband helps with the laundry”. It’s evidently unreasonable to expect a husband to actually do the laundry all by himself. Same with “When my wife cooks a meal for me, I know that she loves me” and “When my husband helps clean up after a meal, I know that he loves me”.

The Wilder Life, Wendy McClure
I was thrilled to win an advanced copy of this in a raffle at an event the author and I attended together. I enjoyed reading it even though I didn’t read the Little House books as kid (I did see some of the tv show, though). I could see myself going on this sort of modern day quest, though I doubt I could write about it as entertainingly as Wendy does or handle the touching moments so deftly.

Leonardo da Vinci, Sherwin Nuland, read by Scott Brick (A)
I liked this short, focused biography; it made me think.

Fire Someone Today, Bob Pritchett
This was given to all of the development team leaders at work—not exactly a title I want to be seen carrying around the office in this economy. It made me very tired just thinking about trying to do some of the things recommended (read more business publications, take people to lunch, build professional relationships). That’s probably why I don’t have my own business—I’d rather spend my energy doing other things.

A Fortunate Grandchild, Miss Read
A peek into life in post WWI Britain with no real plot, just reminiscences. The illustrations added a lot to my enjoyment of this one.

Sleepaway: Writings on Summer Camp, edited by Eric Simonoff
I found the mix of fiction stories with non-fiction a bit confusing. I was surprised to find myself connecting with so much of this even though my own experiences at sleepaway camp consist of two nights as a camper and two nights as a counselor.

Does This Book Make Me Look Fat? , edited by Marissa Walsh
Not the book for me. It had that mix of fiction and non-fiction stories which I don’t appreciate, and almost all were aimed at a younger audience than I am.

Fiction–General:

Agatha Raisin and the Murderous Marriage, M. C. Beaton, read by Donada Peters (A)
I like the title character more now than I did earlier in the series. I was rather taken aback by the body count in this one. I know a murder mystery needs at least one victim, but I didn’t think it needed quite so many as this one had.

The Bible Salesman, Clyde Edgerton, read by T. Ryder Smith (A)
Picked this one out at the library because I needed a “E” for my A-Z author challenge I’m doing this year and ended up really liking it. Having it set where and when it was made me better able to believe the main character and plot, and there were some really sweet moments and some really funny ones, and I felt more cheerful having listened to it even though it’s not a “feel good” book.

The Blue Flower, Penelope Fitzgerald, read by Edmund Dehn (A)
I am pretty sure I started this book once before and abandoned it, as the first chapter seemed really, really familiar. I got through it this time, and thought it was just okay. I have a feeling this is one of those books I’m supposed to analyze and work for, and I’m just not into that. I want the author to flesh out the characters and fill in the holes in the plot, or at least create a world which is accessible and engaging enough for me to not care that those elements aren’t there. (The voice the reader used for one of the characters was very much like that of Winnie the Pooh in the animated specials from childhood, so that was a bit amusing.)

The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory
I’ve had this book what feels like forever. I took it on several vacations and brought it back unstarted. My procrastination continued once I did finally start it; it took me a very long time to get through this. I’ve had an affinity for Anne Boleyn since I portrayed her in a school event in 6th grade, so this annoyed me rather more than most historical novels since I’m more familiar with the documented facts than usual. I wish the author had just made up characters and not messed with real people.

Playing for Pizza, John Grisham, read by Christopher Evan Welch (A)
This was a pleasant enough book, though all the lengthy descriptions of food and tourist sites in Italy made me wonder if this was written just so the author could claim a vacation in Italy as a business expense.

Beneath the Ashes, Sue Henry, read by Mary Peiffer (A)
I thought the back cover copy gave a bit too much away about the plot. The author seemed to realize that the heroine’s actions in some cases might not seem to make sense to all readers and so there were some explanations made, which I appreciated but did not entirely buy into. I did like the parts about the sled dogs.

A Single Man, Christopher Isherwood
This, I liked. I did not see the movie (did not even know there was a movie until after I’d started the book) and am glad for that, since I came to this fresh and could just sink into this day in the life of a professor in postwar California who is grieving the loss of his life partner.

Cover Her Face, P. D. James, read by Penelope Dellaporta (A)
This mystery showed its age a bit but it was still a pleasant enough listen.

Mr. Majestyk, Elmore Leonard, read by Frank Muller (A)
Several of the plot points made me say “o rly?” but this was a good car book—enough happening to keep my interest but nothing too complicated to distract me from driving.

The Suicide Collectors, David Oppegaard, read by Roberston Dean (A)
I liked this, which surprised me, since I generally avoid apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, figuring if I want to be scared and depressed, I can read the news. Yet I found myself looking forward to listening to this and thinking about the world of the book when I wasn’t listening to it. There was a sense of detachment in the narration that felt fitting. The ending was perhaps a bit abrupt, but that leaves plenty of room for me to make up my own sequel in my head.

The Ivy Chronicles, Karen Quinn, read by Julia Gibson (A)
I so disliked the main character (and first-person narrator) and her poor choices and annoying attitude that I almost gave up on this early on. Once the plot got going, so many unbelievable (yet oddly predictable) things happened that I began to think this was meant as a farce, yet I’m not sure it was. I did get a few genuine laughs about 2/3 of the way through, but I’m not sure that was worth putting up with the rest of it. I didn’t like the main character any better at the end, though I think I was supposed to.

Nappily Ever After, Trisha R. Thomas
This was okay, fluffier than I expected.

False Witness, Dorothy Uhnak
Very much a book of its time (the late 70s/early 80s); it felt dated to me.

God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Kurt Vonnegut, read by Scott Brick (A)
This was over in what seemed like no time at all. I liked the premise, but think it probably worked better in the original form of short radio pieces spaced out over time.

Sky Burial, Xinran, translated by Julia Lovell and Esther Tyldesley
This is subtitled “An Epic Love Story of Tibet”; I would have called it “A Bleak Tale of Tibet”. I learned a few things about Tibet, but felt at a distance from the characters the whole time, which was probably a good thing given some of the things that happened to them.

Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Megan Backus
I didn’t understand at first that this was two novellas and wondered why the characters were all replaced by a new cast and put in a new situation. There’s a dreamy quality to this book: things happen that should make no sense but somehow they do yet nothing seems quite solid.

In Free Fall, Juli Zeh, translated by Christine Lo
I didn’t know what was going on about a third of the time and wish the epilogue would have been longer to help me sort things out. I found a lot of sweetness here (amidst some horrifying moments), and things to think about, including a concept involving the mountains that I’d never heard before.

Fiction—Paranormal, Romance, SciFi, Fantasy:

Wanderlust, Ann Aguirre
I liked seeing Sirantha Jax again, and I liked being surprised by several plot points. This book didn’t wrap up as satisfyingly as the first one did, but at least the third one is already out so I don’t have to wait to see what comes next. I felt the ending was a bit rushed—four planets in eight days with only a handful of sentences to cover them. I get that they’re not important to the plot, but I still would have liked to hear more about them. Maybe those worlds will get their time later.

DoubleBlind, Ann Aguirre
I don’t know. I really like a lot of these characters, and I was intrigued by the new planet, but overall it left me feeling sad and tired. I’ll keep reading the series, though, because I do like the characters so much. I’m hoping for spin off series for some of them.

Shades of Midnight, Lara Adrian
I liked this one so much that I wished I’d brought it to work to read during lunch and stayed up very late to finish it. There’s just something about this series that grabs me and keeps me coming back. Of course I have a few nitpicks, including that I’m about done with the “I am not worthy” vamps who bite Breedmates anyway, and I’m very skeptical about that a couple things that happened at the end could have gone down that way, even within the world of the book. No matter, I’m looking forward to the next installment.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow, read by Sean Puckett (A)
A very interesting take on Walt Disney World in the distant future. A few historical details were questionable from the perspective of this Disney parks fan, but that didn’t really detract from the overall experience because so many of the details were spot on, and I enjoyed imagining WDW as transformed in this world.

Dead in the Family, Charlaine Harris
I started listening to this on CD but the voices didn’t match the ones in my head (which have now been influenced by the ones on the tv show), so I had to switch to the print version when my name came up on the library hold list for that instead. Early on, I was reminded of all the things I didn’t like about the previous book in the series but this one ended up being better. Still oddly paced, though, and the heat between Eric and Sookie I remembered from before wasn’t there.

Many Bloody Returns, Charlaine Harris, Jim Butcher, Kelley Armstrong, and Others
This is a collection of short stories written around the theme of vampires and birthdays. Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse story is the headliner here, but it was nowhere near the best one in the book—it felt forced to me, and didn’t really add anything to the mythos of that world. I liked Christopher Golden’s coming of age story the best—maybe because it was different than the typical vampire tale.

A Touch of Dead, Charlaine Harris
I checked this out of the library not realizing I’d already read most of these stories in other collections. The ones that were new to me weren’t any better than the ones I’d already read—I’m afraid Sookie has jumped the shark for me.

Sea Witch, Virginia Kantra
It was refreshing to read about selkies—but since they were new to me, I wished for more world-building than I got in this book. I liked the heroine much more in the beginning of the book than the end. I am planning to read the next in the series to see if maybe things don’t turn out the way I think they did based on how this one ended.

Tempest Rising, Nicole Peeler
This worked for me. Yes, the vamp was a stereotypical pretty boy, and yes, the main characters got together for no good reason, and the brand name and pop culture references were annoying, yet overall I liked it. I liked the world, and I really liked some of the secondary characters. I will probably read the next in the series just to see if there’s more of those characters.

Archangel’s Kiss, Nalini Singh
Second in this series, with the hero and heroine carrying over from the first book. I found the hero more relatable in this one, and was quite happy that some things I thought were going to happen in the plot did not (I’d say more but don’t want to spoil). I’ll definitely keep reading this series, though I still don’t like it as well as her Psy-Changelings.
Branded by Fire, Nalini Singh
It felt so good to get back to reading this series. I especially loved the beginning of this one. I wasn’t entirely convinced that the main couple had such a strong connection, but maybe they’ll grow into it in later books.

Blaze of Memory, Nalini Singh
I thought the hero was a bit overly alpha for a non-changeling, and couldn’t quite understand why he was so into the heroine, yet Nalini Singh writes so well that I was crying actual tears at certain points in this book, I was so affected by the story.

Lover Avenged, J. R. Ward
I was not going to read this book, having fallen out of love with the series during the last couple of installments, but there it was on the library shelf in the new books area where I had to walk right by it, so I caved and checked it out. I was able to renew it, twice, which means I’m not the only one who’s not as hot on this series as before. And I read it and liked it much better than the last two books. Sure, there is still a ridiculous amount of brand name dropping, and the characters don’t always act true to what I’ve come to understand of them, but there were some sections so good I’ve gone back to re-read, and I’m actually interested in what happens next.

< < 2008  2010 > >

Non-Fiction–General:

Skinny Chicks Don’t Eat Salads, Christine Avanti
The explanation of the eating plan seems to make sense but I’m not sure I could do it—a life without whole eggs and full fat cheese is not the life for me. I also found the periodic mentions of products available on the author’s website a bit annoying.

The Fabulous Lunts: A Biography of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, Jared Brown
This took me approximately forever to get through. It was obviously well researched but I wished for more personal anecdotes and fewer names and dates and titles of plays. I found the final chapters about their retirement the most interesting, because those were more about them as people. Perhaps this would have been more interesting if I were an actor myself.

How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Gelb
I picked up this guide to being more creative because some friends were planning to work through it this summer. I did one exercise from the first set (and I didn’t follow the rules—I’m already that creative, see?) and read through the whole book and am not that excited about doing more. Naming the seven principles in Italian felt forced and I often couldn’t keep myself from saying them in my head in a cartoony accent, and some of the exercises seemed quite tedious with no particular point to them, which I think means this is not the book for me. Maybe I’ll revisit some Julia Cameron instead—not that I want to do all her exercises, either.

The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport, Carl Hiassen, read by the author (A)
Sometimes this felt more like a book about writing a book—so many mentions of his editor and the deadline and research. I wondered if he’d have golfed at all if not for having this book deal. Also, the political and pop culture references were intrusive. I did like that he answered the objections he anticipated readers would have to some of the things he did.

Russian Disco, Wladimir Kaminer, translated by Michael Hulse
Maybe something was lost in translation; this was just okay. There were a few interesting anecdotes, but the overall work seemed disjointed and incomplete. Some things were repeated, like maybe the chapters were originally separate columns published over a long period of time.

Wendy Knits, Wendy D. Johnson
I often felt like I’d read parts of this book before—maybe I heard the author interviewed on a podcast and that’s why it seemed familiar. Though there are patterns included, this is really just a knitting memoir. I think it would have been better either without the patterns or with them but expanded to include bigger photos (in color, not the black and white that this book has) and detail shots.

Bitter is the New Black, Jen Lancaster
Much of this was horrifying but oddly compelling. I think it would have been better written as a novel, and possibly in the third person, because then it could have had the kind of redemption possible in fiction that’s so rare in real life.

Such a Pretty Fat, Jen Lancaster
The worst part of reading this book was that I recognized some things that the author and I have in common. I sure hope the fact that I love cheese and get cranky when I’m hungry, hot, and/or tired doesn’t mean I’m going to also follow in the author’s footsteps at some point and buy a German car (I’m assuming a BMW), start calling my muscles “strongs”, and make fun of people who have large birthmarks, leg amputations, or drug problems. I had hoped a book that’s supposed to be about losing weight and getting fit would focus on losing weight and getting fit, but there are pages and pages about doing neither, then more pages about getting a book deal to write about doing them, then 10 workouts later the author’s back fat is mysteriously gone. There’s also a strange shift in tone about three quarters of the way through where it seems like the author realized she should get serious about her topic. So glad I got this at the library and didn’t buy it.

Alex and Me, Irene M. Pepperberg
The first chapter of this had me in tears. There were some funny moments after that, so I am glad I kept reading, though I wish there had been a lot more information about Alex the bird when he was alive. I found it very strange that a book that spends so many pages on a particular death doesn’t explain the cause even though it’s stated that an autopsy was done.

The X-Factor, George Plimpton
I can’t say that I learned anything from this book that I can apply to my own life but I did enjoy reading it.

In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
A lot of this made sense, though I’m not currently willing to make the kind of changes in my life that the author calls for.

The Age of Speed, Vince Poscente
Appropos of the title, this was a fast read. Too fast, I think; I finished feeling that I hadn’t really learned much of anything. There were a few anecdotes I enjoyed; I wished for more substance to go with them.

Non-Fiction–Real Estate:

The Complete Guide to Purchasing a Condo, Townhouse, or Apartment, Susan Alvis
I liked that a portion of the proceeds from sales goes to the humane society in honor of the recently deceased office dog at the publisher. I did not like the lack of editing and proofreading—Veil, Colorado was mentioned as a good place to buy a ski condo (first, it’s VAIL, and second, it’s crazy overpriced). This seemed to lack focus—was it for first time buyers of shared housing or investors? Not clear; it seemed to bounce back and forth. I got the idea that the author had had some problems with neighbors, particularly children, in shared housing—that issue came up again and again in various chapters. The glossary appears to be for a different book, including many terms related to REITs, which were not discussed in the text at all that I can recall. One appendix was almost entirely amortization tables, which seemed like a waste of space—if they were there to make a point, I missed it because who wants to read one amortization table much less several of them.

Condo Buying & Ownership Made Simple, Kay Senay
This was mostly checklists with a few anecdotes sprinkled in. Not enough meat or analysis for my taste.

Buying a Second Home: Income, Getaway, Retirement, Craig Venezia
Well-organized, with lots of good information.

Fiction–General:

Nerve Damage, Peter Abrahams, read by Alan Nebelthau (A)
I strongly disagreed with a decision the protagonist made early on, but aside from that, I really liked this up until the ending, which I found rather abrupt with too many loose ends, but perhaps that was the point.

One Good Turn, Kate Atkinson
I sometimes had trouble keeping some of the characters straight in my head, and wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be a mystery or not. There were loose ends galore, so I’m guessing it wasn’t meant to be a mystery in the conventional sense. I did like several of the characters and would like to know what happened to them next.

Hardware, Linda Barnes, read by C. J. Critt (A)
I had trouble getting into this; I just wasn’t that concerned about who did it or why. The heroine jumped to one conclusion that really didn’t sit well with me and that made me question her judgment from that point on.

E: A Novel, Matt Beaumont
This story is told in a series of e-mails, and that just wasn’t enough for me. At the very least I wanted an org chart to refer to; I kept getting confused about who worked for whom and in which departments. Not sure if this is supposed to be farce, but it sure read like it was.

Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks
Another A-Z challenge pick that I ended up liking even though I was initially skeptical about the subject matter—a novel about the plague seemed like it had the potential to be a lot darker than I like my fiction, and there were indeed some horrific parts but handled in a way that I kept reading. The last several chapters seemed to belong to a different book, though—I wished for something more consistent with the rest of the text in tone and pacing.

Q Road, Bonnie Jo Campbell
Only picked this up because I needed a “Q” for an A-Z reading challenge I’m doing this year. It’s set in Michigan, so I connected with that part. I really liked it, then there was a chapter where horrible things were happening and I almost put it down I was so upset, but I’m glad I pushed on because by the end I liked it again.

The Signal, Ron Carlson, read by T. Ryder Smith (A)
This is set in the area around Jackson, Wyoming, and it was fun to hear places mentioned that I’ve been on ski trips. The story was not so much fun, but it was interesting and a bit sad yet not depressing. I think it would have been better without some of the more action-adventurey elements in the plot.

Zapped, Carol Higgins Clark, read by the author (A) (9-Jan-2009)
I had two major problems with this: many of the characters whipped themselves into more of frenzy than circumstances seemed to call for, and the coincidences were just piled too high. (For the spoiler-y version, see Goodreads.) It did make me appreciate the value of a good audio book reader; too bad the author is not one.

The Front, Patricia Cornwell, read by Kate Reading (A)
There’s evidently an earlier book with some of these characters and maybe reading that would help flesh out these characters for me. I thought they were interesting but that I hadn’t really gotten to know them.

Vineyard Prey, Philip R. Craig, read by Tom Stechschulte
Listening to this rather than reading it meant a clue that was obscured for the characters wasn’t from me. Not too annoying, though the slutty woman was a bit much. Why not a slutty guy?

Last Shot, John Feinstein, read by the author (A)
I picked up this YA novel by John Feinstein because I’ve enjoyed the adult nonfiction stuff of his I’ve read. I liked this too, though the mix of real people and teams and fictional ones made it a bit harder for me to suspend disbelief and really buy into the plot.

The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman
There was a long hold list for this at the library, so I got it after the book club read it, but I’m glad I went ahead anyway because I really liked it. I liked the premise and the mystery surrounding some of the characters and events and wished it were longer and really want to know what happens to the main character next.

The Pickup, Nadine Gordimer, read by Lisette Lecat (A)
I almost gave up on this book because I just couldn’t connect with characters, and given the situation they were in, it should have been a lot more interesting than it was. If there was an important message in here, I missed it, and that’s too bad because if I’m not going to learn something I want to be entertained and/or moved and I got very little of either.

The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff, read by Anna Marie Lee (A)
There were a lot of narrators in this, and while they were clearly identified, I sometimes got confused about what the main character knew of the stories these other narrators were telling. The main character sometimes annoyed me quite a lot yet I ended up glad I read this because there was a lot in here to like.

When Madeline Was Young, Jane Hamilton, read by Richard Poe (A)
The narrator’s mother reminded me of my own mom in some ways, and the Great Lakes locales are close to the places I spent time in when I was growing up, so that familiarity kept me listening even though not much seemed to be happening. I hoped for some huge family secret to be revealed just to shake things up and give the plot a focus.

Vengeance, Stuart M. Kaminsky, read by Scott Brick
I liked the sad sack hero and the twist I didn’t see coming at the end. I also liked this reader, a new voice for me.

Up in Honey’s Room, Elmore Leonard, read by Arliss Howard (A)
I liked this novel set in WWII-era Detroit even before the hero from The Hot Kid showed up. It was only slightly distracting that the narrator hadn’t been coached on some of the odd street name pronunciations we have around here—he said “Bo-ben” instead of “Bo-bee-yen” for Beaubien, for instance.

The Dart League King, Keith Lee Morris
Immediately upon finishing this, I felt a tiny bit cheated by all the loose ends left hanging. Now, a few days later, I appreciate having the freedom to think about where the characters ended up without already having an answer.

Sundays at Tiffany’s, James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet, read by Ellen Archer
I loved the premise and liked parts of the story, but things got rather strained and schmaltzy at times.

Time Won’t Let Me, Bill Scheft
This was okay but I kept feeling like I should be finding it funnier than I did.

Childish Things, Marita van der Vyver, translated by Madeleine Biljon
This coming of age novel set in South Africa in the 1970s (interspersed with 1990s London) was just the right amount of sad for me. I’ve never been to Africa or gone to boarding school, and it’s been years since I was a teenaged girl, but still this story drew me in.

Fiction–Paranormal, Romance, and SciFi/Fantasy:

Veil of Midnight, Lara Adrian
After loving the fourth book in the series so much it was probably fated that the fifth would feel a little flat to me. I mostly liked the heroine, though she fell prey to the “must do something stupid now to create tension in the plot” problem at least once. The hero was pretty bland; didn’t get much information about him until way late in the book. The time spent on the German subplot could have been better used to develop the hero and his relationship with the heroine.

Ashes of Midnight, Lara Adrian
Sixth in the series. This hero was not my favorite, and I really, really wished one of the scenes near the end had been fleshed out more to put the focus back on the main couple, but all in all I liked it and will read the next one when it comes out. I thank Ms. Adrian for keeping true to the earlier books as the series has progressed, unlike J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood, which pretty much fell apart for me with books 5 and 6.

Grimspace, Ann Aguirre
This was so good. I’m sort of afraid to read the next books in the series lest they detract from my good feelings about this one.

Kiss of a Demon King, Kresley Cole
I enjoyed this, but had some problems with the way the hero and heroine treated each other for most of the book. I also didn’t like the way another author’s series made an appearance; I didn’t see those worlds as compatible but evidently there’s going to be a crossover. As in the prior book in this series, the ending seemed rushed.

Master of Obsidian, Jamie Craig
I mostly liked this and wished there were more to it. It starts with the main characters already having known each other for several years so they had a comfort level with each other that I never felt for them or their new relationship. The progression didn’t make sense to me, and lots of things were left unexplained, including how vampires and magic work in this world—the non-vamp part of the couple no doubt knew but I didn’t and it distracted me. (The proofreading also distracted me; at one point, two characters are entering a rare book room and one hands the other “latex clubs” to handle the books with.) I’ll probably read the next in the series even though a couple scenes in this one really squicked me out because some of the other scenes were very good indeed. (Unfortunately I got spoiled for a major development in the series by reading comments to someone’s review of this installment, but maybe it won’t be quite as major as I think it will.)

Unveiled, Jamie Craig
Like the first book in the series, this one left me wanting more: more world building (I still don’t know how vampires are made), more exploration of the relationship between the two main characters outside of the figurative bedroom. The plot development I was spoiled for turned out not to ruin the focus as I feared it would, at least in this installment, so that was good. The balance of scenes that pushed my squick button to ones that didn’t was a little more to the squick side this time; if that continues in the next book I might have to drop this series.

Jacob, Jacquelyn Frank
I really liked this at first, then things went a bit too Mary Sue with the heroine. Why that bothered me here and not in other similar plots, I’m not sure—perhaps because in this case, she got so much power so fast and so easily that it just didn’t work for me.

Gideon, Jacquelyn Frank
The heroine in this one seemed less Mary Sue-ish than the one in the first book of this series, so that was good. I got distracted by trying to figure out how the “soul mate” thing works in this universe; some people have died after being separated from their fated partner but the main characters in this one were separated for years and seemed to suffer no particular ill effects, so it’s not clear what the trigger is that starts the clock ticking. I also got distracted by the heroine’s name, Legna, short for Magdelegna—I kept saying “leg-na” in my head rather than “lena” and thinking that was a rather clunky name to saddle one’s heroine with. There was also a lot of time spent on the couple from the first book, and a fair bit of time setting up the next book (well, books—I spotted at least three heroes in there).

Inkheart, Cornelia Funke, translated by Anthea Bell
Lynn Redgrave read a few chapters to me on the audio version, which I used to squeeze a few chapters in while driving so I wouldn’t get hunted down by the library police for not returning the hard copy so the next person on the reserve list could have it.) I was intrigued by the premise but unlike other YA books I’ve read (Elsewhere, Twilight before the series went off the rails), I wasn’t transported by how it was realized. I read a review (after I read the book) that described the villain as the “Diet Coke of Evil”, and I think that’s about right—he’s evil lite. I liked it enough to want to read the sequel, but not so much that I’m rushing to do so.

Inkspell, Cornelia Funke, read by Brandon Fraser
The best part was hearing Brandon Fraser making marten and fairy noises; I found the book itself disappointing. It was depressing, too long, and lacked any sense of closure.

Dead and Gone, Charlaine Harris
Insofar as I can remember the last one, I liked this one better, but it’s far from my favorite in the series (that would be #4 or possibly #1). I do approve of the direction Sookie’s love life seems to be taking, but even that part could have been handled much better. I do not appreciate the continued odd pacing of plot points and new levels of what felt to me like senseless cruelty.

The Society of S, Susan Hubbard
I wouldn’t have found this but for the independent bookstore where I bought it having shelved it next to something I’d already read and enjoyed. It’s a coming of age vampire tale, and I liked it. I wish I hadn’t visited the author’s website after I was done, though, as there was more information about the sequel there than I cared to know, so now I’ll have to put off reading the next book long enough for me to forget that stuff.

When Darkness Comes, Alexandra Ivy
Some of the prose was a little clunky, but I liked enough of the elements that I’m planning to read the next in the series.

Dead After Dark, Sherrilyn Kenyon, J. R. Ward, Susan Squires, Dianna Love
Both the Kenyon and Love pieces were hard to get into because I wasn’t familiar with the worlds and they seemed too complicated to introduce in a short story. The Squires was better in that regard, possibly because the focus was on the couple at first so I had a chance to know them before too many strange elements got added into the mix. I enjoyed the Ward most of all; it seemed to get back to the things I liked about the early Black Dagger Brotherhood books (though no brothers appear), though I’m not sure it quite fits into the rules of that world as I understood them.

Seize the Fire, Laura Kinsale
I know a lot of people really like this book; one of them recommended it to me. I’m not feeling the love. I didn’t hate it, but it was a bit too much of an epic for me. My favorite scenes between the hero and heroine came fairly early in the book and nothing that came after really grabbed me the same way.

The Magical Christmas Cat, Lora Leigh, Erin McCarthy, Nalini Singh, Linda Winstead Jones (finished 6-Jan-2009)
Given how much I’ve enjoyed most of the Psy-Changeling series, I’m not surprised that Nalini Singh’s story was my favorite of this collection. Even though it was short it didn’t feel incomplete, and it best captured the warm Christmas spirit I was hoping for in a holiday anthology. Erin McCarthy’s tale about the witches seemed a bit too compressed; I never got a feel for the characters, even though I’d been introduced to them in last year’s An Enchanted Season, and one big “why” was left unexplained. The story from Linda Winstead Jones was more horror than romance; I did not care for it, though the addition of more heat might have won me over. The last tale in the book from Lora Leigh was educational in that I now have two new items for my list of turn-offs (barbed penises and men whose chest hair feels like textured velvet). I also found the use of “breed” as a singular noun awkward; maybe if I’d already read some of the series I wouldn’t have, but I don’t see that happening.

Fangs for the Memories, Kathy Love
First book in a new-to-me series. This one is on the lighter side of vampire romance, though there are several darker moments. I liked it enough that I’ll probably seek out the next one.

Wicked, Gregory Maguire
I liked the musical so much; I didn’t like the book nearly that well. I wanted magic. I wanted emotion. I wanted to get caught up in a story. I didn’t get nearly enough of any of that from the text. By the end, I was on Dorothy’s side.

Hostage to Pleasure, Nalini Singh
This had a similar dynamic to one of my least favorites from earlier in the series (Caressed by Ice), with both hero and heroine burdened with a lot of baggage, yet I really liked this one; reading it was like reconnecting with an old friend, because Dorian has been there since the beginning. I could have done with a little more romance and a little less world-building but still felt the main couple got enough “screen time”, unlike in some other long-running series.

The Darkest Night, Gena Showalter
First in the Lords of the Underworld series. This felt unfocused—there were so many characters, including more than a handful with dual personalities, that I felt like I needed a cheat sheet to keep track of them, and between the backstory and the sequel baiting I never felt like the current plot events really got their due. Add in more than a dash of deus ex machina and some very clunky dialog and I’m thinking I won’t be picking up the next book right away.

Angel’s Blood, Nalini Singh
I didn’t realize that this was supposed to be urban fantasy until I was well into the book. No wonder I didn’t like it as well as the Psy-Changeling series. The hero is so alpha it’s ridiculous—why get involved with a man—sorry, angel—who’s threatening to kill you or make you a slave or harm the people you love and their children? Still, I kept reading.

I’m in my mid-soon-to-be-late-forties, but do not yet consider myself middle-aged, as I plan to live to be 107 at least. I think I have a pretty good chance of succeeding; my maternal grandmother reached her mid-nineties (no one was quite sure about her age, including her, since she’d lied about it for so many years).

I’ve lived in the United States my whole life. I grew up near Chicago, Illinois, and have lived in Michigan since I came here for college. I’m in the Detroit metro area now, living in a subdivision in a suburb with my husband, Mr. Karen (not his real name), whom I met in high school and have been married to since 1986. We have no pets or children. We have had guinea pigs as pets in the past and might one day add other furry friends to our family. We considered the children question and decided against having any of our own.

I work for a small software company, Purple Systems (not its real name), writing software that’s delivered over the internet. My current title is Senior System Engineer, which seems a bit odd to me as there are no Junior System Engineers anywhere about. I’ve been with Purple Systems for ten years now and hope to be here until I retire, as it’s the best place I’ve ever worked. In my pre-programming professional life, I was various flavors of accountant: CPA, auditor, corporate general ledger worker bee, etc.

When I’m not at the office or doing necessary life maintenance tasks like laundry and grocery shopping, I like to indulge my love of color by making quilts and knitting various things and painting my toenails. I also like to get out and see new places; Mr. Karen and I believe in using all our vacation time every year. We’ve each been to 49 of the 50 states (still need Hawaii) and several countries outside the U.S. (he’s got a few more than I do). In recent years, somewhere between a third and a half of our vacation days have been used to go out west to ski the mountains there, as we do not have any proper ones here in Michigan. Should we be so blessed as to make it to retirement age in good health with sufficient assets on hand, I expect we’ll travel a lot more than we do now, because as many places as we’ve seen there are so many more on my wish list.

< < 2007  2009 > >

Non-Fiction, General:

Far Appalachia, Noah Adams
This calm and friendly book gave me some context for the places Mr. Karen talks about when he goes kayaking in that region.

The Soul of a Horse, Joe Camp
I am not a horse person, but I really liked this book. I admit that I did speed read the chapters written from a horse’s perspective, as those were less interesting to me.

The Nonrunner’s Marathon Guide for Women, Dawn Dais
I picked this up thinking it might motivate me to run longer distances. It struck me as funny in a quick browse in the bookstore, and it was funny (if a bit repetitive), and I did get one new stretch out of it that I’ve added to my pre- and post-run routine, but I was left feeling rather discouraged. The author trained for and completed one marathon, but never seemed to get to a point where she ever liked running, not even for small bits of time. The end of the book says she’s still running, but I have no idea why, given the constant complaints throughout.

Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear, Paul Fussell
If ever a book needed pictures, it’s this one. I had too Google “Army pink trousers” to see that they weren’t really even remotely what I think of as pink, and maybe it’s my fault my education didn’t cover what a “Sam Browne belt” is, but I was frequently distracted while reading this wishing I could see what the heck he was writing about. I finished it not feeling any more enlightened about “why we are what we wear” than I had been when I started, as the text was more a collection of observations than an analysis that came to a conclusion.

Cooked, Jeff Henderson, read by the author (A)
I liked this for the glimpse into three ways of life I’ll never lead myself: drug dealer, prison inmate, and professional chef.

Everett Kircher: Michigan’s Resort Pioneer, Everett Kircher and others
This was in our hotel room at Big Sky. I think they should consider taking it out, as I was not impressed to learn that the founder of the company which owns the resort has a low opinion of people like me (a non-Republican who skis with her legs not right next to each other and believes children should be allowed to pursue their dreams and not their parents’). In one chapter, Mr. Kircher mentioned how trout he attempted to introduce to Michigan decades ago mostly didn’t survive due to PCBs and other pollutants but that things were much better now thanks to environmental regulations—does he think Republicans made that happen?

Daughter of the Queen of Sheba, Jacki Lyden
I listen to the author on NPR, so I picked up this memoir that focuses on her mentally ill mother. At times the prose left me feeling a bit crazy myself, with metaphors that made no sense to me and sections where the present and the past seemed to be all mixed together.

It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys, Marilyn Paul
I got this as part of my never-ending quest to get more organized after seeing it mentioned on someone’s blog (whose? I don’t know—I’m not that organized!) There’s some good information in here, but I had trouble getting into it. The font used is pretty small, so I had to spend a fair bit of energy just concentrating on making out the words (even with my reading glasses on), leaving fewer brain cells available to absorb the content. The subtitle of this is “The Seven-Step Path to Becoming Truly Organized”, and I can’t remember even one of them now, just a day after finishing my reading. I might try re-reading this.

I Should Have Stayed Home, edited by Roger Rapoport and Marguerita Castanera
Overall I enjoyed this collection of travel gone wrong stories. A few were a bit gross, and one was incredibly whiny, but most were at least somewhat entertaining.

Stiff, Mary Roach, read by Sherry Fraser (A)
As one might imagine in a book about cadavers, there is some horror in here. It was the stuff about animal experiments that really got to me.

It’s All Too Much, Peter Walsh
Reading this is part of my keep less, organize more effort. I think I’m going to have to read parts of it again, as I finished it when we were on vacation and the enthusiasm it spurred in me to declutter had mostly burned out by the time we got home.

Slow Fat Triathlete, Jayne Williams
This was recommended by a friend at work. It’s what I was hoping the The Nonrunner’s Marathon Guide for Women would be—a motivational book for athletes like me. I was slightly discouraged that the author ran her first 5K faster than I’ve ever done one but felt better when I reminded myself that she’s a lot younger than I am. I was very intrigued to learn that some triathlons have a separate division for women over 150 pounds; I might have a hope of competing in that class.

Non-Fiction, Crafting:

Things I Learned from Knitting, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
A small but nice collection of “read one before bed” essays.

Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair, Laurie Perry
I bought this because I heard the author interviewed on the KnitPicks podcast and remembered how much I liked her website (why I don’t visit it very often I do not know).
The book doesn’t quite capture the charm of the site, but it’s pretty good.

Fiction, General:

Heaven, V. C. Andrews (BC)
Do not read this book. It is awful, and not in an entertaining way.

Border Crossing, Pat Barker, read by Simon Prebble (A)
This had some interesting parts, but the way it just sort of trailed off left me disappointed.

Hunting Season, Nevada Barr, read by Barbara Rosenblat (A)
This was my first exposure to the Anna Pigeon series, and I liked it well enough that I might try some other titles featuring the character.

Death of a Travelling Man, M. C. Beaton, read by Davina Porter (A)
It seemed like it took a long time before the travelling man died and things could really get rolling. Who did it was pretty easy to guess (though it took a while for the how to become clear), as was the fate of the main character’s assistant.

Abigail Raisin and the Quiche of Death, M.C. Beaton, read by Donada Peters (A)
With a title like that, I couldn’t leave it on the shelf at the library. Until fairly recently, despite reading many Agatha Christie books in my youth, I didn’t know books like this were called “cozies”. It’s a fitting term for this pleasant despite the murder story.

Agatha Raisin and the Walkers of Dembley, M.C. Beaton, read by Donada Peters (A)
The heroine isn’t necessarily likeable, but I’m still interested in what she’s up to.

Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet, M. C. Beaton
I thought since I’d listened to the first and fourth in the series I should fill in the gaps, but had to read this one in paper because my library doesn’t have the audio. This is the second one in the series and met my expectations based on the others I’ve read.

The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
I checked this out after reading a “help a bitch out” entry about it over at Smart Bitches (warning: spoilers, though I’d forgotten them by the time I got around to reading). I went back and forth on this while reading; some times I felt really hooked into the story and brought it to work with me so I could read during lunch (and I had a bulky library hardcover), then other times I just wished it would move along already. I didn’t appreciate the bad things happening to animals but that was mercifully limited to a few incidents. I liked it well enough to check out more from this new-to-me author.

The Final Solution, Michael Chabon, read by Michael York (A)
The chapter told from the point of view of the parrot was the best part of this short tale. Michael York did a great job reading it; the character voices were distinct and the narration was lovely to listen to.

When Day Breaks, Mary Jane Clark, read by Isabel Keating (A)
There were plenty of suspects for me to consider in this one. There was also one character who so clearly didn’t do it that I thought for sure she must have. I liked that I didn’t figure it out too early on. I really didn’t like that something bad happened to an animal in the prologue; I almost stopped reading right then, and probably would have if I’d had another book on CD in the car. Also, I’m skeptical that a critical clue could have been created in the few days it appears to have been but I guess some people do work a lot faster than I do.

A Year in the Merde, Stephen Clarke
I devoured this. I found parts of it so funny I was literally shaking with laughter.

The Pearl Harbor Murders, Max Allen Collins, read by Jeff Woodman (A)
I got a little impatient for someone to die already in the beginning. I appreciated the summary at the end sorting what was real from what was fictional.

The Book of Lost Things, John Connolly, read by Steven Crossley (A)
I’m not sure what to make of this book. A lot of it was really gruesome and nightmarish, but it was enough of a fairy tale that there was some distance there and I didn’t feel like abandoning it the way I did the novel about the terrorists. The non-fairy tale parts were mostly rather bleak, too, but I didn’t feel depressed when the end came.

Skeleton Dance, Aaron Elkins, read by George Guidall (A)
I think it would have been better to read this on paper than listen to it, as the name of the wife and the name of the police inspector were so similar as to be confusing when they were both in the same conversation. There were a few funny lines and no characters I wanted to throttle, so I’ll probably look for more in this series.

Lord John and the Private Matter, Diana Gabaldon, read by Jeff Woodman (A)
The back cover copy told me this features a character from the Outlander series, which I’ve never read but heard good things about. I had the idea that the series is sci fi/fantasy, so kept waiting for robots or magic or something otherworldly to appear in this book, which they never did. I liked it nonetheless, though I wished more of what was told in the big reveal in the last few chapters had been discovered throughout the book.

The Tooth of Time, Sue Henry, read by Lee Adams
I liked the premise of an older, independent woman traveling around the country and solving crimes. I liked the descriptions of Taos. I didn’t like all the foreshadowing, though. It’s a murder mystery; I know there will be bad guys and bad stuff happening so don’t need to be told ahead of time. I also was distracted by a couple plot points that didn’t make sense.

Murder on the Iditarod Trail, Sue Henry, read by Mary Peiffer (A)
I think maybe I should have read a non-fiction book about the Iditarod race instead, because those bits were the most interesting to me.

The Shape Shifter, Tony Hillerman, read by George Guidall (A)
I know now that this is a later book in on ongoing series, but I didn’t get that feeling while listening to it. This was my second try listening to this; the first time was too close to having listened to the same reader do a bunch of another series and that was confusing my brain. This was just okay; the mystery was not terribly mysterious but there was one character I really liked (too bad he wasn’t the main one).

Storm Track, Margaret Maron, read by C. J. Critt (A)
This kept me guessing, and I liked it. The wrap up was perhaps a bit too tidy, but that’s a small quibble.

Gilgamesh: A New English Version, Stephen Mitchell, read by George Guidall (A)
I feel a bit less ignorant now that I’ve read this.

You’ve Been Warned, James Patterson & Howard Roughan, read by Ilyana Kadushin (A)
I almost stopped reading this more than once. The heroine, who tells her story in the first person, is whiny and makes bad choices and I just got so tired of listening to her and her craziness. I kept at it hoping she’d die a horrible death or at the very least figure out what was going on so she could explain it to me. I ended up disappointed.

Deceit, James Siegal, read by Phil Sheridan (A)
This went on just a little too long. After a while I didn’t really care if the guy was crazy or if there was a conspiracy or what.

That Camden Summer, LaVyrle Spencer, read by David Dukes
The reader in this audio book reminded me so much of Dick Estelle, the radio reader on WKAR that I used to listen to back when I lived in Lansing; I got rather nostalic listening to him and it felt very comfortable. Wasn’t sure what to make of this book at first–was it a romance? a message novel?–but ended up liking it a lot. There is one very rough scene but I think it was needed.

The Father Hunt, Rex Stout, read by Michael Prichard (A)
The age of this one showed. These days we’ve got DNA tests for this sort of thing. Not the most engaging mystery ever, though maybe I shouldn’t have started with this book in the series—perhaps if I’d already known the characters I would have enjoyed it more.

Goodnight Nobody, Jennifer Weiner, read by Johanna Parker (A)
I so didn’t understand the heroine in this one. She seemed to have the emotional maturity and decision making skills of a high school girl even though she was in her 30s and a married mother of three. The heartbreak? Not buying it. The waffling between her husband and the other man? Nonsensical. The yanking the kids out of their familiar environment just when they would seem to need stability the most? Incomprehensible. Failing to get therapy when it’s clearly needed? Stupid.

Two Dollar Bill, Stuart Woods, read by Tony Roberts (A)
I stopped reading Stone Barrington after the ridiculous and unsexy L. A. Dead, then gave him another try a year later with Dirty Work, which was more of the same. I stayed away almost two years this time. This book was still ridiculous, but with a wink, the author nearly comes right out and says he knows his plots are unbelievable. I’ve given up trying to remember Stone’s history—romantic and otherwise—maybe that helps. (I’m pretty sure I’ve missed several books along the way.) This reader pronounces the name of Stone’s former partner differently than the reader I’ve listened to before; that was slightly distracting.

Elsewhere, Gabrielle Zevin, read by Cassandra Morris (A)
I loved this YA novel. Loved it. It had a great, thought-provoking premise and was sweet and sad and hopeful and I didn’t want it to end. The young narrator on the audio pronounced some words differently than I do and that jangled at times but I adapted.

Fiction, Paranormal:

Kiss of Midnight, Lara Adrian
Oh yes, more like this, please. The vampires in this new-to-me series resemble the Black Dagger Brotherhood in J. R. Ward’s books in some respects, but their names and their villains are easier to accept.

Kiss of Crimson, Lara Adrian
Second book into the series and I’m still liking it quite a bit (of course, I said that about the Black Dagger boys back in the day). I was genuinely surprised at how one of the subplots came out; that was quite refreshing.

Midnight Awakening, Lara Adrian
I’m still loving this series. I especially liked the heroine in this one, and the fact that the females do talk to each other about something other than their mates, and how the plot had both a resolution and the introduction of elements to come in future books.

Midnight Rising, Lara Adrian
This book was like what I imagine crack would be—I wanted it so much I didn’t think critically about it. I stayed up too late reading it. I brought it to work to read during lunch. And it’s the what—fourth?– in the series. Good job, Ms. Adrian.

Bitten, Kelley Armstrong
I had high hopes for this series but having read this first one, I don’t think it’s for me. I liked it better than other not-for-me books, but there was too much horror and violence and first person narration by a character I didn’t connect with.

Dark Needs at Night’s Edge, Kresley Cole
I’m still not so sure about this one—the ghostly heroine, the hero reformed through unclear means, the magik, the ten million dollars, etc.—but there were enough very good scenes in here to keep me reading.

Dark Desires After Dusk, Kresley Cole
Fifth in the series (sixth if you count the short story), and I liked it better than the previous one. This one was good fun, with a heroine who did a lot of her own rescuing. The ending did feel a bit rushed. I’m looking forward to reading the next one when it comes out in a little over a month from now.

Dead Over Heels, MaryJanice Davidson
I think Ms. Davidson and I need to break up. One of these novellas had a couple sweet moments, but mostly I wasn’t engaged by the stories. Looking back at last year’s book log, I was also disappointed in the last two books I read from her before this, so it may be time to give up.

Dead to Worse, Charlaine Harris
I liked this 8th book in the Sookie Stackhouse series better than the last one, as real world events didn’t intrude quite so much on the story. And there was a lot of story—witch stuff and were-animal stuff and vampire stuff and fairy stuff. The pacing seemed a bit odd, as major events were covered quickly while everyday routines got plenty of attention; it didn’t seem as focused as earlier books in the series.

The Vampire Queen’s Servant, Joey W. Hill
Wow, this went some interesting places. I wasn’t entirely comfortable in some of those places, but I’m still very glad I read this. There was a slow section in the middle, but it finished with a bang.

The Mark of the Vampire Queen, Joey W. Hill
I didn’t like this nearly as well as the first book in the series. I especially didn’t like the ending, which seems to set up a third book that almost certainly can’t have any of the things I liked about the first one in it. The relationship dynamic that hooked me has been turned on its head.

Catching Midnight, Emma Holly
Second in the upyr series. I’ve read two short stories in the series which led me to seek out this book. Mostly, I loved it. I did think it dragged a bit near the end, and parts of the world building confused me, but I liked the characters so much I can overlook that stuff.

Hunting Midnight, Emma Holly
Another upyr book, another thumbs up from me.

Fantasy Lover, Sherrilyn Kenyon
I took some time away from books to deal with all the magazines piled up in my house; reading this one made me wonder if I lost my tolerance for romance novels during the break or if this is just not a good one. I’m leaning toward the latter. I just couldn’t get into the premise; I could see the plot points coming and didn’t care for knowing for sure the hero and heroine weren’t going to get really busy until right near the end of the book (I know convention says they usually won’t, but it’s still nice to think they could even if they don’t). Also, all these gods and goddesses around lead to too many deus ex machina moments.

Master of the Night, Angela Knight
I picked this up because I was intrigued by reading some short stories set in this universe over the last couple years. I still like the premise but think this book lacks focus, veering from light humor to raunchiness to magical war. It sparked silly associations in my mind at times, with terms like Mageverse Fever (I think it’s goin’ around ) and Truebond (better than super glue?) sprinkled throughout. Some of the dialog also sounded clunky to my ear. I think I’ll try one more book in the series to see if I can get into it.

Master of the Moon, Angela Knight
I liked this better than Master of the Night. I appreciated the strong werewolf heroine, and the silly stuff that took me out of the story in the other book was much less in evidence here (though the guys with long Easter egg colored hair were a bit much). Yes, the ending was a bit predictable but I was happy with the outcome.

Sunshine, Robin McKinley
I loved this book, in a wanted to marry it and have it with me forever kind of way. On the face of it, I shouldn’t have liked it; the vampires are generally icky and evil, there’s a fair bit of graphic violence and only a very tiny bit of graphic sex, and the ending left many questions unanswered. But I did like it, so very much. Liked the characters, liked the world, liked the plotting, wished so much that this was the first in a series.

Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer
The end of the Twilight saga. I loved the first book so much that I forgave it a lot. I liked the second despite some reservations. I thought the third was okay. This one I wasn’t that crazy about. I did like that a character I thought was getting a raw deal in earlier books got a reward of sorts in this one, though the context was rather icky. But overall, I never engaged with the characters and thought so many things were just too conveniently worked out.

The Accidental Vampire, Lynsay Sands
I definitely haven’t lost my taste for romance novels. I like the world Lynsay Sands has created and the characters she’s populated it with, so I smiled right on through the ridiculous coincidences and credulity-defying plot points.

Vampires Are Forever, Lynsay Sands
Yet another Argeneau vampire fails to pay attention to his need for blood and hijinks ensue. In a baby vampire, that might be acceptable, but our hero is more than 200 years old. I’m losing patience with this family and this series. In this one, the main plot was a mystery that was never really resolved.

Mine to Possess, Nalini Singh
Not my favorite in the Psy-Changeling series, maybe because there wasn’t as much Psy in it as the others, or maybe because I didn’t connect with either partner in the main couple. I really liked the excerpt from the next one; I’m very curious to see how the character I think is the heroine gets out of the situation she’s in as the excerpt ended.

Lover Enshrined, J. R. Ward
I am so glad I got this sixth installment in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series from the library instead of buying it, because it’s sure not a keeper. The last BDB book pissed me off most at the end; this one pissed me off first in chapter three, and continued to annoy me at frequent intervals. (It helped not one bit that the author called the car I drive a “piece of shit” more than once.) I finished it mostly because I’m stubborn. Like the last book, there were too many subplots distracting from the main couple’s journey—even more so this time, I think. This is so far from the paranormal romance I so enjoyed in the first two books that I won’t be rushing to read what comes next.

Fiction, Historicals and Other Romances:

Something Wicked, Jo Beverley
Third in the Malloren series. I found this one oddly paced, with peril, sex, then more peril and sex, then almost nothing going on for a huge long stretch, ending with no peril, no particularly good explanations, and not really any sex either.

Secrets of the Night, Jo Beverley
Back to the Mallorens after I took a bit of break. This started strong but sort of ran out of steam as it went along. I still liked it but wished for more of a bang at the end.

Devilish, Jo Beverley
More Mallorens. I sped through this but had a couple problems with it. One of the perils and its aftermath just squicked me out, and I have no idea how the hero and heroine ended up together. A whole piece of the hero’s internal dialog was either missing or so subtle I missed it, because I didn’t understand his transformation.

Winter Fire, Jo Beverley
Eh. Like the last Malloren I read, the obstacles to the couple getting together were just suddenly gone with no satisfying explanation. The characters from earlier books in the series were more interesting to me than the current couple, too.

A Most Unsuitable Man, Jo Beverley
Definitely not the best in the Malloren series; like its predecessor, Winter Fire, this one features main characters who are less interesting than the supporting cast (by which I mostly mean Rothgar). It all works out a little too neatly, and there’s no real payoff at the end (by which I mean the marriage is consummated offscreen, so the last intimate image we have of the couple is an encounter from chapters and chapters before the end that left the hero, the heroine, and me all wishing it hadn’t happened that way).

< < 2006  2008 > >

A Perfect Mess, Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman
I liked this one so much, I wrote a whole entry inspired by it.

Fun Home, Aliison Bechdel (BC)
I liked this graphic autobiography a lot. It was funny and touching and real.

Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
I keep reading books about chefs when I am no cook and don’t aspire to be one because they take me out of my world and into someone else’s. This one did that nicely.

The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick P. Brooks
Since one of the later chapters in this anniversary edition summarizes the original chapters point by point, I think I could have gotten almost as much out of this by just reading the last three or four chapters as the whole thing. I’d hoped I might learn something I could apply to my job but can’t say that I did, other than getting a warm fuzzy that we mostly do it right at Purple Systems. This is more a historical document, from a time when all programmers were men and batch processing was the rule. I’m glad that time has passed.

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
I resisted reading this, in fact checked it out from the library and returned it unopened earlier this year. I try to avoid tragedy in my leisure time, and how could a book about a woman’s husband of 40 years dying as their only child was critically ill not be tragic? I checked it out again and figured I’d at least start it this time. It took a chapter or two for me to engage with the book but once I did I was hooked. The events are tragic, yes, but the book isn’t. I found it beautiful.

The Writing Life, Annie Dillard
I liked this best when she told stories, least when she got into metaphor (maybe I just didn’t grasp what she was going for). I don’t think I learned much about writing, which is okay since I don’t plan to be a writer.

Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
Now that I’ve read it, I can see why this is so popular. I got some good laughs and a couple of ideas to ponder, though I didn’t find the author an entirely sympathetic character.

The Awakening of a Surgeon, David H. Janda
I got the impression that the author is a decent, earnest guy. I’m sure he’s a good doctor, and a caring father and husband. None of that makes me want to read any more of his books, though. Maybe I’m too cynical (or too child-free) to get stirred up about some of the issues he raised. Whole chapters read like an award acceptance speech rather than containing information that might make me think.

The Family That Couldn’t Sleep, D. T. Max
This book about prions was interesting and a little scary.

My Secret Life on the McJob, Jerry Newman
The closest I’ve come to working fast food was staffing the concession stand at my brother’s Little League game one day, so I read this mostly to get a view of what goes on behind the scenes. I got that. I was annoyed by the way some anecdotes were put in boxes out of the main flow of the text (some spread across two pages); it seemed those could have been integrated into the text without a problem.

Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green, Johnny Rico
I picked this up because I was curious to see what an infantry soldier had to say about serving in Afghanistan. I felt like I got a sense of what it was like to be there.

A Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas
I didn’t realize when I picked this up that I’d already read bits of it in O magazine. I almost put it back down when I read the blurbs on the cover—a memoir by a woman whose husband had a traumatic brain injury, described as “a punch to the heart”? That seems a bit depressing. But I liked it.

About Alice, Calvin Trillin
A sweet little book that made me cry at the end.

Non-Fiction, Crafting:

Knitticisms, Kari A. Cornell
A wee little book with a few essays on knitting interspersed with many colorful and mockable pictures from knitting books past. Fun and fast.

Mason-Dixon Knitting, Kay Gardiner & Ann Shayne
I zipped through this the same day I checked it out of the library. It’s chatty and fun and some of the patterns are pretty enticing. (I later bought my own copy.)

At Knit’s End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
This is best read in small doses, lest the little bites of observations start to blur together.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee Casts Off, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
I didn’t like this as well as her Knitting Rules!; it’s not the kind of book I see myself revisiting anytime soon, though I did like the section about gauge swatches. Some of the pages were hard to read: dark olive background, anyone? how about small handwriting set at an angle with shadows to simulate folds in the paper? I spend enough time squinting at my knitting; I don’t need knitting books that make me do the same.

Knit Lit the Third, Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf, editors
If they do a fourth one, I’d appreciate it if they left out the stories that make me cry. I guess I’m saying it wasn’t fluffy enough for me, but it’s a knitting book—fluffy would not be out of place.

Fiction, General:

The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell, Lilian Jackson Braun, read by George Guidall (A)
I really need to stop reading these books now that the author-bot has taken over writing the series. The main character can’t be bothered to actually investigate murders anymore, but just waits to get a letter from a friend of a friend explaining who done it and when and how. No letter, the murder goes unsolved. Despite the very short length, lots of points got repeated, and not even important ones.

Murder Unprompted, Simon Brett, read by Simon Prebble (A)
For a murder mystery, I thought it took rather a long time for someone to turn up dead, but the way things unfolded after someone did was pretty satisfying so I guess that’s alright.

The Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier, read by Richard Poe (A)
I loved the premise of this but didn’t love how it played out. I really wished for more explanation of one of the settings, or at least an acknowledgement that things didn’t make sense there. A couple of the sections were quite tedious; perhaps this was intentional but if so I think the point could have been made another way. Still, I didn’t hate it, and it gave me stuff to think about, so on balance I’m glad I read it.

Alice Alone, Amanda Brookfield, read by Gerri Halligan (A)
I was so disappointed in the main character. I kept listening because I kept hoping the story was going to end up in a good place (the main character thought it did but I do not agree with her).

The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
I hate to use my age as an excuse, but I think I might be too old for this book. If I’d read it even ten years ago, the big reveal might have resonated more. It wasn’t a bad book, not at all, just not one I found myself racing through or wanting to read again.

The Good Nanny, Benjamin Cheever, read by George Wilson
I wish I’d given up on this book early on, when the female half of the couple got hysterical for no good reason. That way I wouldn’t have been around at the end when the male half did the same damn thing, to even more appalling result. Bah.

For Matrimonial Purposes, Kavita Daswani, read by Anne Flosnik (A)
I keep forgetting that I hate these Brilliance Audios with the special effects for phone conversations; it’s very distracting. At least there weren’t many in this book. I found the heroine rather pathetic, and because most of this is told in flashback, it’s clear when things aren’t going to work out well for her so there was a real lack of surprises.

Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris
At first, I found this a bit annoying—all the “we” this and “we” that. Then I got sucked in and started to feel part of the world it’s set in. Then something happened that pissed me off and I didn’t like it again, except it turned out that what I thought was happening wasn’t and I calmed down. It felt real–I have worked in office where people count the ceiling tiles to see whose space is bigger, for instance—with a touch of crazy. After I finished I read some reviews in which people complained it wasn’t funny; it is funny, in spots, but it’s dark humor.

Play to the End, Robert Goddard, read by Gordon Griffin (A)
Much of the plot was frustrating and tedious. I understand there wouldn’t be much of a book if the characters called the police instead of doing their own investigation but I really wished they’d had better reasons for not doing so. Near the end, I got so angry with the stupid stuff the main character did I could barely stand it but hung in hoping it would somehow be explained so it all made sense. It was not. Quite a bummer, this one.

Grave Sight, Charlaine Harris, read by Alyssa Bresnahan (A)
I liked the premise of a young woman with a special talent for finding dead bodies (and listening to ones that aren’t lost). I wish the premise had been used in a better plot. The wrap up of who did what and why was very unsatisfying. That many people got killed because of that? Really?

murder@maggody.com, Joan Hess, read by C. J. Critt (A)
I’m surprised I managed to finish this. The main characters ignorance about computers and the internet was really, really hard to swallow. This woman had lived in Manhattan! Surely they had computers in Manhattan in the late 1990s (the book was published in 2000). And the explanation for something that was going on with people’s e-mail made no sense, either. I did get a couple of laughs out of it, though.

Two-Faced Death, Roderick Jeffries, read by Patrick Tull
I had some trouble keeping a few of the characters separate in my head—one English couple living in Majorca seemed quite like the other—and was a bit impatient for the death to happen so things could start moving along. I liked that didn’t see the ending coming, and I don’t just mean the whodunit part.

Angels, Marian Keyes, read by Gerri Halligan (A)
I picked this up at the library because I recognized the author from a collection of nonfiction essays I’d listened to last year. I sometimes got distracted by the narrator’s rendering of American accents, and some of the characters did things I wasn’t thrilled with, but overall I liked it enough to finish it.

Anybody Out There?, Marian Keyes, read by Terry Donnelly (A)
The first third of this was so gloomy that I almost gave up. It was obvious that something bad had happened, something worse than what was being talked about, and I hated that feeling of something lurking and casting a pall. But I’m glad I persevered, as I got some really good laughs out of the latter part of the book. The accents from this reader were not distracting like the narrator for the last Marian Keyes I listened to, so that was nice.

The Art of Detection, Laurie R. King, read by Alyssa Bresnahan and Robert Ian Mackenzie
I liked this a lot. There’s a story within the story and often I don’t appreciate having the main narrative interrupted like that, but here it worked because the other story was interesting. I appreciated that the cast of characters was inclusive.

The Pleasing Hour, Lily King, read by Suzanne Toren (A)
I’m ambivalent about the main character but really liked one of the secondary characters and wished for more of her. It sort of felt like two books jammed into one—the contemporary story and the generation’s before. This didn’t so much end as trail off.

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
I really, really liked it. Not quite loved, because of the mother, but really, really liked.

The God of Animals, Aryn Kyle, read by Lillian Rabe (A)
Mostly, this made me sad. Sad for the people and really sad for the horses.

The Hot Kid, Elmore Leonard, read by Arliss Howard (A)
This reminded me of a comic book, but not in a bad way. I could see the main character as a romance novel hero, too.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Jeffry Lindsay, read by Nick Landrum (A)
This started out creepy and stayed that way ’til the end, though there was a lot of humor for a book about a sociopath. I’m still not sure exactly what happened between the climactic scene and the epilogue.

Love Life, Bobbie Ann Mason
I pulled this off my “to be read” pile after I got back from the AQS show and was tickled when the first story involved quilts and the second mentioned Paducah (later ones did, too). Overall, though, this collection seemed very melancholy. There were a couple stories I really liked, but I had to take this book in small doses because larger ones brought me down.

The Fandom of the Operatorbert Rankin, read by the author (A)
This was an odd one. I liked it, but felt vaguely troubled by it. The main character wasn’t who I thought he was, but by the time that was clear, I liked him too much to stop listening.

The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin (BC)
This is a child’s book best read when one is a child. I couldn’t find a sympathetic character in the bunch, perhaps because I am old enough to find precocious ten year olds who kick people annoying. The mystery was okay, but I never got curious enough to try and figure it out myself.

Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone, J. K. Rowling (RR)
Like so many other people, I’m trying to re-read the first six Harry Potters before the last one comes out this summer. I only listened to the first five, so this time I’m doing it the old-fashioned way: on paper. Biggest surprise: Ron’s Weasley sweater didn’t have his initial on it.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, J. K. Rowling (RR)
No surprises here, other than I didn’t realize how well I knew this book.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, J. K. Rowling (RR)
Hate the rat. Hate ‘im.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J. K. Rowling (RR)
Despite the major plot problem, this is still my favorite Harry Potter book.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling (RR)
It took me approximately five times longer to re-read this Harry Potter than any of the earlier ones, not so much because it’s so long but because I hate it so much. All the angst, all the shouting, all the bad (and stupid) stuff going on–bah.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, J. K. Rowling (RR)
After OotP, it was a relief to sink into this one.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J. K. Rowling
While I wished some things had been different, overall I’m pleased with how things turned out.

Fiction, Paranormal:

The Turning, Jennifer Armintrout
I can’t remember why I bought this first book in a new to me vampire series. I wish I did remember, because I then I could stop choosing books that way. There was too much blood and gore and too many innocent victims for my taste. I know, I know—I should expect that of vampires, but I’ve gotten used to reading vamp books that aren’t so graphic (or, if graphic, go over the top enough that I can view them as a comic book and not get squicked out). I kept reading hoping there’d be a twist at the end to redeem things or at least make me want to give the series another try, but I didn’t find that.

Full Moon Rising, Keri Arthur
This should have been right up my alley–vampires and werewolves and sexin’, oh my–but it didn’t quite click for me. I think a little more world building and a little less peril would have helped, but I’m not sure. This may not be the world for me, with the moon fever and the auras and the bloodlust. I’ll probably give the second book in this series a try before I decide.

A Hunger Like No Other, Kresley Cole
A few chapters in, I was thinking this was not a series for me, what with the hero pursuing the heroine because he scented her as his fated eternal life mate and most of the vampires being of the red-eyed evil variety, but then I got sucked in. The hero was doing his best to temper his alpha-ness (not easy for a werewolf), there were some kick ass women warriors, there were some hot if sometimes frustrating sex scenes, and the two things that bothered me early were addressed later, so now I’m on board. Bring on the Valkyries and Lykae!

No Rest for the Wicked, Kresley Cole
Oh lord, we’ve got time travel. Fortunately not much of it, but still, I’m not a big fan of time travel. I think this book could have been just as effective without it. I loved the hero in this one, the heroine less so.

Wicked Deeds on a Winter’s Night, Kresley Cole
I liked this third installment in the series as much as the first one, even though there were hardly any vampires in it at all, probably because the heroine could really hold her own. Yes, there was a bit too much drama at times, but that fits with the genre.

Playing Easy to Get, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Jaid Black, and Kresley Cole
I got this because of the story by Kresley Cole which features two of the secondary characters from A Hunger Like No Other, and that story was my favorite of the three in this collection. Kenyon’s tale was my least favorite, with an oddly paced plot and a heroine whose transformation from meek to aggressive made no sense. Jaid Black’s story was forgettable, but I do recall that I didn’t care for key parts of the premise.

Sleeping with the Fishes, MaryJanice Davidson
I picked this up at the airport because I recognized the author from the Undead series and figured this would be some nice light vacation reading. It was. It’s also evidently the first book in a new series (about a mermaid), which means it’s rather unsatisfying as a stand alone read, as a major question is left unresolved. The copy I have contains an excerpt from the next Undead book that didn’t exactly make me pant with anticipation, which is too bad.

Undead and Uneasy, MaryJanice Davidson
Not good. There’s a spoiler in the acknowledgements and another (less specific, though about a more important plot point) in the letter to readers, both of which come before the text. I expect to find spoilers in Amazon reviews but not in prefaces in the actual book. Color me disappointed before I even really got started. I remain disappointed now that I’ve finished. There’s way too much Betsy in this. I know she’s the main character in the series, but she tends to be annoying, shallow, whining, self-centered, and stupid; she needs to be balanced by the characters that are not, and they’re not much in evidence. Some werewolves do show up, and I got the impression that I would have enjoyed their parts more if I’d read Derik’s Bane, but I have not. Also, like the last book, this one is not hot, which means I definitely won’t be buying my own copy when it comes out in paperback.

Night Life, Elizabeth Guest
The author obviously researched ancient Egypt; I would have liked the book better if that information had been less obviously presented. Maybe the problem is my lack of experience with experts in the field; perhaps Egyptologists do go around saying things like “… take the five elements of his existence from him: his akh, his ba, his ka, his name, and his shadow.” I was not happy with the vampire aspects of this world, either; there was too much repetition of the phrase “Eater of Blood and Breaker of Bones” and not enough explanation of how these creatures came to be and why there were no good alternatives to them being evil monsters.

Best New Paranormal Romance, Paula Guran, editor
Like most anthologies, this one was uneven. I thought some of the stories were more sci fi than paranormal (though I liked a couple of those ones quite a lot), and some were not at all romantic, and the one involving an Iraq war veteran started out entirely too realistic for my taste. But there were a few that have stuck with me, so I’d say it was worth it to read this.

All Together Dead, Charlaine Harris
I was happy that this seventh book in the Southern Vampire Mysteries series had more Eric in it (I really like Eric) than the last one did but was troubled by how dark it was, darker than the last book even. Real news events are intruding on this fictional world, and I mostly don’t like it. I’m hoping for happier times in the next book.

Night’s Edge, Maggie Shayne, Barbara Hambly, Charlaine Harris
I bought this for the Charlaine Harris vampire tale, which I enjoyed. The other two stories are ghost stories; both had similar plots and I didn’t really care for either one. For whatever reason, I have an easier time suspending disbelief for vampires than for a ghosts.

The Good, the Bad, and the Undead, Kim Harrison
Second in the series. I read the first some time ago so was fuzzy on the details of this world. There’s a lot going on, so much that I had to read this in small chunks. I finished feeling confused about whether the author wanted me to feel sympathetic toward a couple of the bad guys. The heroine sure doesn’t like them, but I don’t share her feelings even though the book is told in the first person.

Hot Blooded, Christine Feehan, Maggie Shayne, Emma Holly, and Angela Knight
The Feehan story confirmed my feelings that Carpathians are not for me. The Maggie Shayne werewolf tale had some good points but also some cringe-worthy stereotypes. Emma Holly’s upyr story was my favorite of the bunch, despite a credulity-stretched-to-the-breaking-point first encounter between the hero and heroine. Angela Knight’s contribution had some eye-rollingly annoying aspects but a very interesting premise; I want to see what else she’s written.

Fantasy, Christine Feehan, Emma Holly, Sabrina Jeffries, and Elda Minger
A collection of four romantic novellas. The historical by Sabrina Jeffries was fun. The vampire tale by Emma Holly was the reason I bought this book, as I like Emma Holly and I like vampires; I liked the story though I don’t understand why the solution to the heroine’s problem works. The contemporary by Elda Minger was okay but I wished for something hotter and less formulaic. The shapeshifting paranormal by Christine Feehan was my least favorite, as it seemed to have too much explanation and not enough romance.

Twilight, Stephenie Meyer
I loved this vampire novel even though I’m a couple-three decades older than its young adult target market. Yes, it had flaws, but I got so caught up in this fictional world that I barely noticed them. No sooner had I finished than I went back to re-read my favorite sections.

New Moon, Stephenie Meyer
This is the sequel to Twilight, the YA vampire novel I liked so much. When it became clear that this book was going to have much less vampire content than the first, I was worried I wouldn’t enjoy it as much. In fact, I liked one of the non-vamp characters so much I was sad when he got shunted aside when the first person narrator stopped hanging out with him. Reading this was like sinking into a comforting alternate reality, which is odd, because a lot of what goes on is far from warm and fuzzy. It does suffer from a touch of second act syndrome, where things are left open for the third book, but that didn’t bother me too much since I’m already on the hold list for that book and it comes out next week.

Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer
Third in the series, and I didn’t get as good a feeling from it as the first two. I spent a big chunk of the book not nearly as in love with the hero as the heroine is and not seeing how that relationship was going to work out long term. One of my main concerns was later mentioned but not exactly addressed to my satisfaction. I’m disappointed that the heroine didn’t make the choice I think I would faced with her situation and feel really bad for one of the secondary characters. I guess that means it’s a good book, since I care about what happens to these people.

Dead End Dating, Kimberly Raye
I heard about this one and thought, “hey a humorous vamp series I haven’t tried–yay!” I started reading and thought, “this chick is more annoying than Betsy (of the Undead series)–yuck!” I liked it somewhat better as the chapters unfolded (though I’m still not overly fond of Lil, the heroine, who seems really immature for being 500 years old), but when I finished, I felt let down. This book is a big tease, with lots of talk and almost no action.

Bite Me If You Can, Lynsay Sands
This is the latest in the Argeneau vampire series, and I think it’s my favorite. It did have a few episodes that made me impatient–the family meddling, the amount of time spent on the dog with garbage bag incident–and the character motivations were a bit pat and over-explained, but I liked the hero and heroine and the overall plot and enjoyed their story.

Slave to Sensation, Nalini Singh
I bought this one because Bam liked it, and she did not steer me wrong. This is a paranormal with no vampires whatsoever, yet I still loved it. The world building is there, but it’s woven into the story so well I never felt my eyes glaze over. I can’t think of any particularly stupid things done by the characters in service of the plot; perhaps those elements were there but I overlooked them because I was so into the book. I even cried a time or two (though that may have been because I was reading at five a.m. thanks to a bout of insomnia).

Visions of Heat, Nalini Singh
Second in her Psy-Changeling series. This one didn’t grab me quite as hard as the first one, probably because the world was not new to me so I didn’t get that extra boost of novelty. Still, since I loved the first one, I liked the one quite a lot on the overall scale. I found I enjoyed the non-romance parts of the plot quite a bit and have a lot of hope for this series.

Caressed by Ice, Nalini Singh
Third in the series. I liked it enough to read it quickly. I did have some problems with it, though. It felt like there was too much going on that distracted from the main plot, and the central romance was too troubled for my taste. Give me a damaged hero or a damaged heroine, but not both; that’s too much like real life.

An Enchanted Season, Maggie Shayne, Erin McCarthy, Nalini Singh, and Jean Johnson
This book is like a cup of hot chocolate, warm and sweet. I was hoping for something a little spicier. The best of the stories was from Nalini Singh, but it was not as hot as her novels set in the same world, and the hero was a bit too stubborn to be believed. My least favorite was Maggie Shayne’s tale; I was so distracted by plot points not making sense that I never connected with any of the characters. Erin McCarthy’s tale of witches was better, but the heroine was way too passive for my taste. Jean Johnson’s story got a bit preachy.

Lover Revealed, J. R. Ward
The fourth installment in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. I’m sad that this one (like the one before) didn’t grab me the way the first two did. My main problem was character transformations that didn’t make sense. Sure, they were convenient for the plot of this book but didn’t fit what I’d come to know of those characters and the world they inhabit and weren’t explained so I could readily accept them. I do wonder how much my reaction to these later books has been colored by the bad experience I had at the author’s forum (which I found after reading the second book). Would I like these recent books more if there weren’t a link in my head between the Brotherhood and that awful board? I still like them enough to read them, silly names and annoying slang (“compy” for computer? rilly?) and brand name dropping and all, but I miss the buzz I got from the first two.

Lover Unbound, J. R. Ward
Fifth in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series and my least favorite so far. On the plus side, there was mercifully little about the bad guys in this one; those sections have always dragged for me in previous installments. On the minus side, there’s at least one subplot too many, the heroine’s voice didn’t ring true, the hero’s transformation was entirely too quick, the product placements are getting really annoying, and I am so unsatisfied with the ending I think I need to go back and re-read the first book to try and recapture some of my previous love for this series.

Fiction, Historicals and Other Romances:

My Lady Notorious, Jo Beverly
Far fetched (yeah, I know that’s something coming from the chick who reads vamp books) but mostly enjoyable. I could have done without the historical exposition but I guess it was needed for the plot.

Tempting Fortune, Jo Beverley
Second in the Malloren series. I didn’t like it as well as the first one. The heroine gets more annoying as the book goes on. I never got why the hero was so into her.

Strange Attractions, Emma Holly
My first venture into erotic fiction, and thus my first opportunity to ask myself questions while reading like “what happened to the remote control vibrator thingy he had up his butt in the last chapter?” There were parts that made me say “oh, please” and roll my eyes, but there were plenty of other parts that made me say “oh, please, more please”. I liked that the heroine had a lot of control over who and what and when. I really liked the author’s bio at the back, which said she thinks if you’re breathing hard you’re running fast—a woman after my own heart there.

The Golden Leopard, Lynn Kerstan
I picked this up when the library had put most of the romances in boxes while the area where they’re usually shelved was being painted; this was at the top of a box and the rest of the trilogy it starts was there too, so I grabbed them all. I don’t think I’ll be reading the other two, at least not right now. I didn’t hate this, not by a long shot, but it took a while to get going.

Someone to Watch Over Me, Lisa Kleypas
With this book, I feel like a crossed a line. It’s a historical romance, a Regency at that. No longer am I limiting myself to vampires or even paranormal romances. I’m a bit worried about what this means. It’s Bam’s fault, really; I bought this because she gave it an A. I shouldn’t have enjoyed this as much as I did. It’s chock full of romance clichés, including an amnesiac heroine, and I was able to guess at much of the plot from very early on, but I wanted to keep reading.

Lady Sophia’s Lover, Lisa Kleypas
I liked Someone to Watch Over Me so much that I sought out this sequel (there’s also a third one, and I’ve got my name on the hold list at the library for that, too). This one was better. I don’t believe the characters belong in the time period they’re plopped down in, but that doesn’t bother me; I’m not reading for the history but for the sizzle, and there was plenty of that, with a minimum of too stupid to live moments on the part of the heroine.

Suddenly You, Lisa Kleypas
While waiting for my name to come up on the hold list for the third in the Bow Street Runners series, I picked up this other Kleypas historical romance. As with the others, it engaged me despite myself. Also, hot, with a refreshing lack of peril.

Worth Any Price, Lisa Kleypas
When late in the book the heroine reassured herself that no one could have seen a certain plot twist coming, I just had to laugh. Honey, I saw it coming chapters and chapters ago. But I don’t read romance novels to be surprised, so that’s okay.

Dreaming of You, Lisa Kleypas
I think I need a break from Ms. Kleypas after this one, which had too much angst for my taste (plus a plot detour and some late, unnecessary peril). And the last love scene? Not my cup of tea at all.

Then Came You, Lisa Kleypas
Back to Lisa Kleypas after a break and darned if she didn’t suck me right back in. Sure, there were parts of this which stretched believability, and there was no doubt about how it would end (I already read the sequel, not that I had to to know) yet I go so involved I brought it to work to read during lunch.

< < 2005-2006  2007 > >

Non-Fiction:

Dry, Augusten Burroughs
I liked this book, though not quite as much as his Running With Scissors. This one seemed too tidy somehow, with a story arc that real life doesn’t usually provide. I completely missed the note at the front (on the page that faces the title, I think it was), which said “certain episodes are imaginative re-creation, and those episodes are not intended to portray actual events”. Reviews I looked at after I read it pointed it out, and sure enough, there it was when I checked; that explains a lot.

Fair Ball, Bob Costas, read by the author (A)
This is basically a book length proposal for how to fix baseball, circa 2000. It made so much sense to me. Sure, now and again my eyes would glaze over a tiny bit because I am not all that well versed in the business of baseball, but overall there were a lot of good ideas and good reasoning in here.

The Future of Ice, Gretel Ehrlich
Here’s another book that I didn’t quite understand. Is it meditation on winter? An autobiography? A warning about global warming? All of the above? I’m not sure. I liked it best when it was personal, when she told stories about winter canoeing and hiking and wildlife. I liked it least when she turned poetic and abstract—then I’d want to stop reading.

The Worst Day of My Life, So Far, M. A. Harper
This novel about a woman caring for her mother with Alzheimer’s felt very honest and made me think. I wasn’t sold on the palmistry aspect, but that was a minor thing.

Under the Duvet, Marian Keyes, read by the author (A)
These slice of life essays were for the most part light and entertaining. The author/reader is Irish, and hearing her was a nice change of pace from the American and English fare I usually listen to. One tiny quibble: in order to not be annoyed, I had to assume that the Irish pronounce “feng shui” differently than the proper American English sound.

To See Every Bird on Earth, Dan Koeppel, read by John McDonough (A)
This is both a window into the world of serious birders and a biography of the author’s father. I considered whether I would like to be a big lister—I like to look at birds, and I like to document things, and I like to travel to new places—but then the book told me that serious birders get up at 3 a.m. every day on their trips and go out looking for birds without even eating breakfast first, so I’m out.

Maximum City, Suketu Mehta
It took me a very long time to get through this book; there was so much detail to absorb. As with other books I’ve read about India, this one made me think that it’s not the country for me.

Catapult: Harry and I Build a Siege Weapon, Jim Paul
This has been on my “to read” list for a long time. Maybe I let the anticipation build too long, because I was disappointed. I liked the parts about actually building the catapult, and the history interludes weren’t bad either, but there was only one picture of the weapon they built. One, and it wasn’t very large or clear or detailed. There were other pictures taken—the text refers to them—and I wanted to see them. I still don’t have a good image in my head of how the thing worked or what it looked like. I’m also a little uncomfortable about the whole getting a grant from an arts organization to do the project.

A Venetian Affair, Andrea di Robilant, read by Paul Hecht with Lisette Lecat and Jeff Woodman (A)
Because this love affair happened in real life and not a romance novel, things didn’t unfold as I’d hoped. Also, because the story was reconstructed from letters written in the 1700s and not all of the correspondence survived, there were gaps and unanswered questions that vex me. It’s neither compelling romance nor interesting history.

Cross Country, Robert Sullivan
I sought this out because I heard the author interviewed on Whadya Know? and liked what he had to say. This is a long book, but unlike the one I read earlier this year about India, it wasn’t hard to get through at all and I wished there were more of it. It’s a bunch of stuff all put together: travelogues of several different trips, history lessons, autobiography, and random observations. It rambles, yes, but I like that. I like to peek into other people’s heads and it felt like this book let me do that.

A Hope in the Unseen, Ron Suskind (BC)
A lot of this was just so sad—all the kids who don’t make it, don’t get the opportunities, and how hard it is for those who do. I sort of wish I’d read the author’s afterward first, because it sheds light on the conversations recreated in the text, which was something that distracted me a little bit—how did the author know? How much was fictionalized? When I was done, I had to Google to see what had happened to the protagonist; evidently he does a fair bit of motivational speaking now.

Non-Fiction, Crafting:

Stash Envy, Lisa Boyer
A pleasant little collection of quilt-related columns, perfect for reading on the plane when I kept getting interrupted by announcements and the beverage cart and such.

Zen and the Art of Knitting, Bernadette Murphy
It took me a long time to get through this little book about knitting and its connections to creativity and meditation and spirituality. I spent some of those minutes studying the line drawings of the different stitch patterns at the start of the chapters and trying—and mostly failing—to see the stitches as described in the instructions. I think it took me so long to read because it was neither a series of essays that I could enjoy one by one (like The Joy of Knitting which I read earlier this year) or a coherent whole that kept me engaged. It felt more like a random series of stories—different knitters the author had talked to about various things and her own reaction to September 11, 2001 and I never quite got a feel for what the overall message was.

The Joy of Knitting, Lisa R. Myers
A pleasant little book of essays about knitting, with short patterns at the end of every chapter.

Knitting Rules!, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
I liked the content of this, but the format bugged me; there are a lot of little boxes of tips interrupting the main text and some of those are white letters on a dull burgundy background, which is hard to read, and others are dull burgundy letters on a dull rose background, ditto.

Sweater Design in Plain English, Maggie Righetti
This wasn’t as accessible as her Knitting in Plain English, probably because a lot of it is patterns—patterns with a lot of instructional material, true, but still patterns, which aren’t exactly engaging reading material. A lot of this was just over my head, I think, but will probably come in handy after I’ve had a bit more knitting experience.

KnitLit, Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf, editors
This book of essays about knitting is best read in small doses, as otherwise the stories start to run together.

KnitLit (too), Linda Roghaar and Molly Wolf, editors
Like the first one, this mostly pleasant collection of essays is best nibbled at in short sessions rather than devoured all at once.

Fiction:

Death of a Snob, M. C. Beaton, read by Davina Porter (A)
A short, pleasant car book. I didn’t much care about the person killed, so that was all right. It did end rather abruptly.

The Skeleton in the Closet, M.C. Beaton, read by Donada Peters (A)
A good car book. The mystery and the story were a little too neatly wrapped up to be believed, but that’s okay because the scenario is awesome—a big surprise inheritance. Give me some of that.

The Ice Maiden, Edna Buchanan, read by Anna Fields (A)
This was a real downer. It was liberally sprinkled with references to 9/11, which I hadn’t expected in a book about a cold case that had nothing to do with New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, and/or terrorists, and those kept taking me out of the flow of the story. That wasn’t the worst part, though. The ending was the worst part.

Cold Case Squad, Edna Buchanan, read by Robertson Dean (A)
I didn’t realize until I started listening that this is a sequel to another book I’d read (The Ice Maiden), one I hadn’t liked. I figured I’d give it a chance since I didn’t have another book with me. I didn’t like the way the point of view switched between first- and third-person; some chapters in one, some in the other. Overall it was better than the other one, but there was a point in the last disc when I was cursing the author for what she was doing to one of the main characters. It turned out mostly okay, though, unlike the earlier book, so I feel better about this one. Still, I don’t think I’ll be listening to any more Edna Buchanan on my commute; I don’t need any more angst on my drive than traffic and construction already provide.

JPod, Douglas Coupland (BC)
If not for the book club, I don’t know if I would have finished this. The insertion of random bits of text in the middle of the story annoyed me at first, especially the pages of small, tight text that I wasn’t sure if I needed to read or not, but I could see a purpose for them, mirroring the way random bits of information hit us in the real world. After I’d gotten into it, I came to appreciate these random bits because by skipping them I could get through the book more quickly. Pages and pages of random numbers? Score! I didn’t at all see the purpose of the author inserting himself into the story; that made it hard for me to immerse myself in the fictional world, which I was having a hard enough time with already what with all the strange happenings in the life of a programmer.

Bet Me, Jennifer Crusie
I picked this up at the library because someone told me the author wrote good, funny romances. They were right—I laughed and smiled a lot while reading this.

Tell Me Lies, Jennifer Crusie (BC)
This was darker than Bet Me, and I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much. Because I wasn’t laughing and smiling all the time as I read and the pacing seemed fairly slow (though I’ve since read reviews that complain about it being frenetic, so I guess I really wasn’t engaged by this). I had plenty of time to sympathize with the bad husband and ponder why the heroine did such stupid things (yes, she was very stressed and probably not thinking straight, but still—the thing with the gun? too, too dumb). I did appreciate that the hero was a sexy accountant, though—he was a bit too good to be true, but hey, that’s the romance genre for you.

The Body Artist, Don DeLillo, read by Laurie Anderson (A)
This is a very short book, yet it took me a very long time to finish it. There’s no linear plot and nothing much seems to happen and Ms. Anderson’s voice is soothing and I found if I listened too long at a stretch I started to feel very sleepy, which is not a good thing when driving. I would have abandoned this except I kept hoping I would somehow start to understand it, and besides it was only 3 discs, surely I could finish three discs. Now that I have, I still have no clear idea what this was about. Grief? Insanity? Dreams? No idea.

How We Are Hungry, Dave Eggers
I picked this up because I liked the look of it—tooled black cover with textured bronze endpapers and an elastic strap emerging from the back cover that I thought was a bookmark but evidently is not because there’s a ribbon bound into the spine that is definitely a bookmark. As for the contents, they’re pretty good, too, with a variety of characters and situations and imagery. Some of the stories made me smile, and some made me think, some made me feel wistful. I liked that there were short sketches mixed in with longer tales; that added to the variety.

Tietam Brown, Mick Foley, read by Daniel Passer (A)
Man, this makes three car books in a row that threw me for a loop as far as their emotional punch. I liked it, but parts of it were very intense and uncomfortable to listen to. It was strange and sweet and cartoony and touching.

With No One As Witness, Elizabeth George, read by Donada Peters (A)
This dark novel about a Scotland Yard investigation targeting a serial killer was good and absorbing, but I really, really could have done without what the back cover copy refers to as “a devastating tragedy within the police ranks”. It just felt like too much sadness, too much pain. I listened for 20 hours up to that point only to get presented with that plot twist? No fair.

Sammy’s Hill, Kristin Gore
I had a little bit of trouble getting past the part where the heroine heads off to work without noticing she’s got a heeled sandal on one foot and a sneaker on the other—who could do that?—but this book got better as it went on and I ended up staying up late one night to finish it because I really wanted to see how things were going to turn out. There are a couple of really funny scenes and a lot of more subtle humor throughout, but it’s also very touching in spots.

The Mammoth Cheese, Sherri Holman, read by Laurel Merlington (A)
I was disappointed that the title cheese doesn’t even get started until about a third through the book. I know, it’s a serious novel and not just a story about cheese, but still. Overall, I found this book rather grim and dreary—most of the characters spend most of the book being sad, frustrated, stressed and/or melancholy. That’s not to say it wasn’t interesting, but it wasn’t particularly enjoyable. Also, this Brilliance Audio did that thing I don’t like where some of the dialog was mechanically enhanced—say, when a preacher was speaking to the congregation—which I find distracting and hokey.

Beyond Belief, Roy Johansen, read by Richard Ferrone (A)
This strayed into Edna Buchanan territory from time to time, with some violence and death that seemed completely unnecessary to the story, but overall I liked it. I wonder if there’s a sequel; there was certainly a good setup for one, though done in a way that this book felt complete on its own.

Dark Matter, Phillip Kerr, read by John Less (A)
Real people (Issaac Newton and his clerk Christopher Ellis) in made up situations. This got off to a slow start and I almost stopped listening, but then I got into the mystery. Newton is a bit like the detective Monk of the 1690s in this (without the OCD ticks)—figuring all sorts of things out from being an acute observer. I think I might have gotten more out of this if I knew more about English history. I know I could have taken it more seriously if I hadn’t thought of candy every time the narrator said “Newgate” in his English accent.

Can You Keep a Secret?, Sophie Kinsella, read by Kate Reading (A)
I did get a couple of good laughs out of this, but I’m not sure that made it worth it to sit through the rest of the book, which was stupid and infuriating and even painful. Part of the problem was my inability to connect with the main character. It helped not one bit that she hit on one of my pet peeves by borrowing her roommate’s clothes without asking, in fact knowing her roommate didn’t want her to have them. The plot twists designed to keep the hero and heroine apart seemed forced. Surely real people wouldn’t act like that—yet this wasn’t a fantasy world, so I couldn’t explain it away on that basis.

My Life on a Plate, India Knight, read by Jill Tanner (A)
I wasn’t sure which way this was going to turn out, so that’s a point in its favor. I was disappointed that some minor characters just disappeared from the book; I would have liked to know what happened to them, too. I didn’t find this nearly as funny as some people seem to have, maybe because I was distracted by asking myself questions like “what is her problem?” and “what’s the attraction?”

Last Lessons of Summer, Margaret Maron, read by Kate Forbes (A)
This mystery had some excellent red herrings in it. Just when I thought I had it figured out, something would happen that made sense but wasn’t the obvious thing. Nice.

Birds of America, Lorrie Moore
The more I read, the bleaker and sadder the stories seemed to get. I did get one good laugh out of it and several interesting turns of phrase to feed my brain, but I won’t be sad to turn it back into the library.

Death Goes on Retreat, Sister Carol Anne O’Marie, read by Marguerite Gavin (A)
This was okay, but I thought there were too many suspects and too little believable explanation when the murderer was revealed—the groundwork hadn’t been laid for that resolution.

Widow’s Walk, Robert B. Parker, read by Joe Mantegna (A)
Now this was a good car book, in that it did not make me cry and did not make me want to throw the discs out the window. I was a tiny bit disappointed that the first murder was not really resolved—we find out at the end who did it (or had it done, it’s not clear) but not how, and I’d really like to know.

Family Honor, Robert B. Parker, read by Andrea Thompson (A)
This is the first book in the Sunny Randall series—it wasn’t until I was a bit into this that I realized I’d listened to a later book in the series some time ago and not liked it, even judging by the standards of fluffy fiction. This one was better than that one, but still stretched believability a bit too far for me. Yeah, it sure helps when you’re a detective and have strong connections to both the cops and organized crime—and have a friend who’s a karate black belt and willing to come with you and beat up on other people’s bodyguards. Very convenient.

The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman
This has been on my “to be read” list for ages. I’m not sure I’m going to read the other two in the trilogy, as I found this one pretty grim. Children being kidnapped and tortured—not so cheery. Maybe the other two books provide redemption? Though now that I’ve read the reviews from readers who say it’s anti-religion, I feel like I have a moral obligation to keep reading.

Courting Trouble, Lisa Scottoline, read by Barbara Rosenblatt (A)
If you like stereotypes, stupidity, and tedium, you should read this. Otherwise, stay far away. I wish I had. I can’t quite explain why I kept listening; I guess I just couldn’t believe it wouldn’t get better at some point. It didn’t. I neither cared about nor understood the main character. The plot was filled with people doing things that made no sense whatsoever; sometimes the motivations for these actions would be explained, but the explanations made no sense either. A child is born with a cleft lip and doesn’t get surgery until she’s 10 years old? In modern America? I don’t buy it. My brother got his surgery when he was an infant, and we weren’t well off by any means.

New Orleans Mourning, Julie Smith, read by Cristine McMurdo-Wallis (A)
Mr. Karen and I listened to this on our road trip; when we got to New Orleans, it was fun to see things there that had been mentioned in the book, and after we left the city it was fun to hear about the characters being in some of the same places. My theory about who did it turned out to be true but there were a lot of twists and turns to get to that point.

Sucker Bet, James Swain, read by Paul Boehmer (A)
This was pretty good. I especially liked that some older characters got big, active roles. (And it was refreshing to have older characters actually show their age, unlike, say, vampires.) There are two earlier books with the same main character; I plan to look for them at the library.

Only Dad, Alan Titchmarsh, read by the author (A)
I spent the first part of this book wishing something would happen, and then something did, and it was horrible, and then I wished it had stayed pleasant and mundane. Not that there shouldn’t be books about horrible things, of course, but I didn’t quite expect this one to go where it did. I don’t like my commute books to make me cry, and now this is two in a row.

Fiction, Paranormal:

Dead and Loving It, MaryJanice Davidson
For the most part, this was a fun read. No, these aren’t tightly plotted short stories, and yes, there is a fair bit of rough sex. Based on the Undead books, I wasn’t surprised. I haven’t read any of MJD’s other werewolf stuff, so I’m not sure where the ones in this book fit in, but I didn’t feel like I needed that background to enjoy them. I was a bit put off by the vampire in the second story; he didn’t seem to be of the same world as Queen Betsy. Betsy herself shows up in the last story—I would have liked Undead and Unpopular a lot better if this material had been held and incorporated into that book.

Undead and Unappreciated, MaryJanice Davidson
Undead and Unemployed, MaryJanice Davidson
Undead and Unwed, MaryJanice Davidson
Also recommended on that message board, I liked these better than Bitten & Smitten. The heroine can be rather annoying and even infuriating at times, and the vampire rules are again somewhat different, but they were fast, fun reads. I liked the third (Unappreciated) book best, followed by the first (Unwed).

Undead and Unreturnable, MaryJanice Davidson
Book Four in the Undead series. A really quick read—fun and fluffy, with no complicated plot to slow things down. I am very glad that Betsy has stopped lisping when her teeth come out. I hope that sign of vampire maturity means she’ll grow up in other ways before too long. I also hope that the ghost Cathie goes away soon. I am confused about if Eric and Betsy just drink from each other, how that satisfies their thirst—seems like you’d need fresh blood in the system once in while at least—but there’s probably some special queen thing going on.

Undead and Unpopular, MaryJanice Davidson
This fifth book in the Betsy, queen of the vampires, series is the weakest yet. It’s a fast read and has a few fun moments, but nothing much happens and there are loose ends and random incidents galore. It’s more like a collection of soap opera episodes than a novel. Betsy was lisping again and being dense, and I wish she’d just grow up already. She doesn’t seem to have learned much at all in the year since she died; why is she not studying how to be a better vampire? She’s not even attentive to little non-vamp things, like the difference between knitting and crochet. It annoyed me in the last book when she confused the two; I’d hoped she’d have at least learned that tiny thing by now, especially since her best friend knits (or maybe crochets—it’s first person narration so because Betsy doesn’t know, I don’t know). Worst of all, there aren’t even any hot love scenes to distract me from how maddening Betsy is.

Dark Prince, Christine Feehan
This is the first book in the Carpathians series, which kept popping up in my Internet searches for more vampire novel recommendations. I was rather confused at first by the way the Carpathians drink blood and have a lot of other abilities (including turning into mist or one of a whole menagerie of animals) that seem rather vampiric yet they are not vampires—vampires are something else, something evil, and also something a Carpathian can turn into (after which the non-turned Carpathians hunt and kill them). These Carp-vamps are the most Dracula-like characters I’ve run into—living in modern times but still very old world and angsty and dramatic (some of them even wear capes). Fortunately, the tragedy and darkness are punctuated at frequent intervals by love scenes, though I did get a bit tired of the words “silk” and “slumberous”.

Dark Desire, Christine Feehan
This is the second in the Carpathians series. I didn’t like it as well as the first. The timeline confused me; I wasn’t prepared for a 25-year gap between books, and had no idea when this seond book was taking place relative to the short story that came with the first book (at least it came with the copy I have). Now that I’ve studied the reading order on the author’s website, it appears that the short story is from much later in the series, so that explains why there was no mention in this book of something that happened in the story even though the two events were related. Also, there’s a very creepy (in a bad way) sequence involving a fetus that really put me off. (Sorry if that was too much of a spoiler.)

Cravings, Laurell K. Hamilton, MaryJanice Davidson, Eileen Wilks, and Rebecca York
I thought about skipping Laurell K. Hamilton’s contribution to this anthology after I found out it’s an Anita Blake tale from far later in the timeline than I’m at with her (evidently it’s the first few chapters of book 12 and I’ve only just finished book 2), but I went ahead, figuring I was already spoiled for the series in general so what would a few specifics really hurt. Now that I’ve read it, I really understand the people who recommend stopping with book 10 or so. Anita is a mess in this story—she isn’t a good master, she isn’t a good slut, she isn’t a good anything near as I can see—and I don’t want to go there with her, but the first person narration gives me little choice. Also, this novel excerpt doesn’t work as a stand alone story, what with the non-ending. By contrast, the MaryJanice Davidson novella was really enjoyable. It’s set after Undead and Unwed and has the same sense of fun as that book did. The other two stories are not my usual taste in paranormals (i.e. they’re vampire-free) but I liked them, especially the one by Eileen Wilks with the nude mystery man.

Bite, Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, MaryJanice Davidson, Angela Knight, and Vickie Taylor
Another paranormal anthology. LKH: Eh. Anita is not as off putting in this one as she is in the other anthology, but that’s not really a feat. CH:I liked this, but wish this Sookie interlude could have just been incorporated in the last book instead of being a separate story in a separate book. MJD: This was my favorite of the collection. It’s got Betsy and Eric in it, but they’re not the main characters of the story so I didn’t feel like I was reading what should have been an Undead book. AK: Interesting take on the Knights of the Round Table and the author creates a fictional world that I liked thinking about even if I couldn’t quite accept it. VT: These vampires don’t have fangs but they’re plenty dark. All the typos kept taking me out of the story; at least I hope they were typos, because if the author really meant to say a character had a “tinkering” laugh I’m completely lost.

Guilty Pleasures, Laurell K. Hamilton
This is the first book in the Anita Blake, vampire hunter, series, which keeps coming up on people’s lists when I’m looking for vampire novel recommendations. I’ve heard the books start sliding into porn later on, but this one was not at all like that, just a kiss or two and that in the service of work. My exposure to the Buffy tv series is limited, but this book felt the most similar to that of all the vampire novels I’ve read so far. I was hesitant to try this series, because I like my vampires sympathetic, and if the heroine is killing them, how nice can they be, but I liked this enough that I’ll probably read more of them. Anita is interesting and, other than her insistence that women can’t find anything in their purses, not annoying.

The Laughing Corpse, Laurell K. Hamilton
This is the second in the Anita Blake series and was almost too gory for me to finish. There were lots of body parts and blood and not enough of vampire Jean Claude (this is really a zombie/voodoo book). I did like the ending; it didn’t go for the easy way out.

Dead as a Doornail, Charlaine Harris, read by Johanna Parker (A)
My first vampire mystery. I enjoyed it. I do wonder if this one spoiled an earlier one in the series—past events were referred to that sound interesting, but now I know how they turn out. I had a couple quibbles with the plot, perhaps due to my not understanding the world in which the action takes place. I bought the supernatural creatures, no problem, but thought Sookie could have availed herself of some vampire blood on certain occasions and it wasn’t even mentioned (despite a point being made of its effects earlier on).

Dead Until Dark, Charlaine Harris
Book one in the Sookie Stackhouse series. I enjoyed it greatly, even though I knew a lot about how the story was going to go (thanks to listening to book five first because that’s what the library had). There were a couple of what appeared to me to be logical errors in the plot—a vampire out before it usually gets dark in the summertime, for instance—but maybe if I read it again I’ll pick up on the explanations that make these things make sense.

Living Dead in Dallas, Charlaine Harris
Book two in the series. I raced through this one, and it held a few more surprises for me than the first one, as it hadn’t been referred to in the fifth book quite as much.

Club Dead, Charlaine Harris
I think I might cry when I run out of new books in this series, I like them so well (even though I was spoiled for major plot points by not starting at the beginning).

Dead to the World, Charlaine Harris
So yeah, I didn’t do so well with saving the last unread Sookie Stackhouse that I had on hand. I really couldn’t—I knew this was the one where she and Eric … but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

Definitely Dead, Charlaine Harris
Finally got my hands on the library copy of this latest Sookie Stackhouse book and finished it in less than 24 hours (even though for about 12 of those I was either sleeping or not at home). Obviously, I liked it, but it wasn’t quite as satisfying as the early books. It seemed a bit darker, and there are so many regular characters now that it’s hard to get enough time with any of them, especially the vampires.

Dead Witch Walking, Kim Harrison
Though this is mostly about the witch, there are vampires (of course not exactly the same sort that inhabit other books). There are hints of attraction but nothing that goes anywhere. There is some humor, including a situation involving a leprechaun early on that had me almost in tears I was laughing so hard, but most of it is of the black variety, which makes sense given that the main character is in danger much of the time. The plot really seems to set up the characters for a sequel.

A Girl’s Guide to Vampires, Katie MacAlister
I put this down after the introductory chapters which focused entirely on the annoying heroine and her almost as annoying friend. There was too much setup and foreshadowing for my taste. I only picked it back up again because I’d run out of other vampire books. The main problem with this vampire novel is a lack of vampires. There’s much talk about them—though not anything particularly informative, as the title might lead one to expect—and several men who might be one do show up eventually, but most of them turn out not to be vampires and the one that does is given rather short shrift. I was distracted throughout by wondering what the hero saw in the heroine—maybe if the book hadn’t been told in the first person from the heroine’s point of view I would have had a better shot at that. I’ve heard that this is somewhat of a spoof of a series I haven’t read yet (Feehan’s Carpathians, one of which is in my to be read pile), so maybe I’ll appreciate more later. I’ve also heard that the next vampire book by this author is better, but I’m not sure I’m ready to risk another heroine like this one.

Single White Vampire, Lynsay Sands
The emphasis is on romance in this paranormal romance. There are vampires—with yet another set of vampire rules for me to ponder—but the main plot is pure romance novel. There were several scenes that felt forced; I could have done without the codpiece episode and the psychic readings, in particular. I also think the hero could have been a bit smarter about his blood supply, but if he had been then we wouldn’t have the scene in the stall in the men’s room, so I guess that’s a fair trade.

Love Bites, Lynsay Sands
A light and fun vampire romance, perfect for reading on a holiday weekend. It’s set before the events of Single White Vampire (except for the epilogue, which overlaps SWV), but I didn’t feel like I was spoiled for this having read that one first (they were published in non-chronological order). I liked this one better than SWV; there were a couple of plot points I felt could have been elaborated on but better that than dragging stuff out too long the way a couple of things were in SWV.

A Quick Bite, Lynsay Sands
I really wish these Argeneau vampire romances had been written/published in the same order as they fit into the timeline. The events in this one take place before Love Bites. I didn’t like it as well as the other two, even judged by the standards of light romance. This seemed more contrived and cringe-worthy, with an overdose of family interference, embarrassing situations, and stupidity about blood supply. Maybe I just lack the patience to deal with baby vampires (the heroine is only 200 years old and surrounded by a passel of cousins that age or younger).

A Bite to Remember, Lynsay Sands
This Argeneau vampire romance had a mystery element to it as well. There was one scene that was a near copy of one in the first book, which was a little disappointing, but on the plus side I don’t remember any long drawn out forced comedic interludes, unlike the first book. I do wish this one had been hotter, like the first book.

Tall, Dark & Hungry, Lynsay Sands
Hmm, what happened to my resolution to read about vampires only every other book? Oh, I know—the interminable book about India happened. Anyway, this is another in the Argeneau series. I almost didn’t read this; I grabbed a later one off my to be read pile and it refers to the events in this book, and they didn’t sound familiar, so I checked this log and found I hadn’t read this one—I’d bought it but accidentally put it away in a box. As with the earlier ones in the series, this is a light vampire romance. This one seemed more ponderous than the first two; the formula shows a bit too much at times—the forced “comedic” situations, the big misunderstanding, the heroine fleeing—but I still found it enjoyable enough to finish.

How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire, Kerrelyn Sparks
This vampire romance made me smile when I started reading it. I was enjoying it a little less by the end, when the unlikely coincidences had started to pile up, I was sick of the hero saying “God’s blood!” whenever he was upset, and major issues were left unresolved (for a sequel, perhaps).

Bitten & Smitten, Michelle Rowan
Who knew I had such a craving for vampire romance? Not me. I got this based on a recommendation on a message board. The rules for vampires in this world are somewhat different than in Sookie’s world, which was a little confusing. It was enjoyable enough for fairly tame romantic fluff.

Dark Lover, J. R. Ward
I liked this a lot. It’s yet another vampire romance, true, but one with some real depth to it. The author has obviously spent much time thinking through the vampire world she’s created and included a glossary at the front to introduce some of the terms, which I found quite helpful. Several things struck me as less than ideal: the way the Black Dagger Brotherhood seems a bit like a group of WWE wrestlers—big men in leather strutting and posturing, the names straight off of a bad baby names list—like Rhage, Tohrment, Phury (and, oddly, Darius). But I soon got past those quibbles and just enjoyed the suspenseful plot and the hot sex. Though it was overall fairly dark (compared to the vampire fare I’ve been reading, that is—I’m sure there’s much, much darker stuff to be had), there were some touches of humor that worked well (like a Mary Sue joke that I hope was intentional because it indicates the author is very clever and will be able to keep me well entertained in future books).

Lover Eternal, J. R. Ward
This is the second book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, and I ate it right up. I especially appreciated that the heroine isn’t a perfect physical specimen. I continue to have little interest in the bad guys and race through the sections about them to see what the vampires are going to do next. There’s a very neat connection with the first book—it took me a while to realize what was going on but when I did I thought it was just the coolest thing (of course I may be completely wrong, but the point is it got me thinking, which means it’s more than just another vampire novel)—and the groundwork for the third is clearly laid out here. It’s going to be a long wait until September for the next installment.

Lover Awakened, J. R. Ward
This is the darkest of the series so far, which is not surprising given which brother gets the spotlight this time. I liked it, but not as much first two. It’s hard to enjoy sex scenes when one partner has such a traumatic past in that area, for one thing. The emotional healing that takes place seemed too fast to be believable (I know, “believable” and vampires probably don’t belong together). The epilogue doesn’t answer some questions about the intervening time; maybe these will be covered in a future book via flashback but I hate waiting. The heroine, Bella, does have several really good scenes where she’s smart and strong.

You Must Have:
– 1/2 grapefruit or 4 ounce glass of unsweetened grapefruit juice at the start of each meal

You May Have:
– As much meat, fish, eggs, and plain cottage cheese as you like.
– Vegetables, also as much as you feel like eating except for sweet and starchy ones listed below.
– A little butter on vegetable, and/or sauteed meat, fish.
– Salt (but try not to use very much–retains water in body tissue).
– Bedtime snack of grapefruit juice, tomato juice, or skimmed milk.
– Up to two glasses of white wine a day.

You’re Forbidden:
– Fruit, except grapefruit and lemon.
– Whole milk, cheese (except for cottage), or cream.
– Sauces thickened with flour or eggs … and no high-calorie condiments (ketchup, mayonnaise, chili sauce, etc.). Clear sauces made with stock or bouillon and wine are okay.
– Corn and beets–both vegetables are high in sugar; corn is also high in starch.
– Pudding, rice, potaoes, bread, pasta–starch turns to fat awesomely fast.
– Alcoholic beverages other than wine.
– More than one cup of coffee or tea per meal. Cutting back on caffeine when you cut back on food helps you stay calm on a diet.
– No sugar whatsoever!

Ten Day Eat-as-Much-as-You-Wish Menu

All Days:

Breakfast
1/2 grapefruit or 4 ounces unsweetened grapefruit juice
2 eggs, any style
Tea with lemon or black coffee (optional)

Lunch
1/2 grapefruit or 4 ounces unsweetened grapefruit juice
Meat or fish, prepared as you wish–baked, broiled, grilled, sauteed, braised–as long as you avoid thick sauces
Green or raw vegetable salad, dressed with one tablespoon oil and one tablespoon vinegar (you may sprinkle in herbs)
Tea with lemon or black coffee (optional)

Dinner
1/2 grapefruit or 4 ounces unsweetened grapefruit juice
Meat or fish, again cooked as you like
Salad, dressed with one tablespoon oil and one tablespoon vinegar
Tea with lemon or black coffee (optional)

Bedtime
4 ounces grapefruit juice, tomato juice, or skim milk (optional)

(From the Daily Mirror Book of Successful Slimming, as excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine, October, 1980.)