On Hiatus...

Making it official. I have decided to take some time off from blogging. Well, blogging here, anyway. I'll still be over at The Good Bad and the Unread, as Sybil's newest bitch duckie. How can I resist the lure of the ARC? Lots of cool stuff coming up, so please stop by.



I'll also be continuing my monthly gig at Access Romance: Reader's Gab. Amanda has a post up about Irish romance. Got any recs for her?

Also, debut author, Mark Henry, is giving away a copy of Happy Hour of the Damned (which I reviewed here) at Bam/Dionne Galace's. Go forth and comment. He funny.

So I shall be around, and returning to my regularly scheduled program of lurking and making incoherent comments at other's blogs. See ya'll around the Internets!

Come to The Good Bad and the Unread. Or else face the wrath of the devil duckie.

Vote Early and Vote Often...

So this is an essentially meaningless poll, but I've always wanted to do one. The dilemma that I have been pondering is this: lately I have not had nearly the time to devote to blogging that I like. Some of this is just plain busyness, and some of was caused by "reader's block", if there is such a thing. I was having trouble finishing books. You know the drill. I haven't been blog hopping either, one of my favorite pastimes. So I have been wondering whether or not to fold the blog. Gasp! But of course I must waffle, and overthink, and now subject any visitors to it as well. So, out of curiosity, what would you do if you were me?

Zombies are sexy too!

Over at The Good, the Bad and the Unread, check out my review of Happy Hour of the Damned, the debut novel by Mark Henry.

If you are amused by the thought of zombie chicks breaking into a funeral home to steal makeup (for the industrial strength full coverage), and repairing injuries with liquid leather, then you might enjoy this book. If the idea of the supernatural world as a place of kitschy-cool nightclubs, complete with themed cocktails, wall to wall with bored, gossipy creatures makes you grin, then give HHotD a try. It is unapologetically full of snarky humor, label dropping, pop culture references and other things I usually hate, but it fits so well with the silly, almost satirical tone, that I gave it a pass. Though at first I hated the narrator with a passion, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

Blog Slut

I got some decent reading done in the past week and a half. First off, Demon Night, by Meljean Brook. Loved it. Ms. Brook writes great characters and dialogue, and always a hot romance. Read my review here.

I also read two great non-fiction books: Sex With the Queen and Sex with Kings by Eleanor Herman. Very readable, totally absurd history. As you may have guessed, these books focus on royal adultery. Crazy shit. Those poor kings and queens, not only were they forced to marry complete strangers, they were also pretty sad cases themselves. All the inbreeding led to unattractive, weak-minded and stupid monarchs. I enjoyed Sex With the Queen a bit more. Queens definitely got the rawest deal. Very ruled in their own right. Most of them had to leave behind family, friends and country for a place with an unfamiliar culture and language, to be treated poorly by husband and in-laws. It was interesting to read how some of them grabbed happiness (and sometimes a bit of power for themselves) by taking a lover. Don't expect dry academic writing. Herman is very dramatic, almost purple-y. Take a passage like this, about Henry VII's ill-fated fifth wife, Katherine Howard:

Let us imagine the queen's duties in the royal four-poster. The king would likely have suffocated his petite bride if he had perched on top of her. He must have required her to ride astride him, careful not to disturb the stinking wound on his thigh....We can picture the happy king,perfectly sated, snoring, as his young wife lay silently beside him, her heart sinking (Sex With the Queen 79).

Hee. Fun. Read more about the books in Dirty Sexy History.

Now I just have to get something reviewed for this blog.

Bloodfever by Karen Marie Moning

I read Darkfever, the first book in this series, just over a year ago. I enjoyed it, but I wasn't blown away. So it took me awhile to get to the further adventures of MacKayla Lane. But I liked Bloodfever quite a bit more than Darkfever. It took off running and never slowed down. I found the book to be engrossing and action-packed.

Many of the things that irritated me about the first were gone. Mac has grown up a bit, gotten a bit darker and a lot more interesting. Jericho Barrons (man, I hate that name) has also gotten more likeable, while remaining a bit creepy and enigmatic. He is not really a nice guy, but I am enjoying the development of his relationship with Mac. I assume some kind of romance will develop, but for now things are nicely off balance. MacKayla now has three men in her life who have mysterious agendas: Barrons, the Fae Prince V'Lane and the dark horse Christian MacKeltar.

The world of the Fae is developed more and is rather dark and creepy. We also learn more about sidhe-seers like Mac, and those relationships aren't going to play out well :) Karen Marie Moning is a very popular author of fantasy, men-in-kilts romance. I've read one, and only found it okay. But this Fever series really has a lot to appeal to fans of urban fantasy, especially those who like Irish settings and folklore. The happy ending is not clearly in sight at all. But if the action remains fast-paced, and the characters and world keep developing like this, I'll be sticking with this series for awhile: B.

I've finally got an Ebook Reader!

I made my IPod Touch into an E reader!! And it was easy! There are these things called webapps that you can put on your IPhone or IPod Touch and there's one called Readdle. Readdle makes it possible to view a variety of documents, including pdf, html and txt on your Iphone or Ipod touch. And it is easy.

The Iphone hack proved to be beyond my capabilities, but now I've got several books on my ipod. Once you download and open a particular file, you can bookmark it and thus read it even if you are offline, which is good. It's free to use and gives you 50 MB of storage, which is fine for me for now.

Unfortunately, it doesn't read docs that are in .lit, which is my preferred format for reading on my laptop. I find .lit easy on the eyes and easily navigable. Also, I guess it saves the document exactly as is. I downloaded a pdf without opening it up and looking at it first, and when I opened it up to read, it was way too small. I was unable to zoom in adequately, and I couldn't change from a two page to a single page display.

Readdle definitely has its limitations, but it's good enough for me for now until Apple smartens up and gets its own application going. Now I don't have to bring my laptop to bed, and I can read in the dark! And read e books and the Speech Therapist's office!

Review up at TGTBTU

I've got a review up at The Good, the Bad and the Unread. Yet another Ellora's Cave novella. I don't know why these keep sucking me in. This was an all right read, though. Silly title and character names, and, well, premise. But Ride 'Em by Tilly Greene was pretty okay.

See ya, suckers!

I'm off to New Hampshire for the long weekend. Not all that exciting, but I never go anywhere. Hopefully, it will be a break from the every day and I will return, refreshed, renewed and ready to read. Seriously, look at the paltry year to date total.

I did manage to polish off His Magical Student by Mary Winter. See the review at TGTBTU. Not one of my best review haiku. Not the best book either.

Heads up! Lisabea's got a contest. For a signed copy of Demon Night by Meljean Brook, no less. Advance word seems to be that it's as good as Demon Angel and Demon Moon, two of my favorites of 2007. Brook really stands out with her wonderful characterization, great dialogue, and dashes of humor. Worth checking out, and enter the contest!