Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic 50 Book Challenge 2011

Trying to catch up...

15. Dead in the Family - Charlaine Harris

The latest Sookie paperback. I'd love the latest hardback, but I'm trying to be consistant on the bindings. Maybe I need to start hitting the library again.

16. Bet Me - Jennifer Cruisie
17. Faking It - Jennifer Cruisie

A friend got me started on her books. I love the quirky characters, but the stream of consciousness writing can be a bit interesting. Holy run-on sentences, Batman!

18. Valentine's Delights - Meryl Sawyer, Kate Hoffman, Gina Wilkins

Just a short story re-read. Yeah, I'm trying to bump up my reading numbers a bit!

#14 House Rules by Jodi Picoult
Excellent story about a kid with Asperger's accused of murder.

#28 - "Everything's Eventual" by Stephen King

#29 - "The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane" by Katherine Howe

19. Once Smitten / Twice Shy - Darlene Gardner
20. If the Shoe Fits - Samantha Connolly / Designs On Jake - Dorien Kelly (Both are Harlequin Duets.. 2 stories in one book)
Sweet Liar - Jude Deveraux

#59 Fatal Secrets - Allison Brennan
#60 The Prey - Allison Brennan
#61 The Hunt - Allison Brennan
#62 The Kill - Allison Brennan

Having loaded a whole pile of books to my Kindle, I was in the mood for some lightweight thriller/romance and these fit the bill nicely.

This is one of the things I most enjoy about the Kindle, that I can have a whole selection of books available to me at the click of a button in varying genres to suit my reading mood of the moment.

#63 Coraline - Neil Gaiman
#64 Stardust - Neil Gaiman

I'd wanted to catch up with these two for a while and enjoyed them both very much. Coraline was a much simpler tale than I was expecting, but none the worse for it and Stardust differed quite significantly from the movie, but that was all to the good, too. I loved the movie but wasn't disappointed that the book took a different path here and there.

#65 Orchid Blues - Stuart Wood
#66 Blood Orchid - Stuart Wood
#67 Reckless Abandon - Stuart Wood
#68 Iron Orchid - Stuart Wood
#69 Hothouse Orchid - Stuart Wood

Catching up with the rest of the Holly Barker novels. Nice, easy reading that's not too taxing on the brain. I'm kind of disappointed I've read the last of these.

#70 Under the Lake - Stuart Woods

For some reason, I wasn't expecting this departure from his more well-known thrillers to be up to much, but I found it to be one of the best ghost stories I've read in a while. Kept me guessing right to the end and was satisfyingly spooky at points. I'd like to see more in this genre from Woods.

#71 To Defy A King - Elizabeth Chadwick

I've read a couple of Chadwick's historial novels previously and much enjoyed them. This wasn't one of them. The problem with simply following one woman's life was that it was a fairly boring life. Nothing much of note happened, she got married, she had babies...my diary would be more interesting than this. Very disappointing. But it wouldn't stop me reading more Chadwick novels if I came across them in the future.

#72 The Red Queen - Philippa Gregory

This was more like it. The story of Margaret Beaufort - mother to Henry Tudor/Henry VII. It suffers a little from being told from the heroine's pov, which leads to a lot of us being told about events and battles secondhand, as the heroine learns of them, rather than viewing them, since she isn't on the scene to directly witness them. But still a fascinating peek into medieval times, filled with all kinds of horrifying ways women were tortured. The terrifying habit of tossing a pregnant woman in a blanket to 'move things along' if she was enduring a difficult labour. The Holy Church actually formally decreeing that if it came down to a choice between baby and mother that the mother was to be sacrificed every time. Women being forced to attend church and confess to the 'sin' of childbirth after they had their baby...it was a fun time, clearly! A disturbing insight into just how cheaply female lives were held at that time.

LabRat

Labby, I am going to try the Allison Brennan books. My library doesn't have them and I share books with my mother, so I'll get them used on Amazon. I hate paying more to get a book to put on my Kindle.
I haven't been listing my books on here this year. I have been reading mostly the JD Robb, Death series books, when I'm not reading fanfic on my Kindle. LOL
Sue

I particularly enjoyed the Prey/Hunt/Kill trilogy, Sue. Brennan is one of those authors who will have a peripheral character in one novel who then becomes the main character in the next, which I quite enjoy, and that was very much the theme of this trilogy.

LabRat

#15 All Clear by Connie Willis
A long ride but well worth it. Very moving ending.

#1 The Essential Book of Useless Information: The Most Unimportant Things You'll Never Need To Know
Pretty interesting stuff overall. Some facts were dumb, others were cool. Some were surprising and some I already knew.

#2 Dexter Is Delicious
One of the better Dexter books, IMHO. I enjoyed the evolution of his character in this book and cheered his attempts to humanize himself further. But it lacked the "thrill of the hunt" element, as Dexter really doesn't do much killing in this one. And the ending left something to be desired. Still, the idea of cannibals was interesting and it was nice to see Deb struggle (and ultimately come to some "terms" with) who Dexter really is - a serial killer. It was also nice to see an old character resurface and wonder about what their intentions are and where their loyalties lay. The more I read about Rita, the happier I am that the show smartened up her character - the author does a grave disservice to the character and the reader alike in writing her as an airhead that cannot string together a complete and concise sentence.

#3 The Eye Of The World: The Wheel Of Time Book 1
Not the best book ever but entertaining nonetheless. I still continued reading the series.

#4 The Great Hunt: The Wheel Of Time Book 2
Still not over impressed with the story, but compelled enough to move onto the next book.

#5 The Dragon Reborn: The Wheel Of Time Book 3
I didn't even bother finishing this one(got within the last 100 pages). The author spends too much time on minor details that don't matter in the least, bogging down the writing until I just didn't care about the over-arching story anymore.

That's one of the biggest complaints I've heard about the Wheel of Time series. I'm surprised, though. Most people make it to the 5th or 6th book before they get too bogged down. (Says the person who not only has read all the books out, but had to reread through 7-11 so she could remember what happened before reading 12...)

RJ was definitely guilty of that. But I fell in love with enough of his characters and was (mostly) enthralled enough by the story to get over it. At least until book 7. After that, I started to get ticked off with how much padding there was and how obviously RJ was dragging things out to get more books out of the series.

I have the last 3 books to get to yet - like you, Karen, I'm going to have to read through again just so I'm up to speed, otherwise I'm going to be completely lost.

LabRat

While I'm here:

#73 The White Queen – Phillipa Gregory

As this one covers the same events as its companion, much of the tension and suspense are gone. But it was interesting all the same to see things from a different perspective – in this case Elizabeth Woodville (mother of the Princes in the Tower) and the York side of things, rather than the Lancaster.

#74 Summer of Night
#75 A Winter Haunting

Both by Dan Simmons. I really enjoyed these two. The first was very reminiscent of Stephen King's It - which is my favourite King novel - so I loved it for that and it's sequel, though a little less intense, was still very spooky. I thought the second ended a little too abruptly though and with a lot of questions unanswered.

#76 Caught - Harlen Coben

LabRat

Oh thank God isn't just me making that complaint! I know that the books are pretty popular.

Labby, Are you a speed reader? It usually takes me about 2 days for a book if I really work at it, but you seem to just whiz right through them.

LOL - Kindle seems to have taken off the restraints. I don't have to force myself to read a book slowly anymore so that I don't get through it too fast and run out of something to read. I can just read at my own pace and that pace does seem to be fairly fast these days. I'm quite surprising myself with how quickly I'm running through a book these days, now that I have an almost infinite number of books waiting to be read and don't have to rein myself in.

Plus I have plenty of free time on hand, so I can pretty much spend all the time I want on reading.

LabRat

#30 - "The Third Angel" by Alice Hoffman

#31 - "Midnight Cravings" a collection of six short stories by Michele Hauf, Karen Whiddon, Lori Devoti, Anna Leonard, Vivi Anna and Bonnie Vanak

#32 - "Bad Girls of the Bible" by Liz Curtis Higgs

#33 - "Who Needs a Superhero? Finding Virtue, Vice, and What's Holy in the Comics" by H. Michael Brewer

#34 - "My French Whore" by Gene Wilder (yes, THAT Gene Wilder)

#35 - "The Woman Who Wouldn't" also by Gene Wilder

#77 Presumed Guilty
#78 The Apprentice
#79 The Surgeon
#80 Never Say Die
#81 Vanish
#82 Peggy Sue Got Murdered

All by Tess Gerritson. Some of them from her former incarnation as a writer of romantic suspense and a couple from her current incarnation as a writer of much harder thrillers. I enjoyed them all. The romances were a little more lightweight, of course, but none the worse for that. Just quicker to get through.

Gerritson was a doctor before she became an author and it shows in her work. I often find I have to skip pages of very gruesome and minute details of post mortems in her thrillers, which for me is just TMI, but that's the only downside!

I'm kind of disappointed more of her books aren't currently available to me as I'd have been happy just continuing to read more from her right now.

Still, onward and upward. Plenty of other authors waiting for me.


LabRat

#16 The Maze Runner by James Dashner.
My son was very excited about this book and insisted I read it. It's an intriguing premise though it ends with more questions than it started with.

Joan