I spent Monday home with a stomach bug, so I read quite a bit:
The Twelve Kingdoms: Skies of Dawn by Fuyumi Ono (REREAD) (YA, fantasy, epic)
This is some of my favorite Twelve Kingdoms material. There are more characters than in the first arcs which can make it confusing, but I love how all the viewpoint characters in this series start out as horrible people and personal journey themselves into awesomeness. The introductory sections can drag a bit but the coup against corrupt officials is super-exciting (especially once you know who is taking part in it). I'm not usually a shipper, but I'm all for Shoukei x Kantai like woah. She's a former princess! He's a general who's sometimes a bear! Together they're all about piggyback rides and doing the dishes together, awww.
Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews (REREAD) (urban paranormal)
This series is a cure for all the overpowered, hyper-sexy paranormal romance heroines out there. Yes, Kate is powerful, but she gets hurt an awful lot, sometimes doing stupid things. The worldbuilding and magic are well thought out, and there are plenty of interesting secondary characters.
Magic Bleeds by Ilona Andrews (REREAD) (urban paranormal)
Read two in a row, just because I had the time and could. :P
Monday, August 30, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Tudors in the Privy
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| Henry VIII, non-sexy flavor |
(REREAD) Henry VIII: The King and His Court by Alison Weir
I'll admit to keeping a book in the bathroom just in case, but I'm not camping out in there like a guy. The ideal bathroom book has to be something that you can pick up and put down at anytime and still be entertained, and this 600+ page biography fits the bill. Filled not just with the facts of Henry's life, it also covers what life was like for those at the royal court. Some of my favorite details were things like the rules the had to set down for behavior: No peeing on the floor, No drawing a penis on the wall. The more things change, huh?
It's also interesting to see how overwhelmingly positive people were at the start of Henry's reign and how as he aged they became less optimistic. Henry was pretty much like the second coming until he started divorcing queens and breaking with the church. There's some nice coverage of all the palaces built during his reign, though not all of them have survived to the present day. This is a book to reread whenever you feel like going back in time to learn about a different way of life.
Read a Comic in Public Day
Reading "Saint Young Men," a totally cracked out manga. Jesus and Buddha are living as 20-something roommates in Tokyo- watch as they visit Disneyland, go the pool and more!
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Ohisashiburi
Felt like blogging and remembered this was here.
Read this week:
(REREAD) Emissaries from the Dead by Adam-Troy Castro. I had forgotten how violent the opening to the book is, but I enjoyed revisiting the huge artificial world One One One and its sloth-like inhabitants. Although Andrea has a violent past she doesn't spend too much time either angsting over it or excusing herself due to circumstances. I'd like to know more about how the universe operates, and see a wider variety of people who are working in indentured servitude.
(NEW READ) I also read Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, but don't want to say too much to avoid spoilers. In the end I felt that any character that DID NOT come out of the book with horrible PTSD was a bad person. When I finished I was actually shaking, not sure if it was the book or the one session reading I gave it.
On the radar:
Scandal by Carolyn Jewel - Need to finish this one. Heard about it when people started muttering that it should have won the RITA for best historical. That seemed unusual in the romance communities I frequent (where most people try to avoid acting like dicks) so I figured this book must have been really something. Enjoying it so far, just put it down for other things.
Grass by Sheri S. Tepper - SST's book often come across as way to didactic for me, but I keep returning to Grass. I love the setting so much, even the crazy giant church that runs the Earth (where the important stuff is in the basement and the peons all live in the soaring architectural towers). Grass just takes me away to another place.
Read this week:
(REREAD) Emissaries from the Dead by Adam-Troy Castro. I had forgotten how violent the opening to the book is, but I enjoyed revisiting the huge artificial world One One One and its sloth-like inhabitants. Although Andrea has a violent past she doesn't spend too much time either angsting over it or excusing herself due to circumstances. I'd like to know more about how the universe operates, and see a wider variety of people who are working in indentured servitude.
(NEW READ) I also read Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins, but don't want to say too much to avoid spoilers. In the end I felt that any character that DID NOT come out of the book with horrible PTSD was a bad person. When I finished I was actually shaking, not sure if it was the book or the one session reading I gave it.
On the radar:
Scandal by Carolyn Jewel - Need to finish this one. Heard about it when people started muttering that it should have won the RITA for best historical. That seemed unusual in the romance communities I frequent (where most people try to avoid acting like dicks) so I figured this book must have been really something. Enjoying it so far, just put it down for other things.
Grass by Sheri S. Tepper - SST's book often come across as way to didactic for me, but I keep returning to Grass. I love the setting so much, even the crazy giant church that runs the Earth (where the important stuff is in the basement and the peons all live in the soaring architectural towers). Grass just takes me away to another place.
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