Book stats – August 2014

Here are my book stats for August 2014!

Books I read:

The Spark and the Flame (Constantine Vol. 1 The New 52) by Jeff Lemire, Ray Fawkes ★★★
Gods Among Us (Injustice: Vol. 1) by Tom Taylor ★★★
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Edward Connell ★★★
Sentence of Marriage (Promises to Keep: Book 1) by Shayne Parkinson ★★★
Jasmine Plays Her Hand (Fantasy Guild No. 1) by Anwen Stiles ★★★★
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco ★★★
Like Water for Chocolate (Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies) by Laura Esquivel ★★★
Until You (Fall Away Series) by Penelope Douglas ★★★★★

 

I have read 8 books this month – less than I wanted but this was a busy month for me

DNF? (Did Not Finish) Had two DNF – I ran out of time

1 stars: None as usual, but had no 2 stars either!

 I had one five star read this month Until You (Fall Away Series) by Penelope Douglas

Genres: historical romance, historical mystery, contemporary romance, erotica, graphic novel, SF and fantasy, mystery

1. Were you happy with the amount you read?
I like to keep my reading score above 10 per month so this was below my goal. I had planned to read twelve books for August. I read eight and I’m in the process of reading two more. It was a busy month and I ran out of time.

Reading in progress:

Fly Me to the Moon by Alyson Noël

Kingdom Come by Mark Waid (Author), Alex Ross (Artist), Todd Klein (Calligrapher)

2. If you had a 5 star read, what was it and why?
My 5 star read for August is Until You (Fall Away Series) by Penelope Douglas. It is second book in the series and I loved character interactions. It was YA steamy drama and I liked that about it as well! I will continue to read this series in ebook form and will get to reading next book in line when I buy it!

3. If you had a 1 or 2 star read, what was it and why?
I had no 1 or 2 stars books in August. Most of my reading was plain OK for the genre in question.

4. Any new book boyfriends?
None this month – this may be part of the reason why I haven’t reached my reading goals!

5. Any new jerks?

James aka Jimmy from Sentence of Marriage (Promises to Keep: Book 1) by Shayne Parkinson! That’s just a real a$$hole and jerk! I had a horrible time even reading about him in the books since it was plain to see what kind of character he is from the start! UGH! Also his sister Susannah was quite a jerkette as well!

6. Did you start any new series?
Woah I started 4 new series this month…how did that happen?

There were two graphic novel series

The Spark and the Flame (Constantine Vol. 1 The New 52) by Jeff Lemire, Ray Fawkes – I would like to continue

AND

Gods Among Us (Injustice: Vol. 1) by Tom Taylor

One was historical romance series

Sentence of Marriage (Promises to Keep: Book 1) by Shayne Parkinson

I’m curious to continue

and the last one was erotic romance series

Jasmine Plays Her Hand (Fantasy Guild No. 1) by Anwen Stiles

which was a fun read I might continue.

7. Did you find any new authors that you loved?
No new authors but Penelope Douglas moved to favorite authors !

8. Any book you would recommend?
Fall Away Series by Penelope Douglas for all who love good drama YA series with steamy romance see more about it HERE
and
Fantasy Guild series by Anwen Stiles for some fun sexy reading

See books two and three!

   

Random BOOKPILE POOL results!

Two weeks have passed since I posted a Random BOOKPILE POOL.

Here are the results:

The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group by Catherine Jinks       41.67%  (5 votes)  

Death of a Darklord by Laurell K. Hamilton                                   25%  (3 votes)

Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman                                                        25%  (3 votes)  

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu                                                8.33%  (1 votes) 

Real World by Natsuo Kirino                                                                      0%  (0 votes)  

Total Votes: 12

We have a winner:

The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group by Catherine Jinks

When Tobias Richard Vandevelde wakes up in hospital with no memory of the night before, his horrified mother tells him that he was found unconscious.

At Featherdale Wildlife Park.

In a dingo pen.

I bumped it up to my September reading list and the review is going to follow 🙂

I wish to thank all who voted and hope for you to continue participate in my future pools.

I have several ideas and next will be posted soon!

Read comics in public day AUGUST 28!

Today is the day to read comic books in public!

Use the last nice days before school starts to go for a picnic and bring with you some comic books!

These are my friends reading comic books in public with me.

 

Thank you all for participating and hope to have more days like this.

Thank you sweetheart for making it happen!

 

Here are some really cool places you can read your comics today:

http://comicsalliance.com/read-comics-in-public-day-2011/

Have a nice day everyone!

Book review: UNTIL YOU

Last night I had forgone sleep in favor of finishing a book!

I finished reading Until You by Penelope Douglas. This novel is a part of a Fall Away series. First one was called Bully. Bully was a random reading pick I bought on Kindle for 0.99$. It was a wonderful surprise. That was over a year ago. Last month I bought Until you and decided to read Bully again. It turned out even better than I remembered.

This is YA series for mature audiences.

Main characters are two friends who live next door to each other – Tatum and Jared. Both of them live with a single parent. One summer when they are thirteen Jared goes to visit his father. When he comes back their relationship changes and Jared starts bullying Tatum any chance he gets. He goes above an beyond to make her life miserable. From spreading nasty rumors about her to open humiliations in public.

Everything changes when Tatum after years of this treatment goes away for a year to France. She comes back for a senior year of high school with determination to stop being a victim of her former best friend. She starts fighting back.

 

Bully is written from Tatum’s POV (point of view) and Until You is written from Jared’s POV.

Until You follows the same events as the first novel but we see it from different point of view. Even though I knew most of the story, reading Until You had my attention in full! Both characters follow their own line of thinking and it is interesting to read how those two interact.

There is a lot of sexual tension between the two and whole series is charged with it.

Few scenes had my eyes blurry from tears and the whole experience was engaging. There were quite a few memorable scenes and that alone is a big plus since I find most of YA high school novels like movies of the same topic to recycle same stuff in a boring way.

 

Next book in the series is Rival.

It tells the story of Madoc.

Madoc is Jared’s best friend.

His rival is his step sister…

 

Newest book for this series is announced for January 2015.

It is called Falling Away and the main protagonist is K.C. – Tatum’s best friend.

 

More books for my wishlist!

Book review: COMO AGUA PARA CHOCOLATE

Two days ago I read a book by Mexican author Laura Esquivel. It was written in the nineties and it made authors debut.

Original title is Como aqua para chocolate and it serves as phrase to explain someone who is angry. English translation is Like Water for Chocolate.

I read it in translation to Croatian Kao voda za čokoladu. The cover illustration was made by Igor Kordej. It is a picture of a woman looking trough a kitchen window at a sight of a naked woman running from a man riding a horse. This is a scene from the book!

 

This is a novel about love and food. The best way I can describe it is by calling it phantasmagoric and above all spicy!

Main protagonist of the story is a young woman named Tita (short for Josefita de la Garza) who is passionate about her cooking. Story follows her life from birth into her growth as a woman. There are some historical elements hidden among magical realism anecdotes trough the story. As a youngest daughter she gets stuck with upholding a family tradition to never marry but care for her mother all her life. Her first love is called Pedro. Pedro marries Tita’s oldest sister Rosaura just to be closer to Tita.

Tita battles her dreams and desires with duties and traditions. Whole book is made out of twelve chapters. Each chapter is named by a month and they form a 12 month cycle for a whole year. Before each chapter there is a recipe for a dish. Before one chapter there is even a recipe for homemade matches! Each recipe brings out the theme of the chapter. Some chapters are quite magical. Tita has the ability to make magical things happen with her cooking for good and bad.

Titas life is filled with drama and oppression and she uses her considerable cooking skills to express her love and pain. With the recipes comes the explanations for preparations of food. Most of them are done the hard way, like peeling the skins of walnuts for hours just to make sure the dish ends up sweet enough!

I was moved and touched by how the author presented the drama and hardships that are part of life. There is cruelty and violence in the book but aside the first mentions the characters don’t dwell on it much. There are things that need to be done, chores to finish. Life gives you immediate things that need to be done.

It speaks for the undeniable truth of life: IT GOES ON!

I couldn’t help but notice how much flavor was in the recipes that were presented in the book. Most of them had pepper and onions for ingredients!

There is a movie version as well and I plan to see it!

 

Book series continuation WISHLIST

These are books from series I read that are on my “TO BUY LIST”

(These are up on the “to buy” priority list…the list is …long…very long…)

THE HOLLOWS SERIES by Kim Harrison

EVER AFTER – book 11 

THE UNDEAD POOL – book 12

THE WITCH WITH NO NAME – book 13

MERCY THOMPSON by Patricia Briggs

NIGHT BROKEN – book 8 

ALPHA AND OMEGA by Patricia Briggs

DEAD HEAT – book 4

IMMORTALS AFTER DARK by Kresley Cole

DARK SKYE – book 15

MERRY GENTRY by Laurell K. Hamilton

SHIVER OF LIGHT – book 9

IRON DRUID CHRONICLES by Kevin Hearne

SHATTERED – book 7

SOUTHERN VAMPIRE MYSTERIES by Charlaine Harris

DEADLOCKED – book 12

DEAD EVER AFTER – book 13

LUX by Jennifer L. Armentrout

ORIGIN  – book 4

OPPOSITION – book 5

Patricia Briggs book series I love and own

I read quite a bit of UF (Urban fantasy) genre. UF book series make for interesting and fast paced reading time with just enough action and excellent storytelling.

One of my favorite authors is Patricia Briggs.What made me love this author is a wonderful array of creatures and troubles that come with them.

I read, love and own two of her book series:

Mercy Thompson book series

So far there are eight books in the series. I own first seven and the last one Night Broken is on my wishlist!

The main character is shape shifter mechanic Mercedes Thompson.

Mercy Thompson’s life is not exactly normal. Her next-door neighbor is a werewolf. Her former boss is a gremlin. And she’s fixing a VW bus for a vampire. But then, Mercy isn’t exactly normal herself.

Mercy is an inspiring strong female leading character. She is suprisingly down to earth and easy to relate to. There are some love interests for her in the books but they enrich the storyline.

There is also a graphic novel version of the series which is also on my wishlist!

Let me just say this again: she is ubrecool awesome female character!

Alpha and Omega book series

This series has three books and the fourth one Dead Heat is announced for next year!

This book series is running in sync with Mercy Thompson series. They are both in the same world but written from different characters point of view.

Here, main character is a female werewolf Anna. This book series was also known as Anna and Charles, introducing two main characters.

 Anna never knew werewolves existed until the night she survived a violent attack…and became one herself. After three years at the bottom of the pack, she’d learned to keep her head down and never, ever trust dominant males. But Anna is that rarest kind of werewolf: an Omega.

This series started out with short novella which came out in paperback in On the Prowl short story collection and as a single eBook novella.

Story starts with some political werewolf pack intrigue and continues with love relationship of the two main characters. It is mostly centered on werewolves and their traditions.

Here’s what graphic novel version looks like:

There is also a short story collection edition Shifting Shadows by the same author. Stories are set in the world of both book series.

What drew me to this author are some book recommendations and really awesome book cover art! They are all made by the same author Daniel Dos Santos. It kinda bugged me first that artist decided to make Mercy’s tattoos different on each book cover. But now it makes for some nice variations!

These are great stories and great characters. I strongly recommend them to every one who wants to read something really really cool!

Here is what they look like on my shelf! Notice the artwork on the spines!

 

Wishlist presentation – Anita Blake series

I have been a fan of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake Vampire Hunter book series for over a decade. I have purchased first 4 books as a box set.

It is a really cool coffin like box set. It has a removable top. And I really like the box design. The rose reminds me of the book design of Vampire the masquerade PNP setting I used to love playing.

This is what the box set looks like on my shelf:

 

There are these hardcover edition I wanted to own ever since I saw them years ago. For me they are highly prized collectible editions.

  

 

They were printed by Guild America Book club. First two were printed in 1997. Third was printed in 1998. And the last one was printed in 2005. For someone living in a small EU country they are kinda hard to attain.

The cost of shipping sometimes surpasses the prices of the books! And I’m poor!

 

They are all omnibus editions.

Club Vampyre contains first three books in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series: Guilty Pleasures, The Laughing Corpse and Circus of the Damned.

The Midnight Cafe contains next three books: The Lunatic Cafe, Bloody Bones and The Killing Dance.

Black Moon Inn contains books seven and eight: Burnt Offerings and Blue Moon.

Nightshade Tavern is the last of the omnibus editions that was published as such and contains books nine and ten: Obsidian Butterfly and Narcissus in Chains.

The cover art was made by Luis Royo whose artwork is nicely dark and sensual.

See some of Luis Royo art

Random BOOKPILE POOL

There are so many books I want to read and I can’t find the time to read them all.

Some of the books I want to read I buy and then store for later. Then they end up on the shelf and wait for me to get the time to read them. After a while I even forgot why I wanted to read them and the dust settles on them.

To make matters worse I have shopping sprees on my tablet with the Kindle application.

End result is that while my walls are nicely sound proofed and warm proofed for the winter THEY ARE CLUTTERED with random paper books.

This is why I decided to make a pool out of 5 random paper books from my bookshelves and the one that gets picked goes on the reading list for the next month.

For this FIRST RANDOM BOOKPILE POOL I decided to weed out some of the books I wanted to read few times and then skipped out on them for one reason or other. After I read the book that has been picked on the pool I will post a review.

Here is what the pile looks like:

Death of a Darklord by Laurell K. Hamilton is a Ravenloft novel. It is a horror story by one of my favorite authors. Most of her work is spiced up with supernatural and kinky elements and I expect the same from this one.

The reason I want to read it: I’m reading two UF series by this author and would like to see how good is she when writing standalone novels like this one.

Real World by Natsuo Kirino is a Japanese writer that has coined her own genre called feminist noir. I’m interested in Japanese cultural quirks and this novel seemed like interesting enough to read. I got it on sale so that was also a factor and the reason I own a paper copy.

The reason I want to read it: I don’t read many contemporary and modern author novels and this will be a nice change of pace from UF and romance genre I’ve been reading a lot lately

The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group by Catherine Jinks is YA novel I got on sale. My boss made a joke that I had to read it and after a few laughs I decided to get it.

The reason I want to read it: I find the title to be funny and interesting. It fits well with some other books I read and liked. Also I’m looking forward to the YA supernatural drama!

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu is one of the oldest novels in history. That it has been written by a female is an added bonus! It offers insightful look into 11th century Japan aristocracy.

The reason I want to read it: It is filled with social observations on Japanese cultural and social observations from millennium ago and that alone is fascinating enough!

Transman of Gor by John Norman is novel written in the 1966. It is first of 33 books in the series called Chronicles of Gor. The reviews on how bad this series is are many. Most comments are on the account its likeness with Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian series published fifty years before (1917). Also one of the most commented things about these books is obsession with degradation of women throughout the series.

The reason I want to read it: I had to see for myself is it as bad as those who read it claim to be.

Casual player – Hearthstone

I was coerced into playing this game by my boyfriend!

And now I’m a casual player of Hearthstone.

Basically it is an online strategy card game by Blizzard Entertainment. And the last game from Blizzard I liked to play way Diablo 2.

I played it like a maniac for about 7 years without getting bored with it…yeah not sure what that says about me….

Hearthstone has its perks for casual players and there are few things I really like about it. I already said it is a strategy card game. It also has 9 different classes based type of card decks you can play with. Every class is represented by a character hero from World of Warcraft.

I’ve already established that I’m not good with some classes and better with others.

Every deck has 30 cards and when you run out of them the game starts to damage you every time you need to replace a card. There is a maximum of 2 same cards per deck in normal and ranked play with the exception of legendary cards where the limit is 1.

Here is an example of a legendary card.

Some cards are limited to certain classes and some are playable by any class

I have some favorites and cards I find adorable. I put them in almost every class deck contrary to advice I get no to.

These are my two favorites:

One of the funny things about this game is every time you play a certain card there is a sound accompanying it. Many thuds, squeals and cheers.

like the sound when a type of creature called Murloc makes when it enters the game

What I as a player consider one of the best things about this game is minimum opportunity for harassment from other players. By this I mean that there is no chat option between random players who are, after all, total strangers playing a game online. There will not be situation where some other player can get abusive or insulting during a game.

Most of social interaction during a game are 6 greetings and comments a player can pick to say. And even those can be turned off!