We just talked about book budgeting, so now, let's talk about what we're reading and tempt everyone around us with more book purchases! Makes total sense, right?
Right now, I'm reading Big Sky Country by Linda Lael Miller, thanks to the sale last weekend and the continued sale this week (eek!). I don't know why I haven't read Miller before, but so far, I'm enjoying it, particularly because she sets up the conflicts and the characters very quickly, and doesn't spend a lot of time convincing me that Parable, Montana, is the best small town that ever was small and also a town in the history of small or smallish towns and townships. The place is sort of established through the characters – and there are five so far: a hero and heroine for this book, plus a future hero and heroine for the next book, and a heroine for the third book.
I really like character-driven contemporary, especially characters who have very, very low bullshit thresholds, and this book, so far, is working for me.
I also read a memoir recently, Paris Letters by Janice MacLeod, which was also a Kindle Daily Deal. This is a blog-to-book memoir about a woman who realizes she hates her life and her job in LA, and asks herself, How much does it cost to quit your job? After downsizing and saving, she quit the job that made her miserable, and set off for two years through Europe. While in Paris, she met a hot Polish butcher who didn't speak English, and after a bit more travel, returned to Paris, and from there figured out what she wanted in life.
I thought it was really charming and lovely: it combines a semi-insider's look at Paris with all the accompanying culture shock and confusion of not being a native Parisian. Sometimes it seemed solutions to problems came far too easily, but it was a pleasure to travel through this book. And it wasn't until the end that I realized that MacLeod and I shared the same editor at Sourcebooks. Shana Drehs has great taste (and I say that with no intentions to compliment myself because Drehs inherited my manuscript, poor thing, from another editor). Paris Letters has gotten me back on a travel memoir craving, so I'm searching out more of them.
What about you? What are you reading? Looking for a recommendation? Any books you think readers here would love? Come share with us: Whatcha Reading?
After seeing the sale listed here – I am reading First Grave on the Right. Totally fun.
I’m about 85% through with Donna Kaufmann’s Sugar Rush. I’ve been reading it for almost 2 weeks (really busy) and hopefully, I’ll finish it tonight after the Orphan Black premiere. I’m also about half way done with The Profiler: My Life Hunting Serial Killers and Psychopaths by Pat Brown. It is really interesting (She accidentally ended up a profiler after she rented a room to a guy she was certain was a serial killer—after she rented him the room, obviously).
Here I am again. I thinkWicked Women of the Raj could have been so much more than a series of short reports about the women whose stories it tells, but it is just the kind of book to whet one’s appetite for more detailed books about the subject or indeed about the Raj in general.
However, after all the failed marriages and unhappy endings I felt I needed some happily-ever-after and am now halfway through Miss Wonderful by Loretta Chase. I’m sure I don’t need to extol its amazingness to anyone who’s read it, but for the rest of you: Go read it!
I’m working on staying positive, so I have nothing to say about most of the books I’m reading. I did start a Nick Harkaway book that seems very promising, and my love affair with Suzanne Brockmann continues. Thank god she has such an extensive backlist.
Ok, I did *not* intend any innuendo. I’m just talking about books, people.
I recommend from my previous month’s reading:
Fighting Love by Abby Niles ( a steamy friends to lovers story set in the sports world
Also continuing the Karen Rose romantic series. I will start #6 Count to Ten (very good, but I try not read a series back to back)
For the person who likes D. Gist, I recommend trying Karen Wittemeyer. I really her writing (not preachy, imo). I loved To Win Her Heart—she has 4-5 books out now.
Currently, reading Sale or Return Bride by Sarah Morgan (love those MOC stories) These like reading a quick category about a billionaire on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
I’m actually taking a short break from reading. For the past month, I’ve been reading great books but they aren’t captivating me as I’d like. I can observe from afar that, in a different mood, I would have Good Book Noise, but instead I merely like it. If this happened with one book, I’d just move on to the next. But it keeps happening. And it is so frustrating! I read Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and the Veronica Mars’ The Thousand Dollar Tan-Line, both of which I enjoyed a lot, but could have enjoyed more.
I think it’s a consequence of having several books in a row that I had to read on a schedule because of book clubs and library due dates. I got burnt out as books for pleasure reading piled up and now I’m a little overwhelmed. To fix this, I decided to set aside the books I was reading, Veronica Roth’s Divergent and Lisa Kleypas’s Scandal in Spring, both of which I’m enjoying, and gorge myself on TV for a week. So far it seems to be working. I had forgotten how much I enjoy binge-watching TV. Most importantly, the pressure of “You have to read this next. No this. No this looks amazing, read that!” has been lifted.
I’m midway through Fragments, the follow-up to Dan Wells’ YA Partials. Yet another plucky teenage heroine who’s The One that seems to be able to heal a dystopian future society, but it’s engrossing enough that I’m hanging in there. It’s the middle of a trilogy so we’ll see if I make it to book 3.
I just finished Trenton by Grace Burrows. I love, love, love Grace Burrows and have reread several of her books lately. Am rereading Nahlini Singh’s Psy/Changlings series. I coudln’t believe I never read Max’s story Bonds of Justice and just downloaded it. (I have a pretty large refund from Kindle that my 10 yr old grandson and I are working our way through). Just started Jennifer Ashley’s Wild Wolf. Am enjoying that series. I also am reading Susanna Kearsley’s Splendor Falls but having trouble getting into it. I have loved all her other books.
I also read Kat Latham’s Playing It Close but thought her first book much better. I read Anna Quindlen’s Still Life with Bread Crumbs which I definitely recommend (older readers might appreciate it more).
Against my better judgment I read Kirsten Ashley’s The Will. It is crack and I did finish it but muttered all the way through 🙂
I have been munching my way through the Vesper Holly adventures by Lloyd Alexander. Highly entertaining.
Also, just finished “Night Train to Memphis” and am about to re-read “Laughter of Dead Kings,” as I have concluded I do not love Vicky Bliss so well as I love Amelia Peabody, and therefore am reclaiming the bookshelf space. I can always get them on Kindle if I really really want to read them again.
Once I finish that I am going to tackle “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.” And then I have to take a break from mysterious stuff and stay with romance for a while. (I’m about to start writing a mystery & don’t want to be reading in the same genre simultaneously.) There are new titles from Mary Jo Putney and Mary Balogh on my wishlist.
A few days ago I finished Worth Dying For by Lee Child – it was good, but not in my top five Reacher books. Too much driving up and down straight roads in Nebraska, and the violence felt a little too repetitive even for Reacher.
I just finished Suzanne Brockmann’s DO OR DIE (Reluctant Heroes). I liked it a lot, but as a “big” book it had one or two too many subplots for me. I wanted more of the main couple and then for one of the secondary couples to rise above the other secondary couples more clearly in emphasis. I’m becoming a little jaded of every single person in a book being paired up, albeit at different stages of romance. Can’t anyone just be single and okay with that? Or single and looking but the perfect object of their affection is not in the book? She did a great job of keeping so many different subplots going, and keeping the story clear, but it was a lot for my tired brain. Still, I liked it. And bonus – I got some inspiration for my own writing.
Next up is either THE MASQUERADERS by Georgette Heyer or WHEN THE ROGUE RETURNS by Sabrina Jeffries. I hit the “buy two paperbacks, get one free” at Fred Meyer (like Kroger’s) when I was supposed to be shopping for Easter candy … !
And somewhere in that pile of books I have to edit my next Immortal Vikings book, so I’ll also be reading my own pages over and over and over. Sigh.
I just started Love in the Balance by Katherine Withers. Love it and only 15% of the way through the book! Doesn’t feel like a first novel. Looking forward to more.
Then I might try Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.
I’m reading an e-galley of Love, Lucy by April Lindner which is a contemporary YA retelling of A Room with a View. So far, so good. A couple weeks ago I finished The Duke’s Tattoo by Miranda Davis, which I really enjoyed. So often lighthearted Regencies rely on a kind of preciousness in the writing as an attempt at humor, but this book was genuinely funny!
I just finished discovering and glomming JF Smith who writes m/m. He’s only written 4 books, but each one caused me to emit Good Book Noise which is very rare for me. I am very annoyed that he has only written 4 books.
The first one I read, the fence and then the trees, is loaded with triggers I wouldn’t normally touch with a barge pole – it’s set in prison, and has rape, gore, abuse and violence, but somehow the author was good enough to carry me through it. But if you have trigger issues, I’d recommend not reading it. Latakia has a kidnapping by terrorists (the blurb explains it) but it’s not nearly as rough. The other two books are much sweeter. One even includes a plotmoppet. At the end of each of the 4 books I was left with an “Awwwwww!” sniff sniff. Which is Completely Unlike Me. i even ugly cried in one bit, which I don’t think I have ever done in my life. Or maybe not since reading Harriet the Spy at the age of 10.
Unraveled, by C.J. Barry. It’s the second novel in a series of really fun space adventure romances.
I just plowed through 4 of the Big Sky series books. Honestly I haven’t read what I would consider crappy little romance novels (and I don’t mean that to come off as negatively as it sounds, it’s just kind of a genre definition for me, Harlequin etc.) since probably high school, and…. I think they’ve gotten better. I’ve been getting your emails for about a month or so, and read about this series in one of them so I decided try. For whatever reason, these books are working for me right now. I like the setting in Montana, and I’ll take hot, sensitive cowboys any day of the week. All the books get tropey for sure, but for some reason Miller’s use of them doesn’t bug me so much, and she has a way with dialogue that never feels forced.