And now, the most expensive and tempting thread, wherein I ask what you're reading, and you all share and then we all buy more books because everything sounds awesome.
You ready? Credit cards in the freezer? Yeah? OK, let's do this!
Currently I'm reading Zoe Archer's last Nemesis book, Wicked Temptation ( A | BN | K ), which I'm enjoying immensely, though I'm still in the first third of the story. It took me a few tries with different books before I figured out that what my brain and imagination really wanted was historicals. So now I have five or six lined up to feast – it's FINALLY OMG THANK YOU the end of the school year here in our WTF school district, and I'm ready to sit and read and then read some more.
What about you? What are you reading currently? Would you recommend it? Share, share, please!
I’m currently reading an arc of Then Came You by Jill Shalvis and so far I’m really enjoying it. Before that I was on a magic/fantasy kick and read Ruin and Rising which was a good end to the Grisha trilogy by Leifh Barduco. I also read the third book in the Enchanted, Inc and the fourth book in the Harry Dresden series.
The other romances I’ve read recently include Never Trust a Pirate bu Anne Stuart which was a disappointment and Scandalous by Karen Robards which was just average. The Stuart book was way too similar to the first book in the series and I never bought the relationship between the hero and heroine. I thought the characters in Robard’s book were underdeveloped and the storyline was a little meh.
@ jcp, thanks a lot for the Thriftbooks.com coupon. It’s summer. No one really needs shoes in summer, right?
Just finished Rainbow Rowell’s Attachments – enjoyed it. Reminded me of the Rosie Project in the hero’s social ineptitude. It was funny, so very, very funny. Lincoln is hired by a newspaper to read company emails for seditious content Instead Lincoln finds Beth and Jennifer, two engaging women whose emails ultimately lead him to fall in love with a woman he’s never seen.
Recently finished Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate and thoroughly enjoyed the world building, characters and mysteries. On trying to order book 6 was gobsmacked to discover the series stops at #5. Shouldn’t they have to put warning labels on books, like for cigarettes?
WARNING! The Librarian General has determined that there are only five (5) books in this series. Extensive communication with the author indicates there will NEVER be more than five (5) books in this series. You Have Been Warned!
@Dibs Re: the Parasol Protectorate series
Carriger says on her site that the Finishing School series and the Custard Protocol series are set in the same world, although the Finishing School series takes place in an earlier time period and the Custard Protocol series takes place later. Good if you like the world, bad (unless there are cameos from the longer-lived characters) if what you want is more of the same characters.
@ KarenF
Thank you! I had no idea there were Veronica Mars books. (Still living and reading under my rock.) So I scooped up that book on sale.
I’ve been in a bit of a “meh” period with books. So have been re-reading some favourites (Shelly Laurenston) and listening to Georgette Heyer whilst doing some long drives on the freeway.
I’m waiting for the new Thea Harrison novella – Pia Saves The Day – which releases tomorrow. Guess I’ll have Veronica for company until then.
@ Dibs
Totally agree there should be such warnings!
Just finished After All by Jill Marie Landis. Enjoyable! Up next is The Scandalous Miss Howard by Nan Ryan.
@Francesca
I loved Fangirl too – and I don’t normally like YA or NA so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
I just finished Count on Me by Lauren Dane… I’m so sad about the fact that I found it really disappointing. I don’t know whether her writing style has changed or if I just remembered it being better than it actually was (maybe my serious love of Brody Brown had blinded me), but it really didn’t do it for me. Before that I was reading the Naughty Bits series by Joey W Hill – thanks to Redheadedgirl’s review – and loved them for the same reasons that she did.
Currently reading Written in My Own Heart’s Blood by Diana Gabaldon and Cowboy Take Me Away by Lorelei James. I don’t usually have two books on the go at a time, but the former is like 20 hours long or something according to my Kindle so it’s my bus read. So far I’m enjoying both but I’m impatient and do find myself wanting someone to just tell me what happens in the Outlander one already!
Read and loved My Own Hearts Blood by Gabaldon, it was awesome. I felt it flowed really well and it didn’t end on horrible cliffhanger like the last one. I can’t believe I have to wait another 4 or 5 years for the next!
I also just finished Pat Conroy’s memoir “Death of Santini” and all I can say is WOW. His family did not put the “fun” in dysfunctional, it was just dysfunctional—quite horribly so at times. I also think it shows how much we as humans need the love of our parents and will forgive them the worst excesses for that love. All I can say is thank god for my family, we had our own dysfunctions, but all in all we’re pretty cool and don’t have to forgive each other too awfully much.
I’m currently reading The Collector by Queen Nora, but finding it only OK, not a real page turner. I am experiencing a lot of NYC apartment lust reading about the digs the house sitter gets to use as part of her job.
However, I’m on my way to the library to pick up the latest Jim Butcher “Harry Dresden” novel. Can’t wait to start that!
And thanks to Shannon for the kind words re: The Pirate’s Secret Baby. It’s much appreciated!
I’ve read a lot of Kristen Ashley but had never read any of the Rock Chick series so, when they went on sale recently, I went on a total glom. I have to say I mostly like them but am uncomfortable with issues of consent. A couple of them felt like rapetastic Old Skool romances in a modern-day setting. Even though the women were saying no it was ok for the men to go-ahead because of course she really wanted it. I wish there had been a more explicit statement of consent from the women before the men proceeded to “give her the business”
@CelineB, I recently read “Scandalous” and was surprised to find it had a 2001 copyright date. It seemed very Old Skool (both for the coercive way the hero took advantage of proximity to grope the heroine and for the nearly complete absence of the hero’s POV). I guess Karen Robards’ writing style has not changed much over the decades.
@Dibs & LG, I started reading the first book in the Finishing School series last month (but then got distracted by other books), and a young Sidheag (Lady Kingair) is a character. She was sent to finishing school because the male werewolves raising her don’t really know what to do with a human girl. I read an interview with Gail Carriger in which she mentioned that Lord Akadelma (sp?) appears in all three series. So, there are definitely cameos from at least some of the long-lived characters.
I’m reading Sugar in the Blood, A Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire, by Andrea Stuart, for research for the second book in my fantasy trilogy. This is a highly readable family history that begins in Barbados with an English immigrant, George Ashby, in 1630. The author is his descendant, as well as the descendant of the slaves who ultimately worked the sugar plantations on the island. Very compelling, and my head is going splodey with the possibilities.
As for fiction, I’m finishing another historical fantasy that quite coincidentally also involved the Caribbean, Prodigal Spell by Lillian Archer. She describes it on magicalwords.net as, “My book, Prodigal Spell, is a historical fantasy set in 1790s London and the Caribbean at the height of British colonial expansion. It is the story of Julia Richmond, a London society wife, who is hiding her witchcraft from her husband, her friends, and the church. She must choose between the man she loves or a heritage she detests before a demon kills her father. It is a story about severely fractured people and relationships hiding in a historical fantasy.” It’s very good.
I just finished reading a lovely short story Remember When by Annabeth DenBoer (a pen name for Grace Draven). It’s a contemporary romance, and I really enjoyed it. It’s a second chance romance, and that’s my personal catnip, so I definitely recommend it.
I just started reading Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran, which is a Victorian era novel. It pulled me right in within the first few pages, and so far, it’s a wonderful book.
Red Adam’s Lady is a keeper for me—so much so that I bought it in hardback when it first came out. Really good details on running a castle. I only wish it were available in ebook format. As far as I can tell, Grace Ingram has only another historical out there—Gilded Spurs. Anyone know anything about the author?
@Joy, that’s one of the things I love about Red Adam’s Lady; medieval castle keeping porn, and the heroine is very good at it. According to the comments on the review at Dear
Author, Ingrams real name is Doris Sutcliffe Adams. She wrote several books under that name, all virtually unobtainable. http://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/draft-red-adams-lady-by-grace-ingram/
I’m just about to start Part VII of the Kraken King by Meljean Brooks. I told myself I was going to wait until it was published as a whole book, then I thought “well, why don’t I just read the first part and see if it’s any good”.
So, yes, I’ve now downloaded the whole lot. It really is a fantastic read…
I just finished Assassin’s Gambit and was so very pleasantly surprised by it! I had some plot twists in my head that didn’t actually happen that might have made it deeper, but even as a surface romp it was a lot of fun and I plan to read more if there are more in that series. Heh.
I’m still listening to Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter books on audiobook and they’re still fantastic. The narrator has really brought people to life for me and I want to re-read the books because I am finding I totally get different things from them depending on what media I use.
I’m also finding that after having recently being diagnosed with PTSD I am now seeing it in EVERY BOOK EVERYWHERE and had no idea, and am impressed by how many authors are handling the symptoms etc without actually ever coming out and saying “And they had this”. It’s been really eye-opening and incredibly therapeutic. I mean, if favourite characters of mine have PTSD and they’re doing awesome and working through it, I can too, right?
I’ve been suffering from Restless Reader’s Syndrome with a bunch of half finished novels lying doggo on my Kindle. The other thing I’ve been doing is blowing off my homework, so to speak. I signed up for a RITA Reader’s Challenge review and barely finished the book (which I’d fortunately read before) in time to write the review. I have Skin Game out from the library, but I’ve been playing Chinese jump rope with it—you know, dipping my toe in, then skipping out. I totally blew off my mystery book club’s most recent read; I figured I’d get away with it because I read it before, but you can’t talk intelligently about something you read tw-mumblemumble-ty years ago. So what did I actually read recently?
I’ve been reading Gini Koch’s Alien series, because it makes me smile and smile, but I’m trying to dole them out slowly. If you like your science fiction with a high level of fluff and the kick-assedest, funniest, most over the top Mary Sue in Area 51, these books are great fun. More recently, I spent the weekend glomming a bunch of Ally Blake contemporaries. Most are set in Australia and are somewhat reminiscent of Sarah Mayberry’s work. I like them because they are fast and easy and have that interesting location. They’re also reasonably well written. I also read Jana Deleon’s Miss Fortune series up to the current fourth book. Though these are mysteries, I read them for much the same reason. They made me smile. I recently read The Luckiest Lady in London for another RRC review that I might actually finish in time. At this point I only want to say that I love Sherry Thomas for her stunning prose as well as many other wonderful qualities. Oh yeah, I’m picking my way through Lawrence Block’s Burglar Who Counted the Spoons. I’ve always loved Bernie Rhodenbarr.
I guess the theme is fluff, and I think it’s inspired by the stress at the end of yet another school year. I actually picked up Hero: the Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia on sale, so my summer reading may be heavier than my school year stuff. We will see what we will see.
I’ve been in a reading slump for a couple of months. I think I have it beat after binge-watching/overdosing on TV. I needed to cleanse my palette and I think it worked! This past week I finished The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Won WWII by Denise Kiernan for a book club. The subject matter was interesting, but I actually think it’s better presented in Kiernan’s interviews. I especially loved the DBSA podcast interview and sent it to my bookclub to add to the discussion!
I also read John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, which made me cry, but I don’t quite understand why it’s the end-all-be-all YA book. And then I decided to pick up some Literature and read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. While Morrison’s writing skills are brilliant, I hated all the characters and thought the plot was almost nonexistent until the end. It only reinforced why I so rarely read literary fiction.
Now I’m onto all the books that I started and enjoyed, but still put down during my slump: Divergent by Veronica Roth, The Windflower, and At Your Pleasure by Meredith Duran. Hopefully I can cleanse my recent doses of sad books with some HEA romance.
@Lindsay:
I think so. I think that’s one of the benefits of reading romance: they are about emotions and growth, and when we read them, we practice empathy. Both of those things are powerful, hopeful processes. You can absolutely work through it, and do equally awesome. And I’m cheering you on. 🙂
I just started A Breath of Snow and Ashes a few weeks ago, but had to momentarily press pause on it when The Silkworm, the new Robert Galbraith (a.k.a. JK Rowling) mystery, came out last week.
After that, I have no set plans to read anything specific – I’ll probably just comb through my to-read list on Goodreads and see if a book in particular jumps out at me.
I just finished an ARC of Molly O’Keefe’s Never Been Kissed which comes out July 1 I believe. It was so good! Highly recommended. It’s book 2 of her Boys of Bishop series, and the third book comes out in August, 4th in Sep or early October. I’m also looking forward to Entangled Publishing’s new Lovstruck Imprint later this month. And for something a little different, I’m reading a chicklit book called French Twist by Glynis Astie that is very entertaining.
@SB Sarah
Aw, thank you so much! I’m all choked up over here. I swear, you put so succinctly something I’ve been unable to articulate about romance and empathy! It is exactly that, and those HEAs are definitely making things a whole lot easier. Well and kitties, they are making things easier too. And Friday Videos.
@Lindsay:
Kitties are medicinal! So are pictures of them on the internet. I have to see if I can find a Friday Video of nothing but cat awesome. SURELY someone has made videos of their cats for the internet. MWAAHAHAHAH. 🙂
“And Friday Videos.”
I’m not the only one!
I just finished Pride and Prejudice, and now I’m reading The Fault in Our Stars. (It’s actually the first book bandwagon I’ve ever jumped on.)
I am at home (taking a sick day … cramps like this qualify) and am actually going to try NOT to read anything, at least for a while, at least aside from the Internet. My current reading assignment is The Federalist Papers, which is a) not exactly fun, b) rousing my rabble in view of the current state of the USA. I have to take it in small doses. 🙂
The last romance I read was “Dancing Shoes and Honky-tonk Blues,” by Luann McLane, which sounds like a pen name but maybe it isn’t. It’s a fast-paced sexy small-town romance built around a spoof of Dancing with the Stars. A little too much Kentucky dialect for this city girl, but hey, it’s about ballroom dancing. And actually treats the dancing part intelligently (research was clearly done).
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