It's Monday, What are you reading?

This was the last week of summer for kids in our area, school starts back on Monday.  That made it a busy week with getting ready for school, dealing with a rental car while our car was being fixed, and a 12 hour car trip.  I still managed to get some reading in though!  Here is what I finished this week:

Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield (audio)
The Council of Mirrors by Michael Buckley (audio)
The Inside Story by Michael Buckley (audio)
All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris (reread- I have such a hard time keeping track of where I am in this series that I think I may just finish it so I know that I've read it all!)

Saturday Snapshot- Beach!

We loved getting to the beach early and being among the first ones to start our day!

On the last morning we let the kite go all the way to the end of the string, it was so far away it was hard to see!  This isn't anywhere near the end of the string, those shots are way too blurry.

Sand, sun and little toes!

Where did he go?

Building with the shovels to make a machine.

Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs by Molly Harper (Jane Jameson Series #1)

Overview from Barnes and Noble:

Maybe it was the Shenanigans gift certificate that put her over the edge. When children's librarian and self-professed nice girl Jane Jameson is fired by her beastly boss and handed twenty-five dollars in potato skins instead of a severance check, she goes on a bender that's sure to become Half Moon Hollow legend. On her way home, she's mistaken for a deer, shot, and left for dead. And thanks to the mysterious stranger she met while chugging neon-colored cocktails, she wakes up with a decidedly unladylike thirst for blood.

Jane is now the latest recipient of a gift basket from the Newly Undead Welcoming Committee, and her life-after-lifestyle is taking some getting used to. Her recently deceased favorite aunt is now her ghostly roommate. She has to fake breathing and endure daytime hours to avoid coming out of the coffin to her family. She's forced to forgo her favorite down-home Southern cooking for bags of O negative. Her relationship with her sexy, mercurial vampire sire keeps running hot and cold. And if all that wasn't enough, it looks like someone in Half Moon Hollow is trying to frame her for a series of vampire murders. What's a nice undead girl to do?

My thoughts:
At the beginning of this book I thought it seemed as though it was a cross between Queen Betsey from MaryJanice Davidsons Dead series and Sookie Stackhouse (minus being a vampire) in Charlaine Harris's Dead series.  After the beginning though it gained its own momentum and style and I really enjoyed it.  I read it on the beach last week and I found myself wishing that I had packed books two and three from the series as well, which unfortunately I had left on my bookshelf at home.

Jane Jameson is a children's librarian in the town she grew up in.  Her boss hates her, but she loves what she does.  When her favorite aunt died she inherited the family home, although everyone keeps trying to get her to admit that her married sister would be a better fit for the home,  Her mom hates that she is single, her dad loves her unconditionally and her sister thinks she is the better sister.  Then her boss fires her because of budget cuts, but really just to give her niece a job instead, and hands her a gift certificate for a chain restaurant.  One drink turns into more and she meets a mysterious handsome man.  On her way home her car breaks down, a drunk mistakes her for a deer and shoots her from his truck, and she wakes up undead three days later.

While finding her way in her new lifestyle, Jane meets people and vampires who might be friends or might have it in for her, and she has to figure out motives while avoiding telling her parents her news.  She makes a friend or two and an enemy or two and then is accused of killing a vampire.  She is learning her way in this new society, verbally sparing with potential suitors, has conflicted feelings for her sire and spending time with her ghostly aunt while looking for a new job that allows her to work nights.

It was well paced, amusing and fun.  Who wouldn't love a book about someone who worked around books and considers them her first love?

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9781416589426
• Publisher: Pocket Star
• Publication date: 3/31/2009
• Series: Jane Jameson Series , #1
• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Edition description: Original
• Pages: 384

Meet the Author

More by this Author

• A Witch's Handbook of Kisses and Curses
• The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires
• Driving Mr. Dead
• How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf
• The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf

Molly Harper is the author of eight novels, including The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires and Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors. She worked for six years as a reporter and humor columnist for The Paducah Sun, covering courts, school board meetings, quilt shows, and once, the arrest of a Florida man who faked his suicide by shark attack and spent the next few months tossing pies at a local pizzeria. Molly lives in western Kentucky with her family.

It's Monday, What are you reading?

Last week my family took our annual vacation to the beach.  I enjoyed being unplugged for the week, no Internet and no email and we spent a lot of time playing in the water, walking on the beach, playing in the sand and reading.  Even with all that time I didn't really seem to read much more than usual book wise, but I did read a number of magazines.  Here was my week:

Finished reading:
Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs by Molly Harper (I have books 2 and 3 and wish I  had taken them with me, but I didn't know how much I was going to enjoy reading this one!)
Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie
1022 Evergreen Place by Debbie Macomber
The Twelve by William Gladstone (audio)
The Everafter War by Michael Buckley

I have a number of other books started, but I don't know which one I plan to actually focus on next, so I am skipping my usual list of still reading books

Saturday Snapshot-Summer!

 Last night we returned from a very fun week at the beach.  Our family vacation featured hours on the beach playing in the sand and on the waves.

We were lucky and had nice weather and nice water conditions.  We all had fun!

Since I take most of the pictures here is one of the two shots I am in, both of which I took myself!

Beautiful Chaos (Beautiful Creatures Series #3) Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Overview from Barnes and Noble:

Ethan Wate thought he was getting used to the strange, impossible events happening in Gatlin, his small Southern town. But now that Ethan and Lena have returned home, strange and impossible have taken on new meanings. Swarms of locusts, record-breaking heat, and devastating storms ravage Gatlin as Ethan and Lena struggle to understand the impact of Lena's Claiming. Even Lena's family of powerful Supernaturals is affected - and their abilities begin to dangerously misfire. As time passes, one question becomes clear: What - or who - will need to be sacrificed to save Gatlin?

For Ethan, the chaos is a frightening but welcome distraction. He's being haunted in his dreams again, but this time it isn't by Lena - and whatever is haunting him is following him out of his dreams and into his everyday life. Even worse, Ethan is gradually losing pieces of himself - forgetting names, phone numbers, even memories. He doesn't know why, and most days he's too afraid to ask.

Sometimes there isn't just one answer or one choice. Sometimes there's no going back. And this time there won't be a happy ending.

My thoughts:
Ethan and Lena are back from the tunnels and back together, but Gatlin is falling apart after Lena managed to claim herself both light and dark, with both a green eye and a gold eye to show for it.  Locusts swarm and eat everything that is green, the recording breaking heat leads to the lake drying up, the church going community is convinced that they are experiencing the plagues from the Bible.  The Far Keep wants to try Marion for Olivia's role in helping and taking a side in the tunnels when she helped Ethan go after Lena, Abraham and Sarafine pop up more than once and a prophesy says that the one who is two must be sacrificed.

Lena finds a box that belonged to her mother and, just as with magical objects in the first book, when she and Ethan touch them together they see images of the past.  They see Sarafine broken hearted when she is claimed for the Dark on her seventeenth moon, they see Sarafine and John try to make a home for themselves and Lena while cut off from their families and they see the struggle Sarafine goes through to maintain herself against all the pressures she feels.

Meanwhile, Ethan feels he is losing parts of himself.  He can't remember which shoebox holds certain prized possessions, no longer likes chocolate milk or Amma's cooking, doesn't know phone numbers and is having new dreams like he had when he met Lena, but this time it is a faceless teen he is encountering.  Amma is not herself anymore either.  Nothing is Gatlin is going right and something must be done, but who must make a sacrifice for the good of all?

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9780316123518
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 6/12/2012
• Series: Beautiful Creatures Series , #3
• Pages: 576

Dream Dark (Beautiful Creatures Series) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

Overview from Barnes and Noble:

When Link joined his best friend, Ethan Wate, on a quest through a mysterious network of underground passageways endlessly crisscrossing the South, he knew the journey would be dangerous. But returning home to Gatlin, South Carolina was just the beginning...

Wounded during a climactic battle, Link discovers that tending his injuries won't be as simple as visiting a doctor and that healing his arm should be the least of his worries. For being bitten by a Supernatural does more than break the skin -- it changes a person, inside and out, turning Link into someone more and more like the dark creature who injured him.

In this never-before-seen short story by New York Times bestselling authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, listeners witness Link's heart-racing transformation. Dream Dark is set before the much-anticipated third Beautiful Creatures novel, Beautiful Chaos, and as a special bonus includes an exclusive sneak peek at the first five chapters.


Dream Dark word count: ~10,000

 

My thoughts:

It turns out that I read this one out of order.  I thought there were just four books in the series, and there are just four regular novels in the series, but this is an in between novella that should have been read in between books two and three.  I know when I was reading book four I kept wondering if I had forgotten parts of book three even though I had read it quite recently.  Now I know the scenes it was referring to that I thought I must have forgotten were in this book instead.

 

Link has been changed due to having been bitten by John Breed and is now a quarter Incubus.  He no longer needs to sleep or eat regular food and has grown taller and is more filled out.  He is still the lovable Link, who is in a really bad rock band and drives a beat up car, but he is also something more now and needs to work on understanding his powers and the new world that he belongs to.

 

This book reveals more of the tunnels and the supernatural community of dark and light casters, incubuses and more.

 

 

 

Product Details

• ISBN-13: 9780316197045
• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 8/2/2011
• Series: Beautiful Creatures Series
• Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 75