Category Archives: Uncategorized

More on butt-shot covers

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Stray
Stray
Rachel Vincent

OK I haven't posted in a while. It's been a slow reading month.

Meanwhile, someone else has blogged about the butt shot cover trend – juno books:

"We having nothing against bums on covers…But we feel there are issues that should be addressed: Are there too many paranormal tuchas out there? Have artists gone haunch happy? Can you be a successful urban fantasy series with only frontals? Are rumps de rigieur for success these days? Does “kickassitude” mean ass must be portrayed at some point? "

The post can be found here. Plus another discussion on fangs_fur_fey.

FASCINATING!

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Coinstar offering a $10 amazon gift certificate with $30 in coins

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Here's the deal from the coinstar website:

1. Bring $30 of coins to a participating Coinstar® Center
2. Cash it in for an Amazon.com gift certificate… and get FREE coin counting!
3.

Complete the printed receipt & mail in to receive your $10 Amazon.com gift certificate

 

So basically you get and extra $10 free if you wanted a $30 amazon gift cert. I did this and it was easy, and no fee for coin counting when you want an amazon gift certificate. Just have to mail in for the $10 by 11/08/07 – a date which is coming up soon.

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Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt

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Keturah And Lord Death
Keturah And Lord Death
Martine Leavitt

I sped over to the library to pick up a copy of this book after reading a review of it over at Twisted Kingdom. This reads as a mix of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, 1001 Nights, and some well-known, often-told fairy tale.

Keturah is a young village girl who follows a stag into the forest and gets lost for a few days. Eventually she sees Death come for her, but being the storyteller of the village, she tells Lord Death a story and then refuses to tell the ending unless she gets one more day of life and then, she promises, she will finish the story.

"Good Sir Death," I said too loudly, "I would tell you a story – a story of love, a love that could not be conquered even by you."

"Truely?" he asked. "I have seen many loves, and none were so great I could not divide them."

…

"But my tale, Lord Death, is one that will make even you love, that will heat even your frozen heart." My boldness astonished me, but I stood to lose nothing.

"Indeed," said he in disbelief. "Then say on."

"Once there was a girl -"

"An auspicious beginning."

"-who loved…no one."

"A love story in which there is no love – you have caught my attention now," said Lord Death.

Keturah gets her reprieve for one day to go find love, and to finish her tale, and Death even promises to let her live on if she finds her true love in one day. What follows is a charming story about her village and the people in it, and of Keturah, and her relationships with her friends and family and with Lord Death. A perfect fairytale. The fact that this was a young adult novel doesn't even play into it. It felt like the author wasn't writing for a specific audience – just telling a good story.

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Karma Girl by Jennifer Estep

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Karma Girl
Karma Girl
Jennifer Estep

Wow, I'm so behind on reviews. Oh well. *laze*.

Karma Girl is about Carmen Cole, a reporter who finds out her fiance is cheating on her with her best friend Karen on her wedding day. On top of that she learns he's a superhero and Karen, her now ex-best friend is his arch-enemy. Angry and bitter, Carmen exposes them both, then continues to expose other superheroes and villians throughout the country in her quest for what she considers karmic revenge. Eventually she ends up in Bigtime, New York. She's been hired as a reporter to expose the Fearless Five, Bigtime's resident band of superheroes who constantly battle their archenemies the Terrible Triad. This is where things go bad, and Carmen discovers there is a downside to what she is doing. Since she's persona non grata to the superhero community, Carmen has to rely on herself to fix her own problems, even though she feels a connection with Striker, leader of the Fearless Five.

This was a fun, sort of campy novel, using a lot of comic book standards - yards and yards of spandex, first and last names beginning with the same letter, powers gained by being dipped in nuclear waste that happened to be lying about in the open, and secret identities. I had a lot of fun reading it and recognizing the tongue in cheek references to comic books and superhero tropes. Superheroes and villians are common in this world and Carmen sees at least 5 on her way to work. They even have designated parts of the city that they protect. All of this is mixed to produce a chick-lit/romance/humorous story. Really easy to read, and hard for me to put down. Yes it does have some superficial characters and Carmen gets very angsty towards the end when she doesn't need to be (sigh, most annoying part of the book), but I could overlook this and found it enjoyable.

Excerpt to first chapter of Karma Girl

Review of Karma Girl at Dear Author. With amusing youtube video review that you must watch.

I'll be reading book two – "Hot Mama" which is out in November, and probably book three - "Jinx", out April 2008.

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Books and interior design, part 1

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rainbow room
rainbow room

Via design*sponge – Domino magazine has a flickr group and one of the users – chotda has arranged her bookshelf according to color. It looks awesome, but I'd go crazy trying to find things… I'm forgetful as is. I arrange alphabetically mostly (it falls apart when I run aout of space). Here is a flickr group – rainbow of books were others have arrange their books according to color.

And back in 2004, artist Chris Cobb rearranged the entire contents of Adobe bookstore in San Francisco by color. The work was entitled "There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World". Here's a link to an NPR broadcast about this with a slideshow of pictures, and another link with some lovely photos taken by a blogger at superhero designs. A couple of pictures from those sites below:

 

There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World
There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World

 

There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World
There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World

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Wired by Liz Maverick

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Wired (Shomi)
Wired (Shomi)
Liz Maverick

I just finished Wired by Liz Maverick, the first book to come out from the  from the Shomi line. So far I'm liking the futuristic aspect of these books (I reviewed Driven which I liked a lot over here). I guess since paranormal is big now – that's sort of a melding of fantasy + romance, that it makes sense that sci fi and romance is another blend that would work as well. 

This book is told from the first person point of view of L. Roxanne Zaborovsky, a programmer who gets intercepted from going to the 7-11 one night by two men. What follows is a non-linear story where time gets manipulated like a record being scratched by a DJ – forward and backward, reset and spliced, Roxy lives through the same situations a few times but with different variables. The two men interested in Roxy are doing this all in order to ensure the right future outcome occurs, but who is doing it to keep the future as close as it was meant to be as possible, and who is doing it for their own ends? Roxy has to figure out why she's important and who to trust and she flip-flops on that decision.

I read some of Liz Maverick's Crimson City novel, and I prefer her first person voice here to the third person voice in that start of the series. Roxy's story had an urgent pace, and the story flowed well.

The comment I have would be similar to many other reviewers – I think because I expected this to have romance I noticed that the romance was cut short. But I can't imagine how the author could put more romance into this – Roxy is being thrown into a weird reality and doesn't know who to trust, and keeps reliving certain things over and over. Where is the time for some wooing in there? It was a stretch as it was that Roxy trusted people enough for the romance that was in there. So.. maybe if this wasn't expected, this wouldn't even be an issue? I ponder.. Not only that, I think half of the romance happens off screen – around the timeline of the book, not so much during it, and the reader has to just make their own assumptions. I didn't mind this, other people looking for more romance might.

The one thing that confused me in this book was the timeline thing. I felt comfortable with the record player idea of time, it keeps playing forward but it can get pulled back and sped forward and things can be changed in it. On top of this was the idea of time as a wire where you took splices of one piece and put it on another and made up a whole wire, and eventually it all gets used up, there is no more wire left. BUT, I got so confused by one wire bit changing here then being spliced there even though they're two different timelines really parallel to one another – and somehow this works? My head wouldn't quite wrap around it. I was actually thinking of perhaps a diagram of this on the book flap somewhere..

Light, interesting read.

Link to a dear author review. Link to guest review on the good, bad and unread.

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The League of Reluctant Adults

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There's a new blog/website (about a week old or so) started by a group of urban fantasy authors with an irreverent view of things, call the League of Reluctant Adults. This week the posts are about humor in urban fantasy. Yup, not that much humor to be found in in urban fantasy but looks like there's going to be. They discuss. Each author has books I'm either waiting to read or books I read and enjoyed (Ilona Andrews' Magic Bites). Also, probably because this is opening week, each author is giving away something to do with their books as well. Here are their posts about humor. Well worth checking out:

1. Anton Strout (author of Dead to Me)

2. Stacia Kane/December Quinn (author of Personal Demons)

3. Mark Henry (author of Happy Hour of the Damned)

4. Ilona Andrews (author of Magic Bites)

5. Jill Myles (author of Sex Starved)

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BTT: Sunshine and roses

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This weeks Booking through Thursday:

"The reverse of last weeks question:

Imagine that everything is going just swimmingly. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and all’s right with the world. You’re practically bouncing from health and have money in your pocket. The kids are playing and laughing, the puppy is chewing in the cutest possible manner on an officially-sanctioned chew toy, and in between moments of laughter for pure joy, you pick up a book to read . . .

What is it?"

 

This is actually harder to answer than last weeks BTT. I think the answer is pretty much anything. If I'm in a good mood, I have more patience to read books that are slower paced, aren't instantly gratifying, more non-fiction, heavier and not just for fun books. If I was in a good mood I'd probably also be able to concentrate to read more so I'd be able to get in the heavy reading in with the light. I'd probably be more in the mood to read books that have been on my TBR for a while and I just haven't felt like getting to.

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