In my last post, I said that I'd get around to reading this romance novel that I found while at work, and then a couple of weeks ago, I finally did read it. And it was amazing. This was my first (and probably only) venture into the romance genre of books, and I was very satisfied with the book that I chose to read. That being said, I have no clue how romance novels are supposed to normally play out. This one was definitely abnormal in at least one or two ways. I think.
The book starts out in Hawaii with Genevieve, her little brother and her mother (who is only 15 years older than her daughter). Turns out that they're from a hillbilly town from Mississippi, and Genevieve's great grandma almost had sex with Elvis, pre-fame days. She kept his underwear, which got Gen's mother enough money to move them away from the hillbilly lifestyle and do something worthwhile with their lives. Genevieve works at some computer company, Rainbow Systems, and she longs to marry her douchebag boss. While that's going on, the nerdy programmer has a crush on Gen.
The boss turns out to be an even bigger douche by stranding Gen and Jackson (the nerd) on a plane. He was completely prepared for those two to die simply because he stole millions from the company that he co-owned, and he didn't want anyone to know that he was running off with it. Luckily, Jackson had flown computer simulations of airplanes, so he sort of landed it near a small Hawaiian island.
Genevieve and Jackson, stranded, decided to have copious amounts of sex simply because she had condoms that she had packed for the douchebag boss and her to use. And yeah, I didn't really need to read all of that stuff. I still have virgin eyes!
Stuff happens, they're saved, Genevieve gets put into peril again back at home, Jackson saves her, thus proving that he's worth her time even though he's a nerd, and they eventually get married. Yay.
The thing I was most surprised about in this novel was the character development. I was lead to believe that romance novels were two people hooking up and a lot of sex. This one, at least, was not. They had advanced backstories, emotions other than lust, and reasons for why they were the way that they were. Jackson was even color blind, which oddly enough played a fairly big part in the characters getting to know each other. I was very impressed, to say the least. And I was completely hooked. I stayed up until odd hours reading it and I even tried reading it while my friends and I were watching a movie, but then I felt awkward for reading about naughty things while the rest of them watched Tangled.
Sidenote: Because Gen had hillbilly roots, when she was stressed she started talking like a hillbilly again. The language was hilarious, Jackson's reactions to her language was awesome, and I started talking like a hillbilly because of reading it so much. Great...
Overall, it was pretty dang awesome. I approve.
http://www.librarything.com/work/897175/book/79477304
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Working At a Bookstore
I've been shifting Romance novels lately, because our shelves are stuffed with them and I had 15 or so new ones to place. I've never been into the Romance genre, so shifting them was entertaining, looking at the covers of cheesiness, the raunchy titles, and the ridiculous premises. One of my thoughts:
Moments after I posted the second picture, my friends urged me to read the second one. I'm not really sure I want to read a Romance novel, but the title does sound pretty darn compelling. Hopefully it's short on raunchy content! I'll post a review of it when I finish, I suppose... Wish me luck.
I also posted a few pictures on facebook for others to enjoy.
Moments after I posted the second picture, my friends urged me to read the second one. I'm not really sure I want to read a Romance novel, but the title does sound pretty darn compelling. Hopefully it's short on raunchy content! I'll post a review of it when I finish, I suppose... Wish me luck.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
To Satisfy Kate's Need for More Literature...
I've been really hung up over The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, which is a hard read, so I took a break and went to the library and found a graphic novel that looked pretty interesting.
The Book of Ballads is a graphic novel (GN) with multiple authors and every story is illustrated and penned by Charles Vess. To be honest, the font of the title is the main thing that caught my eye, and then reading a little about it got me to borrow it in an instant.
This GN takes songs and folk-tales from England, Ireland and Scotland and turns them into comics with beautiful illustrations to accompany them. Because I'm not from England, Ireland or Scotland, I had never heard any of these folk-tales before. There were 13 tales by 11 authors, some among them being Neil Gaiman (a popular GN and fantasy/sci fi author), Jane Yolen (a Young Adult fantasy author) and Charles de Lint (an author I've heard of but never read; he writes fantasy).
At the end of each of the comics they placed the whole song or folk-tale, and the authors do stick really close to the originals. The spoken parts are always verbatim, and the illustrations tell the rest of the story, sometimes accompanied by a narrator-esque paragraph to help.
My favorite is a ballad from England titled "Sovay". It tells the tale of a man and woman in love; she gives him a diamond ring as a token of her affection right before he has to go on a trip. Another woman talks to Sovay as he's leaving, sowing seeds of doubt in her head as to if he's faithful or not. She decides to follow him from a distance to see if he really is faithful. A man comes at her as she's following him, so she kills him with her pistol and uses his clothes to disguise herself. She then robs her lover, demanding gold, which he gives her gladly, and then demands the diamond ring. He refuses, not afraid to be killed, because his love gave that ring to him. She lets him go, and he arrives after a time to a tavern for the night. A wench offers to keep him warm for the night, but he again refuses. As he enters the room he's to sleep in for the night, he sees the burglar again, but this burglar only wants to return him his money, as he's revealed to actually be Sovay. His faithfulness is confirmed, and they celebrate... In bed.
This GN is a perfect starting point to jump into comics, and I highly recommend it!
The Book of Ballads is a graphic novel (GN) with multiple authors and every story is illustrated and penned by Charles Vess. To be honest, the font of the title is the main thing that caught my eye, and then reading a little about it got me to borrow it in an instant.
This GN takes songs and folk-tales from England, Ireland and Scotland and turns them into comics with beautiful illustrations to accompany them. Because I'm not from England, Ireland or Scotland, I had never heard any of these folk-tales before. There were 13 tales by 11 authors, some among them being Neil Gaiman (a popular GN and fantasy/sci fi author), Jane Yolen (a Young Adult fantasy author) and Charles de Lint (an author I've heard of but never read; he writes fantasy).
At the end of each of the comics they placed the whole song or folk-tale, and the authors do stick really close to the originals. The spoken parts are always verbatim, and the illustrations tell the rest of the story, sometimes accompanied by a narrator-esque paragraph to help.
My favorite is a ballad from England titled "Sovay". It tells the tale of a man and woman in love; she gives him a diamond ring as a token of her affection right before he has to go on a trip. Another woman talks to Sovay as he's leaving, sowing seeds of doubt in her head as to if he's faithful or not. She decides to follow him from a distance to see if he really is faithful. A man comes at her as she's following him, so she kills him with her pistol and uses his clothes to disguise herself. She then robs her lover, demanding gold, which he gives her gladly, and then demands the diamond ring. He refuses, not afraid to be killed, because his love gave that ring to him. She lets him go, and he arrives after a time to a tavern for the night. A wench offers to keep him warm for the night, but he again refuses. As he enters the room he's to sleep in for the night, he sees the burglar again, but this burglar only wants to return him his money, as he's revealed to actually be Sovay. His faithfulness is confirmed, and they celebrate... In bed.
This GN is a perfect starting point to jump into comics, and I highly recommend it!
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Another Old Review in Which I Rant
Being a part of LibraryThing, they also had a SantaThing around Christmas in which you could sign up and pay $25 or something like that, and someone else would pick out books for you to read. I received three books, and I read two of them right away. While they were awesome, I was in a state of mind where they were also depressing and they angered me, so I ranted about them on facebook. So, here for your pleasure, is that rant.
As I slowly descend further and further into my deep world-weary depression, I have to look back and wonder where it came from. Because of this depression I've relied on reading and working to cheer me back up, but still. Is it because of my boredom? No. My monotonous life, doing nothing but working and sleeping? Perhaps. Is it maybe even my friends? Unlikely. I do think that I've sussed out what it is though. It's my books.
I participated in a secret santa-esque event through a book website that I enjoy frequenting. Paying $25, I picked out books for someone else, while another person picked some out for me as well. You think that $25 would go fairly far, but it doesn't. I received 3 books, and instantly delved deep into the first one, titled Sunshine, by Robin McKinley.
This book is about a girl, Rae, aka Sunshine. She barely graduated high school, and then went instantly into the work force, becoming a baker with her step-father as the owner and manager, and her mother financially managing everything. One day she went out to a lake, and the vampires kidnapped her. Oh, by the way, this is a fantasy novel. Very dark, with un-human looking vampires, not the fluffy ones from Twilight, True Blood, or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They have powers of paralysis, and they are unnaturally cruel. As greenmanreview.com puts it,
After a couple of months, she calls to him, not really expecting anything, but he comes. They quasi-bond, help each other out, and end up defeating Bo. Yay the end.
My problem with this whole book is the heroine. She has a great boyfriend, a man riddled with magical tattoos, the head chef at the coffee house she practically lives at. So why oh why does she consort with Con all the time. They kiss several times, although McKinley never lets on that it means anything, and once they were this close to having sex. Seriously. It was situational, not really either of their faults; she had done magic to transport herself to him, and by doing so had accidentally left her clothes behind. Con was also somehow naked. Never really understood that one... When Con finally threw her halfway across the room to prevent the sex-having, she got super pissed. Like, whoa. Talk about anger. Does everyone that gets cock-teased without actual sex get that pissed? I have no way of finding out. Nor do I care to find out. Even with this episode, she shows absolutely no remorse when she next sees her loving boyfriend, then proceeding to copulate with him. No regrets, no guilty conscience; nothing. WTF?!?
The next book, which I just finished, is The Magicians by Lev Grossman. It was absolutely fantastic, being a combination of The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, and other magical books. Perhaps he even channeled some Lord of the Rings. Once again, the problem was the main character. Quentin just pissed me off royally sometimes. He was fine at first, a little downtrodden, forlorn and pathetic, but then he got admitted into Brakebills College, a Magic college. The beauty of this book was that it didn't linger on anything boring. Three years of college were over in about a chapter, because they just weren't all that important. It was beautiful. No dawdling. As soon as he got himself a girlfriend, them first "playing around" as foxes in Antarctica, he became an asshole. Him and his group of friends, the Physical Kids (pertaining to their magical Disciplines) got drunk every single night, and Q lost all focus on what was important in life. They graduated after their five years there (four years for Quentin and Alice, his gf) and moved to New York, where they also did nothing but dick around and get drunk. It was intolerable! Such a terrible life to live doing nothing.
That's almost how I feel about my life right now. Am I really doing anything with my life? Or am I just passing my time doing nothing? Maybe this is why the book bothered me so much?
One night, in a drunken stupor, Q decides to have sex with their friend Janet, thus making Alice feel terrible, Janet, giddy, and himself like the complete asshole that he was. This goes on, him being pissed at himself, and then mad at her too when she has sex with their friend Penny (a guy), and both Quentin and Alice not talking at all. It's terrible. In the end, after they have this grand adventure, that they all were so not prepared for, they have to battle this guy, referred to as the Beast. Alice, being super awesome at magic as she is, battles him with all she's got, throwing spells at him one after another, changing herself into a zoo of different animals and then winding up for a huge spell to finish him off. Only problem with that last spell is that it consumes her. Completely. It was just too much magical power for her to handle and she turns into a niffin, a blue ball of magical energy. Even then, she tears the head right off the Beast before she disappears.
And then my thoughts are, "What?! She dies?! She can't die! She was the best one! Quentin is a screw up! They just finally got back together! She has to be alive somehow!!" But... She isn't. She is gone. For. Good. Wow. But wait, there's more. Q, after seven or more months of healing, goes on a quest to chase the Questing Beast. This stag grants him 3 wishes. Bring Alice back? Um... no. Can't do that. Heal Penny's hands that got bitten off by the Beast? Yeah, no. Can't do that either. Sorry. Aw hell. Just send me back home then. Q retreats into an empty life of monotony. Right up until the last two pages, his life is a living hell filled with pathetic numbness and no magic, since he decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. And then his other friends, that were still alive, come back to make him come with them to go back to Fillory and rule. Yay the end.
What? That's it? What the hell.
These characters are a little too human for my taste, methinks. And this is why my life suck at the moment. It also didn't help that I went from a lighthearted novel about love and magic and happiness to such depressing novel such as those. So now I'm going to read The Hobbit before I read the next book I was given. Probably a good choice. Don't get me wrong, those two books were amazing. But the main characters' morals weren't. And I hated that with a passion. Morals are fun. I like them a lot.
And this end my extremely long-winded rant about how my life sucks. Thanks.
Recently, I found out that Lev Grossman has a second book coming out in The Magicians series, so what did I do? I automatically wanted it, and almost pre-ordered it. Lack of money stopped me, though. Maybe this next book will be happier?
I participated in a secret santa-esque event through a book website that I enjoy frequenting. Paying $25, I picked out books for someone else, while another person picked some out for me as well. You think that $25 would go fairly far, but it doesn't. I received 3 books, and instantly delved deep into the first one, titled Sunshine, by Robin McKinley.
This book is about a girl, Rae, aka Sunshine. She barely graduated high school, and then went instantly into the work force, becoming a baker with her step-father as the owner and manager, and her mother financially managing everything. One day she went out to a lake, and the vampires kidnapped her. Oh, by the way, this is a fantasy novel. Very dark, with un-human looking vampires, not the fluffy ones from Twilight, True Blood, or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They have powers of paralysis, and they are unnaturally cruel. As greenmanreview.com puts it,
Now, in Robin McKinley's alternate universe, vampires are not Buffy-charming, Buffy-beautiful, nor Buffy-bumbling. They may have been human once, but as vampires they are completely alien. They look different, think differently, have different abilities. They have absolutely no human motivations anymore, not even hate or desire as humans understand them. And they despise and hunt humans, and humans hate and fear them. So Sunshine doesn't for a moment think, "Hey, cool!" when she finds herself suddenly with a vampire for a companion. She's horrified.So they take her, with their paralyzing breath, and chain her up next to a vampire that looks absolutely wretched. It turns out that he's a prisoner as well, and they captors want him, Constantine, to eat Sunshine. He doesn't give into that temptation, sticking it to his captor. And, as it turns out later, the wound that they inflicted her with to entice Con had poison in it. After two days of captivity, Sunshine remembers that she has magic in her blood, and she works it to change her jack knife into a key to unlock her chains, and his. Not really sure why she does this, but she feels they have a bond, a vendetta against this 'Bo' character that locked them up. They escaped- in full daylight. Even though Con would burst into flames normally, Sunshine's magic was so powerful in sunlight, that she was able to make him not burst into flames, as long as they touched at all times. He carried her most of the way back to her house, force-fed her, and then left.
After a couple of months, she calls to him, not really expecting anything, but he comes. They quasi-bond, help each other out, and end up defeating Bo. Yay the end.
My problem with this whole book is the heroine. She has a great boyfriend, a man riddled with magical tattoos, the head chef at the coffee house she practically lives at. So why oh why does she consort with Con all the time. They kiss several times, although McKinley never lets on that it means anything, and once they were this close to having sex. Seriously. It was situational, not really either of their faults; she had done magic to transport herself to him, and by doing so had accidentally left her clothes behind. Con was also somehow naked. Never really understood that one... When Con finally threw her halfway across the room to prevent the sex-having, she got super pissed. Like, whoa. Talk about anger. Does everyone that gets cock-teased without actual sex get that pissed? I have no way of finding out. Nor do I care to find out. Even with this episode, she shows absolutely no remorse when she next sees her loving boyfriend, then proceeding to copulate with him. No regrets, no guilty conscience; nothing. WTF?!?
The next book, which I just finished, is The Magicians by Lev Grossman. It was absolutely fantastic, being a combination of The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, and other magical books. Perhaps he even channeled some Lord of the Rings. Once again, the problem was the main character. Quentin just pissed me off royally sometimes. He was fine at first, a little downtrodden, forlorn and pathetic, but then he got admitted into Brakebills College, a Magic college. The beauty of this book was that it didn't linger on anything boring. Three years of college were over in about a chapter, because they just weren't all that important. It was beautiful. No dawdling. As soon as he got himself a girlfriend, them first "playing around" as foxes in Antarctica, he became an asshole. Him and his group of friends, the Physical Kids (pertaining to their magical Disciplines) got drunk every single night, and Q lost all focus on what was important in life. They graduated after their five years there (four years for Quentin and Alice, his gf) and moved to New York, where they also did nothing but dick around and get drunk. It was intolerable! Such a terrible life to live doing nothing.
That's almost how I feel about my life right now. Am I really doing anything with my life? Or am I just passing my time doing nothing? Maybe this is why the book bothered me so much?
One night, in a drunken stupor, Q decides to have sex with their friend Janet, thus making Alice feel terrible, Janet, giddy, and himself like the complete asshole that he was. This goes on, him being pissed at himself, and then mad at her too when she has sex with their friend Penny (a guy), and both Quentin and Alice not talking at all. It's terrible. In the end, after they have this grand adventure, that they all were so not prepared for, they have to battle this guy, referred to as the Beast. Alice, being super awesome at magic as she is, battles him with all she's got, throwing spells at him one after another, changing herself into a zoo of different animals and then winding up for a huge spell to finish him off. Only problem with that last spell is that it consumes her. Completely. It was just too much magical power for her to handle and she turns into a niffin, a blue ball of magical energy. Even then, she tears the head right off the Beast before she disappears.
And then my thoughts are, "What?! She dies?! She can't die! She was the best one! Quentin is a screw up! They just finally got back together! She has to be alive somehow!!" But... She isn't. She is gone. For. Good. Wow. But wait, there's more. Q, after seven or more months of healing, goes on a quest to chase the Questing Beast. This stag grants him 3 wishes. Bring Alice back? Um... no. Can't do that. Heal Penny's hands that got bitten off by the Beast? Yeah, no. Can't do that either. Sorry. Aw hell. Just send me back home then. Q retreats into an empty life of monotony. Right up until the last two pages, his life is a living hell filled with pathetic numbness and no magic, since he decided that it wasn't worth it anymore. And then his other friends, that were still alive, come back to make him come with them to go back to Fillory and rule. Yay the end.
What? That's it? What the hell.
These characters are a little too human for my taste, methinks. And this is why my life suck at the moment. It also didn't help that I went from a lighthearted novel about love and magic and happiness to such depressing novel such as those. So now I'm going to read The Hobbit before I read the next book I was given. Probably a good choice. Don't get me wrong, those two books were amazing. But the main characters' morals weren't. And I hated that with a passion. Morals are fun. I like them a lot.
And this end my extremely long-winded rant about how my life sucks. Thanks.
Recently, I found out that Lev Grossman has a second book coming out in The Magicians series, so what did I do? I automatically wanted it, and almost pre-ordered it. Lack of money stopped me, though. Maybe this next book will be happier?
Previous Reviews
I'm a member of a website called LibraryThing that is all about books, reviews, and reading. They have a way to catalog all the books in your personal library, and they also have a monthly book giveaway that I am quite fond of. When I get a free book, whether it's an e-book or a hard copy, I'm asked to read and review it for the author, for promotion and whatnot. I've done four of those thus far, although I've gotten about 8 or 9 books. I'm a slacker. :/
So here are the reviews for those books, whether they were interesting or not:
Receiving this book, I didn't know what to expect. To my surprise, no only did the main character share my name, but she also lived in the same state as me! That started me off on a great foot with the book, and it didn't let me down.
The main character loses her best friend who ran away for no apparent reason, and now Ariel's still coping with this loss as she starts another school, now without her best friend. Some new people arrive in her life, one being a new female friend, and the other being a hot guy to ogle over. Throughout the novel, she gets the feeling that she's being haunted or something of that nature, so she feels compelled to try and find out what it all means, Hell, MI be damned. When they discover a conspiracy theory, it's up to Ariel to figure out what's going on.
A great light read. I finished it all in one sitting, and I am looking forward to the next one coming out. (5 of 5 stars)
Overall, "Fixing Cupid" was a great book. It was easy to read, and humorous on many different levels. The simplicity of the whole novel was nice too. The only thing that I noticed that wasn't quite to my liking is that there were a lot of small spelling errors that took a lot away from the whole of the book for me.
The main plot of the book, the main character trying to find love and "breaking" Cupid, his roommate, was light and funny. This book is more of a light read, one that doesn't take too much deep thinking- a great summer book.
I really enjoyed it. Good job! (4 of 5 stars)
This book is a high third grade reading level, according to the author, but it is enjoyable for both children and adults. Jimi and Isaac are challenged, in this book, to build a real Mars Probe complete with the ability to take pictures and transmit them back to Earth to be viewed. Isaac gives up early in the game, but Jimi trudges on because of all the adults that are counting on him to finish what they think is a model of a probe and not a real one. The characters go through 7th, 8th and the beginning of 9th grade through this book, so their intelligence is at that level, but the way that they speak can be understood by children years under them. It is a fantastic read, and I recommend it highly for any parent that wants their children to read something more intellectual and stimulating. And fun. (4 of 5 stars)
It's Not About the Crumbs! is a very cute book that is great for learning how to read. The stories are simple, while still having the story line that will interest parents when they read it to their children as well. The different Hansel and Gretel stories that were in this book were very unique, coming from different cultures. I really loved this book, and I will definitely pass it on to my young cousins, so they can enjoy it as well. Great job! (5 of 5 stars)
So here are the reviews for those books, whether they were interesting or not:
Gravity, a young adult paranormal romance by Abigail Boyd
The main character loses her best friend who ran away for no apparent reason, and now Ariel's still coping with this loss as she starts another school, now without her best friend. Some new people arrive in her life, one being a new female friend, and the other being a hot guy to ogle over. Throughout the novel, she gets the feeling that she's being haunted or something of that nature, so she feels compelled to try and find out what it all means, Hell, MI be damned. When they discover a conspiracy theory, it's up to Ariel to figure out what's going on.
A great light read. I finished it all in one sitting, and I am looking forward to the next one coming out. (5 of 5 stars)
Overall, "Fixing Cupid" was a great book. It was easy to read, and humorous on many different levels. The simplicity of the whole novel was nice too. The only thing that I noticed that wasn't quite to my liking is that there were a lot of small spelling errors that took a lot away from the whole of the book for me.
The main plot of the book, the main character trying to find love and "breaking" Cupid, his roommate, was light and funny. This book is more of a light read, one that doesn't take too much deep thinking- a great summer book.
I really enjoyed it. Good job! (4 of 5 stars)
This book is a high third grade reading level, according to the author, but it is enjoyable for both children and adults. Jimi and Isaac are challenged, in this book, to build a real Mars Probe complete with the ability to take pictures and transmit them back to Earth to be viewed. Isaac gives up early in the game, but Jimi trudges on because of all the adults that are counting on him to finish what they think is a model of a probe and not a real one. The characters go through 7th, 8th and the beginning of 9th grade through this book, so their intelligence is at that level, but the way that they speak can be understood by children years under them. It is a fantastic read, and I recommend it highly for any parent that wants their children to read something more intellectual and stimulating. And fun. (4 of 5 stars)
It's Not About the Crumbs! is a very cute book that is great for learning how to read. The stories are simple, while still having the story line that will interest parents when they read it to their children as well. The different Hansel and Gretel stories that were in this book were very unique, coming from different cultures. I really loved this book, and I will definitely pass it on to my young cousins, so they can enjoy it as well. Great job! (5 of 5 stars)
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