It's Monday, What are you Reading? (4)

This meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life

 

This week was all about interpreting school - studying for it, bracing for it, and surviving another class.  I'm utterly drained by the time I make it home but it's worth it.

Suzu is oh so slowly becoming a lap cat and we are thrilled.  This is what we wanted all along but didn't dare hope for.  She also figured out how to open my bedroom door this week (it's a sliding door), which I didn't want at all.  :P

Read Last Week

 

The Paid Companion by Amanda Quick ★★★

I really liked the first half of this book but things seemed to drop off after that. While I worried about the heroine's fate during the novel's set up her rescue at the end was never in doubt. Ooh, the hero's only wrong turn ended up yielding a lot of information, and the bad guy's plans went awry in a predictable way. Not so exciting.

Overall a quick, fun read but not something I'll be returning to.

 All Wound Up by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee ~abandoned against my will~

Against my will?  What could I possibly mean?  Well, when one is met with pages like this you're pretty much stuck:

 

Some pages were like this, others were missing one half or the other, and yet others were blank.  I don't know if it was my reader or what, but it stopped me in my tracks.

 The Knitter's Book of Socks by Clara Parkes ★★★★

 Review forthcoming later this week.

The Lover Hunt by Jess Michaels ★

I was surprised to see this was only 29 screens long. It's basically one modern sex scene dressed up in Regency garb, confusingly written.

 The Perfect Mistress by Victoria Alexander ★★

This book started off strong but it felt like it used the same plot device over and over: he says something stupid, she gets mad, they make up. The plot inches forward. He says something stupid, she gets mad... ad infinitum. Grah.

Currently Reading

 

Angels' Blood by Nalini Singh

Dangerous alpha heroes for the win!  I never thought I would be into an "angel" story but this one is shaping up very nicely.

 

Still Waiting

(books on hold at the library)

Gone Girl - 8 out of 37 (two week wait)

Divergent - 1 out of 2 (...still next!)

Small Space Organizing - 4 out of 4 (two months)

I would tell you the rest but my other library is closed due to Hurricane Sandy, boo.

It's Monday, What are You Reading? (3)

This meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life

I started interpreting school, huzzah!  I'm glad to have the first class over because now I know what to expect.  With all the homework my knitting time is going to shrink, but oh well.  At least the studying is fun!  I never thought I would look at a stack of 240 flashcards and be happy but there you are.

We just set up the kotatsu and Suzu is having a lot of fun playing underneath.  I have a feeling she'll be living in it once the real cold sets in - heck, I will be too!

Read Last Week

 Kiss of Crimson by Lara Adrian ★★

I was hoping I'd be able to watch the main couple from book one continue their journey in book two but no such luck - it was another find-a-Breedmate tale that felt like a retread of the first. The meta Rogue vampire story managed to move forward by an entire half step, ooo. I might pick up the next book if I'm desperate but there's too much good stuff to read in the meantime. Series shelved.

 Immortal by Gillian Shields ★★★★

This book fell right into my sweet spot - a story that unfolds rather than being set, a mysterious man with a troubled past, a normal world that ends up being full of magic. The story is very good and the plot kept me from putting it down for even a moment.

So why only four stars? Connections were spelled out and characters fit into neat stereotypes (the mean girl, the mean girl's groupie, the one nice girl, the mysterious guy, the mean headmaster...). The only person that defied her initial pigeonholing was Helen, and being the "odd bird" it wasn't too hard. I keep telling myself I'll stay away from YA for these reasons but I keep getting sucked back, grah.

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb ~abandoned~

This book is beautifully written and I loved reading the first third. Once the plot thickened near the middle I couldn't continue though.

The insta-attraction and sex itself didn't bother me. I totally understood the need for physical contact after what the main characters went through, but seeing problems coming from so far away put me off. Also, I grew up in a small town where one of my best friends was in a similar situation to Jenny... I saw what happened to her family; I don't want to read about it again, thank you.

I'm sure that many people will love this book but it wasn't for me.

Currently Reading

Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True by Elizabeth Berg

I absolutely love Berg's writing style and voice; several of her novels made it onto my to read list.  This book is geared towards people writing fiction and I'm more into non-fiction but there's still a lot of amazing stuff here.

The Paid Companion by Amanda Quick

A regency romance with a whodunit thrown in.  I may have found my new subgenre!  I'm not giving up paranormal by any means but I need to branch out.

All Wound Up by Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

You can never go wrong with the Yarn Harlot.  These short essays wonderful as a break from studying or more serious reading so I'll be nibbling at this one.

Still Waiting

(books on hold at the library)

This week I learned that queues can jump several people - I'm guessing some people never "pick up" their ebooks.  Divergent went from a two month wait to next, woo-hoo!  It gives me hope that I'll read these titles by Christmas... or even better yet, be able to take them with me on the long plane ride home.

Gone Girl - 13 out of 37 (one month wait)

Divergent - 1 out of 1 (next!)

Small Space Organizing - 4 out of 4 (two months)

Better than Beauty - 21 out of 23 (one month)

Halfway to the Grave - 22 out of 24 (two months-ish)

The Victory Lab - 2 out of 3 (one week)

Never Seduce a Scot - 25 out of 40 (one month-ish)

The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City - 1 out of 1 (next!)

Bound to Please - 2 out of 3 (two weeks)

His Royal Pleasure - 3 out of 3 (three weeks)

Dark Lover - 21 out of 26 (two months)

Pleasure Unbound - 6 out of 10 (six weeks)

Laid Bare - 14 out of 17 (two months-ish)

The Siren - 11 out of 12 (six weeks)

Interpreting School (1): First Day

I'm not going to write lots of details so I don't get googled, but I started interpreting school yesterday, yea!  The school is a little over an hour from my house and meets every Saturday for four hours.  There was so much to do the time flew by!

Our first day went like this:

- housekeeping (paperwork, how to use the Language Lab, etc.)
- teacher self introduction - we translated this in pairs consecutively
- basic interpretation theory
- student self introductions in our second language, with questions from the class

- lunch!

- shadowing both in Japanese and in English
- reading the shadowing text aloud in Japanese and English
- a retention exercise

One day, half a binder of study material.  Oi.

How was it, you ask?  It was... okay!  I knew this wasn't an ideal situation going in - what's easy for a Japanese speaker will be hard for me and vice versa.  So when the teacher decides to start off "easy" and work her way up I get thrown in the deep end and slowly make it to the shallows.  We get material to prepare for the next class ahead of time so I'm hoping today was the worst.  It helps that my classmates (every last one female, by the way) are very nice and welcoming.

There's a lot of homework of both the "thou must" and "thou ought" variety.  Next week there's an oral vocab test where we'll get tested on 30 words from a list of 60.  On top of that we got copies from a "dictionary of current terms" as learning more words now will make upper level classes that much easier.  Other weeks we'll have a newspaper reading test on English articles about a particular subject but I'm not so worried about that because hey, English!  There's also 30 words to study in preparation for next week's lesson.

That's the required stuff.  In addition I'll be shadowing and reading aloud using the material from today's classes, doing retention exercises using an English speech, and straightening out numbers in my head (not easy!).  It's a lot of work but it'll be worth it.

The plan for today is to get my flashcards set up and start pounding away at them.  I'm a student again - I'm going to enjoy this!

It's Monday, What are You Reading? (2)

This meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life

My last week of complete freedom - interpreting school starts this coming Saturday!  Eeeep!  I'll probably write more about that later in the week.  It's a time of transition all around - the days are still warm but the nights are getting cooler, the wool yarn finally reappeared in the craft stores, and soup sounds much more enticing than it did a couple of weeks ago.

This week's roundup is longer than usual thanks to the Read-a-Thon.  I read 1,000 pages in a day - I had no idea I could do that!

Read Last Week

 Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead ★★★

Yup, vampires.  Having three main classes of supernaturals instead of vampires vs. other was neat but the story was only so-so.  I hoped it was just world building blues and moved on to the second book.

 Frostbite by Richelle Mead ★★★

But the next installment was little better.  Mead started heading into "tell, don't show" territory which is a big ol' red flag in my book.  But the plot held together more or less and I just had to see what happened with the sexy Dimitri.  So, near the end of the Read-a-Thon, I tackled:

Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead  ~abandoned~

And... no.  All of my pet peeves from the first two books popped up in the first fifty pages and I threw in the towel.  No need to continue here.

Dead Inside: Do Not Enter by Lost Zombies ★★★★

This post-apocalyptic tale unfolds via notes and other ephemera a la Found magazine.  A super fast read, it was an engaging way to spend the wee hours of the Read-a-Thon.

Crossed by Ally Condie ★★★

Picking up where Matched left off, Cassie is off to the Outer Provinces to find Ky, her true love.  I like that they picked up a few side characters along the way but nothing really happens here.  The move from point A to B, are joined and separated, and book three is set up.  I'm not giving up on the series but I'm disappointed with where this went.

A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant ★★★★

This was my first full blown regency romance and I really liked it.  Martha's husband died suddenly and she's cut out of the will unless there's an heir in the picture.  She enlists the help of a rake to make sure that happens and over the course of the next month what started as a business transaction becomes much, much more.  Solid writing and a good plot made the pages fly by.

How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen  ★★

Ranting about this book during Hour Twenty Four of the Read-a-Thon kept me awake.  Graaah.

Currently Reading

Kiss of Crimson by Lara Adrian

I liked the first book of the Midnight Breed series well enough to pick this up.  I don't have high hopes for it, though.

Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True by Elizabeth Berg

Just started and I'm excited to see what she covers.

Still Waiting

(books on hold at the library)

I just got access to the State Library so this section is going to explode!

Gone Girl - 17 out of 41 (six week wait)

The Paid Companion - 2 out of 2 (one month wait)

Divergent - 4 out of 4 (two month wait)

Halfway to the Grave (Night Huntress #1) - 24 out of 25 (three month wait)

The Victory Lab - 5 out of 5 (three week wait)

Never Seduce a Scot - 32 out of 34 (two month wait)

The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City - 2 out of 2 (one month wait)

Dark Lover - 26 out of 27 (three month wait)

Pleasure Unbound - 6 out of 6 (six week wait)

 

Read-a-Thon: I Made It!

The Final Numbers

Pages read: 1,008 - goal met!

Books finished: 4

Crossed by Ally Condie
Dead Inside: Do Not Enter by Lost Zombies
A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant
How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen

Other books read: 2

Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy #3) - abandoned
Kiss of Crimson by Lara Adrian (Midnight Breed #2) - started

I'll have mini reviews of the finished books in the coming week.  And now for the traditional end of event questionnaire!

1.  Which hour was most daunting for you?
Hour Seven landed at 3 am my time and I had a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open.

2.  Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year?
Dead Inside was a wonderful change of pace.  Being a graphic novel (of sorts) it was easy on the eyes and going through all the personal notes felt a naughty in a wonderful way.  A Lady Awakened seemed to read itself and I recommend it to anyone who likes romance or regency era tales.

3.  Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?
I was bothered that email address are required in comments for many of the mini challenges.  I don't like putting my addy in plain text... I suppose I could get a throwaway account for that sort of thing but it just skeeved me out.

Also, I was put off by all the references to the time in the US - saying that a contest ends at 1 am Eastern makes most people do mental math into their own time zone.  Not so bad for someone in North America, but it adds several mental hoops for people in Europe or over the International Date Line in Asia like me.  It doesn't help that Japan doesn't have daylight savings time... that changes back in October, doesn't it?  Was it before or after Halloween?  Way too easy to mess up by an hour.  Why not just say, "This contest will be open until the end of Hour 18" instead?

4.  What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon?
I liked how the posts on the main blog were often up a few minutes early - if I came to the end of a chapter at x:56 I knew I could refresh and get my blogging out of the way.

5.  How many books did you read?  &  6.What were the names of the books you read?
See above.

7.  Which book did you enjoy most?
Probably A Lady Awakened.

8.  Which did you enjoy least?
How Reading Changed My Life; I ranted about it in Hour Twenty Four.

9.  If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders?
n/a

10.How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time?
To be honest I'm not sure.  I learned a lot in the past 24 hours - that I can read 1,000 pages in a day if I want, that I don't miss my usual internet distractions if the books are good enough, and that simply upping the text size one notch lets me read for much longer without eyestrain on my ipad.  If I could have a do over though I would sleep a full six hours after finishing Crossed in the 2 am hour.  That way I wouldn't have lost so much of my morning to drowsiness.

There was another challenge I saw floating around in my blog travels - aiming for 24 hours of reading in a 48 hour period.  This strikes me as much more sane and enticing, and something I would rather try than another read-a-thon.

Read-a-thon!

Here we go!  I'm going to put all of my updates into this one post to keep everything neat.  Most of the goodies are below the fold, so click through!

Goal: 1,000 pages
Books Completed:  4 - Crossed by Ally Condie, Dead Inside: Do Not Enter by Lost Zombies, A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant, How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen
Total Pages: 940 pages
Current Book:  Kiss of Crimson by Lara Adrian

The Read-a-Thon is Coming!

 A bunch of people are going to try to read for 24 hours straight, forgoing showers and loved ones in the name of books?  That's crazy!

...I'm in!

The Read-a-Thon starts in eight hours and I'm sooo looking forward to it.  I already went out and bought snacks (mmmm salt) and have tea (black, green, and ginger) at the ready.  My fiance's sick so he doesn't mind laying low all day, a big plus.

My books are at the ready too - I just got a card at my huge state library (yea!), quadrupling my hold slots and giving me ten times the ebook selection I had before.  Here's what I downloaded:

Crossed by Allie Condie (Matched #2)
Kiss of Crimson by Lara Adrian (Breed #2)
Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead (Vampire Academy #3)
Escaping Into the Open by Elizabeth Berg
Dead Inside: Do Not Enter by Lost Zombies (graphic novel)

I'm thinking about rereading Night Huntress #1 if my brain goes mushy, and there's always more graphic novels I can check out, too.

Things kick off at 9pm here - talk about weird timing!  I'm going to try and get a nap in this afternoon and get all of my knitting and letter writing out of the way. 

As far as goals go I'm aiming for 1000 pages, or 60 pages an hour for 18 hours.  I'm not sure how quickly I read, to be honest, but it's a nice round number.  The graphic novel feels like cheating... maybe I'll count five of those pages as equal to one novel page.  Finishing three novels would be nice.

Later tonight I'll put up a Read-a-Thon post proper, with updates for each hour and any mini challenges I decide to do.  Now I just need to calm down enough to take that nap!

Review: The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Genre: Fantasy

Format: e-book

Source: library

Summary from Goodreads:

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out....

Review

Just amazing. It's been a long time that there's been a book I'm reluctant to finish because I don't want to leave the world that's been constructed for me. The language is rich and beautiful, dripping with symbolism and hidden meanings. I'm looking forward to rereading this book in six months or a year to uncover layers that I missed the first time through.

The synopsis didn't exactly grab me - two young magicians are trained from a very young age to participate in a game only their instructors seem to grasp the scale of. Nor did the characters, with a couple of exceptions, forcefully drag me into the story. Instead it was the world that captivated me. I would love to visit this circus, to marvel at its wonders and partake in its delights. When I was ushered out of the front gate at the end of the book it felt like a true loss... I'll be back, but sadly I can only retrace my previous steps.

If you like immersive worlds, rich prose, themes and symbolism that you can really sink into, and being led along even though you're not exactly sure where you'll end up, this is the perfect book for you. If you are curious and still have your sense of wonder you will lose yourself in its pages. If you like an A to C through B plot and have little patience for nuance, don't bother.

Some notes on the medium - I read this as an e-book but I desperately wish I could have read a physical version instead. The timeline does some interesting things and I found myself turning to past chapters to compare dates quite a bit. There are also some foreshadowing passages that I liked rereading once the corresponding section was over... both of these were hard to do on an e-reader. There were also many times I would see a reference and think, "Oh, I saw this before!" but grew frustrated before I could find it again. If you have a choice, read the real thing.

The reader's guide actually has some great questions in it - if you're like me and just can't let the world go it provides interesting food for thought.

Verdict

★★★★★

It's Monday, What are You Reading? (1)

This meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life

 

This week was quietly crazy.  I went to the US Consulate in Osaka, took our cat Suzu to the vet, killed some bugs, and did some knitting.  Looking back I can't claim that much on the "finished" list but boy, it took a lot of energy.

This will be more than a book site, I swear, but this is all I have to blog about at the moment, so... yeah.

 

Read Last Week

 

Glory in Death by JD Robb ★★★★

Very good, but maybe I'm not a mystery person after all.  As much as I would like a series to dig into this isn't it.  I will enjoy going back to it now and then, though.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern ★★★★★

Wonderful.  Amazing.  Review forthcoming later in the week.

 

Austenland by Shannon Hale ★★★

I'm backing into Pride and Prejudice by reading Austen-adjacent books.  This one was just okay... the ending may have been the best part.

 

 

 

Currently Reading

 

Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead

I just loaded this onto my e-reader so let's see how this goes.  I've read part of Mead's Georgina Kincaid series and liked it so I'm curious how this will stack up.  It's also a test of YA as a genre, as I haven't had wonderful experiences with it lately.  It's not an all or nothing test, but still.

 

 

 

Next Up

 

This next up section is to say that there will rarely be a next up section.  My next read is largely dictated by the whims of the library's hold system so I never really know what I'll be reading next.  I like it that way.

 

Still Waiting

(books on hold at the library)

Gone Girl - hold 23 out of 42 (roughly a two month wait)
Divergent - hold 4 out of 4 (two month wait)

Crossed - hold 6 out of 6 (three month wait... sigh)

Review: Everything I Know about Love...

Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell
Genre: non-fiction
Format: e-book
Source: library

Summary from Goodreads:

Take a dashing hero with a heart of gold and a mullet of awesome. Add a heroine with a bustle and the will to kick major butt. Then include enough contrivances to keep them fighting while getting them alone and possibly without key pieces of clothing, and what do you have? A romance novel. What else? Enough lessons about life, love, and everything in between to help you with your own happily-ever-after.
Lessons like...
Romance means believing you are worthy of a happy ending
Learning to tell the prince from the frog
Real-life romance is still alive and kicking
No matter how bad it is, at least you haven't been kidnapped by a Scottish duke (probably)

Review

I'm torn. I want to give more stars because I agree with the message - romances don't create unrealistic expectations, on the contrary, they provide a way to examine all sorts of relationships and determine what works and what doesn't. By seeing everything out on the page you can ask yourself, what if that happened to me? How would I react? Would I want the hero to act like that? Each novel is like a case study in love.

But as wonderful as the message is the way it was delivered was less than ideal. First, a good 15 percent of the book was pull quotes from the previous, or even the same, page. They might have worked better in the physical book but on my e-reader they were intrusive and annoying.

Second, a large chunk of the book consists of reader and author quotes, and they get more numerous as the book wears on. Don't get me wrong, some of the testimonials are amazing - one woman's journey through trauma and depression with the aid of books is particularly memorable - but with so many quotes the whole thing feels jumbled. I love Wendell's style and wish more of her own writing graced the page.

Third, some parts were incomprehensible to me, a new-ish romance reader. I usually stick to paranormals so the explanation of Old Skool vs. New Skool was educational, but quick sketch outlines of heroes, trying extremely hard to be spoiler-free, came out convoluted and confusing. Some of the "favorite scenes" were little more than a paragraph and laughable without context. Here's how the excerpt from Heaven and Earth by Nora Roberts starts:

"I don't want you here." She shoved at him, and her voice began to hitch. "I don't want you near me."

"Why?"

"Because, you moron, I'm in love with you."

...I cracked up. How could you not? I'm sure in the book it's a touching moment but yanked out like that it's cliche.

Am I glad I read this book? Sure. I discovered a few series I'd like to check out, and there are some good laughs, both intentional and not. Will I be recommending it to my friends? Not so much.

Verdict

A reluctant ★★