It's Monday, What are You Reading? [8]

This meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life

 

I studied a lot, like always, but we got out, too.  The dinner with a bunch of The Artist's friends was a lot of fun - I forgot that having Saturday classes means I can stay out late on a weeknight!  So much better than fighting the weekend craziness.

Midterms are two weeks away - scary!  They don't count towards passing or failing the class, amazingly enough, but falling behind now would kill my chances.  If you hear mumbling about free trade agreements and pulmonology you'll know why.

On the reading front 2013 challenges are starting to come out and I'm enjoying picking through them.  So far I have a non-fiction genre challenge and a fiction genre challenge lined up but I'm sure there will be at least one more.

Read Last Week

 

on Goodreads

The Siren by Tiffany Reisz

Review later this week.

on goodreads

Better than Beauty: A Guide to Charm by Helen Valentine and Alice Thompson ★★

I was under the impression that this would be an updated version of the 1938 book and boy was I wrong. Some sections are quite dated (a K cup of apple sauce?) but some timeless advice does remain. On posture: "Rigidity is not necessary... you don't want people to notice your posture, good or bad. You want them to see you." Makes sense.

Everything took a nosedive when the fashion section rolled around - afternoon dresses, dinner gowns, what colors you should wear based solely on hair color (ha!), and more. Around here I started skimming, but not so much to notice that the illustrations didn't fit with the topic. Many were from two chapters out and made me wonder what I missed.

More a history lesson than a guide to style, I was less than charmed.

on goodreads

 Laid Bare by Lauren Dane ★★

(see my full review on goodreads for more info, including some spoilers)

This book is perfect in the worst way. Erin is leading a perfect life as a rock star - money, fame, creative freedom, love. A horrific turn of events threatens to take it all away but then she re-meets the perfect guy, Todd. Their sexual preferences match up perfectly. Todd's just aggressive enough, and if he ever steps over a line she says the word and he rearranges his whole life for her.

Dane tried to add conflict in the form of courtroom snits (battle is too strong) but with Erin's strong do-gooder spirit the result is never in question.  Many of the characters said just the right thing at just the right time, leaving things too hunky-dory for my liking.  While there were some nice sex scenes the lack of drive in the plot left me bored and wishing something, anything, would happen.

Currently Reading

 

on goodreads

Small Space Organizing by Kathryn Bechen

I feel like she's trying to hit up all kinds of small spaces in the beginning of this book but we'll see how much of her advice works for my 650 ft. two bedroom.

on goodreads

The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City by Alan Ehrenhalt

I just started but he's going to have to get interesting quick if I'm going to stick around. Maybe it's because I was an urban planning major in college but it feels old hat.

Still Waiting

(books on hold at the library)

Stupid Perfect World - 1 out of 1 (next!)

Dreaming of Mr. Darcy - 2 out of 4 (one month)

At Grave's End (Night Huntress #3) - 9 out of 10 (two months)

Desire Unchained (Demonica #2) - 3 out of 4 (three weeks)

How Will You Measure Your Life? - 14 out of 25 (two months)

Halfway to the Grave - 6 out of 12 (one month)

The Victory Lab - 21 out of 24 (three months)

Love Eternal (Black Dagger Brotherhood #2) - (two weeks) 

Never Seduce a Scot - 3 out of 50 (<one week!)

The Angel - 2 out of 8 (one week)

Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood #1) - 3 out of 18 (one week)

Passion Unleashed (Demonica #3) - 8 out of 8 (two months)

How to Be a Woman - 65 out of 83 (one month)

It's Monday, What are You Reading? [7]

This meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life

 

Last week I was slammed with interpreting homework.  Honestly overloaded.  Cramming vocab and a little luck did the trick though - I got nine out of ten on the newspaper quiz and a perfect 30 on the quick response vocab test, huzzah!  Sadly with all the vocab going on I didn't have much time to work on my actual interpreting.

This week's class brought sensei #3 and... meh.  First knock against him - he's as much as a translator as an interpreter.  We were interpreting on the spot and after he'd be like, "when I mused over this script at my house I came up with this translation...".  We don't have than luxury!  Comparing our on the spot interpretation to your crafted translation isn't fair!

Second knock - his English is the worst out of the three teachers.  Don't get me wrong, he's still gosh darn good, but it sounds like he's never lived for any length of time abroad.  A bunch of his phrasing sounded odd and he punched letters in weird ways.

Third knock - I felt like a bug under a glass when we were interpreting.  At his teacher station he can listen to any of the student mics, and I get the impression that the other teachers click around, getting a taste of everyone's delivery.  But this teacher listened to me, from start to finish, for two of the long exercises.  Afterwards he was like, "I was listening to Karla-san and found xyz interesting...".  Kinda creepy.

He seems to be a nice guy, though, and the class atmosphere was definitely more jovial than usual.  He also had the decency to only call on me when I had a decent interpretation, hehe.

Tonight The Artist and I are meeting up with some of his old Art School Friends for dinner.  There will be an American there who doesn't speak a lick of Japanese so I may get some real life interpreting practice!

Read Last Week

 

Divergent by Veronica Roth  ★★★★★

Holy cow. An instant recommend to anyone who likes dystopia. I'm sure other reviewers on Goodreads will do a better job explaining the plot so I'll leave them to it.

The good:

- it didn't feel like a YA novel, at least not in the annoying ways I've come to expect
- the heroine's journey of self discovery is realistic and gripping
- the world is beautifully imagined

Think of this book as a well rounded action movie.  Don't go poking in the corners, don't go digging deep for symbolism, just enjoy the amazing ride.

Being YA any steamy scenes to come in later books will surely be tamer than I care for... but when the story is this good, who cares?

on Goodreads

 What Every BODY is Saying by Joe Navarro  ★★★★

I found this book to be a very through, un-sensationalistic look at body language. There are no outrageous claims ("Determine if your husband is cheating by studying his eyebrows!!") and Navarro goes out of his way to reinforce that body language can't stand in for a lie detector. After reading the section on hands, especially, I became more aware of my own movements and what they might be communicating to the people around me.

The writing style is clear and easy to understand without being overly casual. I loved that mentions of research were always cited.  Pictures and interesting stories from Navarro's time as an FBI agent pepper each chapter.

If you want to become very good at reading nonverbal tells you can do so by diligently studying this book but even the casual reader has much to gain from its pages.

Currently Reading

 

The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg

I only have one more day on this library book and there are 300 screens left, oh no!  I'm going to turn around and take it right out again as I'm loving every page.

 

 

 

 

 

Next Up

 

Not much change here:

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City by Alan Ehrenhalt
Better than Beauty by H. Valentine
A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James

Still Waiting

(books on hold at the library)

Small Space Organizing - 2 out of 2 (one month wait)

Dreaming of Mr. Darcy - 3 out of 3 (six weeks)

Desire Unchained (Demonica #2) - 5 out of 6 (six weeks)

How Will You Measure Your Life? - 17 out of 23 (two months)

Halfway to the Grave - 9 out of 16 (six weeks)

Never Seduce a Scot - 4 out of 43 (one week)

The Angel - 4 out of 10 (three weeks)

Dark Lover - 7 out of 18 (two weeks)

Laid Bare - 2 out of 13 (one week)

The Siren - 1 out of 3 (next!)

How to Be a Woman - 90 out of 95 (six weeks)

New Visa!

Two weeks after The Artist and I went to the Immigration Office I have a shiny new visa!  They changed the Foreign Resident Registration System in July so I got a new "gaijin card" to boot.  It looks like this:

I love that there's less personal info on this card - the old one had my passport number and The Artist's name as my "householder", ick.  The new system makes it easier for them to keep track of people than the convoluted old way, which is fine by me.

I also love that I'm now the "spouse of a Japanese national"!  (We registered our marriage legally but are having the ceremonies next year.)  The line next to that is priceless - "no work restrictions".  I'm no longer stuck working as an English teacher, the only thing I could do under my last visa.  The world of work is open to me, and my employer will have no immigration paperwork to do, huzzah!

My walk back to the train station was a little giggly, I have to admit.

There are only two flavors of spouse visa - three year, the one I got, and one year.  Japan doesn't recognize duel citizenship (the bastards) so this is it unless I spring for Permanent Residence when I become eligible in lessee... three to six years.

It's not all roses though.  I'm required to carry my residence card at all times.  A policeman can stop me at any time and ask to see it, and hold me in detention if I don't have it.  It's kinda like Arizona asking to see people's immigration papers.

As bad as that is at the moment that pales to what happened when I went through the train turnstile - my smart fare card wouldn't register.  It turns out my new residence card has an IC chip in it, messing things up.  I guess it's time to play with some tin foil!

It's Monday, What are You Reading? [6]

This meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life

"Monday" is becoming a loose concept around here, eep.  Back to interpreting school after a weekend off and I loved the teacher (we rotate among three).  Our first sensei is a little cold and seems to say, "you're just going to have to get used to it" whenever we say how hard something is.  But this teacher said, "yes, it's hard - it was hard for me, too.  Nobody gets it on the first try.  Practice a little above your level and keep upping that.  Don't worry, everyone goes through what you're going through."  That was the exact message I needed at the exact moment I needed to hear it.

She also had some great study suggestions and even told the class how lucky they were to have a native speaker in the class.  A lot more questions were thrown around than usual and I learned a ton.  I'm sad we only have this sensei once a month but I can't wait to show her how much improve in the next thirty days.

Read Last Week

 

at goodreads

His Royal Pleasure by Leanne Banks  ★★★

My first Harlequin and... eh. I'm trying to give category romance a fair shot but I don't think it'll be my thing. The hero is just this side of being an asshole, and while I like alphas he put me off a little bit. I like the heroine well enough, but wonder why on the ebook cover she's a brunette instead of a redhead with a bad perm. It comes up often enough in the story!  The trip she made at the end seemed rushed, and I don't feel like she faced her choice fully.

I'll keep categories in mind when I want to break out of a slump as they do fly by.  I also want to check out some other lines and imprints while I'm at it.

at goodreads

Pleasure Unbound by Larissa Ione (Demonica #1) ★★★★★


I loved this book.  It has all the mainstays of paranormal romance - sexy alpha hero, strong heroine, demons, two sides at war along species lines.  What makes the story shine, though, are the characters.  They are layered, interesting, and flawed in believable ways.  Tayla's ignorance is due to her birth and upbringing, not stupidity.  We meet a blood junkie, a brother that acts as a whipping boy, and good guys that may not be so great after all.  I can't wait to get my hands on the next book in the series.

Currently Reading

 

I'm still chipping away at What Every BODY is Saying and The Victory Lab from last week.  Divergent, hinted at in the Next Up, is insanely good.  Lose sleep to finish one more chapter good.

Next Up

 

The library has been very very good to me, coming through with a bunch of holds all at once, so here's a list:

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City by Alan Ehrenhalt
Better than Beauty by H. Valentine
Bayou Heat by Donna Kauffman
A Kiss at Midnight by Eloisa James

Still Waiting

(books on hold at the library)

Small Space Organizing - 3 out of 3 (six week wait)

Dreaming of Mr. Darcy - 4 out of 4 (two months)

Desire Unchained (Demonica #2) - 6 out of 6 (six weeks)

How Will You Measure Your Life? - 17 out of 19 (two months)

Halfway to the Grave - 12 out of 18 (two months)

Never Seduce a Scot - 9 out of 43 (two weeks)

The Angel - 5 out of 11 (three weeks)

Dark Lover - 10 out of 21 (one month)

Laid Bare - 2 out of 12 (one week)

The Siren - 4 out of 6 (two weeks)

How to Be a Woman - 114 out of 116 (six weeks)

Review: Archangel's Kiss

at goodreads

Title:  Archangel's Kiss by Nalini Singh
Genre:  Paranormal
Format:  Ebook
Source:  Library

Summary from Goodreads:

Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux wakes from a year-long coma to find that she has become an angel-and that her lover, the stunningly dangerous archangel Raphael, likes having her under his control. But almost immediately, Raphael must ready Elena for a flight to Beijing, to attend a ball thrown by the archangel Lijuan. Ancient and without conscience, Lijuan's power lies with the dead. And she has organized the most perfect and most vicious of welcomes for Elena...

 

 

Review: 

Angels' Blood, the first book in this series, blew me away but Archangel's Kiss was merely okay.

The good: Raphael didn't lose any of his Alpha-ness as soon as he became attached, and I loved seeing him as a scary, powerful archangel. Getting to know "The Seven" better was great and each character was fleshed out and interesting. Elena's past comes back to her in drips and drabs and she faces it (for all of ten seconds) in the final scene.

The not so good: The world building slipped a bit - I never felt like I could picture the Refuge which is a shame because it should have been awesome. The plot felt meandering and had a bunch of waiting built in. I missed Sara, even if she was gone for good reasons. Elena spends so much time reliving what happened to her as a kid that she doesn't face her new situation as much as I would like. Did she even have a denial stage? Will there be one in the next book to make up for it?

I still want to see where the series will go from here but I'm going to take a break.

Verdict:

★★★

Today in the Paper - Coal Mine Edition

Welcome to my newest blog feature - Today in the Paper!  The title is admittedly lame but I'm open to suggestions.  Rejected: Picture in the Paper, Picture the Crazy.  See?  I need help.

Anyway....

Japanese news outlets have their own graphic design sensibility, doing things I would never expect to find in a national paper in the states.  Things like, say, pasting heads of public figures on cartoon bodies.   Today's illustration is a case in point, as they milked the term "fiscal cliff" for all it's worth:

 

The title is "If Japan and America fall off the fiscal cliff..." and outlines of a possible outcome are below.  The US side below President Obama reads "Democrats and Republicans are unable to come to a compromise ->  Tax cuts expire, the budget is cut -> American economy fails, striking a blow to the world economy".  The Japanese side by Prime Minister Noda ends with confusion in the bond market affecting local economies.

Cliff in a coal mine, that's where it's at!

It's Monday, What are You Reading? [5]

This meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Because it's still Monday somewhere!

Life

 

I didn't have interpreting school last week so with my extra free time (har) we started planning for our Japanese wedding ceremony.  The average budget made me want to run for the hills.  In Japan the bride spends hundreds of dollars on things like makeup and a western style ball gown for the reception.  What's wrong with having a friend do you up and wearing your wedding dress?  Grah.  It's like culture shock all over again.

Read Last Week

 

at goodreads

Angel's Blood by Nalini Singh (Guild Hunter #1) ★★★★★ 

Wow! This book sucked me in from the beginning and never let go. There's great action, a kick butt heroine, a deliciously dangerous hero, and an interesting mythology holding everything together. I immediately got the next book in the series....




 

at goodreads

Archangel's Kiss by Nalini Singh (Guild Hunter #2) ★★★ 

Review later this week.

at goodreads

 Bound to Please by Lilli Feisty ★★★★

 This was my first foray into true BDSM literature and I liked it! I would say more but I don't have anything to compare it to... a problem I look to be fixing shortly.  I mean, look at my hold titles below, some are pretty obvious.  ~grin~

 

Currently Reading

 

at goodreads

What Every BODY is Saying by Joe Navarro

Non-fiction is good for the soul!  So far it's an interesting, breezy read on what could be a tedious topic - non-verbal communication.  Navarro's background as an FBI agent lends itself to juicy examples and there's lots of pictures to illustrate the gestures.  So far, so good.

at goodreads

The Victory Lab by Sasha Issenberg

This hold came through on the eve of the Presidental election - fate.  My afternoon reading is set!

Next Up

 

at goodreads

Divergent by Veronica Roth

A bunch of holds came through this week, but I'm going to try and power through the non-fiction before digging into another dystopia.

Still Waiting

(books on hold at the library)

Kiss at Midnight - 1 out of 1 (next!) 

Small Space Organizing - 3 out of 3 (six weeks)

Gone Girl - 5 out of 39 (two weeks)

Better than Beauty - 3 out of 9 (one week wait)

Halfway to the Grave - 13 out of 18 (six weeks)

Never Seduce a Scot - (one month)

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

The Angel - 8 out of 12 (six weeks)

His Royal Pleasure - 1 out of 8 (next!)

Dark Lover - 16 out of 26 (six weeks)

Pleasure Unbound - 2 out of 13 (two weeks)

Laid Bare - 5 out of 14 (two weeks)

The Siren - 6 out of 9 (three weeks)

How to Be a Woman - 140 out of 140 (two months)