Book: The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson

I've had the first Longmire novel, The Cold Dish, on my wishlist at paperbackswap for months - since I first watched Longmire on A&E's website.

I finally got it in the mail last week, and even though it's been probably more than a year since I read anything in print, I looked forward to reading this book so much that I started it that night. Reading at night by flashlight, reminiscent of my tween and teen reading years, when I had to pretend to go to bed at the appointed hour, and couldn't be caught reading after lights out. What fun.

This book seriously needs a better editor. I mean, really. It's not a poorly edited book, but it's not well-edited. Nope. Maybe subsequent reprints have been updated. I can hope.

Parris Island was misspelled Paris Island. Sight instead of site. Right of passage instead of rite of passage. Deep-seeded instead of deep-seated. Affect instead of effect. Multiple uses of sat instead of set. Grinded. Too many whos and thats making things more complicated, when the idea could have been communicated much more simply without them. A serious overuse of commas, much like I found in the first book I edited for someone who'd used Grammarly for their book edits before finding me. Sheath of papers instead of sheaf. Antiquainted, which is not even a word, instead of antiquated. Freeze de jour. If worse came to worse.

And oh, my gods. The dialogue. Dialogue and actions were mixed into paragraphs, such that I have a hard time sometimes keeping straight who is talking and who is acting, because both are done by different people in the same paragraph. He doesn't much believe in dialogue tags, which might be fine if there are only two people in a book, but there are dozens, and holy cow.

All of this had been making me crazy (er than usual), until I just want to throw the frakkin' book into the wall. Has everyone forgotten the English language, including editors?

Even crazier? I'm enjoying the book despite all those flaws.

Book Walt has a bizarre and twisted sense of humor that makes me laugh. Out loud. I love the relationship Book Vic and Book Walt have with each other - he appreciates her more than the show implies, and Book Vic is much more like a favorite scifi character than Vic is on the show. She's mouthy and independent and brash and competent (not that she's incompetent on the show), and drops the F-bomb a lot, and is more vulnerable and open with Book Walt than she's been on the show (understand that I've never seen the first season, only two and what's aired of three). Book Walt is spiritually-inclined and has a more interesting relationship with Henry Standing Bear - Henry is in many ways Book Walt's conscience. Their relationship is sometimes adversarial and sometimes cooperative, and there are moments that they don't need words to communicate, and underlying everything is a deep and abiding love for each other, in a way that is unusual in American heterosexual men, at least unusual in the sense that they love each other and are never awkward about it.

I'm just enjoying the hell out of this book, and it's been my oasis in the middle of a crisis, editorial mistakes notwithstanding.

TV: Battlestar Galactica (2003)

Back when BSG was on the air, I didn't really get a chance to watch it.  It was during one of the times when I didn't have cable, and trying to consistently get a friend to record it for me was just too much trouble.  Besides that, I was still pretty into the two Stargates, and wasn't looking for a new fandom.

But a few weeks ago, I was skimming through the Amazon Prime streaming looking for something to watch and decided to see if BSG was on the free list yet.  I was thrilled to find out it was, and went on an unintentional binge.  I watched the mini-series, Razor and all four seasons.  Then the last episode was over and I was in shock.

I've watched a lot of TV.  I mean, a LOT of TV.  As a kid, I was allowed to watch Sunday nights, you know, Marlon Perkins and Wonderful World of Disney.  That was it.  Any other TV I got was at other people's houses, and was rare.  I've kind of made up for it since then, between a former subscription to Netflix and my current Amazon Prime.

Anyway, Battlestar Galactica ripped out my guts, repeatedly, and put them back in differently.  I've never seen another show that so perfectly resonated with me - characterization, visuals, music, plot, relationships (friendships and otherwise - relationships are the main reason I stick with ANY show), premise.  Over a week went by and I couldn't even think of watching something else.  I hunted down some fanfic to ease the taste of POOF out of my mouth - you'd have to see the very last episode to understand that one - and went on a little reading binge.  Then, I started watching it all over again.  I'm taking my time this second time around, paying closer attention, noticing different things, and I'm still in love with this show.

Part of me wishes that I'd been able to see it during its heyday, and gotten involved in the fandom.  A bigger part of me knows that had I tried to watch this while the Stargates were still occupying my screen time, I wouldn't have connected with this show in quite the same way.  I'm sad that it ended after four seasons and there's nothing more except fanfic.  That's a little hard to deal with.

Yes, I'm aware I'm talking about a TV show, and yes, I'm aware I'm a little strange.  And?

Trying something new...

How would you like an $18,291.75 paycheck
EVERY MONTH automatically?

==> http://txbuffgal.secretaff.hop.clickbank.net

Download this now before it's gone!

Book: Taken By Love by Mindi Winters

Good solid premise, but OMG the typos and grammar errors!!!!

Proofread and edit, people!  At least pay attention to those squiggly lines in MS Word.

Since I got a new phone, I've been reading much more using the Kindle for Android app.  I've noticed a disturbing trend in the Kindle editions - many more typos, more extra words, bad sentence structure.  Does publishing a book into an e-book format automatically release an author or publisher from the due diligence of providing as error-free a book as possible?

I think not, and I'm disappointed that so many of the books I read lately make me want to take a red pencil to my phone screen.

This book was the worst example I've yet to see among the dozen or so books I've managed to read over the last three weeks since I got my new phone.  Oy vey.

NaNoBloMo - Different Homes

blogHer writing prompt:  When was the first time that you realized that your home was not like other people’s homes?


I guess I was about twelve when I had a sleepover with a girl from school and noticed that her parents were so encouraging, not just to her, but to all of us.  No ideas were too stupid to share.  They were actually interested in what us measly ol' twelve-year-olds wanted to discuss.  It was very uncomfortable for me until the parents left us girls to our own devices.  I just didn't know how to deal with adults like that.

Review: Bra

Leading Lady Cotton Front Hook Leisure Bra

Style: 20231

 

I can no longer reach behind me to connect a bra in back.  For months now, my daughter has been helping me with my bras anytime we had to go out.  But then, she traveled to San Antonio to spend a week with her husband, and I had appointments.  I HAD to go get a bra that closed in front.  I've always had good luck with the Hanes/Bali/etc outlet at Grapevine Mills mall, so I headed there.  The woman in the store was extremely helpful, and though she didn't have exactly what I was looking for, she found me something that would work well enough.

That was a Playtex bra, and I liked it well enough that I researched to find how much larger they came, since this one was a cup-size or two too small.  Imagine my surprise to find that the size I was wearing was as large as Playtex makes.

The hunt was on, so I researched and read reviews and researched some more.  Finally, I had my choices whittled down to two, and both were available in my price range on JustMySize.com.  I ordered one of one style, because I was pretty sure it would be too small but wanted to try it on, and two of the other.  The other was the subject of this review, the Leading Lady style number 20231.

This bra is so comfortable I forget I'm wearing a bra!  That is something I NEVER thought I would say.  I have large breasts, which get larger as I gain weight, so finding something that feels so comfortable is just amazing.  This bra is a cotton/spandex blend.  The straps do not adjust, but are slightly padded and feel great.  The one con for me is that something so comfortable provides almost NO support, so when I go out in public, my breasts jiggle, which I think is extremely unattractive, as well as unnecessary.  It's a price I'm willing to pay, for now, to have something comfortable to wear, which I can afford, which I can fasten by myself, which also keeps me from being completely braless in public.

http://www.justmysize.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/product__11151_-1_11002_90670_27055

Thrilling Thursday

OK.  It's not really thrilling, but I like the alliteration.

I went to a book club meeting tonight.  Uh, technically, that would be last night.  I met several interesting women, one of whom is a local author, and got a bunch of suggestions for books to read or authors to watch.

It was a lot of fun to get out of the house, and it cost me nothing but a little gas money.  Or a little more, since I already had to go to the Post Office to mail a couple of packages ( stuff I sold!!!).

I plan to go again next month, and I have the next three months books saved on my Blackberry, so that I can find them at the library and read them before the respective meeting.

They even seemed slightly interested in possibly reading some of my mom's stuff, if I can get it into publishable form.  I have been thinking about that, since it was one of my mother's dreams to be a published fiction author.  The only thing standing in the way now is my lack of knowledge. 

Kay Hooper series of trilogies

I checked out all these books at the library, and no money changed hands anywhere.

Kay Hooper wrote a series of trilogies, featuring and building the Bishop/Special Crimes Unit of the FBI.  All members of the SCU are psychic in one way or another.  If this sort of thing does not appeal to you, move on along, because the whole psychic thing plays a huge part in these books.

Each book actually stands alone rather well, though reading them in sequence and within a fairly short time-frame makes for more suspense as the over-plot gets revealed or resolved, little by little, in each book.  I did not read all the books in order - in fact, I did not know there were so many until this last trip to the library.

The trilogies are, in order, Shadows, Evil, Fear and Blood.  Each title in each trilogy contains the name of the trilogy.

I read book 3 of Evil, Sense of Evil; books 1 and 3 of Fear, Hunting Fear and Sleeping with Fear; all three books of Blood, Blood Dreams, Blood Sins and Blood Ties.  I actually read Blood Ties first, and that's what set this whole thing off: it had a list in the front of the book of all of the SCU books, and I made a special trip to the library to get as many of these as I could.  I'd read several of the books before, and interestingly, remembered enough of those plots for the references in the later books to make perfect sense.

The only "complaint" I have is that references to the events of Blood Sins made them sound horribly traumatic and suspenseful.  In point of fact, the resolution of that piece was fairly short and simple, and therefore, a bit disappointing.  Had I read the books in order, perhaps I wouldn't have noticed this.

Stealing Shadows (Shadows Trilogy)
Hiding in the Shadows (Shadows Trilogy)
Out of the Shadows (Shadows Trilogy)
Touching Evil
Whisper of Evil (Evil Trilogy)
Sense of Evil
Hunting Fear
Chill of Fear
Sleeping with Fear
Blood Dreams (A Bishop/Special Crimes Unit Novel)
By Kay Hooper: Blood Sins (Bishop/Special Crimes Unit: Blood Trilogy)
Blood Ties: A Bishop/Special Crimes Unit Novel (Bishop/Special Crimes Unit: Blood Trilogy)

For me, these books were suspenseful and action-packed, with believable psychic "gifts," as well as believable struggles for the people learning to cope with their new (or old) abilities.  Each of these people brings something to the table besides being psychic, many are either military or police trained prior to joining the FBI and several have specialties that make them valuable to the FBI as a whole, not just to the SCU.   The love stories share equal time with the action, and yet are not given short shrift in the overall plot.

If you are one to read books about out of the ordinary abilities and gifts, I highly recommend any of the books in this series.

Ghosts Abound!

I checked all these books out at the library and no money changed hands anywhere.

Heather Graham wrote the Bone Island Trilogy, Ghost Shadow, Ghost Night and Ghost Moon, all set in and around Key West, Florida, and a small circle of friends who mostly grew up together.

Ghost Shadow (The Bone Island Trilogy)
Ghost Night (Bone Island Trilogy)
Ghost Moon (Bone Island Trilogy)

In the beginning of each book, there's a fairly comprehensive, bulleted list of historical events involving Key West and how it came to be Key West.

I've read many of Heather Graham's books, including several under her "pen" name Possezere (I think), which is actually her real name.  At any rate, I've come to expect a certain quality from her, including well-choreographed sex scenes.  These books were a big disappointment for me.  There were characters I particularly enjoyed, like the actual ghost who was a part of the family for the entire trilogy, but mostly, I kept expecting there to be something more to the story and there never was.  The sex scenes were so blah that I even thought the books might have been better without them.

At the end of the trilogy, and yes, I made myself read all three books, I was left with nothing but a serious jones to visit Key West sometime soon.  I cannot really recommend these books, though your mileage may vary.

Weird stuff happening

Today, I've been having trouble typing.  I've been typing since I was 15 or so (around 30 years), and though I failed typing in high school, I generally type 65-75 words per minute with near 100% accuracy once I started typing on a regular basis. 

What's been coming up on the screen today, though, is not what I've been thinking and telling my fingers to type.  To make matters worse, I'm having to wait for the computer to finish typing something, so if I think I've made a mistake, I have to wait as much as 5 or 6 seconds to see if I did, and then fix it.  It's messing with my speed and making it hard to get things out of my head an onto "paper."

Maybe I'm just having a bad typing day.  It's also been pretty cold, so maybe my fingers are just not cooperating.

My first Amazon "experiment"

Well, I thought I'd see how a person could make any money offering books, CDs and DVDs for a penny on Amazon.  I mean, I'm competing against that price whenever I list stuff.

So, I listed a book I got free for a one penny sales price.  And the experiment worked.

I just listed the book yesterday as soon as I'd finished writing the review, and it sold this evening.

With the Amazon built-in shipping, I made a whopping $1.66 for that book.  But wait, there's more!  I also had to pay for shipping to ship it to its new owner, to the tune of $3.07.

Basically, I can list books (let's just leave it at books, OK?) for a penny, but I lose about a buck and a half on the transaction.

Bottom line?  My minimum price for a break even transaction is about $1.50 for a book.  That's good to know.

Book Review: The Miracle of Mercy Land

The Miracle of Mercy Land by River Jordan.  


The author's name makes me giggle, just so you know.


Like the author, River Jordan, Mercy Land is a person, not a place.


Miracle sounded interesting when I chose it at booksforblogging.org, but once I got it, I had second thoughts.  I spent the first few chapters of this book wondering if I would be able to finish it.  The writing style is very talky, and not one I generally like in my reading material.  For most of the first half of the book, the story is told from the perspective of Mercy Land, a young woman from Alabama.  Alternating throughout the book are journal entries by her boss at the paper, Doc Philiips, with one or two as John (another character) thinking.  These alternating points of view are easily identifiable and are in no way confusing. A couple of them are used as venues for exposition, and I guess by now, you know I fail completely to be a fan of tell-not-show.  I did finish the book, though, and while I wasn't wowed by it like some others seem to be, I did enjoy the read.


Mercy Land is born on a riverbank (literally), during a freak thunderstorm in not-even small-town Alabama.  Though she relates some of her childhood, the story actually takes place during her adult life, after she has moved to Bay City, Alabama, which is big enough for a Woolworth's and a couple of restaurants, but definitely not Mobile or Atlanta, Georgia.  The sequence of events she relates occurs during her tenure at the Banner, the local newspaper, in the mid to late 1930s.  


While I don't generally enjoy talky books, Mercy is a unique enough individual that I got a kick out of her.  She was born to parents on the upper side of the riverbank, as opposed to the lower classes who lived on the other side of the Bittersweet River.  She talks to herself some in the book, and sometimes lapses into her country-speak while giving herself pep talks, and this is sort of entertaining.  Mercy is also unique in that her childhood, while not one of plenty, is a happy one.  She is a grown woman, and a smart one, not necessarily naive, and without an ugly bone in her body.  I'm talking about pretty-is-as-pretty-does, not physical beauty.


The heart of the story is that a few years into her work with Doc at the Banner, Doc magically (again, literally) comes into possession of a miraculous book of light that contains people's lives - the choices they made, the paths they did take and the ones they might have taken.  Doc entrusts Mercy with the safekeeping of the key to this book, and as a team they protect it from others who might use the information in the book for harm.   In reaction to the book, Doc pretends to plan for retirement and invites a strange man to town allegedly to take over the paper.  Mercy picks this man up at the train, and knows almost right away that he's not here for the newspaper, though she continues to be confused as to why he IS there.


The remainder of the book is the story of connections: to past, to present, to Bay City, to Bittersweet, and how those connections create and destroy trust between the characters, most notably between Mercy and her "family" of people.


In the end, I'm still not sure why the book came to Doc Phillips, what purpose it served other than to be the center of the story.  I enjoyed Miracle enough to finish reading it, and I will probably not be searching out another by River Jordan anytime soon.  


You can read the first chapter free by clicking on the image of the book and clicking on "read first chapter free" to the right of the page.




FTC Disclaimer: Thanks to WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group, who shipped this book to me at no charge for the purpose of reviewing it for my blog and for their website.

Book Review: Shadow of the Vampire by Meagan Hatfield

Shadow of the Vampire by Meagan Hatfield was a book that made both a positive and a negative impression on me.   Parts of the book were very well-written, and other parts were cliche-ridden.  

The main male character, the hero, is a dragon-man.  I'll admit to a fascination with dragons that started in my early teen years with the first Pern book I ever read (though these dragons' resemblance to Pern dragons ends with the word dragon).  Declan is a strong figure, physically attractive, and head of the dragon clan after his parents' deaths.  He's full of angst over their manner of death and his unexpected ascendance as head of the clan.

Alexia is a 125 year old vampire, daughter of the current Queen, and heir-apparent.  In some places, she's smarter than she appears to be, and in others, she's just dumb as a rock.  I don't really understand why she puts up with Lotharus at all, except to appease her mother, whose "lover" he is.

There's a feud between dragons and vampires, a la Underworld's vampire/lycan struggle, and the background for this feud is scattered about in little bits and pieces, with not much organization.  Ultimately, all I really understand is that the vampires hate the dragons and vice versa, with no real inkling as to why exactly this is so.  Maybe there's a previous book or story I missed reading before this one.

The villain of the piece, Lotharus, is easy for me to hate, as he is abusive (verbally, physically, sexually) and a bigot.  His secret plot to take over the vampire clan is threaded throughout the story, until the denouement decides his fate once and for all.

Alexia's mother, the Queen of the vampire clan, is mostly an afterthought tucked into chapters here and there, though she does play a major role in the climactic fight for "survival" of the clan.

The chemistry between Alexia and Declan fairly crackles, and this is a part of the book with which I'm pleased.  Their growing care for each other, and the internal struggles each experiences, create obstacles with which most of us can identify from our own romantic hobgoblin-strewn past.

The most obvious place for my displeasure in this book is one single word:  conscious.  In no less than six places, this word is incorrectly used instead of conscience.  As the daughter of an English teacher, I tend to see mistakes like this in blinking neon letters, and it not only irritates me that a mistake of this kind passed the editing process, but also these mistakes tend to take me out of the story in a highly abrupt manner.  Thus does even an otherwise nearly perfect book lose a star, or even two, in my own personal rating system (not that this one was nearly perfect).  No, I do not use the English language perfectly, though I do try to keep my errors in the spoken arena of use, rather than the written.  I have high expectations of a published work, and this one fell down on the job.  Conscious and conscience just aren't interchangeable in the English language, and the repetition of the mistake really chapped my hide. 

Fight scenes are an obvious part of the plot, both between the dragons and the vampires, and internally amongst the vampire sects.  For the most part, the fight scenes are well-written, though sometimes they do spring up from practically nowhere.  The private scenes with Declan and Alexia are probably the most engaging, and there are enough to keep the reader interested in finding out how this relationship resolves in the end.

In this universe, dragons have powers, and sometimes those powers (such as telepathy) appear out of nowhere to move the overall arc forward, but in reality as a form of exposition.  It's not overused, but often enough that I remember it.

One of the biggest wtf's (and yes, I am aware that is not proper English, lol) in this book is an entire chapter dedicated to Declan's sister, Tallon, and her newfound attraction to lone wolf Griffon.  Had it been interwoven into the book from the beginning, it might have worked.  As written, though, one single chapter in the middle of nowhere, it stuck out like a sore thumb, and did nothing whatsoever to impact the plot in any way.  It deserves its own story, not being stuffed into the middle of Declan's, particularly as this chapter shows Tallon and Griffon dancing around her sprung-out-of-nowhere attraction, and finally falling into a fairly hot love scene.  Turn the page, and we're back to Declan and Alexia.

Bottom line:  I enjoyed parts of this book, but none of it was really memorable beyond reading, with the exception of the word conscious and the fact that the villain was an abuser.  I remembered those two points!  In order to write this review, I had to open the book a couple of dozen times to random pages and rescan to remember names or plot points.  If you like dragons or vampires or feuds or paranormal in general, you might enjoy this book.  If you read with a critical eye, you will probably not enjoy this book.  

I got this book as a sample-pack of four paranormal/suspense/thrillers from Harlequin.  I got nothing else from this except the on-again, off-again pleasure of reading this book.

Got a lot done today...

When I got up, Mr Potatohead had rearranged the living room, again, making it more accessible in several ways.

This update freed up several boxes I had been unable to get to before, and I was able to sort several and empty at least two entirely.

My donate/freecycle bin is overflowing.  I have someone coming over probably on Wednesday to look through the stuff and see what she can take home with her.  Someone picked up a bagful of school supplies yesterday, and also took some stuff off the front porch, so it's going away.

Also got several new items listed on Amazon, neither books nor CD/DVDs.  We'll see how that branching out thing works for us.  Kids had some diapers and other stuff they got as gifts that they can't or won't use, so I'm listing it on Amazon, since it's easy as pie to sell it there.

On a less positive note, those roaches are starting to impinge on my reality again.  That "cleanout" the apartment pest control did was not effective.  So far, it's mostly the tiny ones, just hatched and easy to kill, but I've seen a few grown females, and I am not looking forward to having to climb furniture to kill the ones that like to walk around the edges of the ceiling after Mr Potatohead's gone to Basic.  Just kitchen and bathroom, as far as I've seen.  I could maybe handle the ones in the bathroom, as they've been very sporadic, but the ones in the kitchen just creep me out.  I feel compelled to wash everything I take out of the cabinet before I use it, because I just don't know what's been crawling in it.  Well, enough of that.  I'm starting to get the creepies.

Yes, I did just do that, and...?

Dude, I so need my medication.

I just got so mad that I threw plates in the sink.  One broke.  I have managed to resist all such impulses for years.  Universe, please toss me the resources to get back on my meds.  Thank you.

I got a car!

Today I got a new-to-me car.  It's a 1996 Volvo, green, in very good condition.  It's very snazzy, with little perks my Blazer didn't have.

The first thing I did was pack the kids all up and go to the title office, then to the Post Office, then to Target.  Tomorrow is laundry.

See what you can do when you have a car?  lol

First book finished in 2011

Three Fates by Nora Roberts

I can nearly always count on Nora Roberts to write a good book, so if I see something that even remotely sounds interesting, I can pick it up without hesitation.

Three Fates is that good, solid book.  It has seven or eight main characters, and each is well-written.  Of course, the three fates as a collective are a character in and of themselves.  Each character, or set of characters, is given an opportunity to be on top so the reader gets to know them. 

Because of the number of main characters, and the chance each got to be up front, when I finished the book, I actually felt like it was a bit too short.  So much was put into characterizing that the last few chapters of mostly action weren't really enough for me.  Some of the personal advances seemed wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am.  I must note that I enjoyed reading the book, and while I was reading, this too much, too fast didn't feel that way.  It's only on reflection afterwards that it seems that way.  

I liked the characters (the ones I was supposed to like, anyway), even the peripheral ones.  I'd like to read more about the core family characters, whether back in Ireland on their home turf, or on travels related to the job, in the case of Jack and Rebecca.  I'd like for Ms. Roberts to find a way to work the cop and the Greek Tycoon into the background of another book or two.  The cop might even be able to carry a book on his own (with a female companion, obviously - this is Nora Roberts).

Bottom line - I enjoyed it and it was a good use of my reading time.

I read the hardcover version of this book, and I don't remember where I got it.  I do know that I paid for it, so I got nothing out of this except the pleasure of reading a good book.

Not what I had in mind...

So, I got an email from my mom today, telling me, among other things, that she had removed me as a friend on Facebook.  She never posts, only comments now and then, so I probably wouldn't have noticed for quite some time - it's not like I check my friends list all that often.  But to make sure I knew, she had to tell me.

That's not exactly what I had in mind when I decided this year was going to be much better.

Happy New Year!

It's officially the year 2011 in all parts of the USA now, and since we're the last of the Mohicans, so to speak, it's 2011 everywhere.

I sincerely hope your new year starts out smoothly and brings you increased health, wealth and happiness.

Starting off 2011 with books

What I'm reading now:  Three Fates, Night Play, Songmaster and The Journals of Rupert Giles.  Please don't ask me why I'm reading four books at once, because I have not come up with any answer that even remotely makes sense to me.  Each book is in a different place in my home, and I read it only in that place.  I've given up figuring out why I'm doing it or why it's working.