I got Absolute Fear from my local Half Price Books clearance rack, and swapped Lost Souls with a local fellow bibliophile. I received nothing in exchange for this review.
Lisa Jackson has written a continuity, set in and around New Orleans, both pre- and post-Katrina. The first book in this continuity, Shiver, I've either not read, or read long enough ago that I don't remember it. Absolute Fear revisits the asylum established in Shiver, and revolves around a murder investigation. This investigation ends with a police officer's daughter waking from a coma, and kept me reading avidly. That said, I have some notes cribbed on a Post-It, so that I could write my review, but don't remember many details. Can't spoil the plot for you that way, can I. LOL
First note: either the author or her editors had trouble with the terms black and african-american. African-american is more politically correct today, but frankly, I come down on the black side. I'm white, black people are black. I don't really understand why we have to be so darn milquetoast to live in our society. And who cares what color someone is, anyway? I digress. My note was that the author should pick one and stick to it. Both were used often enough that I noticed it, and wrote it down. Lost Souls didn't have this problem, as I recall distinctly that various people in the police departments are referred to as african-american.
Second note: many of us have watched enough cop shows that we know what a BOLO is, at least in context. It's an acronym, standing for Be On the LookOut. Only in this book, it's parenthetically defined as Be On the Lookout For. So, in this book, BOLO is BOLF. Yes, that took me out of the story enough to scribble it on my sticky note.
Third note: a car was called a Carmengia. Unless I miss my guess, this is a Karmann Ghia, an old Volkswagen model. I remember thinking, "Seriously? They can't even make sure to spell a car model name properly?" I have since done some research and found many places online where it is spelled incorrectly, as shown above, so maybe someone did some lazy research and just picked the first website that came up on a search. Call me a purist. Things that are named after people and places should be spelled properly.
Lost Souls starts with Kristi Bentz (the girl who awoke from a coma in Absolute Fear) packing up the car to leave home. She's decided to work on her education some, toward the goal of becoming a true-crime writer, and has enrolled in a not-quite-local private college. Of course, part of making that choice included knowing that four girls had gone missing over the last year and a half, and she hopes to solve that mystery while she's attending classes, and then use that to write her first book.
When she gets there, several unpleasant surprises await her, among them that one of her instructors is someone she knew in the past, very well.
Lisa Jackson creates great suspense, with odd secondary and tertiary characters, as well as wonderful descriptions of the college buildings and surroundings. It's easy to understand how Kristi gets creeped out just about every time she walks out the door.
Some of the minutiae of attending college classes in a small town drags a little, though it's very little. The mystery unfolds, piece by piece, and Kristi and her criminology professor, Jay, run down clues and research people and places. I enjoyed this book a lot, and found the Kristi's efforts to avoid Jay, then build a new relationship with him, believable.
I did not see the twists coming, and that always makes a book better for me, if I haven't figured out the ending after the first two chapters.
This gets a solid Very Good, and I look forward to another Lisa Jackson thriller set in this locale. Since this was published in 2009, I just have to get out there and find it on a shelf somewhere.
Showing posts with label swap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label swap. Show all posts
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Looking to swap
Or, I'm happy to be gifted with this: Fisher and Paykel HC385 humidifying chamber for my CPAP. Mine is about four years old; since I no longer have health insurance, I don't get a new one every year.
If you know someone who might have one of these that they do not use, I'd be thrilled to give it a new home.
If you know someone who might have one of these that they do not use, I'd be thrilled to give it a new home.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Second book finished in 2011 - Night Play
Judging from the state of the book, I probably got this at a secondhand store or a library discards sale. I didn't get it for free.
Night Play confused me for about the first 80% of it, but most particularly the first chapter. I'd read the first chapter before, and it was in the middle of a book, not the beginning. I kept reading, knowing that it was a different book, and hoping to get unconfused. Eventually, like in the last couple of chapters, I did finally figure it out.
Eureka! I was reading the series of events from the other brother's point of view. Boy, did I feel dumb when I realized why I was confused.
This book had its fair share of romance and action, but it just wasn't as compelling as I usually find Sherrilyn Kenyon's books to be. The sex was OK, but not the wet-your-seat good I've come to expect from Ms. Kenyon (In one book, the two main characters don't even have sex until near the end of the book, but the interactions they do have are damn fine examples of wet-your-seat writing.). The characters were mere shadows of themselves, even the ones I already know from reading other books in the Dark-Hunter universe.
The heroine, Bride, was a solid size 18, with self-esteem issues galore, just as many of us with size dramas are. Vane, the brother in question, was naturally a magnetic, powerful, sexy, hot, etc. magical wolfman, with a tight ass and washboard abs and cruise ships full of money. Bride's self-esteem issues were magically borne away on the wind when she realized that Vane wanted her, all of her, as she was, and not some skinny chick who was "more sexy." I know that in the first glows of newfound love, self-esteem issues sometimes seem to disappear, but really, they don't. They just take a back seat. Knowing that your man finds you sexy doesn't mean that you still don't wonder what other people think of you. In Bride's case, she found out exactly what her sister thought of her, for instance.
To be honest, though, I think the book could have been better if size was not an issue in the first place. I know that I despair of ever reading good books written with heroines who are more than a size 14. There are some out there, but they are few and far between. The best ones are written by women who have actually been there and come back from the trip. Queen Latifah, who is a very sexy large woman, probably hasn't always been as comfortable in her skin as she is now, and I bet it wasn't easy to find her true self among the garbage. But I digress. In this case, such an issue was made of Bride's size and her emotional baggage that the easy fix was a letdown and took me out of the story.
Vane is just too perfect for words, perhaps more so than other heroes in Ms. Kenyon's book, and maybe because his perfection was described at so much length by Bride herself, in her thoughts and conversations, as comparisons to her own "shortcomings." As the hero of the book, Vane should have been easier to peg, but his characterization is pretty shallow in this book. I actually prefer the Vane I got to know in the book where his brother, Fang, finds his own mate. In this one, so much of his time is spent agonizing over whether or not Bride can understand his world or not, hiding his magic from her, calling in favors to protect her when she doesn't even know she needs protecting, pretending to be someone else (his wolf persona) so that he can be close to her without scaring her, etc., that I never really got to know HIM at all, just what he can do. He's too perfect for words (ok, weak and unintended pun), and as such, not really appealing to me.
So, though I did enjoy reading how Vane and Bride met, I didn't enjoy it as much as I "should" have enjoyed it, considering Sherrilyn Kenyon wrote it and considering that she's one of my favorite paranormal authors. This could easily have been written into the other book, as an alternating viewpoint kind of thing, though the characterization flaws would have stuck out like a pimple on your nose.
If, despite my review, or maybe because of it, you'd like to read it, let me know. I can ship it - $2 for postage, including delivery confirmation. First come, first served, though in Ms. Kenyon's books, it's usually the other way around. Pun intended.
Night Play (Dark-Hunter, Book 6)
The next to be finished is looking like Songmaster by Orson Scott Card, so look for that review sometime in the next week.
Night Play confused me for about the first 80% of it, but most particularly the first chapter. I'd read the first chapter before, and it was in the middle of a book, not the beginning. I kept reading, knowing that it was a different book, and hoping to get unconfused. Eventually, like in the last couple of chapters, I did finally figure it out.
Eureka! I was reading the series of events from the other brother's point of view. Boy, did I feel dumb when I realized why I was confused.
This book had its fair share of romance and action, but it just wasn't as compelling as I usually find Sherrilyn Kenyon's books to be. The sex was OK, but not the wet-your-seat good I've come to expect from Ms. Kenyon (In one book, the two main characters don't even have sex until near the end of the book, but the interactions they do have are damn fine examples of wet-your-seat writing.). The characters were mere shadows of themselves, even the ones I already know from reading other books in the Dark-Hunter universe.
The heroine, Bride, was a solid size 18, with self-esteem issues galore, just as many of us with size dramas are. Vane, the brother in question, was naturally a magnetic, powerful, sexy, hot, etc. magical wolfman, with a tight ass and washboard abs and cruise ships full of money. Bride's self-esteem issues were magically borne away on the wind when she realized that Vane wanted her, all of her, as she was, and not some skinny chick who was "more sexy." I know that in the first glows of newfound love, self-esteem issues sometimes seem to disappear, but really, they don't. They just take a back seat. Knowing that your man finds you sexy doesn't mean that you still don't wonder what other people think of you. In Bride's case, she found out exactly what her sister thought of her, for instance.
To be honest, though, I think the book could have been better if size was not an issue in the first place. I know that I despair of ever reading good books written with heroines who are more than a size 14. There are some out there, but they are few and far between. The best ones are written by women who have actually been there and come back from the trip. Queen Latifah, who is a very sexy large woman, probably hasn't always been as comfortable in her skin as she is now, and I bet it wasn't easy to find her true self among the garbage. But I digress. In this case, such an issue was made of Bride's size and her emotional baggage that the easy fix was a letdown and took me out of the story.
Vane is just too perfect for words, perhaps more so than other heroes in Ms. Kenyon's book, and maybe because his perfection was described at so much length by Bride herself, in her thoughts and conversations, as comparisons to her own "shortcomings." As the hero of the book, Vane should have been easier to peg, but his characterization is pretty shallow in this book. I actually prefer the Vane I got to know in the book where his brother, Fang, finds his own mate. In this one, so much of his time is spent agonizing over whether or not Bride can understand his world or not, hiding his magic from her, calling in favors to protect her when she doesn't even know she needs protecting, pretending to be someone else (his wolf persona) so that he can be close to her without scaring her, etc., that I never really got to know HIM at all, just what he can do. He's too perfect for words (ok, weak and unintended pun), and as such, not really appealing to me.
So, though I did enjoy reading how Vane and Bride met, I didn't enjoy it as much as I "should" have enjoyed it, considering Sherrilyn Kenyon wrote it and considering that she's one of my favorite paranormal authors. This could easily have been written into the other book, as an alternating viewpoint kind of thing, though the characterization flaws would have stuck out like a pimple on your nose.
If, despite my review, or maybe because of it, you'd like to read it, let me know. I can ship it - $2 for postage, including delivery confirmation. First come, first served, though in Ms. Kenyon's books, it's usually the other way around. Pun intended.
Night Play (Dark-Hunter, Book 6)
The next to be finished is looking like Songmaster by Orson Scott Card, so look for that review sometime in the next week.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Busy weekend
This weekend has been beyond busy, with lots of auctions ending, and putting stuff up on the new site. I have twelve packages ready to go out, with six of them paid for.
I listed my truck up on craigslist, and have already gotten two responses to it. It's only been an hour. Sheesh. I mean, good, because I want to get rid of it to have something more useful to me, but unexpected.
Tomorrow I have to go to an unemployment meeting, mandatory, at 9am. I guess that's technically later today. Ugh. I hate mandatory meetings, much less first thing in the morning, when I haven't been able to get to sleep the night before.
The cats all went to the shelter last week, and I miss them. I wish that I'd had the money to keep them, but since they weren't even mine, I guess I just have to live with what is, rather than what I wish.
I listed my truck up on craigslist, and have already gotten two responses to it. It's only been an hour. Sheesh. I mean, good, because I want to get rid of it to have something more useful to me, but unexpected.
Tomorrow I have to go to an unemployment meeting, mandatory, at 9am. I guess that's technically later today. Ugh. I hate mandatory meetings, much less first thing in the morning, when I haven't been able to get to sleep the night before.
The cats all went to the shelter last week, and I miss them. I wish that I'd had the money to keep them, but since they weren't even mine, I guess I just have to live with what is, rather than what I wish.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Books, books and more books
I have hundreds, no, thousands of books in my home. Books are among the things I most enjoy and prize and among the things I'm downsizing and decluttering, in an effort to make my post-life cleanup as easy as possible for my daughter and her husband. Not that I'm going anywhere anytime soon, just that despite eight years, the memory of cleaning out my mother's house after her death is FRESH in my mind. It was a hideous experience, and one I will not wish on my own kid and grandkid(s).
I have First Editions, autographed books, antique books and "trashy" romance novels. I have reference books, text books and teacher manuals. I have self-help books and Dummies books. And, of course, I have kid books. My favorite among those is about the squirrel, Miss Suzy
I so loved this book when I was a kid. I might even not get rid of it. Baby Potatohead has to get stories read to him sometime, right?
I look around my room, which is where I am right now, and I long for the day when listing books will be as easy as just looking at the book. Yeah, I know, it seems a little big-brotherish to me, too, but oh, for an easier way to list all these darn things.
For instance, here's one I can see on the dresser. I have the hardback, of course, because if I really like an author or a subject, I want to get the books that will hold up best under repeated reading, and yes, I do read books more than just once or twice.
I love Anne McCaffrey - all the Pern books, all the Pegasus books, all the Acorna books - and own almost all of them in hardcover. I did read a romance she read and um, really didn't like that one. Other than that, if AM wrote it, I've read it and liked it. I've continued to read stuff she's "written" with her son, Todd, I think, after her death. The style is not the same, and I've enjoyed them all the same.
I can see two, count 'em, two hardcover editions of Bullfinch's Mythology. I'm sure one was mine and the other was my mother's. I probably even have several more around here somewhere. My mother believed that if a book was worth recommending to students, it was worth having several copies, so she could loan (lend?) it out to them if they couldn't get it themselves. She was a teacher, by the way. English teacher by day (she graduated from college the same year I graduated from high school) and other odd, strange and bizarre things by night - astrology, numerology, tarot, world religions, mythology (she favored Egyptian, where I favor Greco-Roman), , magick, etc.
I see two Robert Heinlein hardcovers - Job: A Comedy of Justice
and Friday
. Of course, the links don't take you to the hardcover books, probably because no one selling on Amazon has them listed.
In addition to that, I have an entire box (more than one to be honest, but only one within view), full to overflowing, of paperback romances - the steamy stuff. I've read a LOT of romance novels, and the older I get, the more I like the ones that have sex in them. The ones where the two main characters never even kiss during their "courtship" are just not realistic, and in my opinion, they're generally written in a juvenile style.
Of course, I also have my foot-and-a-half tall stack of library books, because buying books at this point in my life is just not useful. I mean, what's the point of getting rid of books to declutter when I just buy more that I might not read again for three or four years, or even longer?
So, authors, I read your books. I don't buy many anymore, and I'm sorry not to contribute to your pocketbook, particularly if I really enjoy your work, but logic and selfishness wins out on this one, I'm afraid.
I'm experimenting with different ways to send my books to new homes. I use listia, eBay, Amazon, paperbackswap and goodreads right now. If you know of other places to list used books of different types, please let me know. It'll take me a while to get them all gone, so I have time to try out different ideas and sites. I am obviously open to sites that don't involve me getting any actual money in exchange.
I have First Editions, autographed books, antique books and "trashy" romance novels. I have reference books, text books and teacher manuals. I have self-help books and Dummies books. And, of course, I have kid books. My favorite among those is about the squirrel, Miss Suzy
I so loved this book when I was a kid. I might even not get rid of it. Baby Potatohead has to get stories read to him sometime, right?I look around my room, which is where I am right now, and I long for the day when listing books will be as easy as just looking at the book. Yeah, I know, it seems a little big-brotherish to me, too, but oh, for an easier way to list all these darn things.
For instance, here's one I can see on the dresser. I have the hardback, of course, because if I really like an author or a subject, I want to get the books that will hold up best under repeated reading, and yes, I do read books more than just once or twice.
I love Anne McCaffrey - all the Pern books, all the Pegasus books, all the Acorna books - and own almost all of them in hardcover. I did read a romance she read and um, really didn't like that one. Other than that, if AM wrote it, I've read it and liked it. I've continued to read stuff she's "written" with her son, Todd, I think, after her death. The style is not the same, and I've enjoyed them all the same.
I can see two, count 'em, two hardcover editions of Bullfinch's Mythology. I'm sure one was mine and the other was my mother's. I probably even have several more around here somewhere. My mother believed that if a book was worth recommending to students, it was worth having several copies, so she could loan (lend?) it out to them if they couldn't get it themselves. She was a teacher, by the way. English teacher by day (she graduated from college the same year I graduated from high school) and other odd, strange and bizarre things by night - astrology, numerology, tarot, world religions, mythology (she favored Egyptian, where I favor Greco-Roman), , magick, etc.
I see two Robert Heinlein hardcovers - Job: A Comedy of Justice
and Friday. Of course, the links don't take you to the hardcover books, probably because no one selling on Amazon has them listed. In addition to that, I have an entire box (more than one to be honest, but only one within view), full to overflowing, of paperback romances - the steamy stuff. I've read a LOT of romance novels, and the older I get, the more I like the ones that have sex in them. The ones where the two main characters never even kiss during their "courtship" are just not realistic, and in my opinion, they're generally written in a juvenile style.
Of course, I also have my foot-and-a-half tall stack of library books, because buying books at this point in my life is just not useful. I mean, what's the point of getting rid of books to declutter when I just buy more that I might not read again for three or four years, or even longer?
So, authors, I read your books. I don't buy many anymore, and I'm sorry not to contribute to your pocketbook, particularly if I really enjoy your work, but logic and selfishness wins out on this one, I'm afraid.
I'm experimenting with different ways to send my books to new homes. I use listia, eBay, Amazon, paperbackswap and goodreads right now. If you know of other places to list used books of different types, please let me know. It'll take me a while to get them all gone, so I have time to try out different ideas and sites. I am obviously open to sites that don't involve me getting any actual money in exchange.
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