Manic Monday

Hosted by Sheila at Book Journey - here is where we rejoice about how many books we've read
or in my case, admit that we read about ONE book a week (two in a good week!)

This last week - it's been only one book. The week before, now - that was THREE books - pretty good for me lately.

I haven't really done an official Monday Reading post for two weeks, so you get two weeks worth.

read in week before last....

I read and reviewed The Pack, by L.M. Preston. I enjoyed this book. Strong female character who has learned to overcome her blindness and some strong supporting characters. Life on MARS - kidnapped children, smuggling, danger, kids working together to beat the bad guys - it was good book with some good lessons couched in an adventerous format. btw, YA book.

I read Sophie Kinsella's The Undomestic Goddess within a 24 hour period. She writes entertaining books, her heroines alway overcome embarrasing situations and hardtimes - but they alway have a good ending. This one was a feel-good book that was just what I needed to read. Funny too.

I also found out that Sophie Kinsella (remember the shopaholic books?) writes as Madeleine Wickham. I plan to take a look at some of these books. While I'm not crazy about the shopaholic's character, I have enjoyed every book that I've ready by Sophie Kinsella, and I'm sure her other persona writes just as well.

There are some books that totally deserve more than the five stars allowed at Amazon or the six stars that I set as my limit - this is one of them. I haven't reveiwed it yet, because just like Magic Bleeds, all I can say right now, is DAMN!!!!

City of Ghosts is the third in the Downside series by Stacia Kane, and Stacia is kicking ass with this series. Seriously Kicking Ass!

future read

received Glory from PhoenixFireWolf. Devin O'Branagan has just released Glory, a book about a young woman with something special in her blood, an epidemic that is killing thousands, and other mysterious things. I haven't started it yet, but plan to very soon. Ms Branagan has written a couple previous novels, years ago. She's began writing again (or publishing, presumably, like most writers, she's been writing all along. Many writers just HAVE to write, whether they publish or not...it's a need.) There is a page for buying her other books. One in particular seems very interesting to me, Red Hot Property. I love the descriptions of the other characters.

currently reading

Right at the moment - and for the last four days - I'm reading Spin State by Chris Moriarty. I mentioned this book before, when I first bought it. At the time I assumed (because of the name, mostly) that Chris Moriarty was a man. To my surprise, and mild shame for assuming, Chris is a woman. I have to say, the first name helped to fool me into believing this was a man. The rest of the belief just followed -first the name, then because it was hard science...there's not a lot of women that write hard science, in my defense.

This books is amazing - the story is about intrigue, mystery, murder, space travel, mining, spying AND relationships - and threaded through out are theories of quantum physics, string theory, coherence, decoherance, all kinds of computer speak. There are quite a few phrases here that I just flat out don't understand. Some of the characters have long-winded conversations about theories and physics....a way of giving the reader some information. Even couched in the conversation of an AI (artificial intelligence) being explaining things to the main character, I still didn't understand most of it. In fact, I'm still a bit confused regarding the post-human, pre-human, construct beings (aparently post humans...or a version) and AI series,...there's a lot to take in if you're not a scientist who has already studied this "high science". But even so, I'm still entertained by the story itself. One thing ( I should really save this for the review, but...) I am enjoying is the DIALOGUE between these characters. Even though this book is obviously written by a woman with an extremely high IQ, the speech patterns by the characters are not stiff and too formal. No, they sound like real people having conversations with words and phrasing that actually fit the circumstances and the personalities of the characters. This is something that some authors seem to forget. Not all vampire or demon slayers or especially, Teenagers sound like professors.