It's Monday

The kid pictured above had his 3rd birthday on Mother's Day this year. We had him overnight last night, and this morning his cousin had fun handing him his presents. She was very excited since she had kept secret ever since the day before what his presents were from us. He was so sweet he let her play with one of his newest toys....something she has a problem doing herself. lol

I had a lazy, lazy afternoon - after the grandkids went to their respective homes, I thought I would spend the afternoon reading, rather I spent the afternoon napping and reading and napping and reading....then all my son's ended up at our house, with two of their friends so I was honorary mom to five boys today...er...five men. We had food from one of the many Taqueria's in town. Love a plate full of carnitas....non spicy of course.

I did however, manage to finish reading one more books Sunday.

:)
This brings us to the Monday weekly meme, hosted by Sheila of Book Journey

I started out the week reading from at least four books, I ended the week finishing two - Christopher Moore's The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove and Dia Reeve's Bleeding Violet. Both were entertaining in their own ways, but believe me, if you're squeamish about teens and slightly crazed behaviour, you're going to have a hard time with Bleeding Violet. I enjoyed it, but then sometimes I'm a little weird...not that I'm ever violent or anything....Something that I found ironic, is that even though one book was an adult novel and the other a young adult, and the plots were very different, with very different settings and character, each novel had an underlying thread of belonging, or fitting in. The need to belong or fit in...but then, I think a lot of books have that thread running through them - and that's as analytical as I'm ever going to get. {The brain, she is tired and lazy now *g*}

After I finished Bleeding Violet, I found a book that was laying around in my cave...er, bedroom. I've always enjoyed Sookie Stackhouse novels, but I waited this time until Dead In the Family came out in paperback... I finally decided to read it. The next book is already out in hardback. At this point in the series, I'm not even reading the back of the book for information on the story. It says Sookie, it says Charlaine Harris, and I just buy it and read it at some point. Once I decided I like series, this is kind of what I do with any series. Until it goes off the deep end like a certain series that is on it's 19th or 20th book. Anyway, started reading Dead In the Family, and then the whole Mother's Day dinner happened, so I ended back in the living room. After everyone left, I didn't feel like going to get my book, so I sat on the couch like a blob - a well fed blob - and looked to my right, where I saw...

The Spirit Thief by Rachel Aaron. Look at the face on the picture. Somehow, this is more attractive, in a bad-boy, slightly wicked way than all those covers with the bare chested men and their washboard abs. I haven't gotten very far yet, far enough for a king to get stolen. This is proving to be a humorous fantasy-a thief that drives people crazy, one that happens to have wizard powers. There are two other books already out, sequels to The Spirit Thief. I'm hoping I like this book, because the others sound just as interesting. So far the dialogue is good, and the narration is interesting, so it's promising.

Soap Box Moment - I like to include an excerpt link of books that I'm reading whenever I can. I think it's great when an author is able to put excerpts online. When I was searching for an excerpt I saw quite a few links for free downloads of the full text of Dead In The Family. I don't usually preach about things on my blog..but I don't think it's right to pirate copies of books when it's already tough for an author to make a living from writing. Somehow, many people that would cringe at the thought of stealing things from a store, or a friend think nothing of pirating a copy of an author's written work - just because it's easy on the internet.

So if it were completely easy to steal from a store or a friend, I wonder if they would do this. Because it amounts to the same thing. I don't think rationalizing (as I've read here and there) that some authors make a lot of money makes any difference. It's still stealing and for every author that possibly makes enough money to live on, there are many more that still have to work a day job to make ends meet. So they are working, some raising families, and STILL spending time writing to get stories out just to have someone (or a lot of someones) steal by pirating their stories from the internet.

It's not right.