It's Monday and I'm tired...

Mondays are a mixed blessing/curse. I hate Monday, because it's the start of my work week and where I used to look forward to work, I now have a very hard time getting up and getting motivated...once I get there, I'm okay, as long as I have enough pain meds (sounds bad, doesn't it? But yes, I need to have a certain amount of meds in my system at all times just to feel comfortable enough to even walk...but that's whining, and not the purpose of this post or blog - it just is.) But the point is, it's getting more and more difficult to do this work thing, and I'm close to wanting to retire...yet the government says I'm too young. That's yet another blog post ( seriously, I have to wait until I'm 67!?! I think the government is just hoping most of us die off before we hit that age, and they want to raise it even HIGHER. Shame on them. )... The blessing part, is that usually by Monday or Sunday night, I've had a pretty fun weekend, even if I'm utterly exhausted from dealing with two preschool aged children. One has just turned four years old (the girl) and the other is going to be three in May.

(I know, this belongs more on a personal blog - but it's part of my Monday feelings.. lol)
I had a fun weekend. Both the grandchildren were over; they were playing together nicely....most of the time - a few times it was Battle Royale, but for the most part it was fun. We read books, watched movies, laughed at potty humor (WHAT has happened to my MIND) and played. I was extremely lazy (except for the whole potty thing and changing of the diapers), even going to far as to laying on the bed and letting the kids roll around on and off of me. This is a sneaky way of getting a back rub. Hey, what ever works - when your muscles are so tight from pain that they cramp up, having little kids roll around on top of your back, sitting on your back and in general just roughhousing ON TOP OF YOU, it actually feels good. This is pretty much how all my weekends go. It works for me.

In the picture here, they were being a prince and princess - dressing up in grandma's clothes and each wearing a button from Jack Kessler's Helles Belles book. If you look very closely, you can see the outline of Jezebel from the book. Not only were they prince and princess, but every weekend they must be transformed into kittykats, with heart shaped noses and whiskers - courtesy of their fun Aunt AJ. I wish she were my aunt sometimes. I hope to someday have a grandchild from her.....hint hint.

Okay, down to business - book blog business.
It's Monday - What Are You Reading? or What ARE you reading, for god's sake!
wierd mood, what can I say?

Hosted by Sheila of Book Journey, this is where we give and get a glimpse of what each other has been reading, might start reading and what we've read for the past week.
My reading has slowed down quite a bit since a year ago (see above picture for possible reasons) but I'm plugging away, getting at least an average of one book a week.

:)

By Cat Adams, (writing team of C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp) I finished Blood Song, an enjoyable urban fantasy read that includes vampires, telepaths, werewolves and Abominations (people not quite turned by a vampire). I enjoyed it enough to want to try out the second in the Blood Singer series (Siren Song). In fact, not only did I finish reading, but I actually managed to post a review on THE SAME DAY. I haven't cross posted it yet to Amazon and the other sites, like Good Reads, but I will.

That's it. for finished reading...

I'm Currently Reading:

A Song For My Mother by Kat Martin. This is my "work book", a book that is fairly tame, with a work-safe cover, that I don't mind the students catching a peek at. It's about a woman who has left her small hometown at a young age because of family trouble. She's held a grudge against her mother for all those years, but has come home for a short visit to allow her own daughter to get to know her grandmother. Her daughter came through a bout of cancer, so she's finally decided to allow her daughter and grandmother to meet each other. Personally, speaking as a grandmother, I can't think of anything more heartbreaking (other than death) than not being allowed to even meet your grandchildren.

I am also reading The Iron Witch by Karen Mahoney. Karen Mahoney wrote short stories for the YA anthologies Eternal Kiss and most recently Deadly Kiss. I was fortunate and won it (still excited about winning it, I'm such a book nerd - *g*) and had to force myself to wait until I finished reading Blood Song before I started The Iron Witch. I was able to get some reading done this weekend, despite having my weekend fun (see above *g*). Even though it's written in third person (my favorite is first person), I'm enjoying the whole tone of the novel so far. The heroine also has these cool metal markings on both arms (she doesn't like them, though). There are mechanical birds which remind me of some of the steampunk gadgets and/or the mechanical owl in The Clash of the Titans. the mythologically based movie made long, long ago. There is a POC side character, if anyone is looking for POC characters in books - though not a big deal is made of this (refreshing). I'm within the first hundred pages, but it's going well so far.

I'm also going to admit here that I was too lazy to walk back to another room to get The Iron Witch, when I had five minutes to read, so I grabbed a book that was sitting on my bedside table, Masques by Patricia Briggs. Per Patricia Briggs, this was her very first novel. She's re-worked it a bit, and luckily it's been reprinted, along with the sequel Wolfsbane. I haven't bought Wolfsbane yet - I was waiting to see if I would like Masques first. Although I love reading her Mercy Thompson series, I don't like the Alpha and Omega series - too romancy for me. I've only read the first chapter, but it's promising. After I read her forward, I was almost afraid to start reading the book, but it's not bad. *g* There is still a sample of the original Masques up at Hurog

I was going to finish this post with the books I'm reading, but I'm in the mood to inflict yet another grandchild picture on y'all. This one is a study of feet. It's the difference between my grandson's foot, and my granddaughter's foot. Remember, they are a year and a couple months apart - the girl being the oldest...she gets very angry when we mention how he's bigger than her. She wants to be bigger. She also doesn't like sharing the 'L' from the alphabet, only she's suppose to have it in her name, I guess. lol.

latest book read, books enjoyed and some flat ones

After suffering from BADD (Book Attention Deficit Disorder)I have finally finished a book! For the past year I have had a hard time actually finishing a book. I have over 60 books that I have bought in the last year, and I have started about 30 of them, lost interest in some, misplaced a few and finished about 10. Ten in about a year. I used to read at least two books a week. I have bought, and passed around enough books to stock a used book store.

I'm not sure what to blame this Book Attention Deficit Disorder on (yes I know it's not a valid sydrome - but it's mine and I'm sure it should be a real syndrome) .

Possibilites for why I have developed BADD

1. Three new grandchildren within two years; a beautiful very intelligent and spirited granddaughter who at the age of 22 mos has quite a sense of humor, keeps me on the run and was my first grandchild; a beautiful, sweet baby boy that was born with a birth defect (relatively minor compared to what could have been) that will involve surgeries throughout his childhood (he has already had one of them and he is only eight months old) who is so sweet and full of smiles for his grandmother; and a oneyear old step grandson who I like to just claim as a granchild. He has just came into my life three months ago. He is full of laughter and a lot of fun to be around
2. A slightly stressful end of one job, and a very stressful beginning to another job - general suck assness. If it weren't for the fact that I really enjoy children and need to actually pay rent and eat, I would have quit.
3. I suffer from chronic pain, and sometimes have difficulty holding a book - but I'll hold one as long as I can. I'd rather read a book than listen to audio books. I like to imagine the voices of the characters. Have you ever read a book that was enjoyable, had an idea of what a character sounded like (the wolf in Tenth Kingdom, the Hungry, dangerous wolf) then watched the movie and had to listen to the actor/or director's intrepretation of the character (i.e. whiny unpleasant wussy voice of the wolf in The Tenth Kingdom? Though the movie was pretty good, I was very put off by the movie wolf, when the book wolf was kinda cool. Sad for me.)
4. I take a lot of medicine, one of them a newer drug for nerve pain; I worry that it might affect my memory at some point. Don't really want to travel down that worry road, then I'll start worrying about brain damage via medication, or onset of Alzheimer's (that one is scary for me) anytime I can't think of a name of a person. I misplace a lot of books in the middle of reading them. Are they in my car? under my bed? My granddaughter's toy box? (she likes to pretend she is reading my books), did I loan any out and forget?
5. Recently moved from a cramped apartment to an actual house (hallelujiah) and have a lot of my books still in boxes.

Those are probably enough reasons to develop Book Attention Deficit Disorder, can't think of any other reasons at the moment (oh my god, there's that memory problem again!). At any rate I am very pleased that I have finished a book, started another one and am almost finished with that one. Some of the memorable books for 2008 for me were written by Lilith Saintcrow, Patricia Briggs and Terry Pratchett. The books that I finished (the ones I remember anyway) and really Enjoyed are

• Working for the Devil (Lilith Saintcrow) five books in that series
• Dead Man Rising (")
• Blood Bound (Patricia Briggs) three book series so far, more to come
• Iron Kissed (")
• Nation (Terry Pratchett)
• Making Money (")
• You Suck (Christopher Moore)
• Stormborn (Richelle Mead)
• Magic to the Bone (Devon Monk)

Some of the less memorable books lately (within the last two years)

• Incubus Dreams, Danse Macabre, The Harlequin, etc. by Laurell K Hamilton (hey I loved her first few books, enjoyed the middle few, but the last few? What? Why? - hey what happened? It went from horror, to just ... um.... yeah.... She has a way with words, used to have a good story , yeah okay hope it gets better.
• the Mona Lisa books by Sunny. Kind of ...um.... yeah.... sappy. A chip off the recent LKH block of ....um....yeah whatever. Okay, but not really enjoying the insecure-I- must- protect-all-the-supernaturally-strong-men-around-me-even-though-I'm-physically-weaker-and-human-just-found-out-I'm-only-part-human-type of heroine. Even though Sunny can be a good writer, and has interesting ideas with bits of humor thrown in, the dialogue between her characters are kind of lame, making them appear (to me anyway), as a little - stupid. (Hey -I know I can't do better than that - I'm a reader - not a writer, no real imagination here...)
• Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead. I was ready for some kick as Succubus demon action...good concept, but I would rather my succubus demon be less angsty, or whiny and guilt-ridden. Wasn't horrible, but really wasn't driven to buy the sequel, though I liked her other book (Stormborn), though I almost didn't buy it based on the style of Succubus Blues.
• Nightwalker (Jocelyn Drake) Couldn't finish it. Not sure why. I looked forward to it for a while (I surf the web for new authors to read), but just lost interest. I will actually try to read it again though.....as soon as I find it...where did I put it?...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the above are horrible writers, they just didn't hold my interest either at the time, or anymore. Or in the case of LKH, she lost me. I still think she's a good writer, or could be, but ...that's a whole other post. Soon. I don't really want to post about books that straight up suck for me.

Just finishing up (two chapters to go - but here I am typing away, or is it keyboarding away?) Demon Bound by Meljean Brook. Great book. MelJean Brook has written (I think) four novels and one or two short stories. I've read her other three novels and they are all exceptional. She writes a good story, no lame dialogue ( I hate lame dialogue between characters that are supposed to be intelligent and ubertough - ruins a book for me everytime)

The book I just finished is Magic to the Bone by Devon Monk. It's set in Oregon in an alternate world, where magic has recently been discovered. The general populace actually believes that magic has in fact only recently developed or appeared. In this setting, using magic costs the user a price in body pain or memory loss. Miss Monk has developed a world where corporations are making money with magic and all the byproducts of magic use. "Offloading" where users don't have to pay a personal price , storage of magic, rights to magic, blackmarket magic uses, etc. Devon Monk has brought up a lot of interesting concepts. The book has suspense, murder, romance (nothing too sappy though - tired of sappy romance, probably a symptom of my encroaching aging), twists and turns. The heroine (Allie Beckstrom) doesn't have it easy, suffers from memory loss when she's not careful with her magic offloads, and doesn't have a special happily ever after. I really enjoyed this book a lot. I'm hoping Devon Monk is writing sequels to this....

I just searched the web for Devon Monk, because of course I haven't before this. The only site I could find that was close to a homepage for her was the Penguin book co... thing. She apparently has written many short stories, published in many SF magazines. This is the only novel I could find by her.

So Miss (actually she's a Mrs) Devon Monk, here's hoping that you write another Allison Beckstrom novel. Please. I would buy the next book by you, just seeing your name on the cover.