I also finished Christopher Pike’s The Secret of Ka, but only because it was a galley.  My initial foray into the NetGalley service, to be exact.  I’ve read every YA novel Pike wrote between 1985 and 2000, and at least a couple of his adult novels, and he was easily my favorite author when I was a teen.  I found myself overwhelmingly disappointed in Ka. Truthfully, I don’t think it was the story as much as I think it’s mis-categorized.  It’s marketed as a YA novel, but it *really* felt middle grade to me.  And if I had known that, I wouldn’t have requested it. Anyhoo, I’ll save my elaboration for my review (not posted until September). 

As far as NetGalley is concerned, it was easy enough to get the book onto my Kindle (the only reason I signed up), but the formatting for the Kindle book was pitiful.  Whoever is responsible for the formatting of the Kindle-compatible book (I don’t know if it’s NetGalley or the publisher) should be ashamed of themselves.  If you read the book online though the web site, it looked great, but on my Kindle the chapter breaks were messed up and the capitalization was erratic and almost 100% wrong.  I’m not sure there was one sentence that had a capital letter at the beginning of it. It’s really not very difficult to convert a pdf to something that’s readable on the Kindle, so there’s no excuse.

And, to top off that dissatisfaction, I abandoned Sarah Graves’ The Dead Cat Bounce about 1/3 of the way through. I really wanted to like this series, with its setting in downeast Maine, but it just didn’t grab me.  I blame the financial motive for the murder. Those schemes just don’t excite me.  Regardless, I thought the book had a really great first two paragraphs:

My house is old, and rambling, and in some disrepair, and I think that it is faintly haunted: a cold spot forming inexplicably on the stairway, a scuttling in the hall.  Then of course there is the matter of the enigmatic portrait, whose mystery I had not yet managed to resolve on that bright April morning when, after living cheerfully and peacefully in the house for over a year, I found a body in the storeroom.

Coming upon a body is an experience, like childbirth or a head-on collision, that takes the breath out of a person.  I went back through the passageway between the kitchen and the small, unheated room where in spring I kept dog food and dahlia bulbs, and where apparently I now stored corpses.

But alas, this series and I weren’t meant to be.

I’m currently down to only 2 books on the go: The Black Ice by Michael Connelly on my Kindle and Smoke Screen by Sandra Brown on audio. As far as the rest of the June, here’s what I reviewed:

• 28: 2010: #63 – Dead and Gone (Charlaine Harris) 
• 27: 2010: #62 – Undertow (Sydney Bauer) 
• 26: 2010: #61 – From Dead to Worse (Charlaine Harris) 
• 25: 2010: #60 – All Together Dead (Charlaine Harris) 
• 24: 2010: #59 – Cleanskin (Val McDermid) 
• 22: 2010: #58 – Just Before Sunrise (Carla Neggers) 
• 20: 2010: #57 – Possessed (Kate Cann) 
• 18: 2010: #56 – Chenxi and the Foreigner (Sally Rippin) 
• 14: 2010: #55 – Killing Orders (Sara Paretsky) 
• 13: 2010: #54 – Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint (Nancy Kress) 
• 11: 2010: #53 – Worst Case (James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge) 
• 09: 2010: #52 – Pay Dirt (Rita Mae Brown) 
• 03: 2010: #51 – Back to the Bedroom (Janet Evanovich) 
• 01: 2010: #50 – Voices (Arnaldur Indridason)

I hope you’re enjoying your (holiday, if you’re in the U.S.) weekend! We are in Nashville, and will be heading downtown for the fireworks this evening. I have family in town, so it’s been a weekend full of fun, card games, and corn hole.

I’m thinking about starting a weekly giveaway to weed out some of the ARCs I don’t want (or need) to keep. So stay tuned!

I’ve been in a little bit of a funk.  Winter and spring are surprisingly hard for me, the past few years.  I get stuck in routines (ruts, even), and the thought of doing anything different makes me cringe.  What little social instinct I have disappears.  I read twitter and facebook, but my posting dwindles drastically.  I have all sorts of intentions of posting stuff, but nothing ever gets written. And to top it off, one little annoying medical issue after another has kept me in waiting room after waiting room since February. Nothing serious, it just seems like it never ends. Even now, I’m suffering the after-effects of a cold I had 3 weeks ago.  My right ear won’t unplug! So annoying.

Now, the sun has come out, and summer is in full force. Hallelujah!

My reading has actually been pretty good.  In fact, I read four books just this weekend, finishing off the Sookie Stackhouse series. I’m a little behind the pace I’d like to be at (my goal for this year is 144 books), but I’m not unhappy with my progress.

In other good news, my illustrious husband has kindly arranged for us to have a partially paid for vacation this year.  To Las Vegas! We play in the APA pool league, and he and another teammate of ours entered a doubles tournament and won! The prize is entry into the national tournament, and money towards the trip.  It’s nowhere near enough money to cover the whole thing, but it’s enough to cover one of our plane tickets and a couple of nights in the hotel.  The actually tournament only runs 3 days, but we’re planning to extend the trip to a whole week. I’m quite excited.  Anyone have any recommendations for Las Vegas in general?  We’ll have several days for sight-seeing before he has to play pool. It’ll be the third week of August, so no desert hikes please

So anyway, I’m trying to make an effort to post more non-review material here.  I’m especially interested in weekly/monthly memes, but imagine my surprise when I found there was no central listing of book-related memes!  I know they’re putting together something for BBAW, so I really look forward to that. In the meantime, what memes do you participate in?  What’s your favorite?

Number of books completed: 3 1/2  

Pages read: 668 + 2:28 on audio

Time spent reading: 10:10

Mini-challenges completed: Hour One meme

I don’t think that’s too bad! I had more total reading time than I had last read-a-thon, but I quit at about the same time (11PM). I just can’t do super late nights anymore! Especially since I’m out of the house until after 10 on Sunday nights due to APA league.  Missing all that sleep would kill me on Monday morning.

Which hour was most daunting for you? Funny enough, the hardest hour for me was Hour Two!  That darn benadryl.  I think getting out the of the house for grocery shopping in the afternoon helped me past that mid-afternoon sleepy-time.

Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? The book that held my interest best was In Ecstasy, and not only because it was YA.  It had two alternating points of view that kept you interested. Basically, anything you don’t have to think too hard about is good.

Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? I saw someone else (I wish I could remember who) suggest a better plan for the cheerleaders.  Things were pretty quiet around here until the evening. Also, I’m a fan of the memes! I would like more memes.  They give me something besides stats to blog about each time I update.

What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? I thought the official posts were short and sweet and to the point.

How many books did you read? I read from 7 books.  I completed one book that I started pre-read-a-thon, read two from start to finish, and gave up on one.

What were the names of the books you read?

• Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
• So Much For That by Lionel Shriver
• Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress
• Dark Entries by Ian Rankin (art by Werther Dell’edera)
• Pretty Little Mistakes by Heather McElhatton
• Beneath the Blood Red Moon by Shannon Drake
• In Ecstasy by Kate McCaffrey

Which book did you enjoy most? That’s a hard call! In Ecstasy was good because it was short and sweet.  Dark Entries was good because it was the first graphic novel I’ve read in a while, and I thought the story was interested.

Which did you enjoy least? Pretty Little Mistakes

How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? I will almost definitely participate in future read-a-thons as a reader, as long as the dates work out.

Thanks to the organizers and all the cheerleaders! I hope you had a great Read-a-thon!

The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat

This collection of short stories just didn’t grab me. The first two stories were great, and then the book started to lose me. Maybe in a different frame of mind I would have had a different reaction. I think I expected the stories to be more closely related.

Veracity by Laura Bynum

Unfortunately, this book and I didn’t click. I gave it 50 pages, and found that I just didn’t care about picking it up to read further. I think the book is well written and probably has an interesting story, it just wasn’t for me. I was definitely more interested in Harper’s childhood story rather than her adult story, and I may have stuck with it longer if more of that had been at the beginning. There wasn’t enough back story to make me care about Harper as an adult. But, if you are a fan of this genre, I think it’s worth grabbing the Kindle sample and seeing if it works for you.

Dixie Divas by Virginia Brown

I made it 50 pages into this bound manuscript, which means it was probably more like 75 in the actual book. This had all of the right ingredients — it’s a cozy mystery with a humorous tone where the "detectives" are a group of quirky southern ladies. But it ended up being too much.  Too much explanation, and TOO MUCH DESCRIPTION.  And not the clever, imaginative sorts of description.  This was the "there was a couch to the right with a painting above it and a staircase over to the left, flanked by a couple of lovely vases" type of description.  I was starting to feel like I knew the location of every doorway and staircase in town. And I got the point about how the main character’s parents were living a second childhood first, when the author told us they were, and second, the *first* time they started planning an outrageous trip.  I didn’t really need it pointed out over and over again.  So yeah, it was too much.  I might have stuck with it longer if it had been a regular sized galley and not a bound manuscript, but the slowness of the story combined with the unwieldiness of the book did it in.

In other news, I’ve signed up for the Read-a-Thon in 2 weeks. We’ll see if I do better than last time! What I *really* need is a blog-a-thon, as I’m currently 6 reviews in arrears.  I don’t think I’ve been caught up yet in the year 2010. I had some work travel and personal travel and then moved offices at my job, so maybe things will calm down a little and I can get some review writing done!

Have a great week!

I only reviewed 6 books this month, which makes my total seem low.  But it’s an artificial low! Let me explain.  First, here are the 6 I reviewed in January:

• 2010: #6 – Little Children (Tom Perrotta) 
• 2010: #5 – Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott) 
• 2010: #4 – Night Fire (Catherine Coulter) 
• 2010: #3 – Lamb (Christopher Moore) 
• 2010: #2 – Shogun (James Clavell) 
• 2010: #1 – The First Rule (Robert Crais) 

Technically, I read The First Rule in December, but wanted to wait to post my review when the book was released.  Then we have Shogun! This took me roughly 3 weeks to read, but it was totally worth it.  It’s been a long time since I’ve read a saga like that.  Since then, I’ve picked up the pace a little.  In fact, I have 4 books that I finished (the last of them this morning) that are in the queue to review.  So I think my January total is a little closer to 9 than 6. Not as high as I’d like it to be if I’m going to make 144 by the end of the year, but we have a long ways to go!

The end of the month also marks the end of my first month as a Kindle owner.  I’ve been pretty pleased with it so far.  I’ve been able to put all of the ebooks I already owned onto it (with the help of Calibre, a fantastic e-book management and conversion program), and my experience with purchasing has been flawless.  I also got a case for it that I’m really happy with… this one from M-Edge:

I *love* this case.  I got the synthetic leather, in red.  I can stand my Kindle up and read easily while I’m eating lunch, which is when I do most of my Kindle reading.  It’s also easy to hold on to if I’m not standing it up.  My birthday is tomorrow, and I’m planning to take some of my birthday money to buy the light that M-Edge sells that slides into the case and can be stored there.

Now for the Kindle itself.  The things I really like about it are how easy it is to read, how easy it is to load files onto it, and how light it is.  But, like most devices, there are some things that could be done better:

• The wireless settings.  I keep my wireless turned off most of the time, because the wireless networks I am in most often are protected networks, and it seems that the Kindle keeps trying to connect to them and in the process, drains the battery.  There’s no way to even put in a password.
• Folder management would be nice, but I’m pretty sure I can live without it.  Something I would like to be able to do is jump to a certain page in my table of contents.  The search feature does help if I’m looking for a particular book in my list.
• Sometimes, it freezes.  I’ll be reading a book and it won’t advance to the next page.  Most of the time I can unfreeze it by putting it into sleep mode and then turning it on again, but sometimes I have to reset it.  I don’t know if this is due to the sheer number of items on it (several hundred), but I’m nowhere close to filling it up so I hope that’s not it.

Overall, I’ve been super happy with it.  I *thought* I was happy just reading on my iPhone (and I still read on it when the opportunity is right), but the Kindle has shown me that reading on my iPhone was straining my eyes more than I thought.  With the case on it, I’m not afraid to take it anywhere.  I even take it with me when I play league pool twice a week.

The real challenge? Making sure I don’t neglect all of my paper books!

Yes, that is 15 inches of snow.  It started at home around 1:30 or 2pm, which lead to a rather hairy drive home (I left work at 2) that I would be ecstatic to never repeat. We haven’t had this much snow the entire year for the past few years.  I’d forgotten what snowbanks look like.  But, all is well, and our cars can get out (they finally plowed our road this morning). Though mine still has a snow mohawk.

I don’t have much else to say, cuz I’m saving all the good stuff for my end of year post in a couple of weeks.  But, I did want to mention a couple of books I abandoned recently.

The first abandoned book this month was Last Last Chance by Fiona Maazel. I just couldn’t take the writing style — it was all over the place.  And that was just in the first chapter.  There just wasn’t enough that was believable. That doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t like it… It just didn’t click for me.

The second abandoned book was Two Brothers: One North, One South by David H. Jones.  I was a little sad that this one didn’t click with me, because I’m sure that it’s quite good as far as the Civil War goes.  The problem I had with it was the really stilted dialogue.  I think the author was trying to be historically accurate, but I think you can achieve that and still have some life in your characters.

I just started reading Shogun by James Clavell.  It’s definitely a chunkster, at 1210 pages and very small print, so I’ll probably be reading it through the end of the year.

Other than a couple more book reviews and some challenge posts (yes, more challenges!), I probably won’t be posting much until the end of the year.  We’re going to Baltimore for Christmas, and I’ll be bringing my computer, so who knows.  Scott is going to be helping his dad with some remodeling while we’re there, so I may have some time to kill after the Christmas weekend is over. 

Happy Holidays to everyone! May Santa bring you a lot of books!

Anyway, I hope all you Thanksgiving celebrators out there had a good Thanksgiving! We traveled to Ohio and visited with my dad’s family.  We basically did nothing but eat, play games, and sleep from 8pm on Wednesday until we fell into bed at 1am Saturday morning.  Our food of choice was pie, and our games of choice were Euchre, poker, and a game called Time’s Up. There were 32 of us for Thanksgiving dinner and from 10-20 of us (depending on the time of day) at my aunt’s all day on Friday. My family is very loud and boisterous, so it was a raucous good time.

I brought some books with me, but the only reading I got done was either during the drive or while acting as a pillow for my cousin’s sleeping 1 month old.  It’s always nice to get a good baby sniff fix. I finished Last Rituals by Yrsa Sigurdardottir and we listened to Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore, which was better than some of the other Moore books we’ve listened to lately. I’m also halfway through The Book Thief, which I need to get finished for book club Thursday night. I like it so far, though it takes a little bit of time to adjust to the author’s style. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that most of my book club is going to hate it, because they probably will see the style as frippery.

Also, it is the time of year for challenge sign-ups! I have a whole mess of challenge posts starred in my Google Reader, so I’ll be posting about them in the month to come.

Now, for the mailbox! I had a few things come in this week — two books from Amazon Vine, and then some others from PaperbackSwap:

Veracity and The First Rule are the Vine books. I’ll be reading The First Rule fairly quickly, because my mother-in-law will flip over it.  I’d like to pass it on to her at Christmas.  The Outlaw Demon Wails will be read pretty soon as well, because I’ve been waiting for this to come up on my PBS wishlist for quite a while.

Mailbox Mondays are hosted by The Printed Page.

Which hour was most daunting for you?

Other than the 11pm hour when I called it quits, 2-3pm required a nap.

Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year?

I think anything that’s really fast paced is good for Thonin’.  I didn’t read him this time, but James Patterson would probably be perfect.

Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?

Nope!

What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon?

I thought all the giveaways were really amazing.

How many books did you read?

I read from a total of 6 books, and completed 1.

What were the names of the books you read?

• How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford
• The Ultimate Weight Solution by Dr. Phil
• Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
• The Maze Runner by James Dashner
• Seize the Night by Sherrilyn Kenyon
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Which book did you enjoy most?

How to Say Goodbye in Robot was really quite good.  I also liked Seize the Night, because it’s quick and steamy.

Which did you enjoy least?

Dr. Phil.  I’m still debating if it’s worth it to read the whole thing.

How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time?

I would love to participate again as a reader! I have to admit, I’m not a very good Cheerleader.  As long as the date works out for me, I should be able to do it!

And a BIG thank you to everyone who stopped by here and posted encouragement! Getting those comments in my inbox was a nice boost!

I’ll probably post up some vacation pictures for you all at some point.  We had a really good time, but I came home exhausted.  We went to 5 national parks in 5 days, and by day 6 I was ready for some rest and relaxation.  We hit Mesa Verde, Arches, Canyonlands, Grand Tetons, and Yellowstone.  I think Arches was the prettiest, but Yellowstone was the most exciting.

Reading-wise, I am still *way* behind in my reviews.  Here’s what’s coming up!

• The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson (later today)
• Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore
• Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran
• Wish You Were Here by Rita Mae Brown
• Silence of the Grave by Arnalder Indridason
• Hunter’s Moon by C.T. Adams & Cathy Clamp
• The Spire by Richard North Patterson
• Full Bloom by Janet Evanovich
• The Fury by Jason Pinter
• Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore
• Vixen 03 by Clive Cussler

The good news is that I have most of these reviews written, I just need to get the posts put together.  In addition, I have three or four new challenges I’m joining that I need to post about.

The thing I’m hemming and hawing about most these days is the upcoming Read-a-Thon. I’ve never participated in one before, and I’m seriously considering it this time around. There’s no Hokies game that Saturday, and it looks like we’re probably going to my in-laws the *next* weekend, so I’ve got a good opportunity. Have you done the Read-a-thon before?  What are your thoughts?

• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
• The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
• Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore
• Silence of the Grave by Arnaldur Indridason

On top of the work project, on Saturday we’re leaving for Utah for the rest of the month! And the chance of me blogging while I’m gone is about 5%. But, I am bringing some good books with me…

• Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran
• True Blue by David Baldacci (if I get it in time)
• Spire by Richard North Patterson
• A yet to be determined book from my non-review TBR pile
• And I have books on my iphone for backup if I finish these!

So enjoy the rest of your September, and keep reading! I’ll be back the first week of October.  And I’ll still be on Twitter from time to time.