TGIF @ GReads #7: Most Valuable Books

TGIF is hosted over at GReads every Friday, and features many thought-provoking questions that are fun to answer.
Today's Question:

Most Valuable Book: From your personal collection of books, which ones hold the most value to you - is it signed by the author? or maybe it's your favorite story of all time? Share it with us.

Hmm. The most valuable books I have are the books I have loved enough to share with all my friends and/or the books I love enough to save/note so I can buy them for my kids. Yes, I am going to be THAT mom who makes her kids read all the books she loved when she was a kid and then demand to know what they think, haha.

• Archangel by Sharon Shinn, which was shared with me by Simone, and which I shared with all my friends.

• The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede, which was one of my earliest encounters with a dragon and a feminist princess (my kids will most def be reading these books).

• The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare- one of my earliest love stories, filled with sensible people, and a lesson in prejudice. 

• The Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews - because I recommend this to everyone I know who reads UF and because of the joy I get in immersing myself in pure awesomeness

• The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis - do I even need to explain this one?

• Daring to Draw Near by John White which very fundamentally changed my view of prayer.

• Prayer by Richard Foster which expanded on my changing views of Prayer

• Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton - which helped me think through my own philosophy of faith

• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis - which showed me that Christians could be thinking people too

• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, which was one of my earliest journeys into sci-fci and fantasy, and showed me that weak people can be strong heroines too, something we seem to have forgotten nowadays.

To name a few, these are some of the treasured books in my library. There are so many more where those came from.

Not for Me #1: Faythe's Shenanigans

Some books are not good reading experiences for me. Sometimes these are books everyone loves that I just don't enjoy. There are books I steer clear off because I know I won't like them. So here's my diary page for the books and series that are just not up my alley.

The Shifters series by Rachel Vincent

Rachel Vincent is probably one of my favorite UF authors. I love her writing - love it! And her world-building is fantastic. Her settings are so, so unique and oh-so memorable. You won't find them, or a worthy facsimile of them anywhere in UF-landia. When you come across something similar, her world is always the superior one, always.

But - and it is a major 'but' here - for me, her characters leave a good deal to be desired.  They drive me to violence. I often want to sit them down and beat some common sense into them; or just beat them bloody. It took five books for me not to want to kill Kaylee in the Soul Screamers series. I still want to badly maim all the other characters in that series except for Tod. Same issue for her Unbound series. The response the characters have to revelations or their knee-jerk reactions just frustrate the daylights out of me! To borrow one of the many British phrases I am learning, her characters just take the piss.

Without having ever read a single book in her Stray series, I can say that this series is not for me. I have read several reviews as well as a couple of discussions about the series. Just about everyone - lovers or haters of the books - complain about Faythe, the protagonist. I tend to believe the complaints because they're almost unanimous. And I know I just can't. Her well-loved characters give me pause, so how much more this almost universally panned one? Great world-building or no, I won't be able to deal with Faythe. So I pass over the Shifters series every time I come across it without blinking an eye. It is loved by many of Ms. Vincent's fans, and probably with good reason too. I would love to read more of Ms. Vincent's adult books, since she creates such fantastic settings. It's a shame really, but this is one set of books that are just not for me.

Review: Tough Customer by Sandra Brown

Author: Sandra Brown

Title: Tough Customer

Series: Mitchell and Associates #2

From acclaimed bestselling author Sandra Brown, "Tough Customer" is a heart-pounding tale about obsession and murder, the fragile nature of relationships, and, possibly, second chances.
Colleagues, friends, and lovers know Dodge Hanley as a private investigator who doesn't let rules get in his way -- in his private life as well as his professional one. If he breaks a heart, or bends the law in order to catch a criminal, he does so without hesitation or apology.That's why he's the first person Caroline King asks for help when a deranged stalker attempts to murder their daughter . . . the daughter Dodge has never met. He has a whole bagful of grudging excuses for wishing to ignore Caroline's call, and one compelling reason to drop everything and fly down to Texas: guilt.
Dodge joins forces with local deputy sheriff Ski Nyland, but the alarming situation goes from bad to worse when the stalker begins to claim other victims and leaves an ominous trail of clues as he lethally works his way toward Berry. Sensing the killer drawing nearer, Dodge, who's survived vicious criminals and his own self-destructive impulses, realizes that this time he's in for the fight of his life.

My Thoughts:

Rating: Somewhere between "Good" and "Excellent."

I won this book from a GoodReads Giveaway - my first time ever to win any book! - and I really enjoyed it. Berry Malone's coworker is stalking her and now he's escalated to violence.

Caroline King, Berry's mother, calls in Dodge Hanley, a private investigator to ask him to help. she's been estranged from dodge for thirty years. Beery is their daughter, but Dodge has never met her.

Although I didn't feel it was very suspenseful, I will say that this novel is more of a suspense novel than most of the suspense novels I've been reading lately. Those were more romances with suspensful elements; this one was more of a suspense with romantic elements. I liked the change. I think it was a solid mystery and a solid chase to find the killer before he got to Berry.

The reason why I didn't find it too suspenseful was because I was totally focused on the relationship dynamics between Caroline and Dodge. Even though it occupied only a minor space in the book, their history was so rich and fraught with - everything: joy, sadness, love, anger, pain, hurt, hope... it was wonderful to read about. I thought it was genius that Ms. Brown managed to weave the flashbacks of the days when Caroline and Dodge were young seamlessly intot the main storyline of the present-day issues: Berry and her stalker. I liked the scruffy irreverent Dodge, and was glad he and Caroline got an HEA after 30 years, can you imagine!!

What I didn't like was the twist. I didn't see that coming, but when it happened, my reaction was more "What the heck?" as opposed to "oh wow, what a cool twist!" But anyway, by then, I was more interested in Dodge and Caroline than I was in the whole stalker issue.

In her acknowledgements at the end, Ms. Brown stated that Dodge was a compelling character and she hoped she did him justice. In my eyes, at least, she did him justice and did it very well.

*My thanks to Sandra Brown and GoodReads.*

OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES:

1. Smash Cut

 

#1: Thinking On... Re-Reads

For me, the best part about rereads is coming back to a familiar story. And because I already know the sequence of events, there is no hurry. I can go on the journey again, taking the time to savor it, and in the process I notice new things: subtle nuances (redundant, I know), a character description I missed, someone's POV, an opinion expressed, beautiful prose, striking images - all the things I overlooked because I was s caught up in the euphoria and the drama of the plot the first time around.

I don't often reread books, but when I do, I am usually glad [unfortunately there are a few books that I don't enjoy on reread, and it makes me wonder how/why I liked them so much before].

Here are some of my favorite books to reread, and which I do often:

 Rose, Declan and the boys. Their story never fails to make me smile, and I never, ever fail to be immersed in Declan and Rose's lives. And each time I reread it, I notice something funny that I didn't notice before. I always read this one from cover to cover, and I always fall a little bit more in love with Rose and Declan every time I pick this one up.

Probably my favorite series of all time. Just being with Kate and Curran and enjoying their lives and seeing their world through their eyes is a wonderful experience I keep returning to these books over and over again. I have lost count of how many times I have read the books, especially book 4, my favorite, and the Curran POV's. 

The sheer beauty of Sharon Shinn's writing and the awesomeness of the characters make this book a treat time and again. Gabriel is one of my most favorite heroes in all of fiction. On every reread, I notice something new about him. I notice his flaws more, but I see his strengths more too. Rachel is also made of awesome. For 10 years and counting I have loved this book, and it never goes out of style each time I pick it up.

 Hawke! In all his fantabulosity.... and Sienna .... and the SnowDancer pack.... and Lucas. But mostly Hawke and his beautiful self. I love this world that Nalini Singh has created, and I love spending time with such a wonderful ensemble cast, the most wonderful of whom is Hawke!

Do you have any favorite books that you reread often? Do you reread any books at all?

Review: Kitty and the Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn

Author: Carrie Vaughn

Title: Kitty and the Midnight Hour

Series: Kitty Norville #1

About the Book: Kitty Norville is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station - and a werewolf in the closet. Her new late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged is a raging success, but it's Kitty who can use some help. With one sexy werewolf-hunter and a few homicidal undead on her tail, Kitty may have bitten off more than she can chew?

My Thoughts:

The last 25% of the book is a massive improvement over the first 75% of the book, in my opinion, and major reason I've rated this book as 'good' (3 stars) instead of 'didn't like it' (2 stars). I also think that my feelings about this book have to do in large part with my own expectations gone wrong.

What I Expected:

Before starting this book I'd heard it was about submissive werewolf. That had me majorly excited because in all the werewolf fiction I've come across, dominant, not submissive wolves are the subject. You come across an outlier once awhile, like Anna in Patricia Briggs' Alpha and Omega series, but they ae usually dominant wolves in some weird/different incarnation (like Anna is) or dominant wolves whoa re dormant and waiting for the right time to strike. I wanted to read this book because I thought it would be fun to see an imagined werewolf society through a submissive wolf's perspective. I was also excited because not every strong person is 'kickass', or 'take-charge', or dominant. That paradigm shows us only one side of strength and forces our expectations of what strength should be inside a box (okay soapbox over...I think).


Well, anyway, that is what I expected, not what I got.

What I got:

1. A HELLA whiny heroine. And by that I mean HELLA whiny! Whining in both wolf and human forms, cowering all the time, all over the place. If I had to desrcibe her in one word, it would be whiny, with 'HELLA' in brackets and capitals attached before.

2. NOT a healthy description of a person or a wolf pack. In Kitty's pack instead of being protectors, the dominant wolves seem to be walking abusers, preying on anything weaker than themselves, ans walking man-whores too (no wonder most werewolf mythologies have them as immune to almost everything. They'd all have died from STD's by now if that wasn't the case!) Most of them were asshats. They were more like sadists than a pack of werewolves.

3. A HELLA whiny heroine. She was not a healthy person. As I was reading, I couldn't help thinking over and over again that 'this is NOT what a healthy depiction of a submissive person/werewolf should be!', and 'this is NOT what a healthy werewolf packs should be!

*As the story went on, I liked Kitty less and less, most of that being the way she acted on her talk show. I don't know if she was meant to be a shock jock or something, but I thought the way she spoke to most people was quite rude and uncalled for. I don't like that.

By the end, the writing had gotten really better, but through some unbelievably fake machinations (to me at least), our heroine sorta comes into her own, and discovers that mebbe she isn't really submissive after all. She is growing up; she has more spine; she is probably more dominant than she thought she was. I felt that was a cop-out. She's basically your generic 'kickass, talk-smack' UF heroine, only quite watered down, and slightly gentler. Eh whatever.

Thus I was disappointed in this here story. It was a good case of wrong expectation, but I also think it was a good case of wrong execution too. Even though I enjoyed the last parts of the story much more than I expected, I don't think I will come along for the ride.

OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES:

 

Dying to Get in June: Terrible and Tod

*At the beginning of the month I post covers of new releases I am just dying to get my hands on and why I am so excited. *

 I don't even know what I am going to do with myself this month! The two books I am most dying to get my hands on are releasing on the same day!! Ack! What to start first? To make matters worse, I might be working on that day! Dammit!

 June 26 2012: Before I Wake

I am very interested in seeing how Kaylee and Tod deal with the aftermath of the events in If I Die. I could care less about the other characters, when I am not spending time actively hating them. Ms. Vincent has been dropping really juicy, scary hints about the events in this book. I am so sure I will read the final chapter before I actually even begin the book, I don't want to die of a heart-attack halfway through, hehe.

June 26 2012: Chasing Magic 

I truly like spending time with Chess and Terrible (most especially Terrible). Ms. Kane has created a wonderful, complicated relationship between the two of them, and I love coming along for the ride. For me the mystery and plot always pales in comparison to the moments Chess and Terrible share together. Oh yes, I also want to see how Chess is going to handle this new development with Lex. Terrible better not die in this war or I'll kill Lex myself!

{May} Month in Review

I am shocked by how little I read.

Stats

O_O! I read less than 10 books this month - 8 to be exact- one of which was a reread!

I am going to blame it one still slowly coming up out of my reading slump, and still getting adjusted to the new job. I have only worked for about 6 weeks so far, and since it's shift work instead of a nine-to-five, I find myself working at odd hours all week, and trying to fit my sleep in :D. 

The favorites

• I think I enjoyed rereading G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy the most. He's one of the first that got me thinking about MY faith and MY philosophy of life, instead of approaching them in the general sense.
• Touch of Frost was a surprise for me - not the story, but the sensible character-in-YA bit. It was a major factor in my enjoyment of the book.

The least favorites

• I didn't like Kitty Norville and the Midnight Hour, which I read earlier this month. The review will be up here sometime.

Underwhelming/disappointing reads

• Shadow Bound by Rachel Vincent was a big disappointment for me, which is really sad to say because I have been rabidly looking forward to it since I finished Blood Bound last year. I did not enjoy it at all.
• Tangle of Need I enjoyed very much, but I ended up feeling like I didn't know the main couple. It's like watching the wedding of a complete stranger: beautiful to see, but you're not invested in the event. I wish we'd seen more of them before it came to this.

Reflections

Quality, not quantity. Even for reading so few books, I really enjoyed my reading experiences. Just about every book was a winner (except for 2 or so outliers). 

Looking Forward

Although I have much less time to read, I am used to reading more books than this and this I do under more pressures than I currently face. I am hoping I'll get to spend more time reading in June. I also fully expect to enjoy myself more, as my slumps lifts even further. I finally started writing down some of my bookish thoughts that don't fit into review space, and I am psyched to be putting them up (finally they'll be in some place other than my head!). And I get  new laptop in June! No more stealing my sister's laptops at ungodly hours! Yay me! Here's to a wonderful new month!

Review: Tangle of Need by Nalini Singh

Author: Nalini Singh

Title: Tangle of Need

Series: Psy/Changeling #11

About the Book: Adria, wolf changeling and resilient soldier, has made a break with the past--one as unpredictable in love as it was in war. Now comes a new territory, and a devastating new complication: Riaz, a SnowDancer lieutenant already sworn to a desperate woman who belongs to another.

For Riaz, the primal attraction he feels for Adria is a staggering betrayal. For Adria, his dangerous lone-wolf appeal is beyond sexual. It consumes her. It terrifies her. It threatens to undermine everything she has built of her new life. But fighting their wild compulsion toward one another proves a losing battle.

Their coming together is an inferno...and a melding of two wounded souls who promise each other no commitment, no ties, no bonds. Only pleasure. Too late, they realize that they have more to lose than they ever imagined. Drawn into a cataclysmic Psy war that may alter the fate of the world itself, they must make a decision that might just break them both.

 

My Thoughts:

As a rule, I enjoy the books featuring the SnowDancer wolf pack, so I expected to like this one, and I did, quite a bit too, but not as much as the other SD books.

My favorite parts were the parts with Hawke and Sienna, which were so ridiculously cheesy and utterly adorable. I loved every second of their on-screen time. They're adjusting to mated life, and it is so cute to watch. We also get to spend time with just about every SnowDancer who's ever been mentioned, which was a great treat for me. Their pack dynamics are just fantastic. Riley and Mercy's news was awesome and I cracked up at he and Hawke getting drunk. Mercy's a bit more likeable now that she hangs with the wolves. And Hawke is so silly he makes my heart sing. Love that wolf!

Okay, Riaz and Adria. I enjoyed very much this journey of two broken people healing each other and then unexpectedly becoming indispensable to each other, and it was awesome seeing their pack help them along the way. It was only in the last 20% or so of the book that their story finally started to really engross me. I think Ms. Singh handled it so well, and I love the emphasis on choice (i.e. that mating is not automatic; you have to make a conscious decision) and the noting of the fact that it's not only mated changelings who can have a fulfilling life, that humans who love each other can have just as fulfilling a life as mated changelings. It felt like an affirmation of love and humanity and it was awesome. That final scene with Riaz and Adria drove home the point wonderfully; it was poignant and amazing.

BUT! As I was reading I realized I wasn't ready for this story. I love SD and all the lieutenants have grown on me, so my excitement has been building ever since Ms. Singh announced that she'd be writing Riaz's story. I was sure I would enjoy it, and I did. However, he and Adria really only appeared on the scene in Indigo and Drew's story, 2 books ago. I felt like I hadn't had time to get to know them and be invested in them, so I was actually more caught up in other things: Hawke and Sienna's sheer adorableness, noticing how awesome Riley is, enjoying SD pack dynamics, paying attention to the Psy drama and the tension in the PsyNet.... just about everything else except for the main couple. They weren't strong enough to carry the book because I hadn't had time to know them before they were thrown together. For this book to have worked better, I think Riaz and Adria should have been introduced much sooner, or their story to have come later.

The next ARC of the series promises to be interesting. This ride is far from over. Recommended read, even though the whole is a teensy weensy bit less than the sum of its parts.

OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES:

1. Slave to Sensation
2. Visions of Heat
3. Caressed by Ice
4. Mine to Possess - 2.5/5
5. Hostage to Pleasure
6. Branded by Fire
7. Blaze of Memory
8. Bonds of Justice
9. Play of Passion
10. Kiss of Snow - 5/5

 

ARC Review: Shadow Bound, by Rachel Vincent

 *Official release date for this title is June 1, but copies were available from May 22nd*

Author: Rachel Vincent

Title: Shadow Bound

Series: Unbound #2

Source: NetGalley

About the Book: If you live in the dark long enough, you begin to forget the light…

KORI DANIELS is a shadow-walker, able to travel instantly from one shadow to another. After weeks of confinement for betraying her boss, she’s ready to break free of the Tower syndicate for good. But Jake Tower has one final job for Kori, one chance to secure freedom for herself and her sister, Kenley, even if that means taking it from someone else…

The job? Recruit Ian Holt—or kill him.

Ian’s ability to manipulate the dark has drawn interest from every syndicate in the world, most notably an invitation from Jake Tower. Though he has no interest in organized crime, Ian accepts the invite, because he’s on a mission of his own.

Ian has come to kill Tower’s top Binder: Kori’s little sister.
Amid the tangle of lies, an unexpected thread of truth connecting Ian and Kori comes to light. But with opposing goals, they’ll have to choose between love and liberty…

 

My Thoughts: 

After Bood Bound left me on tenterhooks, I couldn't wait to read Shadow Bound. It's probably my biggest disappointment of 2012 so far. Here's the thing: Ms. Vincent creates world-building masterpieces. They are unique and grossing and just...fabulous. However, her characters usually incite a desire to do violence in me. Reading Shadow Bound made me angry in degrees. I started off angry about the mess the dead girl's selfishness had gotten all of them into. By the time I finished, I was seething at the foolishness of Kori and Ian. Enjoying this book to any degree depends heavily on being sympathetic to the characters, which I could not find it in me to do because they were all TSTL. Cast of Characters

1. The Daniels Family: This is a world where any display of some power will attract attention from mobsters who are looking to add the skilled - willingly or unwillingly, to their numbers of minions. This hinges on Binders, the people whose specific skill it is to bind people's wills to their contracts (and so to the mobsters). You discover by painful experience that your sister is a very powerful binder, which guarantees the mobsters will be after her her entire life if they get wind of it. What do you do? Well, if you are Kori Daniels and her family, you "shelter" her. You don't research into how binding works; you don't teach her what she needs to protect herself from being discovered; you don't impress upon her the danger of her gift (esp. as a disaster has happened before); you don't teach her to be wary of people who ask for her blood and their motivations, and not to hand out her blood to her friends for friendship's sake.... knowing well that if she is caught, her skill will be spent binding lots of people to a life of horror and that her life will be spent in servitude to horrible people. No. You "shelter" her so she grows up to be a nincompoop. How is that any sort of intelligent decision? Exactly! It isn't. suffice it to say, Kenley is easily snared by Jake Towers and Kori goes with her to protect her. No intelligent life in this family. They knowingly laid the groundwork for this to happen. When people were telling Kori it wasn't her fault, I wanted to smack them. Yes it was! If they'd just exercised some common sense, they'd have nipped this in the bud before it begun, so that this story wouldn't be taking place.
2. Kori Daniels: We already know she isn't intelligent. If to save your life and your sister's life you are asked to cozy up to some dude, will your modus operandus be to be rude and crass to him? But apparently, she doesn't know that you don't catch flies with vinegar. But rest assured that she catches Ian, who's a prize fool himself. Much was made of how strong and indomitable Kori's character was. I didn't see it. I saw instead a TSTL person who talked crassly. That's all. No substance, no depth, no integrity, no nothing. All those fights she won were sooooo unbelievable to me. I couldn't understand how one couldn't just shoot her in the head.
3. Ian Holt: If you are on a mission to kill a stranger's sister to save your brother, a mission on which you can't afford to fail, do you spend your time agonizing over that stranger and whether they like you? Or about the urgency of your mission to save your brother's life?
4. A closer look at Kenley Daniels reveals a girl as selfish as she is stupid. And she is that way because her family made her so.

Nope. I couldn't support these people and their lack of common sense, self-preservation and intelligence. If nothing else, the fear of having Kenley bind people to such horrors should have spurred the Daniels family into raising her to be sensible. So much blood is on their hands. Unfortunately the final book in this trilogy is to center on Kris, Kori and Kenley's brother. Owing to what we know about the lack of intelligence and common sense in this family, I'll be frank and admit that my hopes aren't very high. 0 butterflies for the characters; 2 butterflies for such a unique and wonderful world, and the promise it is denied by the nincompoops inhabiting it. If you do read this series, read it for the amazing world-building, not for the fool inhabitants.
 

OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES:

1. Blood Bound - Excellent

Memorable Monday #8 : A Quote From Frost

 This totally awesome meme is hosted by the ladies at Escape in a Book, and invites us to share quotes we like.

Hello, long time no see.  I've been spending a  lot of time with duds, so not many quotables there. I came across a quote in one of my most recent reads, and I wanna share! It's from Touch of Frost by Jennifer Estep.

    Once you believe in something, you give it life and form and substance. 

 

With one exception (I could discuss this but then we'd get into religious talk here) I think this holds true for most of life.