May Reads

I know this is late, but I have been busy this month. I have a 15 week class condensed into 3 weeks. That means 5 hours of grammar everyday for 3 weeks. My brain is not functional when I get home.

You maybe asking why am I taking a grammar class with such long hours everyday. It's due to the fact that I am in school to become an English teacher. So knowing my grammar is a priority, even if it can be boring and makes me want to slam my head into my laptop every once in a while. The only way I stay sane is to just think of it as a puzzle. My brain likes figuring things out. So I tend look at grammar as almost a math problem.

Anyway, onto what I read for the month of May!

Light in Shadow by Jayne Ann Krentz- I wasn't all that enthusiastic about this book and reading it didn't change my mind either. I guess I don't like Suspence romance. But, at least I gave it a try.

The Things We Do for Love by Kristin Hannah- This took a little bit of warming up to, but in the end it was a really great book. It was heart warming once you get past the part where the main character seems to be wrapped up in the fact that she gets divorced due to not being able to have a child. Actually, it's more due to the fact that she is too wrapped up in wanting a child that she ignores her husband because of her hurt and her marriage falls apart. But she does redeem herself in the book, which made the second half of the book a great read. I plan on reading more by this author.

Lucia, Lucia by Adriano Trigiani- I loved this book. It was a humorous look into an Italian family, set in the 1950's. Again, this is another author I plan on reading more of. I enjoy her writing style.

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris- I was late getting on the bandwagon for this series. The first book was really good. I think Bill and Sam are both yummy. It would be hard to choose between the two of them. I've started reading Living Dead in Dallas, the second book in The Sookie Stackhouse series.

Lives on the Boundary by Mike Rose- Since I'm in training to become a teacher, this was a book I had to read for a class. I really thought it was going to be dry and boring, but I was totally wrong. Mike Rose gives details of his own life on being put in the vocational education track and how that affected him. He tells stories of students he worked with, from grade school to Vietnam War vets. This was a really interesting read and really put a magnifying glass over teaching by ability.

Bitten by Kelley Armstrong- This is the first book in the Women of the Otherworld series. I devored this book I liked it so much. I highly recommend this book if you like werewolves. I have the second book, Stolen, waiting to be read in my TBR pile.

Midwife of the Blueridge by Christine Blevins- This is a historical that I saw on the shelf of new books in my library. I had never read this author and I liked the cover, so I decided to give this one a try. This was a wonderful book. It's about a woman, named Maggie Duncan, who comes from Scotland to the New World as an indentured servant. Her experience seems daunting at times, especially with an outcast lord trying to chase her on a boat that isn't near big enough to hide on. I really enjoyed this author's writing. It was obvious she did research on dialects and history. I highly recommend this book if you like historicals.

Moonlight Warrior by Janet Chapman- Janet Chapman is a must read author for me. This book is a branch out of her MacKeage series. So this isn't a book you can easily pick up and read without knowing a little bit about the MacKeage family. That's the downside of this book. Even I was a little lost since it had been a while since I read the series, but I remembered a few things. Anyway, this book is the beginning of a new series for Chapman, set in Midnight Bay, ME. Kenzie Gregor is from 1048 who now lives in the present. He was once a jaguar, but he broke the spell and he has come to Midnight Bay to open a sanctuary to help those like himself. He runs into Eve Anderson and her mother Mabel and he's off to woo Eve. If you like, magical, time-travel romance this is a must read.

The Bane Affair by Alison Kent- All I can say about this book is "HOT!" This is the first book in the SG-5 series. This was a steamy read. It was action packed and the character development was great. A must read contemporary romance, especially if you like your men with a hurtful past that haunts them into the present. And did I mention the chemistry between the hero and heroine is hot?!?

Total pages read for May: 3378

Musing Mondays

This is from the blog Just One More Page: Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about early reading…

Do you remember how you developed a love for reading? Was it from a particular person, or person(s)? Do you remember any books that you read, or were read to you, as a young child?

I remember very clearly how I gained my love for reading. My grandmother, who was agoraphobic and hardly ever left her home, would come over for holiday dinners at my parents' house. She was a quiet woman who had been through raising two children alone while her husband who had been off in the Navy and working for Amtrack. She suffered from severe depression as well. But that's not what I remember about her as a child.

I remember her walking through the door of our house, while the wonderful smells of food permeated the house, and walking to one of the recliners where she would sit ever so quietly. Immediately, I would go hug her and then run off to grab a book. It didn't matter what it was, usually a book filled with short stories and then run back to ask her if she would read to me. She always said yes to the request because she read a lot. With much haste, I'd climb into her lap to show everyone grandma was occupied and was not to be disturbed while she read to me.

My parents have a picture of one of those few times that I ever got the chance to sit in the lovely woman's lap and listen to her soft voice spin worlds around me. I'd love to put it up here, but my parents are in RI and I'm in FL. The sad thing is that my grandma passed away when I was in sixth grade. It hurt to realize I'd never be able to sit cozily with the woman who was more stranger to me than family due to her illnesses and have her read to me.

My aunt, my grandma's daughter, decided she would buy me books for Christmas and birthdays since my grandma was no longer around to read to me. My aunt read a lot too which gave us common ground. My father also started reading aloud to me and my sister after my granmother's passing. He knew it wasn't the same, but he wanted to continue that tradition.

As I got older, reading became my way to escape. My mom always tells the story of how she would ask me to clean my room and how an hour later she'd find me in a corner, with a book in hand, reading quietly. It drove her crazy that my room wasn't clean, but it made her proud that I loved reading so much. We laugh at these stories now because, really, that is just funny.

One great thing about my love of reading is that I've passed it on to my sister. She hated reading as a kid, but now that she's older, married, and working full-time, she realized it was a great way to relax. She told me as we got our nails done last summer, "I never understood what you got from books. You always had one with you and you loved to read," she pulled out a chunkster of a book from her huge purse and placed it on the counter in front of me and smiled, "I totally get it now!"

Contest Winner!!

Sorry about not doing this Friday night. You know how real life can get in the way!

The winner of Amanda Ashley's A Darker Dream is: ibeeeg!

Congrats!

I've contacted you by email. Please email me privately with your snail mail info!

Bitten By Books Give Away

If you're a fan of Keri Arthur and the Riley Jensen series, here's your chance to win one of 15 copies that Keri is giving away. I'm a huge fan of the series and own every book except the new one! I must have it!! :)

Go here and enter: http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=7182

Sherrilyn Kenyon Signing

I've been tweeting about this most of the day, which is rather pathetic, but I'm totally excited about going to see Sherrilyn Kenyon at BAM tonight for a book signing in Tampa. I missed her last year when she was in Orlando to sign for Acheron due to just coming back from RI (I'm originally from there) and having a tropical storm rolling through the area. I didn't want to drive 2 hours in the pouring rain while still exhausted from my flight. I knew she'd be this way again sometime so I let it go.

Tonight, hubby will be coming with me to the signing. He's never read one of SK's books even though I tell him he would like them and perhaps get some interesting ideas *winkwink*. He loves reading about vampires so SK's DH series would be a great fit for him, plus it's a new take on something that's been done a million times before.

I will be posting pictures of the event. I'm hoping to get a picture with SK, but I'll take one with just me standing there while she signs. She is one of my must read authors no matter the pen-name she uses. She is also an inspiration for me as a writer. I love the humor she uses in her books and her writing style. I'm usually up late devouring her books and can read them in about a day or so.

This will be a great night for me no matter if I come home with really sore feet and back from standing in a long line waiting to see SK.

Now, I must ask everyone out there, what authors would you drive for 2 hours to see because you just love their books so much?

CONTEST: Leave a comment and I'll give away A Darker Dream by Amanda Ashley (another one of my favs!). I'll choose a winner randomly on May 15th. Please make sure your email address is included in your comment. (This is a contest only for the US, sorry international followers!)

Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
  


• Open to a random page
  


• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  


• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
  

"I sit down at my desk and begin to sirt through Delmarr's sketches. We'll build some dress for the fall; the rest of the sketches, never realized, will be filed."

From: Lucia, Lucia by Adriana Trigiani pg. 145

Reads for April

A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin Pages: 1128 Grade: A+
A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin Pages: 978 Grade: A+
The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen Pages: 276 Grade: A+
Grimspace by Ann Aguirre Pages: 312 Grade: A (Review)
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Pages: 93 Grade: A-
Dark Desires After Dusk by Kresley Cole Pages: 368 Grade: B
The Metamorphoses by Franz Kafka Pages: 34 Grade: B
Zaabalawi by Naguib Mahfouz Pages: 13 Grade: B
Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton Pages: 365 Grade: C

Total pages read for April: 3567

There are a couple of new authors I found in the list that I really enjoyed: Ann Aguirre and Sarah Addison Allen. They are both great writers and I will be reading more books by them.

The last 3 I had to read for a class this past month, but I did enjoy them.

The Song of Ice and Fire series is great and magnificently huge! I finished that up this month and I am eagerly awaiting the 5th book of the series by George R.R. Martin, though no one even knows when it will be finished, not even Mr. Martin at the moment.

I hope to get more reading done this month. Summer classes will start on May 11th so I may be held back on how much I can read this summer since I will have to cram 15 weeks worth of work in to 10 and 5 weeks periods for 2 classes. That means lots of reading and work. Nevermind how much writing I will have to do as well for one of my classes.

I will be posting some more reviews on a couple of books I've read on this list. Swallowing Darkness and The Sugar Queen will be reviewed for sure.