December Reading – 100 Word Reviews

Lucy Gives It Up For The Boss by Jackie White (Pure Fantasy Books, Kindle Edition) ~ 1/5*

Opening Line:

Lucy hated to admit it, but Gary did look hot in a black suit.

~

I’m not sure I can manage 100 words about this book really. There isn’t much to say.

There is practically no storyline, the characters are all made of plastic, the sex is slightly too graphic to be anything but off-putting and cringe-worthy and it ended so abruptly I actually said ‘is that it?’ out loud. Not because I wanted to read more you understand, just because it was such a bizarre ending.

The whole story is effectively: ‘Enter pretty, shallow girl and stupidly attractive, high-powered man who should never have met. Wham bam thank you mam! BYE!’

And that’s it.

*

The Firework-Maker’s Daughter by Philip Pullman (This Edition: Corgi Yearling, 2004. Originally Published: Doubleday, 1995) ~ 5/5*

Opening Line:

A thousand miles ago, in a country east of the jungle and south of the mountains, there lived a Firework-Maker called Lachland and his daughter Lila.

~

I remember loving this when my teacher read it to us at primary school and was delighted to find that I still love it all these years later.

A fast paced adventure with all the fizz and colour of fireworks that highlights the importance of friendship, love and family in a way that isn’t sugar-coated or forced.

The characters are funny, the journey involves a volcano, lots of fire, some part-time pirates with silver-foil swords and a talking white elephant  – what is there to dislike?

Philip Pullman excels at writing for children in a way grown-ups can love too.

*

A Book Of Nonsense by Edward Lear (Kindle Edition) 2/5*

Opening Limerick:

There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, “It is just as I feared!— Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!”

~

I know this was supposed to be nonsensical but some of it was ridiculous.

A book of limericks is never going to be full of literary genius, but a lot of them seemed to be desperate attempts to make the rhyming pattern based only loosely on the opening line of each poem.

Also, it featured several instances of a pet hate of mine – ‘rhyming’ two words just because they are spelled the same. ‘Prague’ and ‘vague’ do not sound the same, regardless of the letter patterns they share.

Some were good, lots were not. At least it was short.

*

A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10) by Kim Harrison (Harper Voyager Urban Fantasy, 2012) ~ 5/5*

Opening Line:

The woman across from me barely sniffed when I slammed the pen down on the counter.

~

There aren’t many books I religiously pre-order. In fact, since the end of Harry Potter, there is only one series – this one.

There’s always the worry that by book 10 in a series you’d be tired of the world and the characters, but Rachel’s  first person narrative is still intelligent and witty, the characters still make me laugh out loud, the story is fast paced and intriguing and I’m still scared witless by Al.

And I really, really want to know what Glen is up to and whether Trent’s plan is going to work – so, when is book 11 out…?

*

Every Other Day by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Quercus, 2012) ~ 5/5*

Opening Line:

The decision to make hellhounds an endangered species was beyond asinine, but I expected nothing less from a government that had bankrolled not one, but two, endowed chairs in preternatural biology (one of them my father’s) at the University That Shall Not Be Named.

~

At first I found it hard to lose myself in the first person narrative. I wanted to love it, I was intrigued by the storyline and the idea of Kali, the main character, but I found it difficult to believe her. I’m not sure why, but it quickly wore off and I was utterly absorbed.

The story was a brilliant, clever twist on the supernatural world; a proper rollercoaster of emotions throughout – my adrenaline was pumping, heart racing and I cried at the end. Buckets.

Every time I thought I had it figured out, it went somewhere else. Pure genius.

*

The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder (Moyer Bell, 1992) ~ 5/5* (Finished on Christmas Eve, as always)

Opening line:

…perhaps the clock hands had become so tired of going in the same direction year after year that they had suddenly begun to go the opposite way instead…

~

I love this book. I have faithfully read it every December for many years and will ocntinue to do so for years to come.

With a chapter for every day between the 1st and 24th of December it’s a perfect alternative to an Advent calendar.

Essentially it’s the Christmas story but at the same time it’s an adventure, a history lesson, a story about family and love and a mystery about a missing girl.

If you took all the magic of Christmas, rolled it in ink and smeared it across paper, this book is how it would look.

Merry Christmas!

*

Caressed By Ice by Nalini Singh (Gollancz, 2010) ~ 5/5*

Opening line:

Mercury was a cult. That was what everyone said at the start.

~

I love how the adult-themed nature of these books is balanced by fast-paced murder mysteries and ever-intriguing politics between the Psy and Changeling races. It’s not just porn for the sake of porn, it’s a story that happens to involve some racy scenes.

The last two novels involved Changelings of the cat variety (Jaguars and Leopards) which were really good but the main Changeling in this one was a wolf. I don’t think it’s possible to get any further up my street to be honest – thrills, mystery, blood, danger, sexy men, wolves…

I may treat myself to Book 4 soon.

*

GOOD NEWS! I set myself the challenge to read 30 books in 2012 but I hit that total in Summer so I upped the target to 52 to see if I could average one a week. And I’ve done it!! I’ve read 54 in fact. Though two of those were so short they barely counted. But still, hooray for me!!

December Reading

How is it December already? Oh well, that means I have 31 days to read 6 books in order to hit my personal target of 52 books in 2012. Along with finishing the novel I started last month in NaNoWriMo (but turned out to be a story that needs more than 50,000 words to tell) and, you know, doing Christmas.

Better get my nose stuck in some books then hadn’t I?

I have already started A Perfect Blood by Kim Harrison – I picked it up when i finished my last November read but haven’t finished it so it will have to roll over into this month.

Along with that I intend to read:

The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder (A beautiful, beautiful book that makes a fabulous alternative to an advent calendar if you are after a non-chocolate option. It has a chapter per day for 1st-24th December.)

Caressed By Ice by Nalini Singh (Yes, another of her racy almost-beastiality Psy-Changeling novels. I’m a bit of a sucker for them, okay?)

The Firework-Maker’s Daughter by Philip Pullman (I remember this being a class reading book as a kid and enjoying it and fancy re-reading it to see if it’s as magical as my memory paints it.)

Lucy Gives It Up For The Boss by Jackie White (A free Kindle book. Clearly going to be porn. I don’t expect much from it to be honest.)

Every Other Day by Jennifer Lynn Barnes (I am a fan of her Raised By Wolves series so am quite looking forward to this one.)

*

I’m not going to bother with a reserve book because I’m going to struggle to squeeze all those in as it is. If I do read anything else it will probably be something I get for Christmas and can’t resist picking up. This is assuming I get any books for Christmas. I will be sad if I don’t.

Books With Sex In – A Rant

I previously mentioned that my July Reading List was a bit racy and it has lived up to my expectations. However, reading three of the books at once (Lady Chatterley, Visions and Spoil of War) I have discovered something that, to me, makes the difference between a good ‘sex book’ and an average one.

Well, a few somethings actually – words. Words like:

• nipple
• erection
• orgasm
• penis

There. They aren’t so hard to write. Even I can manage it – even Liberty could type them and she’s probably already sniggering at this post because of them (and because she is actually only about 12 years old…)

So why, WHY? do people writing porn struggle with them? It’s like they are afraid of admitting that their characters are either human or naked.

Lady Chatterley was penned in 1928 and Lawrence was quite capable of using them – ‘The activity, the orgasm was his, all his…’ and ‘the stirring restlessness of his penis…’ are but two examples – If 1920′s porn can say ‘penis’ then why can’t so many of its modern day counterparts? For example in Spoil Of War (pub. 2011), Sullivan writes – ‘Reaching between them, she circled his flesh in her long, cool fingers, and began to guide him.’ – I read this and immediately thought ‘which bit?’ This is not what you want your reader to be thinking in the middle of a sexy scene. You want them to be at least vaguely absorbed by the action if not totally swept away in the moment, not thinking for the briefest of moments that the girl has grabbed the guy’s stomach fat and is pushing it around. If the word ‘flesh’ had been replaced with ‘penis’ or ‘erection’ then there would have been no confusion dragging me out of the scene. That line would have been fine even if earlier in the scene the guy’s erection had been mentioned directly so I was aware of it rather than just vaguely implying it resulting in my moment of amusement.

Not all modern ‘romance’ novels are rubbish, clearly. I have not read 50 Shades despite the enormous hype, however I’m not really bothered because people who I know have read it have warned me away saying it’s ‘too fast paced throughout to be realistic and feels empty and baseless’ and that the writing itself is a bit lazy and shabby. They know that selection of things will annoy me enough to tell me not to waste my energy. However I have read the first two novels in Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changleing series and I love them for a multitude of reasons. They are bold and brave and racy but at the same time they have strong story lines throughout – murder, deception, politics the lot. Instead of feeling like a series of sexual encounters tenuously linked by a soul-less storyline like many other novels in the genre (Spoil of War lies dangerously close to this accusation) it feels like a book where the sex scenes are an integral part of it all. It’s not just empty sex either as so often happens – where the characters come together just for the sake of it (no pun intended) – but more often than not the relationships develop and characters change as a direct result of the racy scenes. It’s still exciting and whatever else but somehow better for having a strong story base underneath.

There are of course a multitude of terrible ‘adult fiction’ books out there. Stories and books that talk of floating over rainbows and stars instead of orgasms and have too many uses of ‘ enormous shaft’ – they are awful. And hilarious. But not sexy. They are full of sentences like: ‘Her loose fitting half shirt ripped low in the front, fell lower, exposing one of the perfect mounds of her medium sized firm breast.’ (from an online fiction I shall allow to remain unidentified) which, quite frankly, sounds like cooking instructions (‘medium sized, firm’). And generally don’t have any substance and aren’t in my mind, worth the effort it takes to read them.

After all this rant I must confess to never having written any sex scenes myself. I have done a few where I build up to it and then firmly close the bedroom door but none where anyone actually does anything for the simple reason that the mere thought of it made me giggle embarrassedly. If and when I do (which I think may be soon after reading all this smut!) I like to think I will listen to my own advice and not write rainbow sex. I shall maybe get brave and post it up here for you all to laugh at/slate. Maybe.