Off The Shelf Challenge - 2012

The old year is done, and the new year is yet to come. 

2012 Off The Shelf Challenge is commenced!

I will be reading 15 already acquired books off my bookshelf, assuming they were acquired before January 1st. This year, to make things easier, I have a list of all the books I own that I haven't read yet. And no, I'm not going to post that list here. There are just too many of them to list. Sorry. 

To sum up: I am taking part in the 2012 Off The Shelf Challenge hosted by Bookish Ardour. I will be attempting the category: "Trying - 15 books".

Anyone with me?

Off The Shelf Challenge 2011 - Summary

Long ago, in a time far away, I signed up for the Off The Shelf Challenge at Bookish Ardour. I agreed to read 15 books from my TBR shelf, and then review them all here. If you have been paying attention, you will notice I have reviewed 9 books that were sitting on my book shelf at the beginning of 2011.

Well,  as most people can relate to this year, a bunch of craziness happened this year. I wasn't able to blog as often as I'd hoped, but I did manage to read as many books as I normally do. As such, I did read 15 books that were on my bookshelf at the beginning of 2011.

So without further ado, here are the 15 books:

Strange Brew, edited by PN Elrod
Red-Headed Stepchild, by Jaye Wells
The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor
Spider Bones, by Kathy Reichs
The Vampire Diaries, Volumes 1-5, by LJ Smith
Stray, by Rachel Vincent
The Dark Lady's Chosen, by Gail Z Martin
Dark Haven, by Gail Z Martin
Spellwright, by Blake Charlton
Wicked Lovely, by Melissa Marr
Ink Exchange, by Melissa Marr

And now, on to 2012!

Reading Meme - Day 15

Day 15 - Favorite Female Character

Like I said yesterday, picking a favorite is difficult. Fortunately, though, a favorite female character was easier to decide on than a favorite male character.

Alexia Tarabotti, from the Parasol Protectorate Series, by Gail Carriger.

I absolutely love her! She's smart in an age when educated women were feared. She knows her limitations and flaws, and she accepts them rather than fight against them. She has a sense of humor, and excellent fashion sense. She has crazy friends both with horrid taste in hats and amazing sense of flamboyance. And she carries a steampunk parasol capable of defending against even robot ladybugs. What's not to love?

Reading Meme - Day 14

Day 14 - Favorite Male Character

I went back and forth on this one. It took me a long time to come up with a decision, because as much as I read, my favorite tends to be who I'm reading at the time. However, at much deliberation, a decision was reached:

Harry Dresden, from The Dresden Files Series, by Jim Butcher.

You just have to love a guy with a White Knight Complex. Especially one that doesn't always quite "get it right". But he tries, and his heart is in the right place, and he does whatever it takes to keep those he cares about safe.

Plus, that hat-and-duster look is totally sexy mysterious.

Why Science Fiction has Ruined Me

Recently, a friend posted a link to a chart. This chart outlined the apparent year that classic sci-fi took place, in comparison to what year it really is. For instance, Back to the Future took place in 2015. That's 4 years from now. Does anyone really think we will have hover-skateboards and flying cars and all that other crazy stuff in 4 years? No. Of course not.

Disneyland was build in 1955, and it had an area of the park devoted to the future. "Tomorrowland" was supposed to represent the way the world would be with the contribution of science, and over 50 years later, we still don't have all the doodads and gadgets imagined back then.

Is it because the technology hasn't developed? Sure. But the big question is WHY hasn't technology advanced as quickly as we'd hoped? Is it because we aren't smart enough? I don't think so.

I think technology hasn't developed as much as was dreamed in the past, because the writers and dreamers of the past never imagined how EXPENSIVE technological development would be.

Think about it. How many science fiction books have you read where money gets in the way? How much would an enterprise like Jurassic Park cost in todays world? Could we do it? Maybe. But it would probably take the entire GDP of a midsize country to get it done.

Why haven't we started colonizing the moon? Cost.

Why don't we have thriving underwater communities? Cost.

Why don't we have electric cars, smooth roads, and a way to travel cross-country in an hour or less? Cost.

Now, I'm not trying to make some economical-political statement. That's not how I roll, and I realize these issues are a lot more complicated than a simple dollar sign. What I am saying, is that being a lover of science fiction has made it impossible not to look at the world today and wish things could be a little different.

Because I know how innovative we can be. I know how creative our scientists and engineers truly are. And I know why most of them stick to doodling on napkins.

Reading Meme - Day 13

Day 13 - Favorite Childhood Book

You know what's sad? I don't remember very many books from my childhood. I remember reading some Dr. Seuss around the time I started kindergarten. I remember reading children's encyclopedia's cover to cover in the first grade.

But I don't really remember loving books until I was in Jr. High. Don't get me wrong. I LOVED reading. Did it all the time. I read everything I could get my hands on. I just don't remember actually falling in love with a book before Jr. High, and the first book I actually remember falling in love with was either A Wrinkle in Time or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Just don't ask me to tell you which one happened first, because I don't remember that.

Reading Meme - Day 12

Day 12: A book you've read more than once

I don't know if I've actually come right out and said it or not, but I like to read. Not that you couldn't have gathered that from everything you've seen on this blog. So, here's the thing. My husband likes to watch and re-watch movies and TV shows. I do the same thing with books. There are very few books on my book shelf that I've read only once. I even have a lot of my favorites both in book and audio form, just so I can get a story fix more often. And now I have to pick ONE that I've read more than once?

Nope. Not gonna do it. Here's a short list of some series I've read more than once:

The Wheel of Time

Harry Potter

Sword of Truth

Kushiel's Legacy

The Hollows

Reading Meme - Day 11

Day 11 – A book that disappointed you

There was a lot of hype over this book before it was released in 2010, mostly based on the author. I remember reading some of the blurbs and thinking, "Yeah, that sounds kind of cool!" Being the lemming that I am, the more positive hype I saw, the more I wanted to read it. So when it was released, I rushed out and bought it. It took some time for me to get around to reading it, but when I did I was incredibly disappointed. So much so, in fact, that I will most likely review it here at some point just to express my extreme displeasure. What's really frustrating is all the things that made me hate this book are touted by other reviewers as being the reason they like it. And I just found out the sequel was released in January, and I never noticed it. I'm not sure I'll read it.

Reading Meme - Day 10

Day 10 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving

I don't normally pick up books that I don't think I'll like. There were quite a few in high school that I was required to read for class that I actually ended up enjoying, though, and my favorite one of those was:

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens.

I've even read it a couple of times since high school just for fun. So that's that.

Reading Meme - Day 09

Day 09 – Best scene ever

How do you choose the best scene ever? There are so many I could name. In fact, since I can't pick the best ever, here are a few of my personal favorites:

Phedre and Joscelin fishing in Kushiel's Avatar.

Mat losing an eye in Towers of Midnight.

Roland finding the Tower in the Dark Tower.

The death of Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I'm sure I could come up with more, but that's what I'm going with today.

Reading Meme -Day 08

Day 08 - Your Favorite Work in Translation

Unfortunately, I can't say I've read many books in translation. There were a couple I read in high school, and maybe 2-3 since then. Because of this, my favorite will seem like a cop-out, seeing it's so popular right now:

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Stieg Larsson tells a riveting tale of familial intrigue and betrayal, and I liked how everything was wrapped up in the end. I've seen a lot of people say they liked the second or third book in the Millenium trilogy better than the first. I can even see why. However, the first book is a stand alone, while books two and three are so interconnected it can be difficult to pull them apart, and that's why I picked the first as my favorite.

Reading Meme - Day 07

Day 07 - A Writer You Don't Like

**I really don't like putting a black mark against someone on the net, but my opinion is my opinion, so take it or leave it. I should have put this disclaimer before the last author bashing I did, so I apologize for that.**

The one writer I know I don't like is Robert Newcomb, author of the Chronicles of Blood and Stone. The first book in the trilogy, The Fifth Sorceress, made me so angry after reading it that I haven't been able to look at any of his other books without cringing. The Fifth Sorceress is a violent and bloody tale of a world where all women are evil and only men can be trusted. Robert Newcomb appears to have some serious hatred of the feminine, and the violence that fills the tale is completely gratuitous. The author even spends a lot of time describing how the evil sorceresses do horrible disgusting things just for the sake of shocking the reader. As I've mentioned before, I can't NOT finish a book I start, but this was one of the few I wish I had.

Reading Meme Day 06

Day 06 - Your favorite writer

I've already mentioned that it's difficult to choose a favorite. And for the most part, that's true. Except here.

Brandon Sanderson

Need I say more? The author of Elantris, The Mistborn Trilogy, The Alcatraz series, and more. The man hand-picked to complete Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. Yeah, him. Love him!*

*Yes, I did jazz hands. He's that awesome.

Reading Meme Day 05

Day 05: A book you hate

I'm going to be honest. I don't "hate" very many books. Most books, even if I don't enjoy them, I am willing to say it just wasn't my thing and move on. That being said, there are a couple that just made me angry to read. I have a minor OCD tick in that I can't start a book and not finish. I just can't. And when I'm reading a book that I think is ter

rible, I can't put it down and walk away. Which makes me angry. There are a couple of these that I could choose from, but some of them could show up later in the Meme, so I'm picking one for each slot.

Conspiracy in Kiev by Noel Hynd

A shrewd investigator and an expert marksman, Special Agent Alexandra LaDuca can handle any case the FBI gives her. Or can she?

While on loan from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Alex is tapped to accompany a Secret Service team during an American Presidential visit to Ukraine. Her assignment: to keep personal watch over Yuri Federov, the most charming and most notorious gangster in the region.

Against her better judgment---and fighting a feeling that she's being manipulated---she leaves for Ukraine. But there are more parts to this dangerous mission than anyone suspects, and connecting the dots takes Alex across three continents and through some life-altering discoveries about herself, her work, her faith, and her future.

I got the book through a promotional free download from Amazon's Kindle website, and in preparing this post I discovered that Noel Hynd is carried by the Christian publishing house Zondervan. I mention this because the book made me so mad in its awfulness that I wanted to find out if it was, in fact, put out by a mainstream publishing house or instead was a self-published or vanity press kind of set up.

It was bad. The writing was terrible, the story was slow and full of plot holes (I spent a great deal of time yelling "WHY???" in frustration), and the characters are shallow and one-dimensional. That doesn't even bring in the fact that half the minor details in the book were wrong, like the author did some half-baked attempt at research on Yahoo search and called it good.

As an example, the protagonist finds herself in Venezuela, hiding in the jungle, when a diamondback rattlesnake crawls up her leg and she is forced to hold her gun in front of her face and shoot it off her chest. Not only did this snake appear in a part of the world where it shouldn't be, but the protagonist did not have any sort of deafness, blindness, or burns resulting from firing a weapon two inches from her face. Oh, she had thought to herself that if she missed she would only have 2 or 3 seconds to realign the shot and try again. Really?!?

2011 Locus Challenge

This year I am participating in the Locus Challenge.

Details can be found here:

http://www.rantingdragon.com/2011locuschallenge/

I pledge to this year try to read books from the Locus 2010 Recommended Reading List. Those books will be reviewed here (if they haven't been already).

To date, I have read the following:

The Passage, Justin Cronin

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemison

The Broken Kingdoms, N.K. Jemison

Changeless, Gail Carriger

Reading Meme Day 03

Reading Meme Day 03: Your Favorite Recent Book

This one is a tough one. There have been quite a few books that have come out in recent months, and quite a few that I've been so excited about that I had to go out and buy it on release day.

The question is, what counts as recent? I'm going to go with 6 months.

What books have come out in the last six months? Quite a few. But which one to pick? Do I pick the latest installment of The Wheel of Time, Towers of Midnight, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson? Or do I pick the first book in what is sure to be a top-notch fantasy series, like The Black Prism, by Brent Weeks or The Way of Kings, also by Brandon Sanderson? (Seriously, the man writes more than is humanly possible. I'm convinced he's part machine.)

The more I think about it, the more I can't make a decision. All three of the aforementioned books were fantastic, and I've already read each of them twice. So that's what I'm going with. Yep. (*Note: All blurbs and images from www.goodreads.com)

The Way of Kings:




Speak again the ancient oaths,
Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Journey before Destination.
and return to men the Shards they once bore.
The Knights Radiant must stand again.





The Black Prism:




Gavin Guile is the Prism, the most powerful man in the world. He is high priest and emperor, a man whose power, wit, and charm are all that preserves a tenuous peace. But Prisms never last, and Guile knows exactly how long he has left to live: Five years to achieve five impossible goals.







Towers of Midnight:





The Last Battle has started. The seals on the Dark One’s prison are crumbling. The Pattern itself is unraveling, and the armies of the Shadow have begun to boil out of the Blight.

The sun has begun to set upon the Third Age.

Reading Meme Day 02

Reading Meme Day 02: A Book You Wish More People Had Read





















The Blurb (www.goodreads.com)

This book is the magical epic of King Arthur and his shining Camelot; of Merlin and Owl and Guinevere; of beasts who talk and men who fly, of wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad.

You remember that Disney movie, "The Sword in the Stone"? You remember how crazy it was, with a talking owl and a kid turning into a squirrel and a crazy wizard that talks too much? What most people don't know is that movie was based on this book, and when I say based on, I mean it copied the story almost exactly. What's more, that movie only covered the first part of this book, which goes on to become one of the most amazing tellings of King Arthur and his knights that I've ever read. And I really wish more people had heard of it.

Challenge!!

Some blogger friends of mine have recently discovered a new reading challenge, and being the lemming that I am, I'm following in line.

Bookish Ardour's Reading Challenges is hosting a challenge with one goal in mind: Read all those books on your bookshelf that you haven't read yet, rather than running out to the bookstore to buy the shiny new ones. They offer several levels of challenge, and I'm having trouble deciding what level to take on (From their website):

Challenge Levels

1. Tempted– Choose 5 books to read
2. Trying – Choose 15 books to read
3. Making A Dint – Choose 30 books to read
4. On A Roll – Choose 50 books to read
5. Flying Off – Choose 75 books to read

Here's my thinking: I currently have 19 books on my shelf, 3 Audiobooks on CD, countless eBooks on my Kindle, and quite a few audiobooks from audible just calling my name. Of the books on my shelf, 14 are actually mine, the other 5 are books my roommate gave me with orders to read them or suffer a long painful death. And there are SO MANY good books coming out this year!

So I think I'll choose Level 2: Trying. With as many books as I plan on reading, I should be able to read 15 I already own, right? Especially if I can count the eBooks and Audiobooks in the challenge.

Oh, and don't worry. I'll review every book I read, even if they are decades old and smell a little funny.

Wish me luck!

Reading Meme Day 01

Reading Meme Day 01: Your favorite series of books (with more than 3 in the series)

There are quite a few book series that I am currently reading and/or that I have read and enjoyed a great deal in the past. As such, it’s very difficult for me to pick one. So, I’ve picked the one that has affected my life the most:

The Blurb (www.goodreads.com)

The Wheel of Times turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, and Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

Something about this series stuck with me when I started reading it my freshman year of college. My roommate suggested it to me, saying, “I liked the first one, then it got to weird, but I think it’s perfect for you!” So I picked up the Eye of the World, and I was half-way through it when I went out and bought all the others that were out at the time in paperback (book 8, I think). Then, when I had finished reading what was available, I went online in search of like minded people to talk to about them, and I joined a Yahoo Group. There, I made some of the best friends I’ve ever had. Then, because I couldn’t stop talking about them, I got some of my real-life friends hooked, too.

Reading Memes

Recently, some blogger friends (and probably other bloggers who aren't my friends, by which I only mean I don't know them) participated in a "Reading Meme" activity. I don't know where it came from, or even what it's really called, but I like the idea, so I'm going to do it, too. Yay, peer pressure! For perfect examples of the Reading Memes, you can check out:

http://waitingforfairies.com

http://onapalestar.wordpress.com

So for 30 days, I will post a "Reading Meme", as listed below. But, knowing me, I won't be posting them every day, so it will most likely last longer than 30 days. Enjoy!

Day 01 – Your favourite series of books (with more than 3 in the series)

Day 02 – A book that you wish more people had read

Day 03 – Your favorite recent book

Day 04 – Your favorite book ever

Day 05 – A book you hate

Day 06 – Your favourite writer

Day 07 – A writer you don’t like

Day 08 – Your favourite work in translation

Day 09 – Best scene ever

Day 10 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving

Day 11 – A book that disappointed you

Day 12 – An book you’ve read more than twice

Day 13 – Favorite childhood book

Day 14 – Favorite male character

Day 15 – Favorite female character

Day 16 – Your guilty pleasure book

Day 17 – Favorite trilogy or tetralogy

Day 18 – Favorite book cover

Day 19 – Best ensemble of characters in a book

Day 20 – Favorite kiss or love scene

Day 21 – Favorite fictional romantic relationship

Day 22 – Favorite ending/climax

Day 23 – Most annoying character

Day 24 – Best quote

Day 25 – A book you plan on reading

Day 26 – OMG WTF? plot

Day 27 – Favourite non-mainstream writer

Day 28 – First book obsession

Day 29 – Current book obsession

Day 30 – Saddest character death