BTT: Trashy Paperbacks

Booking Through Thursdays asked:


Do you ever crave reading crappy books?



I am going to interpret this to mean “trashy” books. I don’t read books that are “crappy”. What would be the point?!? I do love my light and easy to consume trashy paperbacks however! The type of books that aren’t trying to pretend they hold the answer to the universe or win the Man Booker. Books that just want to have fun! I have been reading more and more of them in the last few years because my full time job is sucking the life and brain power out of me (it has help, but the way it is running me ragged means I am placing the blame on it’s shoulders!) and I just don’t feel like reading big serious tomes in my free time. This means I have been reading more and more paranormal romance, urban fantasy and suspense, less literature, less mysteries, less epic fantasy and less science fiction. I love being challenged, but when your brain is leaking out your ears you just want a light escape. And so I open a trashy paperback and escape for an hour or two. I still read my other genres, I still love them, still worship at the altar, I just can’t stomach them at the moment. It is like being full to bursting from eating a large salad and then seeing a table full of every single sweet and sinful dessert you have ever had, and you are salivating, getting high on the scent of chocolate and sugar, but you hold your belly and look at it mournfully, cursing fate because you just filled up on rabbit food. You love salads but you wanted those chocolates too… This is me. I love reading trashy paperbacks. I do not deny it. I think it would be kind of pretentious to do so. So yes, my name is Jacq and I read trashy paperbacks!

Teaser Tuesday: War of the Worlds by H.G Wells

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

My Teasers: 

I was at home at that hour and wring in my study; and although my French windows face towards Ottershaw and the blind was up (for I loved in those days to look up at the night sky), I saw nothing of it. Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer space must have fallen while I was sitting there, visible to me had I only looked up as it passed.
Page 6 of War of the Worlds by H.G Wells

Teaser Tuesday: Reaper by Rachel Vincent

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

My Teasers: 


I had died, and the world keeps spinning, without even a wobble in its rotation to mark the occasion. I’d known life would go on without me, but seeing that was different than knowing it, and feeling it was worse than all.
Page 36(?) of Reaper by Rachel Vincent

Manic Monday: Spider's Bite by Jennifer Estep

Each Monday (or the closest I can get to Monday) I will be posting a Past/Present/Future Reading Post called Manic Monday. Don't hate me if I post it on a Tuesday - it just indicates how "manic" my Monday really was! If you want to see more of what I have been reading, I try and update my Goodreads account with each book I am reading.

What I just finished reading

Spider Bite by Jennifer Estep
Stars: 4/5

Blurb from Goodreads:
My name is Gin, and I kill people.

They call me the Spider. I'm the most feared assassin in the South — when I'm not busy at the Pork Pit cooking up the best barbecue in Ashland. As a Stone elemental, I can hear everything from the whispers of the gravel beneath my feet to the vibrations of the soaring Appalachian Mountains above me. My Ice magic also comes in handy for making the occasional knife. But I don't use my powers on the job unless I absolutely have to. Call it professional pride.

Now that a ruthless Air elemental has double-crossed me and killed my handler, I'm out for revenge. And I'll exterminate anyone who gets in my way — good or bad. I may look hot, but I'm still one of the bad guys. Which is why I'm in trouble, since irresistibly rugged Detective Donovan Caine has agreed to help me. The last thing this coldhearted killer needs when I'm battling a magic more powerful than my own is a sexy distraction...especially when Donovan wants me dead just as much as the enemy.

Why I picked it up: Sofia from Galaxy kept telling us it was awesome at book club. She rarely steers me wrong and it sounded interesting.
Why I finished it: It was a good solid urban fantasy. I liked the plot, I liked the suspense and the action, the main characters had just the right amount of chemistry, and I loved the main character. I also want to know more about the goth dwarf!
I'd give it to: People who love Devon Monk, Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs and Lillith Saintcrow.

What I am reading now

What I am I not reading? I can't seem to make up my mind! I have been skipping from book to book this month, because I banned books in November. I can't settle on anything.

What I am reading next

I realised that my New Years Resolution was to read Wuthering Heights, but I got stuck half way through again. I guess I should do something about that! I also want to finish my Global Challenge. I am not sure what I have actually read though, so it may be bust... I have Oceania, Europe, and North America in the bag, so I need one more South American book, one more Asian book and two African books. I still don't know what African books to read :-/ Oh, Asia is finished if Lebanon is counted as Asia? The Middle East is technically counted as the western part of the Asian continent isn't it? So 2 African books and one South American book? ;-/ Do you have any suggestions? I mostly read speculative fiction... I hate dramas and biographies...

Book Survey X

 
This is stolen from my friend Dutchie's blog BookishArdour. I am on a hiatus at the moment, but I thought I would share something just because :) I need to start writing up some of my reviews soon, although I have been limiting my reading due to Nanowrimo as well. I would love to know your answers too, so leave me a link if you share this on your blog too.

How much time can you end up spending in a bookstore or library?
If I have my way, an hour or more. I tend to spend hours (plural) at Galaxy Bookshop. There are so many books I want!

Do you have a system when visiting a bookstore/library?

• At Galaxy I go after specific books first, then I go to the new release shelves, then my genre shelves, then I check out the rest of the store.
• At Abbeys I go to the archaeology and history section, the classics shelf, the general fiction shelves, the poetry shelves and then to the travel section.
• At general book stores I go straight for the fantasy/SF shelf, then the classics, and then look for a new Nora Robert's novel on the romance shelf. I also love checking out the art section.
• At libraries I look at the spotlight shelving (new release or featured books, etc.) before checking the paperbacks stands and going after specific authors in the A-Z shelves. I mostly borrow non-fiction from libraries, as my interests are fairly specialist. Archaeology books are very expensive, unless you want to buy popular market archaeology books, and they are normally non-factual or generalist information.

What book do you like to give as a gift?
Nothing in particular. If I know a friend wants something in particular I will buy it for them, or if they are into a particular type of non-fiction I may pick them up a book. However, I know I hate it when friends get it wrong when buying me books, so I tend to think my bibliophilic friends have the same issues. Instead I buy them gift certificates to book stores or buy them book-related items. I love it when I get a few certificates to Galaxy for my birthday, so I know my bibliophilic friends must think the same! :D

Do you judge books by their cover?
Yes and no. I don't think that a book will be good or bad in relation to the cover, but I am drawn (or repelled) to books because of their covers. I also purchase the nicest cover I can find for each book I buy. This is why I now buy Vintage Classics as opposed to Penguin Classics, etc..

Have you bought books based on their cover?
Yes.

Where do you usually buy your books?
Galaxy Bookshop. They specialise in speculative fiction, I am friends with a lot of the customers, Count at least four of the staff amongst my friends and am part of it's paranormal romance book club. I bought a Sony Reader on Thursday, so I need to find out where to buy my paranormal romance and urban fantasy from. Galaxy doesn't stock much Lora Leigh* so I guess I will be getting those as ebooks unless I can find another store based in Australia who stocks the paperbacks. I'll be doubling up the ebooks with paperbacks when the physical copies are affordable. I bought the ereader because I can't read hard covers (hurts my hands) so this will mean I no longer have to wait more than a year for the next book in a series! :D

*I just got a tip off from Kat at Book Thingo that  Ever After sells Lora Leigh paperbacks! Yeay!

Do you prefer brand new or second hand or does it not matter?
I am not too fussed. I buy brand new these days, but that is because the books I want a new release. I still buy second hand when I see something I like. I am more interested in the words, not the appearance. I would prefer pristine condition, by my books are "loved" and I don't store them behind glass or treat them with kid gloves. I look after my books but I read them so often that they will never stay in "as new" condition. As long as a book isn't filled with someone's writing, covered in wine or coffee stains or with pages torn, I will buy it.

Online Vs Offline, which do you think is better?
I am not sure what this question refers to. Book stores? I like browsing. And I like being able to read a book straight after purchasing instead of waiting for it to be posted to me. I guess I am old school in this way. But I have bought a few books online, mostly from small specialist book sellers. I think these people deserve our support, and they are more likely to be part of a niche market, and in my own country! I refuse to buy from Amazon. They are a big bad evil corporation as far as I am concerned. I refused to buy a Kindle from them as well, because they lock everything down so they continue to have a monopoly on the market - but then they go and limit the books that non-Americans can buy!? Evil!

Do you borrow books?
Yes, and I limit to reading them at home only. This way my environment won't damage the books.

If yes, what was the last book that you borrowed?
Rosie lent me a bag of urban fantasy, paranormal romance and science fiction romance.

Do you let others borrow your books?
If I trust them to care for my books. Last year I had too many people damaging my books. I've been burnt and will no longer lend books to non-bibliophiles! I'd rather just buy them a bloody book than let them touch mine!

Book Bites on hiatus because of NaNoWriMo!

I won’t be posting my usual memes for a few weeks. I have been distracted by planning for NaNoWriMo, and now writing, so I haven’t been reading all that much. Add to that, the books I _want_ to read were lent to me by Rosie, and I have a rule about borrowed books – they don’t leave the house! So I haven’t been reading as frenetically as I normally do. I've just been reading a few chapters a day. As someone who reads most of a book per day, this is quite mind boggling for me, but I just haven’t been able to churn through them like I normally do. I think I could if I could take them with me during the day – I am so rarely home! But books that travel with me become well loved. My book bag also has my notebook, bottle of water, and umbrella, so it never stays pristine. If it is my books, that is okay. I don’t mind a book that is well loved. But I am not going to prematurely age someone else’s books! So they get to stay cuddled up on my bed while I go to work *sigh* This is also the reason I am still reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Because I have all these goodies waiting at home for me to read, I haven’t been just reading Never Let Me Go. I read it in my lunchbreak and while I am commuting, but not at home. I’ll have to start, because the book club I am reading it for is on the 13th of November! I've only read two thirds of it so far! I am really really enjoying it however. It seems to be the type of book that sneaks up on you. You aren’t expecting it, but it just keeps on drawing you in. I don’t know how to define this book AT ALL! I don’t know who I would recommend it to, or who else would appreciate it. It will definitely be on my recommendation list however.

I am currently focusing on Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Beyond The Night by Joss Ware. Both are dystopian, but with different bents. Beyond The Night seems to be a dystopian romance or science fiction romance? I haven't gotten far enough in to see if it is a romance, but it definitely has that feel to it. The story is interesting enough and the writing is good enough that I haven’t been focusing on the couple, but the whole story. I can’t wait to see what happens!! And if the Strangers have created those zombie like creatures! o_O And how they kicked off the apocalypse! Love it!
Edit: I finished it last night. Epic! So buying this series!


As I mentioned, I am undertaking NaNoWriMo this year. It started this week, and to put it simply, it is an international month-long write-a-thon. The goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November. So I would basically need to write just under 2,000 words per day. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but life gets in the way. I don’t want to be writing complete and utter crap, and I have a very definite story in mind. I gave up on the concept of writing seriously when I was a teenager, so I am doing this for myself. I spend all my time editing, reworking and waxing lyrical and never finish a story. I am using this NaNo to try and overcome that problem. I’m not allowed to get hung up on editing. Which is going to be so bloody hard! I am the type of person who dithers over each sentence, and the challenge for me is to leave them be and come back latter to edit them. The problem with that is that I love words. I love making them work together, and I love them individually. So choking that impulse down will be difficult. I am already behind, so I need to up my daily goal to catch up. I am writing by hand, so I don’t have a fancy automatic word count *sigh* I thought I had a system worked out for estimating, but I counted it by hand yesterday, and I am about 1000 words behind what I thought. So instead of being about 4000 words I am about 3000, give or take. I was sick yesterday, so I only wrote 3 pages *sad face* I went to a write-in in the city on Wednesday night and found it really helpful, so I think I am going to go to the one on Sunday as well. I’ll miss the one next Wednesday because it is the same night as the Galaxy EOY party. I also miss the Galaxy book club because I am going to see Metallica (!) perform *grins* Worth missing one night, surely! Anyway, I am hoping the write-ins help me spew words onto the page, because leisurely scrawling in my lunchbreak is only churning out 3 to 5 pages… those pages have anywhere from 150-200 words per page, so it really isn’t enough! :( My friend Ari has already passed 25000 words!!! And Bons has passed 10000! O.O I need to get my freak on! Wish me luck! I already want to go back and edit the crap out of it *sigh* Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Do you want to add me as a buddy? I do have a writing blog, but I am not really writing much on there at the moment. Nothing is ready for someone else to read. It needs a lot of pruning! Instead I am commenting on twitter and facebook LOL You can add me at http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/682560 and follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/obsidiantears83 Good luck if you are doing NaNo this year! :D

I have a rule for November not to read anything urban fantasy, because I am writing an urban fantasy and I don’t want to be influenced, even subconsciously! Already it is starting to seem like her dog is a little bit more than just a dog *sigh* I need to turn him back into a canine and not a lupine! Maybe he is just a smart and empathetic puppy?

Oh, and I am also reading up on Jung's theory of collective unconsciousness in relation to my story :)

Also, I am hopefully buying the Sony Reader next week! :D I am so freaking excited!!!

Sorry if there are any typos or badly constructed sentences above! I haven't time to proof it, and I wanted to get it up and out there why I have been so quiet :) I may still pop in now and again, but I won't be blogging religiously!

Meme: 15 Authors

I thought I would share this meme from facebook. It did the rounds last week, and it was interesting to see the authors and poets people were influenced by. I didn't do a great amount of thinking for this. I originally did a speculative fiction list, and later did a non-speculative fiction list and my influences can be quite diverse.

From facebook:
Don't take too long to think about this. List fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and who will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag at least fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what authors my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste these rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people under Tags below the note.)

This is my speculative fiction list:

• Charles de Lint
• David Gemmell
• Enid Blyton
• Frank Herbert
• HG Wells
• Isobelle Carmody
• JRR Tolkein
• Nalini Singh
• Patricia A McKillip
• Patricia Briggs
• Peter V Brett
• Raymond E Fiest
• Sherrilyn Kenyon
• Tanith Lee
• Terri Windling

This is my non-specfic list:

• Anon (for all those poets! Beowulf, Dream of the Rood, Battle of Maldon!)
• Banjo Patterson
• Charlotte Bronte
• Colleen McCullough
• Dick Francis
• Henry Kendall (he wrote Bell-Birds near Gosford, where I grew up! Also have a look at Last of his Tribe... And Bob... And something about a grey ghost!)
• Jane Austen
• John Marsden
• Melina Marchetta
• Peter Dickinson
• Rosemary Sutcliff
• Ruth Park
• Upton Sinclair
• William Blake
• William Langland, etc.

Teaser Tuesday: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

I am a bit late with this LOL I had a migraine on Tuesday, and work has kept me too busy to post.

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

My Teasers: 

Tommy thought it possible the guardians had, throughout all our years at Hailsham, timed very carefully and deliberately everything they told us, so that we were always just too young to understand properly the latest piece of informatuion. But of course we'd take it in at some level, so that before long all this stuff was there in out heads without use ever having examined it properly.
Page 81 of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Hey There Cthulhu

This is my new favourite song!



Apparently you can buy it {here} - I am quite tempted. I am now obsessed with this song! :D

Manic Monday: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro & Caleb by Sarah McCarty

Each Monday (or the closest I can get to Monday) I will be posting a Past/Present/Future Reading Post called Manic Monday. Don't hate me if I post it on a Tuesday - it just indicates how "manic" my Monday really was! If you want to see more of what I have been reading, I try and update my Goodreads account with each book I am reading.

What I just finished reading

Grimspace by Ann Aguirre
Stars: 4/5

Blurb from Goodreads:
As the carrier of a rare gene, Sirantha Jax has the ability to jump ships through grimspace—a talent which makes her a highly prized navigator for the Corp. Then a crash landing kills everyone on board, leaving Jax in a jail cell with no memory of the crash. But her fun's not over. A group of rogue fighters frees her…for a price: her help in overthrowing the established order.


Why I picked it up: Rosie lent  books to me, and out of the books she lent Grimspace had the prettiest cover.
Why I finished it: It was such a fascinating story. I think I became an Ann Aguirre fan! Both Rosie and Kat have been saying I should try her books, and I can see why. The story was unique, the writing was good, and the characters interesting.
I'd give it to: Fans of urban fantasy. I know it is a science fiction, but it reads like a Patricia Briggs/Devon Monk/Ilona Andrews style urban fantasy. I've already recommended it to Dan Dan who is a fan of those authors :)

What I am reading now

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Blurb from Goodreads:
From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day comes a devastating new novel of innocence, knowledge, and loss. As children Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were.

Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special–and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is another classic by the author of The Remains of the Day.

Caleb by Sarah McCarty

Blurb from Goodreads:
Allie always desired mysterious, sexy rancher Caleb Johnson, but he never seemed to notice her. Until the night she's attacked by a vicious animal, and rescued by a shapeshifting vampire that she almost seems to recognize: the baritone growl, the mesmerizing eyes, the inexplicable animal attraction. That's because her savior is Caleb, and now he has no choice but to bring Allie into the shadows with him-to protect her from a rival werewolf pack, and to finally reveal his true feelings for the woman he's been afraid to love.

What I am reading next

The second Ann Aguirre book

BTT: Foreign

Booking Through Thursday asks:

Name a book from a country other than your own that you love. Or aren’t there any?

I read books regardless of the country they are written in. I love Australian authors, but I love a lot of authors who are not Australian. I pity anyone who only reads books written by their fellow country(wo)men because they are missing out on the richness and diversity that abounds in this big wide world of ours. If the last five books you have read were written in your own country, I recommend you pick the next one from another country, or even another continent. Each country has a different flavour to it's writing. This changes from author to author, but I have noticed that Australian authors have a different tone from New Zealand, English, American, Canadian, Chinese, Japanese or Lebanese authors. I will not list my favourite non-Australian authors here, there are too many. But I will mention some authors I recommend who aren't American or English that you may not have read and should give a chance:

• Randolph Stowe - Australia
• Isobelle Carmody - Australia
• Charles de Lint - Canada
• Nalini Singh - New Zealand
• Angelica Gorodischer - Argentina

Can you recommend others?

Teaser Tuesday: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

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

My Teasers: 

All we could see really was a dark fringe of trees, but I certainly wasn't the only one of my age to feel their presence day and night. When it got bad, it was like they cast a shadow over the whole of Hailsham; all you had to do was turn your head or move towards a window and there they'd be, looming in the distance.
Page 49 of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro