Teaser Tuesday: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

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!

(Yes, this is two days late. So sue me! I need to get back in the habit of blogging on time LOL)

My Teaser: 

Up on top of the Parker-Morris Building with Tyler’s gun in my mouth. While desks and filing cabinets and computers meteor down on the crowd around the building and smoke funnels up form the broken windows and three blocks down the street the demolition team watches the clock, I know all of this: the gun, the anarchy, the explosion is really about Marla Singer.
Page 4 of Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Manic Monday: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

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

On The Edge by Ilona Andrews
Stars: 3.5/5

Blurb from Goodreads:
The Broken is a place where people shop at Wal-Mart and magic is nothing more than a fairy tale.
The Weird is a realm where blueblood aristocrats rule and the strength of your magic can change your destiny.
Rose Drayton lives on the Edge, the place between both worlds. A perilous existence indeed, made even more so by a flood of magic-hungry creatures bent on absolute destruction.

Why I picked it up: I really got hooked on the Ilona Andrews Magic series. Luckily I used birthday money, because I wasn’t too impressed with it. Interesting but not as addictive as the other series.
Why I finished it: I’d paid for it and was flooded in. It was an interesting book, I just wasn’t riveted.
I'd give it to: People who love urban fantasy, particularly Mercedes Lackey’s urban fantasy novels.

What I am reading now

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

Blurb from Goodreads:
The first rule about fight club is you don't talk about fight club.
Chuck Palahniuk's outrageous and startling debut novel that exploded American literature and spawned a movement. Every weekend, in the basements and parking lots of bars across the country, young men with white-collar jobs and failed lives take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded just as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter, and dark, anarchic genius, and it's only the beginning of his plans for violent revenge on an empty consumer-culture world.
This is for book club and I am really liking it’s writing style so far. I wish I hadn’t seen the movie, because I know the twist already. This does not detract from the story as much as you would think, as I am noticing how the twist is catered for through the entire book, word by word.

What I am reading next

I won’t be buying books for a while (ebooks don’t count, right?) because of my massive backlog. I really am not used to having a TBR pile with more than 3 books, and at the moment it is probably more like 30 or 40, maybe even 50. I am too scared to count. I want to get started on my reading challenges, so will probably read a dystopian book set in Australia? Or maybe the Jennifer Estep one I have sitting buy my pillow? Or the Kelley Armstrong sitting next to my lamp? Or the Joss Ware sitting on my pillow? Or the Serressia Glass sitting under my pillow? TOO. MANY. CHOICES!

Hello Two Thousand and Elevenses!*

I need to apologise for my 2.5 month absence. I spent November concentrating on NaNoWriMo and took a planned hiatus from blogging, as well as other activities like reading speculative fiction. In December I was recovering from NaNo, glutting myself on spec fic, and dealing with the real world (hectic end of year schedule at work, Christmas parties, etc). I had planned to start 2011 with a BANG! However I spent the last two weeks at my family farm just out of Toowoomba. We didn’t have internet access, and the one week holiday was turned into two when we were flooded in. I have a LOT to catch up with now I am back in the land of Interwebia and rather than doing a large post here, I am going to just mention the challenges I am doing this year, and catch up with my Manic Monday post I missed yesterday.

Get Steampunked! Challenge
I am doing the lowest level “Geared” where I read 5 steampunk books this year. You can find out more about the challenge at Dutchie’s challenge blog.

The Dystopia Challenge
Again, I am doing the lowest level - “Asocial” and committing to read 5 dystopian books this year. I will probably read more, but I don’t want to overtax myself. You can find out more about this challenge here.

The Stephen King Challenge
I am going to give this one a go. I've read a few of his books in the past but I am trying to spread my reading wings again and head out into different genres. I loved Talisman and Nightshift and have read a handful of others. I am aiming to read 6 Stephen King books this year. You can find out more at Book City Chick.

I am also attending two book clubs again this year. One is the Paranormal Romance book club at Galaxy, and the other is a general book club in Sutherland. I had discussions with an online friend about maybe starting a speculative fiction book club, but I don’t know if we’ll go ahead with that or not. I am planning on attending ARRC for the first time this year, although I still have to scrape up the money to buy my admission. Last year I sat by twitter and my phone hearing all about it. This year I wish to be in the midst of the action! ;-p Anyone want to help me rob a bank???

Anyway, I don’t want to make this too long. I just want to say that I have really missed blogging, I've missed hearing about all the gossip in the reader’s world, and I have millions of blogs to catch up on… I am planning on writing more reviews this year, and to be a better blogger. It is a New Year’s resolution after all :)





*Because it is nearly eleven o'clock and I am getting hungry. I may also be quietly wishing I will be reincarnated as a hobbit in my next life.

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...