BMBR: Harmless Women by Rebecca Sharpe

I was a victim of "Just one more chapter" on this one, and now it's way past my bedtime.

Excellent thriller about a woman who steals, her victim who isn't what she thought, and a third woman searching for her daughter.

5/5

BMBR: Seeking Persephone by Sarah M. Eden

 Social media has been flogging a TV series that's available to watch on Angel TV should you want to pay for another streaming service, which I don't, and somewhere along the way it was mentioned that it's based off a book, so I looked up the book, which led to reading the book.

The book was lovely. 

Regency romance with the tropes: no one knows anyone until the day of the wedding, he has to wed to produce an heir so that his useless cousins don't inherit, her family needs money so she agrees, he doesn't like feelings, and Beauty and the Beast.

No sex. Which was fine. It was still lovely.

Lots of crying. Not a how-to-be-strong-as-a-role-model character, but not a weak and useless character, either. 

The writing was a bit clunky at the start, but it got better, enough that I also read the second book in the series. 

BMBR: Noelle Adams

I read A Baby for Easter on the weekend. It was about $3 on Kindle. Adams' books are usually in that range, and they're usually worth it. This one felt a bit short, and there isn't as much descriptive sex in it as there is in her other books, but maybe that's because the characters are blatantly religious in this one.

Baby still delivered a love story that had me falling in love right along with them, and it was great escapism (one of my dreams ended this weekend, so I'm in great need of escape), and I didn't lose any brain cells.

Bottom line: Adams won't kill your brain cells while you're reading her addictive love stories about triumph over miscommunication. It's pretty good foreplay, and the pricing isn't too bad. I've read most, and probably soon I will read all of her books.

BMBR: Thirst no 1 by Christopher Pike

My niece leant me this book. It's about a vampire's efforts to save all humanity, and to find her own.

This is my niece's favourite series. Yes, she's a teenager.

Boiled down, this story is about the last vampire on Earth (or so she thinks), her love for a boy named Ray, her discovery that she isn't the last vampire, and her quest to become human again.

She's also trying to reconcile her love for mankind--the side of her that hates to kill, with her nasty side--the side of her that has no qualms about squeezing someone's head so hard that their brains squish out.

At first I had a hard time with this reconciliation; if this teen book were a movie, teens wouldn't be able to watch it. But the more I read it, even though it gave me bad dreams, the more I respected Pike's honesty about how nasty a vampire would really be. There isn't much romanticism, and it's actually quite hard to like Alisa, let alone love her, yet it's easy to root for her success, and to love her.

Bottom line: it's $13 for a real book, and $11 for an eBook. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking that if I were a teenager, I'd probably spend that. As a busy mom, nah. I'd maybe get it from the library if I had time, but really, I'll probably only read on in the series if my niece lends me the rest of the books.

Until I got to the end. I'm still not going to buy the books, but I am really hoping that I can borrow them!

BMBR: A Wanted Man by Lee Child

I buy Jack Reacher books as real books, usually from Costco because they're a bit cheaper and therefore a more justifiable purchase. I'd probably pay full price. I like them in real form because my Dad reads them too. Sometimes he buys them and shares them with me. And by that I mean he doesn't usually get them back. Ahem.

Anyway, the four days it took me to read this one was an incredibly long time (it usually takes eight hours), but see my last post. I also had to sleep and work and hang with the kids etc. It's taken four days to write this much of this post. Busy Mom Book Review, for sure.

Quick synopsis: Jack Reacher hitches a ride with the wrong guys. Or, should I say that some bad guys pick up the wrong hitchhiker?

Action ensues, full of math puzzles, death, mayhem, and good old fashioned ass-kickings.

As usual, Lee Child does not disappoint. (Don't judge the books by the movie. They're better. But that's a post for another day because if I start in on the movie, it's going to hijack this post.)

The next book is already out. It's not waiting for me on my piano, yet. But soon. Very, very soon.

BMBR score: just buy them and read them, but be warned--you won't be able to put them down once you begin, so I recommend not starting them just before bed.

BMBR: The Land of Painted Caves BT Jean M. Auel

I almost titled this Shelters of Stone. Does that tell me that it's all been a blur?

I'm done!

Anyway, Painted Caves was a wonderfully detailed journey in a time and place that existed a long time ago, as seen through the eyes of the peoples who lived then. The archeologist in me loved it.

I'm finally done!

The rest of me found the experience of reading the first six hundred pages or so to be an excruciatingly painful process. Painful. So, so, painful.

I can finally read something else!

Either when I was younger I appreciated the detail more readily, or now that I'm older I find that extreme redundancy in writing to be so very boring.

Thank goodness I'm done!

Sure I wanted to know how Jondalar's and Ayla's adventures ended, but I felt that I didn't need a six hundred page summary of the first five books before the last couple hundred pages.

I love that Ms. Auel does so much research for her books, I really do, but she could probably take a couple lessons from Diana Gabaldon in writing style. Sure, she does lots of research, too, and yes, her books are hundreds, if not over a thousand pages long, but you can't put them down. And, if you buy the fourth book first not knowing that it's in a series, and start reading said book, you realize by the second page that you should probably go buy and read the first three books first because Ms. Gabaldon is not going to sum up her previous books for you.

Back to The Land of Painted Caves.

You know what? I'm going to do you a favour. I'm going to presume that you've read the other books, and I'm going to sum up the first part of Painted Caves for you in one sentence, or so, and then I'm going to tell you from where to start reading the book so as to avoid Severely Repetitive Redundancy Pain.

SPOILER ALERT! I'm not responsible if you keep reading this post from this point forward and then decide to get all pissy about it. If you want to read the book in it's entirety without knowing what's happened first, stop right now.

The summary:

Jondalar and Ayla are living with Jondalar's mother's cave, their daughter Jonayla is growing up, but Ayla is really busy training as an acolyte for the Zelandonii, and what with all the traveling to summer meetings and a donier tour to see all the important painted caves, and with all the visiting and ceremonies and rituals and training, Ayla doesn't get to spend as much time with her family as she wants or needs to.

Now you can start reading from chapter thirty (page 580). It will start moving along a little faster, I promise.

If you really wanted the descriptions of the caves, do yourself a favour and find a picture book on cave paintings. I may even have an Archaeology textbook that I could lend you.

If you really want a summary of the end of a book, I can do that too. Let me know.

Busy Mom Book Review: When it Rains by Lisa De Jong

Beautiful story about a girl and her highschool sweetheart/best friend, the assault that she suffers by the highschool football hero, and the guy who rolls into town and brings her back to life.

I won't tell you if this love triangle has a happy ending or not, but as you read, it's an easy guess as to how it's going to end.

I wouldn't have complained if I'd bought this as a real book for full price, but I don't need to do that. I'm happy that I spent four bucks or so for the Kindle version (dammit! I just went to Kindle to double check the price. After the Rain is a buck. So much for not buying more ebooks until I'm done slogging through Shelters of Stone! And, I suppose that this answers the question as to whether or not I'd buy more Lisa De Jong: yup).

Go for it. But keep a box of tissues handy...

Book Reviews by a Super Busy Mom

Yeah, so I haven't been here much. Sorry. I've been busy. It's T4 season. Guess what my day job is?

I've also been sick. As in, I slept for two days. And my husband looked after everyone. He's awesome. But I digress.

Part of the reason I haven't been here is that there's too much to write about (whah, I know, I know), especially book reviews because I've been reading a lot, and the idea of doing justice to the reviews was daunting.

Until I came up with a plan of attack. Or a method. Yeah, a method. Short, sweet reviews, Busy Mom Style.

There are 5 different "calibers" of books that I read (IE will I recommend them to you, and if so, how much should you spend on it?).

5. I lost brain cells from the sample sent via Kindle to my phone. I did not buy this book; I did not download it if it was free. And if I did, it was an error, and I'll blame the length of the sample. Yeah. It's the sample's fault.
4. The sample seemed okay. I checked to see if the library had copies, because I'd read it for free. But I wouldn't pay for it.
3. As in Number 4, but the library didn't have copies, but it's available in ebook form for less than $3.00.
2. I loved it. Or maybe just enjoyed it. And I'll Kindle it. (But I don't generally spend more than $5 on ebooks. For more than that, I want a real book in my hands, thank-you very much.)
1. I have to own this book in real form. I will wait until it's in a more affordable paperback form, but an ebook just won't do.

Sometimes series get grandfathered in to one category or another, and sometimes they get bumped to the Kindle from the real bookshelf.

I'll talk to you more about it this weekend.

Book Review: Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

I read this to K1 tonight. I almost managed not to cry. Almost. Saddest book ever, and it's a kids book.

I don't know anyone who wouldn't cry reading this book.

That's all I'm going to say about this one.

Book Review: Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich

Have you read the Stephanie Plum Books? You know, One for the Money, Two for the Dough, and on and on; I think they're up to nineteen, now.

They're really funny. The first book was so funny, in fact, that I laughed out loud so much in a restaurant that the lady at the next table asked me what I was reading, and I went out and bought all of the books before I headed into camp again. At that time I think they went up to eight. And I read one in the morning and one in the afternoon for the next four days. Laughed my ass off the whole time. Well, not all of my ass--there's still a large chunk of it hanging around today, but I'm sure that you get the idea.

Anyway, let's fast-forward a few years to a couple of years ago. I read Wicked Business, which is the first in the Lizzy and Diesel novels.

Diesel is the mysterious hunk that showed up in a couple in-between-the-numbers Stephanie books, and he's enlisted Lizzy--a girl with witchcraft in her ancestry, and the magical ability to sense magic,or something--to find all of the SALIGIA stones. Apparently they're only going to find one per novel, because they've only found two so far in the two books so far.

Without getting into too much detail because let's face it--K2 will be up any minute now and I don't have a lot of time--I'll just tell you that there is great humour, a lot of whining, a lot of kooky, annoying, evil and endearing characters, a pet (a monkey--and actually, don't tell him that I called him a pet because I think that he's probably some kind of reincarnated pshyco who'd think nothing of jumping out of the pages and wrecking my house. I mean come on--I have two toddlers. I don't need no damn monkey who thinks he's a fucking human (albeit one stuck in the when-is-he-going-to-be-fucking-four-because-three-is-making-the-terrible-twos-look-like-good-behaviour stage of life), thank-you very much! Oh, and a cat, and if they ever make this book into a movie it'll be played by that orange cat that plays the oh-my-god-what-the-fuck-happened-to-your-cat cat in all the movies that have that so-ugly-it's-adorable cat in them), and some magic. And, of course, there's that underlying sexual/romantic tension that's probably going to take nineteen--I mean seven--books to play out.

Anyway, if you've read the Stephanie Plum books, then the above probably sounds pretty familiar. Granted, Rex, the Hamster, is pretty innocuous, but don't forget about Bob the dog's hi-jinx.

Seriously, the whole time I was reading the Wicked books I got so sucked in by the whining girlie-girl who's in a situation that she's completely inept for, that every time someone called her Lizzie instead of Stephanie, I had to check the front of the book for the title. And I'd think, oh yeah. Not an SP book. Right.

Don't get me wrong, the books are still really funny, and I do enjoy reading them, but, and I'm including the SP books here, I don't have the need to rush out and buy the latest one like I used to.

If you haven't read them yet, I will recommend them as a great read, but don't be surprised when you start feeling like you do when your favourite sitcom has lost it's edge--you still watch it because it still makes you laugh, but it might sit around on your PVR for a while before you watch it. Or, in the case of this book, it might sit around on the piano for a bit before it's finished.

I Preview Samples on my Kindle and I Still End up with Crap

Does someone sit around at Kindle and decide where exactly to end a sample so that it hooks you in and hides how hideous the writing is beyond this point?

Do they contact the authors and say, "Yeah, hey, so you know that book you just wrote? Do you think you could rewrite the first five pages, maybe take out the comma faults, and try to make the heroine not seem so much like a wishy-washy, simpering idiot? Just for the sample section though. That'll make it good enough that people who want to be interested and insist on good writing before actually purchasing the book will do so.

"No worries about the stupid, simpering-idiot heroine who spends the next fifteen chapters going back and forth about the hero and about how much she hates and loves him at the same time (run, daisies, run!)--sure, she needs therapy (if you're doing a sequel, get her some fricking therapy), but so long as you make her seem like a strong, I'll-avoid-abusive/toxic-relationships kind of girl in the sample section, people will still buy your book."

Argh. Sometimes it's really easy to spot the crap, but lately I've ended up with some really stinky stuff. At least it's been cheap!

The Bookshelf (and the Kindle). A.K.A. My Library

I have a bookshelf full of books. A friend of my mother's was excited when she saw it; it makes her sad that so few people have a personal library these days.

I've always loved books, but when I was younger they were expensive (probably in part because they were "real" and partly because my allowance wasn't that big), so my library cards were well used. And, of course, English Literature was one of my favourite classes!

In my twenties I worked as a First Aid Attendant in the Oil Patch (more stories from there, I promise) and I a) made lots of money, b) was often out in the bush for weeks at a time and didn't want to incur late charges at the library, and c) had LOTS of downtime just waiting for someone to do something inanely stupid, so I started buying lots of books.

Now I have a couple of kids and an in-town job that doesn't pay as much (but it's getting better), so the buying of real books has slowed down. A little. I try to stick to series and authors that I already have been collecting. I only add authors that have recently produced some kick-ass series. Or authors that have filled a need . . . but more on that later.

Enter my Kindle. Baby number two does NOT like to nurse while I read real books. He's distracted by the light, and by the turning of the pages. So I downloaded Kindle to my phone and found a couple cheap books that were pretty good. I can now read silently in the dark (so long as I dim the screen)!

I have to admit that I prefer real books. Sure, my husband won't believe that statement since I've been reading tons of e-books lately, but honestly, I love real books. I thought that I'd NEVER go digital, and I still prefer to buy my favourite ("quality") authors in paper, so I reserve e-books for the cheesy stuff that I would prefer not to admit that I read (but I will. Admit it. But only under high duress) and for the books that are only available digitally.

Okay, I'll admit it: I also love digital books. No one knows what you're reading, hubby doesn't know how many e-books I'm buying until he sees the credit card statement, (actually, I don't know how many e-books I'm buying until I see it on paper. Cheap books can add up to a lot of money. . . . Ahem) I can quietly read in the dark, and I'm not carrying any extra weight in my purse when I'm out and about and my phone is right there when I'm waiting in line anyway, so it's really easy to whip it out to read.

But, I still like the feel of real paper in my hands. I love the smell of books. Paperbacks don't really weigh that much, and the batteries never run out. I can also read them in the bathtub (favourite pastime!) without fear of financial ruin; it's not too bad to replace a ten dollar book, but a 500 dollar phone? Yeah, no.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I have an eclectic library and I'd like to share it with you, so I'll be reviewing books that I've recently read, and I'll go back and review the books that I've already read. And, I'd love to hear your thoughts on these books/authors. I'd also like to hear any suggestions for good reads (and warnings against the bad ones).

I'm just going to go pick one. . . . See you soon. Maybe.