Books for 2010

Just finished Sarah's Key, written about Vel' d'Hiv, during WWII in France. The first half is written from the perspective of two different people, one chapter in the present day, and the next in the past. The subject matter was new to me, yet included much about WWII and the Nazi's treatment of the Jews, to make it also somewhat familiar. I found it thoroughly interesting.

I love finding books like that...where I'm so excited to find out what happens next that I read through it quickly. But I hate finding books like that too, because they are so few and far between. Now I get to spend however long looking for another good one.

****

Just finished Flirt, Laurell K Hamilton's latest, and wow do I feel ripped off. $25 bucks for a story that didn't even fill the book! The last 1/8th of the book was how and why she came to write the book...and that wasn't even interesting, to me anyway! It should have been a short story in a book with other short stories...like Micah. No more hardback Hamilton books for me. Next time I'll wait.

****

I read the second half of the Rachael Morgan/Hollows books by Kim Harrison in january and preordered the next one due out in march for my Kindle.

Finished Chill of Fear and Blood Ties by Kay Hooper

Im not sure what ill be reading next, if anything, I really need to get work done but cant concentrate for anything.. my muse took off without so much as a see ya later.

Maybe the Olympian series Eve and Tristan keep saying I need to read, by Rick Riordan.

I just reread Turn Coat by Jim Butcher since I'm waiting on the next book in the series. I expect that book to be the next I read. Don't know what else to read after that it takes me a while to fall out of the imaginary worlds I read about and be ready to enter another one.

I've been working on the Wheel of Time for a year now

I'm also reading Metamorphic Phase Equilibria and Pressure Temperature Time Paths but I'm guessing no one wants to read that.

I've started a few series while waiting for other series to come out with their next. So far in 2010:

Undead & Unreturnable by Mary Janice Davidson - finished
This is book 4 in the series and the flaky vampire queen deals with planning a wedding, a love puppy human who writes her autobiography, and theres also a serial killer loose. This is the most boring of the 4 books so far since not much really goes on. Its still amusing enough to read and I like waiting to see what the queens sister will do. (she also happens to be the devils daughter)

Lunatic cafe - Laurell K Hamilton - finished
book 4 i think in Anita Blake series. It was good, but whos a monster whos not a monster gets tiring. Anita spends alot of time having moral issues over whether she should have sex with her hot werewolf boyfriend or if she has some kind of feelings for the vampire master of the city who has the hots for her. Pretty good all around though.

Bloody Bones - Laurell K Hamilton - finished
book 5. This was pretty darn good. I like learning more back story about Jean Claude the vampire. Anita leaves town to raise some dead but finds alot more than she expected. EVil faeries and boogey men that are real. The vampires they meet in this book give me the heebie jeebies like the one in the second book did. I still wish Anita didnt wear Fanny packs tho.

I Am Ozzy -Ozzy Osbourn - Pretty good book. Kinda great to read about his crazy arse life. I foudn myself giggling at his choice of wording more times than not. I wanna read Sharons book as well.

Black Magic Sanction - Kim Harrison - gota download it on my nook today, as it just came out! YAY!

Plus some school texts like Earths Geology, Psychological research design and life span development but those dont count as GOOD reads!

I've recently gotten into a few books by Sharon Kay Penman, mainly her Welsh and English trilogies.

The English trilogy begins with When Christ and his Saints Slept, then Time and Chance, and Devil's Brood. It begins in the 1100's with the war between King Stephen and his cousin Matlida for the throne of England. It follows with her son Henry II taking the throne as Stephen's heir and his reign and marriage to Eleanor of Aquitane (one of my personal heros) and then on to Henry's conflicts with his sons, Henry, Richard, Geoffery, and John, finally ending with John on the throne of England.

The Welsh Trilogy starts with Here Be Dragons, then Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning. This series starts in about 1183 with the story of Llewllyn Fawr, prince of Gwynedd, Wales and his marriage to Johanna, illegimate daughter of John, and ends with his grandson Llewellyn ap Griffydd, the last prince of Gwynedd conquered by King Edward about 100 years later.

There is a bit of historical discrepancy moving from the English trilogy to the Welsh due to the fact that the Welsh was actually written first, and the author had done more research, mainly on Richard and Eleanor, by the time she wrote the English trilogy. She does an excellent job making the characters seem real and not just another story from a history book. Since reading the books I have also had the chance to correspond a little with the author, and in a bit of a round about way been also introduced to a very nice lady who owns and maintains Garth Celyn, which was the main residence of the princes of Gwynnedd. My only reget is not having these books to read when we were actually stationed on that side of the pond and visiting a lot of these places was much more of a reality. I have been to a few of the places in the stories, but the majority of the history that is presented to the public is that of the Tudor's, and not so much of the Plantagenets and almost none of the Welsh.