Looking for Your Next Book

Constance Anderson is a screenwriter currently without any available scripts. So it comes as a great surprise to Constance when Jennifer Roberts, a Hollywood diva and superstar announces (on prime time television!) that her next movie is being penned by Constance! The news, while surprising to Constance, brings her instant fame and thousands of new social media followers.  Well ... not just followers, but trolls as well. Although frantically trying to come up with the perfect script for Jennifer Roberts (sure to propel Constance to fame and bigger paychecks) she gets caught up in the social media storm with quick, unchecked replies and an unfortunate fury over 'leaked' nude photographs. This anti-social social media could well erase everything she's worked so hard for. I don't remember where I got this book but I will often read self-published and small press books if the story looks interesting and this one did. I'm also not adverse to reading in any category, even...

Kat Lawson had been an investigative reporter for The Phoenix Gazette but recently lost her job and now she's working for Travel International , covering Germany's holiday scene in Munich. Except ... it's all a cover. Kat is actually working for the FBI. She's hoping to get close Hans von Hausmann, a charming museum curator who is suspected to be hiding artwork, stolen from Jewish families during WWII. It starts out to be a pretty easy and enjoyable trip for Kat - von Hausmann is a charming man and all her travel expenses are paid for by the agency. But when one of her sources turns up dead, Kat realizes the true danger in being a spy. When the German police want to arrest Kat for murder, she finds she needs to avoid the police and the real killers who want to keep their stash of art a secret. This is the second book in the Kat Lawson Mystery series. I don't know how I missed the first book - I've tried to read everything Nancy Cole Silverman has published but ...

I had no idea that this was the second book in a series until I went to grab the image from Goodreads to add to the blog. Now I understand!  I understand why I didn't enjoy this book.  I was missing some vital parts of the story! I also hadn't realized, when I requested a copy, that it's cyberpunk - a genre that I don't generally click with (though there are exceptions). Access to a virtual world known as the Slip is in the head of Shock Pao. He stole the bioware program and now he control's all the systems around the globe.  This makes him a target, of course, for every criminal wanting that access.  While Shock is constantly seeking new hiding places, there is a strange illness plaguing the planet. The source seems to be from one of the outer hubs (former Earth cities that were sent into orbit). Time is running out to secure a cure. The post-apocalyptic world, as created by author Ren Warom, is dark, gritty, messy, and brutal. There's plenty of action - fight ...

The reading (and reviewing) of a book is so often a result of the reader's environment.  I've discussed this with a friend of mine - how so many different factors might influence how much I enjoy (or don't enjoy) a particular book. I mention this because the first time I tried to read this book I was really not enjoying it. And this was after not enjoying two previous books by Ms Stiefvater. So I put this away and only recently came back to it.  What a difference time and distance can make. I still didn't love it, but I didn't hate it. The Soria family of Colorado are forever linked to the saints due to a history of being able to create miracles. But the manifestations of the miracles are not usually what is hoped for, and when some travelers/pilgrims come seeking the Soria's, looking for a miracle, they're informed they will have to work through their own darkness before any miracles can be performed. Daniel Soria, the current miracle-maker, goes on the ru...

If you walk into a bookstore you can hardly turn around without seeing a "How to Write" type of book.  For a time, I enjoyed reading a lot of them and noting what they had in common (the advice that was always there) and what was unique to that particular author.  But that was decades ago and the only real reason I was interested in reading through this book was because of the author.  I have really enjoyed the fiction I've read from Chuck Wendig, as well as his tweeting ('X-ing'?), and I wanted to see what he had to say about the art and craft of writing.  Of course I was immediately struck by the absurdity of the title.  Anyone who's read Wendig knows that he is never gentle. An of course he knows this: "One does not kick asses gently. Asses must be kicked aggressively, or they are not being kicked..." he writes. In many ways, this book can boil down - as all books about 'how to write' boil down - to the idea of: Write! ("BUTT IN CHAI...

1969 was just a hair early for me to be reading comic books - especially those that were of a darker nature, like Creepy , Eerie , and Web of Horror . Even when I was reading comics in the 70's, I didn't read anything darker than Savage Sword of Conan . Which is really too bad. My interest in comics was primarily with the artwork (as the budding young artist I was) and the artwork in a comic like this, now collected as a book, is just phenomenal. Artists such as Bernie Wrightson, Michael Kaluta, Bruce Jones, and Frank Brunner (collected here, along with others) are artists whose work I came to really seek out in the 70's. My preference has always been B&W fine line art and in many cases, every page is a work of art here. The stories are less interesting to me.  Despite some familiar names penning the stories (such as stalwart Otto Binder) these stories ranged from cheesy schlock (that's an official category people) to moderately interesting. The power of this collec...

From Canada comes this anthology of anonymous sex fiction. The premise is that because we (the general reading public) still have hang-ups about sex, writers tend to write gently around the theme of sex, but if given the opportunity to write about sex and remain anonymous, how much more open, explicit, and erotic would the fiction be? Twenty-four "prominent authors living in Canada" have stories here, centrally themed around sex. (Side note: I didn't recognize any of the names of the authors included here.) As editor Russell Smith notes in the introduction:  Writing sex scenes is notoriously difficult: one walks a tightrope between the crude and the laughable (especially in English, a Germanic language that lends itself to the silly or the ugly). When describing body parts, one must choose between the correct word — which can sound clinical, as if one is reading a medical textbook — and a slang word, which almost always sounds more crass than the rest of the language one’...

There was a part of me that reacted with some joy - "Another Beatles book!" - and a part of me that thought - "Another Beatles book? What new can be said?" As it turns out, a fair amount new can be said. This book takes a deep look at The Beatles' five feature films (A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, and Let It Be) as well as some of their work individually in films and touches on the revised footage of Peter Jackson's Get Back and Ron Howard's Hollywood Bowl films and the animated Beatles series and the Anthology footage. And when I say "deep dive" I mean it - almost ridiculously so.  I mean, is it important for us to know: Hairdresser Betty Glasgow worked on Lolita , A Hard Day's Night , Alfie , Georgie Girl , To Sir With Love in the 1960's and such work after the 1960s as Empire of the Sun , Titanic , Tomorrow Never Dies , Saving Private Ryan , and three Harry potter films. Probably not. But it does...

Alice is trained to fight the monsters that appear in the dream world known as Wonderland. With her fighting skills and the magical weapons available to her she'll rip the Wonderland denizens to shreds ... if she's finished her homework. Fighting off the Nightmares (as the Wonderland monsters are called) could be a full-time job and then some, but Alice also has more mundane things to keep her busy as well.  She's fighting to keep up her GPA and keep her over-protective mother at bay, and find a way to stay connected with her high-maintenance friend. But the Nightmares are getting stronger and Alice's trainer, her mentor, has been poisoned. There is an antidote, but it's deep in Wonderland - deeper than she's ever been. Getting there and back again will be a challenge, and there's no room for being late. I'm a sucker for anything based on Lewis Carroll's A lice in Wonderland which on one hand makes sense because I like the Alice stories so much, but...

It is 1621 and the widowed Duke of Bavaria is getting married again. It is an extra special event as the duke is also introducing his daughter, Sophie, to Bavaria high society. Sophie isn't particularly excited about the event, but her tone changes when she meets Philip - a prince, heir to the throne in Spain. Philip doesn't like these events much more than Sophie but his position requires he attends.   Sophie and Philip have a mutual, immediate attraction to one another and fall in love.  But Philip is ordered to return to Spain by his father and king, where there is an arranged fiancé waiting for the prince. Heartbroken, Sophie turns to Claudia - her father's new wife. But as she gets closer to her stepmother, Sophie begins to wonder if the rumors of Claudia working magic are true.  Philip returns and claims that he's convinced his father that a marriage to Sophie is also good for Spain and that he was going to marry his love whether his father approved or not. Thi...