January and February reads

I am no longer as good as I used to be at writing reviews of everything I read. I have loads and loads of half written reviews sitting in draft. Some of them may see the light of day at some point, but others will languish there in draft form forever! So, it seems like a good idea to do some kind of monthly round up of the books that I have read. This month I will post both January and Februarys reads but going forward it will be just one month. I will link where I have actually posted a review. If there are any books that you would really like to hear my thoughts on, leave a comment and I will do my best to complete the reviews and post them.


The books I read in January were:

The Bleeding Dusk by Colleen Gleason 4/5
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry 4/5
Naughty Neighbour by Janet Evanovich 4/5
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 4.5/5
The Leopard Unleashed by Elizabeth Chadwick 4/5
The Last Queen by C W Gortner 4.5/5
To Seduce a Bride by Nicole Jordan 3.5/5
Secrets of Surrender by Madeline Hunter 4.5/5

February reads were:

His Wicked Kiss by Gaelen Foley 4.5/5
The Water Horse by Julia Gregson 4.5/5
Signora da Vinci by Robin Maxwell 4/5
It by Stephen King 4/5
The Founding by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 4.5/
Foul Play by Janet Evanovich 3.5/5
Grimspace by Ann Aguirre 4/5
Snowy Night with a Stranger anthology 4/5
Portrait in Death by J D Robb 4.5/5
Victory of Eagles by Naomi Novik 4/5
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen 4.5/5
Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach 4/5
Life as we knew it by Susan Pfeffer 4.5/5
Moon Called by Patricia Briggs 4.5/5
A Fool's Tale by Nicole Galland - DNF


As part of the I Suck at Challenges challenge, it is time for the February update.

February was actually a pretty good month for challenges. I finished the Bang Bang book challenge and the 2009 Sci-fi Experience and the Medieval Challenge.

I also read one book for the Chunkster Challenge (The Founding at 527 pages), two books for the Art History challenge (Tulip Fever and Signora da Vinci), one book for the War Through the Generations challenge (Briar Rose by Jane Yolen), one for the Pub 2009 challenge (Signora da Vinci by Robin Maxwell). So far for the 100+ Reading challenge I am up to book number 19 for the year, and in the Library Challenge I have already read 14 out of the 50 books that I set as a target for the year.

I am currently reading Silent in the Sanctuary by Deanna Raybourn and that one fits for two challenges so I already have a bit of a head start for March. .

Life as we knew it by Susan Pfeffer

No shops. No TV. No Electricity. No Daylight. No idea if your family is alive or dead. Could YOU survive? When a freak asteroid knocks the moon from its orbit, horrific tides engulf parts of the globe, and life on earth changes overnight. For 15-year-old Miranda as power, communications and food supplies start to break down, a desperate battle for her family's survival begins.

I first heard about this book at Becky's Book Reviews around a year ago when she interviewed Susan Pfeffer and I immediately added it to my TBR list. I may have heard of it before that, but that was the post that made me add it to the list. One of the things that I try to do with any reading challenges is to pick books that are already on my list so when Carl announced this year's Sci-fi Experience, I figured that this would fit the bill. I have to say, I am really glad that I chose this as one of the books for the Experience.

This is a young adult book told in a journal format, and our main character is 16 year old Miranda who lives with her mother and brothers in Pennsylvania. Like everyone else in the world, Miranda and her family are transfixed as they watch the coverage of the moon being hit by an asteroid. It is a major news event but everyone is reassured by all the experts who are commentating on the event and life is expected to go on as normal. Sometimes though, the experts get things wrong, and in this case they get things very wrong.

With the moon off it's axis, the tides are effected, and the first sign of trouble comes in the form of huge tsunamis around the world, but not long after there are earthquakes and long dormant volcanoes erupting causing massive death tolls. There are increasingly regular power outages, to the point where it is more common to have no electricity than to have it, and the weather is also effected, going from one extreme to another throughout the period of the book.

As soon as Miranda's mother realises that there is a chance that things won't get better they set about stockpiling anything and everything that might help them get by but the biggest worry as things get worse rather than better is that despite all the preparations, there is not going to be enough for everyone to be able to survive.

Reading Miranda's journal as the events go on, we are exposed to her emotions and see how they change. At first it is very normal sixteen year old girl emotions about boys, and in particular her favourite ice skater, about the prospect of learning to drive, fights with her mum and a little confusion about the events in her family with her dad announcing that his new wife is now pregnant. Miranda goes through a range of emotions from anger to despair to acceptance to resignation, and yet throughout the book there are also enough moments of hope (for example the family's first Christmas since the fateful night when everything changed) and love. Pfeffer touches on several different topics such as first love, the way some people might turn to religion during such a time, vigilantism and death of loved ones, and large scale death such as we saw with the tsunamis. In some ways this felt a bit close too home given everything that has been going on here with the bushfires recently.

I normally have one book that is my reading on the train book, and another that is my reading at home book. I started this one on Friday morning when I was not far from work. There was then a problem on the train so I was stuck for half an hour or so so I was able to get a really good start on it. By the time I got home, I just wanted to get to the end to find out what happened. There was no way known that I was going to be able to wait until I got on the train on Monday to finish this book.

It was in turn moving, chilling, realistic and scary and totally worth reading! I was all ready to request the follow up book, but apparently it is not going to be released here until 2010 which is a very long wait.

Reading this book did make me wonder how my son and I would survive in this kind of situation, and the short answer is not very well. I don't know that I would have the presence of mind to be able to get things together, let alone the ready cash that Miranda's mother had. The other thing is that there is just the two of us and so we wouldn't be able to divide the jobs up, but at least I wouldn't have to look at my kids and decide which one had the most chance of survival and therefore give them more food. That and the fact that as Australians we wouldn't have the foggiest how to survive in blizzards or even just temperatures that cold! Brrr!!

When I was looking for the cover image, I had a look at her page at Fantastic Fiction, and I was surprised to see that this author had written so many books over quite an extended period of time. My library doesn't have any of the others, which is a bit disappointing because I will definitely be reading at least the next book!

By finishing this book, I have now completed this year's Sci-Fi Experience. I really enjoy this experience as it does make me read outside of my comfort zone a little, and I enjoyed both books that I read this year.

Rating 4.5/5

Other Blogger's Thoughts:

Things Mean A Lot
An Adventure in Reading
Stephanie's Confessions of a Book-a-holic
Bookfoolery and Babble
Rosario's Reading Journal

Grimspace by Ann Aguirre

By all accounts, Sirantha Jax should have burned out years ago…

As the carrier of a rare gene, Jax has the ability to jump ships through grimspace—a talent which cuts into her life expectancy, but makes her a highly prized navigator for the Corp. But then the ship she’s navigating crash-lands, and she’s accused of killing everyone on board. It’s hard for Jax to defend herself: she has no memory of the crash.

Now imprisoned and the subject of a ruthless interrogation, Jax is on the verge of madness. Then a mysterious man breaks into her cell, offering her freedom—for a price. March needs Jax to help his small band of rogue fighters break the Corp monopoly on interstellar travel—and establish a new breed of jumper.

Jax is only good at one thing—grimspace—and it will eventually kill her. So she may as well have some fun in the meantime…

I first heard about this book over at Ramblings on Romance just about a year ago, and even though I knew that it would be something very different for me, I bought the book. Since then the book has languished on my bookshelf waiting for the right moment to be discovered!

That moment came when I needed to nominate a book to read for the Sci-fi Experience. With the cross genre combination of sci fi and romance, it seemed to be a perfect fit. Since reading this book I have bought another sci-fi romance novel by Susan Grant, so it is a good thing that I enjoyed this one!

Sirantha Jax is a jumper, or at least she was, and she thinks she still is. At the opening of the book she is being held prisoner by her employer, with interrogators trying to find out what happened during the fatal crash that killed many people, including some dignitaries and her co pilot and lover Kai. When a group of mercenaries, led by the enigmatic March, break Jax out of her captivity, she has no idea what they want from her other than her skills as a jumper. She soon finds herself drawn into a plot against the government, and one that has her travelling from one world to another.

Jax is a complex character. She can be harsh and bitchy, emotionally brittle, but she is also intelligent, strong and very entertaining. She is a woman who has been pushed to the edge of her limits and has managed to hang on. She is also someone who at first is being forced to move on from a past that she is not yet ready to let go of.

As a hero, March is pretty darned good! He is dark and broody, damaged and aloof and yet highly principled and prepared to do what it takes to firstly get the job done but on his terms, and also to provide as much support for Jax as she is willing to accept, always knowing when not to push her too far. This is a delicate balance because the relationship between jumper and pilot has a much higher degree of intimacy than just crew member to crew member would normally entail.

I loved the secondary characters, particularly with the introduction of Velith towards the end. The action moves through several different worlds, and there was enough information to be able to separately identify the worlds and their individual dangers without there being an info dump in terms of descriptions of worlds and aliens.

The end of the book was wrapped up very neatly, but I am sufficiently engaged to want to read the next one! I should also point out that Aguirre has the first book in a new series coming out soon, called Blue Diablo, and you can see the ticker in my side bar!

Rating 4/5

The Sci-Fi Experience 2009

Okay, so I am shallow and have joined a challenge/experience because of the awesomeness of the button! Actually, I may have done that before too, and I did participate in last year's version of the challenge as well, so perhaps, just perhaps, I am not totally shallow. Maybe?

Anyway, Carl V is once again hosting the Sci-fi Experience. In his words:

As I said last year, this is an experience and not a challenge. There are no reading lists, book requirements, etc. I do not argue about what is or is not considered ’science fiction’. Nothing about this two month period of science fiction celebration should cause anyone to feel obligated to participate. I host two other very involved challenges throughout the year and the last thing I want to do is start a new year adding stress to your busy lives or my own. This is simply a time to experience how exhilarating science fiction can be.

Again from last year:

“More than any other genre of fiction, science fiction reading is to me an experience– not only does it transport me to another time and place in the future but it also transports me to my past and as such creates an aura of reading that is wonderful to experience but difficult to describe. I can only hope that you fellow readers are nodding your heads in agreement right now, recalling similar experiences that you have with various novels and/or genres of fiction.”

The main reason for me to participate in the Experience is that sci-fi is one of the genres that I don't read very often, and so I like to try and expand my exposure to the genre as a whole. I really enjoyed the book I read last year, and then The Host by Stephenie Meyer is one of my favourite reads of 2008, so it does seem like a good idea to read another sci-fi book. The question is what? I could read the second book in the Island in the Sea of Time trilogy but I guess that would be cheating a little. I have borrowed it from the library a couple of times over the last twelve months but had to return it unread.

I think though I am going to give myself two books to read. Both are cross genre reads. The first is a sci-fi/romance that I bought months ago and haven't read yet - Wanderlust by Ann Aguirre. The other is a YA/sci-fi book that I first read about at Becky's Book Reviews, and have seen around other places in blogland - Life as We Know It by Susan Pfeffer.



****Edited to say****

I will of course be reading Grimspace, the first book in Ann Aguirre's ongoing series, not the second book!