Tag: reading

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Book reviews Media Consumption Writing Life

Writer Reading Report: Spring 2021

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It’s long past time I posted one of these. Why, you ask? Excellent question, invisible internet reader.

TL;DR: I have been reading a lot, and the review situation is Out Of Hand. Skip down to the list.

Sticking around fot the long version? Cool. First, there’s the draining prospect of writing full reviews. They take mental energy to parse out, to make sure I’m saying exactly what I mean and nothing else. Recommending verbally is easy. I babble freely, chipping out remarks until the point emerges from the solid block of words. The conversational flow carries off all the false starts, vocabulary stumbles, digressions, parantheticals, and general mayhem that occurs whenever I attempt to impart information with words. (Trust me, the whole write like you speak thing does NOT work well when you think non-sequentially.)

I hope to get ratings & blurbs onto retail sites for all the books listed below, but no promises, because–second– in addition to the energy suck, I’m cratering on the executive function aspect too. The longer the list gets, the further behind I fall, the harder it is for my brain to get a grip on beginning it. I want to get this done to get it the heck off my mind, but I can’t get it done unless I start. Vicious damned cycle, that one.

General exhaustion plays into it too. Bodies & brains do what they do, and mine have been tag-team tackling me with increasing do-nothing demands. I keep looking back on non-productive days and realizing my “lazy lack of motivation” was really physical pain/brain fog/stress-distraction in disguise.

The number of days I’m fighting petty, niggling issues (vision fatigue, aching wrists, tired fingers, sore hips, brain-nopes…) gets higher each year. And beating back the “but maybe I AM just lazy” conditioning is wicked tiring all by itself. I am daily thankful that I’m in a living situation where health needs that would interfere with earning abilities don’t threaten my survival. BUT I DIGRESS. Quelle suprise. ANYway.

I’m doing an end run around the problem.

Here’s a list of just the titles & authors of what I’ve read since the beginning of the year. There’s everything here from hard scifi to steamy romance, horror to humor. If you like things in a hierarchy, sorry, this isn’t one. They’re listed in order of how they came to mind, which has ZERO to do with how memorable, exciting, or cool they are.

  • Mazes of Power & Transgressions of Power Juliette Wade
  • Black Sun Rebecca Roanhorse
  • The Secret Chapter Genievieve Cogman
  • All The Courtney Milan books I could get my hands on
  • Sorceror To the Crown (reread) & The True Queen, Zen Cho
  • The Bear & the Nightangale and The Girl In the Tower, Katherine Arden
  • a re-read of Lois McMaster Bujold’s whole Penric & Desdemona series
  • The newest in the Rogues to Riches series, Grace Burrowes, followed by a re-read of the quartet.
  • The Duelling Neurosurgeons (the only non-fiction on the list)
  • Afro Puffs Are the Antennae Of the Universe, Zig Zag Claybourne
  • Dark Matter edited by Sheree Brown (the only anthology on the list)
  • JurassiChrist, Michael Allen Rose
  • A Year of Flash Fiction Jamie Lackey
  • The Hound Of Justice, Claire O’Dell (Jane Watson series, start with A Study In Honor)

I loved each and every one of these. They all get high recommends.

(Yah, but K, what’s that even mean? It means, “If you read that genre & the cover blurb appeals, these are worth your time to pick up and evaluate for yourself.” I adored them. Your mileage may vary.)

Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston is one last title I must mention. It gets my All-thumbs-up 5-star bookseller recommendation, but I can’t list it as “read” because I DNF’d.

It’s a glorious book packed with incredible world-building and peopled with multifaceted, fascinating characters. And the prose is magnificent. But. It wasn’t the right read for me when I tackled it. This happens. I plan to attempt it again in a year or two. It might be right for you right now. PLEASE check it out.

Pretty sure I’ve missed a book or five in there, but that’s the not-quite-midyear list. I’ve already recommended these authors to folks word-of-mouth style on the regular, and getting this written gets me a big step closer to putting quick & easy deli-style reviews up on sites. Eventually. One or two at a time.

And now, onward to the next read!

Currently high on my TBR stacks: Bone Swans by C. S. E. Cooney, a re-read of all the Murderbot stories by Martha Wells, Galactic Hellcats by Marie Vibbert, Storm Of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse, The Brothers Jetstream: Leviathan by Zig Zag Claybourne (because I read bk 2 first) and Sycorax’s Daughters if I have the brainspace for another anthology so soon. Oh, and A Wizard’s Guide To Defenisve Baking by T Kingfisher.

Here’s a cute library cat as a reward for getting this far.

Photo by Flickr on Pexels.com

That’s all for this edition. Until next time!

Categories
Authoring Book reviews Media Consumption Writing Life

Writer Reading Report: Smoke Bitten

Thanks to NetGalley, I received two ARCs (advanced reader copies) of upcoming novels by two of my favorite authors. Here be my short but heartfelt reviews of the first one I finished. It’s out now, so you don’t even have to wait!

Smoke Bitten by Patricia Briggs.

I expect most people interested in Smoke Bitten have read some or all of the preceding books. Smoke Bitten is the twelfth in an urban fantasy series about Mercy Thompson,  part-time coyote, full-time auto mechanic, Volkswagon owner, seer of ghosts, and neighbor to a werewolf alpha.

So if you’re checking reviews because this book looks interesting, you’re right! It is!

I always recommend starting at the beginning of any series as well=established as this one–or at least with a book closer to the beginning.  That said, if this is the only Mercy Thompson book you can find, it’s a great chapter in the ongoing saga, and a decent introduction to the complex, entertaining dynamics between members of an ever-increasing cast.

Honestly, any plot summary without spoilers would be either redundant or too vague to be useful. The important points. First, as with most other books in the series, the events in Smoke Bitten take place over a very short time frame.  Second, the action is local, and the stakes more personal than world-changing.

The plot shines brightest when Mercy is dealing with her friends and family. Often she’s making hard choices between people and rules, between principle and practicality. In this book, a problem arises from the solutions to problems resolved in previous books.

It’s a tangle of big personalities, old grudges, and buried mysteries, with all the emotionally satisfying, complicated I’ve come to expect from this author.

 

Categories
Authoring Media Consumption

Writer Reading Report: January-March 2020

I’ve read over 20 new books and done a couple dozen re-reads since the first of the year. I’ve also watched plenty of shows & movies, but not as many as I would have done in the same time period last year. One nice thing about the new house is that we cut the cable cord, so turning on the TV is an Intentional Act, not a default activity.

Writing is now the default activity. Go, wording!

Well. To be strictly accurate, Writing is now among my many default activities. Writing & working on table & bling ideas for Gen Con, & hammering away at the intractable Series Title Problem, &planting things, & baking, &…my days are not empty.

Anyway. I’m going to do my usual thing & summarize things more by author than title. No pretty pictures because I am The Laziest Ever. Also they were mostly library books read on ebook, & those don’t get pretty color cover pictures.

First I did a comprehensive chronological re-read of ALL the Liaden Universe books by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. I then bought all the Constellation short work collections. A new book came out while I was finishing those, so I  read it too. I love these characters, I love the universe, and I love where the plots are headed.

A review of one of my books complimented my writing by comparing it to theirs. That remains one of my all-time favorite reviews.

Next up in reading: Hunter, Elite, & Apex by Mercedes Lackey, a tidy series I somehow entirely missed when published, because I always want to read All the Lackey. Neat spin on the usual post-apocalyptic dystopian  thing, (add magic, plus it’s not a totally horrible All Guvmint Bad kind of place) And the young protagonist is competent all by herself because it’s what she does, not because daddy wanted a boy or to heal trauma or For Boyfriend…I do adore no-excuses competent heroines.

I got Peace Talks by Jim Butcher & Smoke Bitten by Patricia Briggs through NetGalley. Those two are both Advanced Reading Copies of novels due out later this year, and I very much enjoyed them both.

I read a Regency in there somewhere…ah! Project Duchess by Sabrina Jeffries. An unexpected delight. I guess I still love my fantasy romances if they have loads of good dialogue and comedy of manners elements.

And currently I’m on a YA/Middle Grade kick. They’re mostly (all?) books written long after I was an adult, but I decided to tackle them just because. So I’ve finally read a bunch of Gail Carson Levine books. (And obviously I enjoy them or else I wouldn’t keep reading.)  So far, it’s been Ella, Enchanted, Fairest, A Tale of Two Castles, Stolen Magic…I think that’s all so far. I’m on a waitlist for more. I did read a couple in paperback, but it was a painful slog compared to reading onscreen.

I’m 3/4 of the way through Protector of the Small series by Tamora Pierce, loving every sentence.  I need to go put myself on the waitlist for All The Tamora Pierce books through the library’s digital loan program. And I suspect I’ll need to own them all in the end, though.

In summary : I recommend without reservation all the books I’ve mentioned here–except the NetGalley titles. I do recommend the series they come from, but…BUT.  The Harry Dresden & Mercy Thompson series are both clocking in at  10+ books. Despite great efforts by the authors to keep references to past events understandable and relevant, the weight of continuing plot is a tangible force in almost every scene. Someone could jump in, but it won’t be nearly as much fun as starting at the beginning.

That’s all for now. If I keep up with writing and reading the way I aim to do, the next reading report won’t be quite so LOOOOONG.

Until later, world.

 

 

Categories
Authoring Promotion Writing Life

Take a picture, get a free ebook

Hello, dear readers! I have a con coming up in a few weeks, so here’s a timely reminder about my add-on-the-ebook program.

Currently, when you purchase a paperback book from me–say, at a convention, or ordered from Your Favorite Local Book Place–then you can add the ebook edition to your collection too. All you have to do is post a shelfie of the book on social media.

Imaginary reader asks, “Golly, Karen, what’s a shelfie?”

“Glad you asked!” I reply. “A shelfie is a photograph of a book or books in your choice of setting. Standing on a shelf,  sitting on a table, in the middle of a stack of other books, whatever.”

You do NOT need to be in this picture yourself (although if you are, that’s extra awesome, of course.) For the pic to qualify as a shelfie, it needs only to be a photo of your purchased book somewhere in a setting of your choice. Some random options:

  • On one of your bookshelves between all its neighbors.
  • In your hand.
  • sitting in your To Be Read Stack.
  • resting on a table
  • Leaning against a houseplant.
  • next to a cat, dog, bird, or other pet.
  • Outside on the arm of a deck chair.

Really, the opportunities are endless. Once you have your photo, post it on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter–and tag me so I don’t miss it! I’m @kmherkes on Facebook & Instagram, and @dawnrigger on Twitter.

When I see it, I’ll message you to find out your preferred ebook format & destination email.

I get a happy, you get a free ebook. SO SIMPLE.

There’s no set end date for this program. I’ll honor it as long as I can keep up with people sending me shelfies. So.

That’s all for now.

Ta until later!

important postscript:  I have things set up to give buyers access to a free Kindle edition automatically when they buy print books from The Website Named For A Big River.  This is my way of making sure no one gets left out.

Categories
1. Storysculpting Book reviews Writing Life

Inside my head right now

Recent random doings:

Read:

Ardulum Book 1. Juicy space opera goodness. I saw a recommendation by Seanan McGuire online,  and I second the recommendation and third it and give it many thumbs up.

Other than that, I’ve been reading seed catalogs, longform online articles about sunscreen & vitamin D. Also re-reading my own writing a lot in the process of revisions.

View:

Venom. Much more fun than I expected. Tom Hardy was entirely believable as a loser coping with an alien parasite. Slight letdown at the end with the alien.

 Smallfoot. Um. It could’ve been worse? I don’t feel the 90 min of my life were wasted.

First two seasons of The Good Place, and caught up with the current season.

Kitchening:

It’s “eat all the summer’s saved fruit!” season. I am perfectly willing to eat frozen blueberries as-is, raw & rinsed off, but Spouseman much prefers me to bake them into things. So. Faux cobbler gets made a lot (what’s that? I take a baking dish, pour in some rinsed frozen fruit w/a little sugar & lemon stirred in, dig out a couple of frozen apple doughnuts, enough to cover the fruit when chopped up and sprinkled on top, and bake until bubbly, browned on top, and delicious.)  I make it with sliced, peeled apples too, but mostly berries.

Gardening:

Garden things in January? In Chicagoland? WEIRD, right?  I helped with a seed bank seed-sorting project at Chicago Botanic. It was lovely. I got to play with screens, and pans, and an air column . Bergamot, penstemon, and prairie dock. My hands smelled like summer all day long, both times. Hoping I get to do that again.

 

Flashback cat pic:

Atop the chair, Bruce the Magnificent. Beneath it, Scootercat in Lurking Evil mode.

No Context WIP snippet. I post these because I like them but am uncertain whether they work, by the way.  Yes, I would like to know if they’re totally meh, or if you like them too.

Jack saw the rising column of smoke in the distance as soon as the teleport haze cleared around him. The tree-lined neighborhood street was empty, but shouts and wailing sirens were audible at a significant distance.

He bit back a snarl. The smoke meant they were going be late to the incident site no matter what they did, when every second counted.

And that’s a wrap.