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Sakura

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Everything posted by Sakura

  1. I'm confused, because the German translation for Killing Commendatore will be out by April, the English one apparently needs till September. But I've always read Murakami in English, so I'll stick with that.
  2. I can enjoy different things in a romance novel, but in general I prefer character driven romance with protagonists that have a certain depth to them, do not feel stereotypical and have a good chemistry together. I need to know why they love each other, not just that they do. It needs to feel believable. Banter is always very much appreciated, as is some humor, with a decent portion of sweet and adorable. I'm not a fan of a lot of angst or unnecessary drama and forced, endless miscommunication are a pet-peeve of mine. I prefer simple, everyday situations, at least in contemporary romance. I like a good supporting cast: parents, friends, coworkers, etc. I always feels weird when you have the happy couple in a lonely bubble somewhere. I'm not a fan of insta-love, though insta-attraction is fine with me. I like a slow burn more than a book that fills most of it's pages with enforced separations and absurd problems for the couple to solve, though I do enjoy a few chapters of couple-dom at the end. I do like some graphic sex, or even a lot, as long as it's not just gratuitous. But it needs to be either really hot or realistically awkward. Oh, and since we are talking LGBT, I get annoyed when everyone in the vicinity is homosexual. That's just not realistic. Also, flawless gaydar is boring too.
  3. I think Ann Granger and Elizabeth George have a similar style to P.D. James. I'm looking for crime novels with a virtual reality theme. Going Sci-Fi is fine too. I liked Lock in by Scalzi a lot and am looking for something like that.
  4. I hate it when authors use a protagonist, whose actions they never explain. I'm not very good at reading motivation from action, so those books leave me annoyed and baffled.
  5. Try The Thief who Series by Michael McClung, starting with The Thief who pulled on Trouble's Braids. Amra Thetys is a tough girl, knows her way in a fight and has a sarcastic mouth on her, that gets her in trouble more often than not. She's also clever and scheming and though she takes quite some beating over the novels, she never, ever gives up, even in the most dire circumstances. @Michelle: I like Lila too, but she's hardly the protagonist.
  6. I like David Hair, who writes (YA) fantasy and Willow Scarlett, who is probably entirely unknown to most of you, since he does homosexual romance books that emphasis respectful relationships, consent and gender fluidity. Oh, and sexy times.
  7. Abe 'Sarge' Griffin served in WWII 60 years ago. His squad was responsible for finding more unusual (meaning supernatural) threads. After destroying a polish madman's weird ritual and taking the arcane pieces with them, so he could not try again, they went home, but Abe was never the same again. He has not aged a day, is faster, stronger, tougher then any human ought to be. Being on the verge of killing himself from ennui and loneliness he is visited by the granddaughter of his old squad-mate Paddy. Paddy is old and demented, but Anne, the granddaughter, tells Abe that Paddy has not been himself for days, trying to flee the home crawling, trying to reach Abe any way he can. Abe agrees to come with her to visit Paddy and trying to reassure him, but as it turns out, things are far from fine. The past they left behind in Poland has caught up with Abe and the left-overs of his old squad, and they have to figure out a way to end it, this time for good. I enjoyed this book very much. It's a mixture of superhero action scenes (though Abe is not actually wearing a costume, he displays typical abilities and powers of a classic superhero) and lovecraftian horror, with some military bits thrown in. The Action is varied, engaging and fun. The scenes are described well, so I always had a good sense of what's going on even in more complex tussles. There are monsters, fanatics and people driven crazy. The author managed some pretty disturbing images and scenes, but it never felt like too much, if you know what I mean. It always fitted well within the story and did not seem to be purely for shock value. I liked the characters. Abe tells the story from his perspective, but there are also a bunch of other support characters. Abe, for all his old demons and problems is a pretty sympathetic character and I like his thought process, tough deviance, rough nature and protective instincts, but I also could understand his deep flaws. Anne is a pretty awesome character too, though, understanding and independent, weak only when the action is up. I simply gobbled the book up and am very happy to know there's still one more part out there, because I'm not quite done with this author yet.
  8. I guess sometimes it's just dumb luck. Getting publicity at just the right time so your name just sticks with the public and you can gather a fan base to support you. I know of at least one english author, that was apparently not very popular in english-speaking countries, because his new series was just translated and published in German, no english version at all.
  9. I have read everything there is by Jane Austen and The Bronte Sister. I'd read about everything by Rainbow Rowell. Other than those, I can't think of any authors I would read everything by, without reservation. Even my favorites Terry Pratchett and Steven Brust have written some books that just don't seem all that interesting to me.
  10. I thought Anthem is really bad. I liked Atlas Shrugged, though it's not an easy read, but Anthem did not work for me. It feels like a rip off of We, but in a misogynistic, lecturing, know-it-all kind of way.
  11. Some less well known classic dystopias would be Kallocain by Karen Boye, about a scientist who develops a truth drug in a communistic kind of state, and War with the Newts by Karel Capek, which describes how the world changes as men discovers an intelligent and highly capable species of amphibians, and starts to exploit them. There's also The Giver, which I did not see mentioned. It's a children's book, but it's still my favorite dystopia.
  12. There's the reason I don't get hard covers any more. e.x. I liked Fall of Giants from Follett, so I got Winter of the World right as it was released. As hardcover. And then I never read it, because it was just too massive to take anywhere. I read a lot on the train to work, and that book was just not handy for that. In the end I sold it after 4 years of not touching it, and will probably just get the eBooks one of those days.
  13. Personally, I kinda prefer shorter stories. I like short stories around 100 pages just fine, and I think an ideal length for a book is somewhere around 200-300. I don't mind reading thicker tomes, though like you, I always feel reluctant to actually start on them. Therefore, I only buy really thick books when I know I really, really want to read them. I don't mind long series, I actually prefer them. If they are awesome, more content for me. If the books don't keep me interested anymore, I have no qualms to just break off a series in the middle, cliffhangers or not. I like to be able to read something different often. I don't mind reading several books at once, but with the bigger books I usually want to get them finished. So it's some kind of itch, that gets annoying, when I read the same book for a few weeks.
  14. I'm a pretty die-hard Potter fan, and pretty much for that reason I did not like the script at all. The characters where just not well written. I felt most of the old characters where just off. Ron e.x. was reduced to a comic relieve, Hermione seemed way understated, Snape was quite simply not Snape, etc. Also, there where some holes in the plot where it meets the plot of the books. It just doesn't quite fit together, it seems shoehorned in. And as someone who reads a lot of HP Fanfiction, I just felt a lot of the relationships and plot points where just popular, not to say stereotypical, fan fiction storylines. The whole thing seemed to me as fan service written by someone who is not a big fan himself, and that put me off immensely.
  15. I love tea. I drink a lot of rooibos at work, since I can't over steep that. I don't like it bland, it tastes weird to me, but I like it with vanilla, almond and currently as a winter blend with cardamon and cinnamon in it. At home I drink a lot of green teas, Sencha, Bancha and Gunpowder, but also oolong and yellow tea. I like black tea too, but it has to be pretty mild. I can't stand Assams and Earl Greys. Also, I only ever put milk into chai blends. Otherwise it's just a little pinch of dark rock sugar for me.
  16. I've just read Fangirl and immediately started on Carry On. I love it, it's so me as a teenager, including the fanfiction writing (even though I never was any good). I'm a sucker for well written, relatable characters. Carry On is good too, but it feels a bit weird, because it's so obviously a stand in for the Harry Potter stories. There are a lot parallels. I hope it gets more of a life on it's own further in.
  17. I have no problem admitting I read porn, but I don't know any books that fit your bill. I can tell you right away that Sleeping Beauty doesn't, though. There is homosexual content in there, and the main character is very submissive, though there are some Mistresses in it, too. Also it's BDSM for the most part with little of the more regular sex. Anita Blake might work, Incubus Dreams is there it's starting to be more erotica than anything else, I believe. If I remember correctly Anita kinda switches a lot, though, mixing up submissiveness and dominance. Also, it does border on bestiality in parts, with all the were creatures, but you said you can deal with that if need be.
  18. I really enjoy his poems. I did love them as a teenager and I still like them today. Besides the ever-loved Raven my favorites are Evening Star and Rome, Ruins of The Coliseum. I did enjoy the stories too, but it's been quite some time and I cannot recall them very well at all. The poems I kept in my mind a lot better.
  19. It's really weird. I was thinking: "Did he also write some awesome books I never heard of?", but no, just some poetry ages ago, and 1/3 of an autobiography. I'm all for giving out the price to more known authors then in the past, but that's kinda off. Songtexting is it's own genre to me, they have their own prices.
  20. I enjoyed the Fox Woman by Kij Johnson. It's set in heian era Japan and has some elements of Japanese folk tales.
  21. The Girls - Emma Cline : It's very hyped right now, but I found it dull and boring. The language is kinda interesting, but the characters are really flat, there is barely any dialog in it and very little plot. Athem - Ayn Rand: I liked We, which has a similar plot in a lot of places, but Rands version is pretty much just pushing her worldview using very leading examples and obviously stupid antagonists to do so. The characters and story itself fall flat and I also found it very misogynistic. The Apple Tart of Hope - Sarah Moore Fitzgerald : Another pretty recent book that also won some kind of price. That one annoyed me. It's YA, but the main characters act like adults all the time. In contrast the main "villain" is so over the top and one dimensional it's not even funny. Mostly I thought the book liked to seem deep and meaningful in it's messages, while actually not dispensing anything but trite drivel. Memories of my melancholy 'ladies of the night' - Gabriel Garcia Marquez: That one I just thought was boring and uninteresting. The whole tone is just without any interest or excitement. The story dribbles by, and I could not care for it at all. Awoken - Serra Elinsen: Admitedly, this is self-published, but it's also one of the worse books I've red. It's pretty much a fanfiction lovestory, with a constantly moaning, overemotional teenager as main character, a plot that's mainly wish-fulfillment and foreseeable and a relationship that's about as unhealthy as 50 Shades of Grey.
  22. I think I'm at 51, not counting manga. I read every day while commuting, so that's a lot of book time.
  23. I'm not familiar with Goodreads. I use a few german sides, that allow to track progress and note if you finished a book. But yeah, I wouldn't count unfinished books as read either, but that has nothing to do with it being audio books for me.
  24. When you say you never add them anywhere, I assume you mean like reading-related social media? Most of them allow you to add the audio book instead of the actual book, and I would totally mark that as 'read', because that's simply the default phrase. Of course I don't read audio books, but I do consume them. I feel the distinction to me is mood. If I ask someone if they read a book I don't actually care if they read it, or listen to it, I'm asking if they know it. I guess not everyone retains the same information if they read a book vs listening to a book, but people already read very different in the first place, and don't notice the same stuff, so that it seems pointless to me, to make any distinction in that matter. But if someone wants to come up with a phrase that shortens "Did you read it, or listen to it." I'd be willing to use that, to be more inclusive of audio book listener.
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