Kell

I know it’s still just over two months till the end of the year, but when it comes to setting up a reading challenge, the sooner you get the word out there, the better! Throughout next year I will be hosting the 2012 Genre Challenge and taking part in the Maxi Challenge. I now have a good two months to decide which genres I will choose and then choose my books to suit the genres as the months approach. I hope all my reading friends out there in Blogland and on the forum will take part too. For full details see the 2012 Genre Challenge page HERE

Book 1: Following a white rabbit in a hurry, a girl falls down a hole. Strange adventures. Curiouser and curiouser! - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol Book 2: Sparkly vampire and werewolf fall for human girl. Emo teen love triangle. - The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer (do I get extra points for summing up an entire series in twelve words?) Book 3: A boy and a tiger on a lifeboat. Risky situation! - Life of Pi by Yann Martel Book 4: Corporate wives Battle for their lives On a hostile island. Who will survive? - Savages by Shirley Conran (how about extra points for making it rhyme? LOL!)

Just couldn't resist posting this pic of a sleeping white mouse hugging a tiny teddy, You just don't get any cuter, really! (click pic to view larger)

The entire Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder is wonderful and follows her whole life from being a very small child living in a Little House in the Big Woods, then moving further and further west with her pioneering family, right through to the first four years of her marriage to a farmer.

2011 Spooktacular October Paranormal Reading Challenge Hosted by Ramblings of a Daydreamer As rather a last-minute thing (as I only discovered it half-way through the month) I have decided to take part in the 2011 Spooktacular October Paranormal Reading Challenge as I adore both paranormal fiction and October (hello, Hallowe’en anyone?!). Join me and the other fang-tastic fans of all things freakish, ghostly and spine-tinglingly chilling as we embark on our adventure into the dark unknown…! So here are the paranormal books I have finished during this month: Kelley Armstrong – Spellbound (WotOW 12) - 3/5 Alyson Noël – Evermore (Immortals 1) - 3/5 Alyson Noël – Blue Moon (Immortals 2) - 2/5 Currently reading: Alyson Noël – Shadowland (Immortals 3) Coming next (from Mount To-Be-Read): Kelley Armstrong (and others) – Dates From Hell Jane Austen and Ben H Winters – Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters Poppy Z Brite - Lost Souls Erin Morgenstern – The Night Circus Books I’d like to get to if I get the chance: Kelley Armstrong – The Gathering (Darkness Rising 1) Gail Carriger – Soulless (Parasol Protectorate 1) Laurell K Hamilton – Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake 1) Charlaine Harris – Dead Reckoning (Southern Vampires 11) Charlaine Harris – Grave Sight (Harper Connolly 1) Lauren Kate – Torment (Fallen 2)

BOOKING THROUGH THURSDAY Vacation Do your reading habits change when you’re on vacation? Do you read more? Do you indulge in lighter, fluffier books than you usually read? Do you save up special books so you’ll be able to spend real vacation time with them? Or do you just read the same old stuff, vacation or not? It really depends on how much reading time I have. I used to read a lot more while on holiday as I had more time to myself. Now that I have a child, that time is taken up with him whether I’m on holiday or not. If we’re going away I do still take books with me to read, but usually only in the evenings in bed after Xander is asleep. As for it influencing my reading choices, that’s a definite yes. I always try to take at least one novel set in the place I’m visiting. For example, when we visited friends in Swindon, I read The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next 1) by Jasper Fforde which is partly set in that city. I took other books too (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, and Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery) but I made sure that the one I read from start to finish whilst there was The Eyre Affair. I also read Karma by Holly A Harvey whilst visiting family in Northumberland as it’s set in that area. I do still read some of the same stuff I’d be reading anyway and no matter what I don’t switch to “lighter” or “fluffier” just because I’m on holiday – I read what I like, which is often historical fiction. If I can tie it to the area I’m visiting, so much the better!

I'm taking part in the 2011 Spooktacular October Paranormal Reading Challenge!

W... W... W... Wednesdays * What are you currently reading? * What did you recently finish reading? * What do you think you’ll read next? What are you currently reading? Philippa Gregory – The Lady of the Rivers (Cousins’ War 3) The third installment in the wonderful Cousins’ War series. I love historical fiction and although I usually go for Roman or Tudor, this isn’t too far out of my usual era as it’s the history of what happened right before the Tudor dynasty attained the throne – it’s how they got there really. I love this sort of historical faction although I’ve not long started it, I’m enjoying it so far. Alyson Noël – Shadowland (Immortals 3) Third in the Immortals young adult series. I enjoyed the first book, but the second was a bit of a let-down by comparison. I’m hoping this one will be a bit better because if it isn’t, I won’t be reading any further in the series! Fingers crossed, because I’d like to see where some of the characters are going… What did you recently finish reading? Alyson Noël – Blue Moon (Immortals 2) - 2/5 Rather a disappointment, this one. The first book in the series was a little more original than some other (*ahem* Twilight *ahem*) urban fantasy series aimed at this age group and the heroine was a bit more solid and less wimpy than others, but in this second book, she went all Bella Swan on me and started mooning over her boyfriend who was being all aloof and ignoring her, so I’m sure you can understand why I was a little upset at this development. It was also very repetitive and predictable which made for dull reading. The two-star rating was being as generous as I could. Titania Hardy – The House of the Wind - 2/5 Full review HERE. What do you think you’ll read next? Erin Morgenstern – The Night Circus (own) G.P.Taylor – The Ship of Fools (Mariah Mundy 3) (library)

Yesterday, I was told I'd won a Facebook proze draw ro win a signed limited edition of The White Queen by Philippa Gregory, of which there are only 750 in existence. It arrived this morning and is beautiful. It's #276 of 750 and bound in black goat leather (which feels and smells wonderful) with ornate gold and silver. I just checked it out a moment ago and discovered these babies are priced t £150!!! It is now officially my most expensive book and also, on account of it being a wonderful book and so beauitful to loko at, my favourite addition to my permanent library.

TEASER TUESDAYS 1. Grab your current read 2. Open to a random page 3. Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page 4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) 5. Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! My teaser: Synopsis: Jacquetta, daughter of the Count of Luxembourg and kinswoman to half the royalty of Europe, was married to the great Englishman John, Duke of Bedford, uncle to Henry VI. Widowed at the age of nineteen she took the extraordinary risk of marrying a gentleman of her house-hold for love, and then carved out a life for herself as Queen Margaret of Anjou’s close friend and a Lancaster supporter – until the day that her daughter Elizabeth Woodville fell in love and married the rival king Edward IV. Of all the little-known but important women of the period, her dramatic story is the most neglected. With her links to Melusina, and to the founder of the house of Luxembourg, together with her reputation for making magic, she is the most haunting of heroines. What I think of it so far: I’m almost 1/3rd of the way through this one and it’s intriguing. The whole period (pre-Tudors, beginning the novel at the time of Joan of Arc’s capture) is fascinating and it’s so interesting looking at the characters who shaped the English monarchy and directly influenced the Tudor reign by their actions. Jacquetta is a wonderful character – so full of hope and promise. She’s a feisty one who is unafraid to go after what she wants. I enjoyed both the earlier novels in this trilogy and have high hopes of this third installment.

Musing Mondays Do you judge a book by its cover? Yes I do – almost every time! I’ve found that if I like the cover, it entices me to read the blurb on the back of the book which, in turn helps me decide whether I think I would enjoy the book. If a book has a terrible cover, I find it incredibly off-putting. In fact, and this might sound terribly superficial, but if a cover is particularly bad, I feel it must be a pretty awful book or someone would have taken the time and care to give it a beautiful cover. In the case of self published books, they occasionally have hand-drawn covers that have been created by the author and I (perhaps unfairly) feel it reflects on the writer’s artistic ability and I won’t go near that book with a barge pole! On occasion, I have found books that have attracted me solely because of the over artwork. The first example is that of The Plucker by Brom. I saw this book sitting face-out on a library shelf and thought the cover so breathtakingly awesome that I borrowed it without even reading the blurb – I just knew I was going to love it. And you know what? It didn’t disappoint! It blew me away with both the artwork and the writing, an dmeant that I have discovered a new favourite. I’ve gone on to read The Devil’s Rose and The Child Thief since then. All three have been superb and I can’t recommend them highly enough! A more recent example is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I saw the cover and fell in love. I bought it and haven’t even read the blurb. The simplicity of the colour scheme – the monochrome with a tiny splash of red – is something that has always appealed to me, but this really is just a stunning cover. It reeks of magic and mystery and, well, just everything that is absolutely spellbinding. It’s next on my list of books to be read and I just have a feeling that this book is really going to make me sing!

Although I'm a HUGE Eric fan and also love Alcide, I'm a Sam girl at heart really and STILL secretly hope he and Sookie will end up together. Bill, well, I never trusted Bill - right from the first book I thought he was trouble!

I'm busy watching all of The Tudors. Last night I finished episode 3 of season 4. I'll most likely watch a few more episodes this evening along with the next two episodes of Person Of Interest... And no book suicides in our house - I don't even know what Jersey Shore is about - LOL!

Title: The House of the Wind Author: Titania Hardy ISBN: 978-0755346295 Publisher: Headline Review First Published: June 2011 No. of pages: 528 Rating: 2/5 Synopsis (Amazon): A legendary ruin. An ancient mystery. Will unveiling the past transform the future? San Francisco, 2007. Madeline Moretti is grieving for her fiancé. Nothing brings her joy any more, and Maddie’s grandmother, a fiery Italian, sends her to Tuscany to heal. Here, Maddie is immersed in the mystery of a ruined villa. Destroyed centuries ago in a legendary storm on the Eve of St Agnes, it has been known ever since as the Casa al Vento – the House of the Wind. Tuscany, 1347. Mia hasn’t spoken since her mother’s death, and lives in silence with her beloved aunt. One dark night, a couple seek refuge in their villa. Used to welcoming passing pilgrims, Mia is entranced by the young bride’s radiance and compassion, but mystified by her reluctance to reveal even her name. Where has she come from, and why must her presence be a secret? Centuries apart, each searching for a way to step into her future, Mia and Maddie will be haunted by the myth of the woman who walked unscathed from the ruins of the House of the Wind. Review: I really wanted to like this a lot more than I actually did. I adore historical fiction and I love the cleverness of concurrent storylines, centuries apart, having bearing on each other, but this just didn’t work for me. The problem for me was that it was just too darned slow. Hardy uses achingly beautiful prose that absolutely sings off the page, but the plot unfolds at a maddeningly sedate pace, not just in one timeline, but in both. As a result, I grew bored with the characters, their loss, their pain, their motivation, and their relationships, and grew tired of waiting for everything to happen. The fact is, that the same writing device has been used before to better effect (if you’ve read Labyrinth by Kate Mosse, you’ll know what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t read it, I can heartily recommend it!) and I found myself forever waiting for something other than the writing to excite me. Truly, the writing often verges on the sublime and I give it a higher rating as a result, but it was let down by pedestrian plot and plodding pace. I will be interested in reading more by Titania Hardy if only to see if the tale is worthy of the writer’s obvious talent with words.

I take part in various book blog memes where a question is posed on various days of the week. Musing Mondays - a question relating to books Teaser Tuesdays - a few lines from a book you're reading to entice others to read it too WWW Wednesdays - What are you currently reading? What have you just finished? What are you reading next? Booking Through Thursday - a question relating to books They're all hosted on various blogs and the blog owner poses the question (if there is on) and posts a "host post" so that everyone taking part can leave a link to their own post that relates to the meme. Musing Mondays are hosted by Should Be Reading Teaser Tuesdays are hosted by Should Be Reading WWW Wednesdays are hosted by Should Be Reading Booking Through Thursday is hosted by Booking Through Thursday I also make the posts on my blog (Diary of a Domestic Goddess) but I like to post them here too in case anyone else fancies joining in on their own book list thread. Hope that explains things a bit for you.

Definitely not Narnia...

Both the vampire chronicles films were completely different from the books. Strangely, going on film alone, I atually preferred Queen of the Damned, purely because it had Stuart Townsend and great music. However the opulent lok of Interview was rather gorgeous. Either way, that doesn't excuse the film makers trampling all over the books. In the case of the books, I thought the stories were great, but I don't rate Rice's actual writing and I gave up ni the series after about the 5th book - I just couldn't wade through her style of prose any more...

I found the Bree Tanner novella every bit as bad as the rest of the series, but then, I didn't really expect any different and only read it because I'm a completist and a bit anal retentive that way. The only really positive thing I could say about it is that it's not very long!

Anne Frank's Diary is a stand-alone book and is non-fiction. Anne of Green Gables sounds like it might be promising though - several of those books...

BOOKING THROUGH THURSDAY Sequel If you could get a sequel for any book, what would it be? This is a bit of an odd one for me, as I’d both love a sequel to my choice but at the same time would be terrified it would ruin things. The Stand by Stephen King is one of my all-time favourite books and although I would love to find out what happened next... I would also really worry about it letting me down in a major way because it would have to be something really special to live up to the original. I know that if any writer could handle it, it would be Mr. King, but even he is not infallible and I don’t think I could, ahem, Stand to be disappointed by a duff follow-up!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible - 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte 8 1984 - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk 18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger 19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger 20 Middlemarch - George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis 34 Emma - Jane Austen 35 Persuasion - Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli�s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (abandoned half way through) 39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne 41 Animal Farm - George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving 45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid�s Tale - Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding 50 Atonement - Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel 52 Dune - Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck 62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding 69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens 72 Dracula - Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses - James Joyce 76 The Inferno - Dante 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal - Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (unfinished as yet) 80 Possession - AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell 83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte's Web - EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 94 Watership Down - Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo I've now read 53 on the list (although a couple were unfinished - one of which I intend to return to at some point in the future and finish as I was enjoying it, I just wasn't in the mood for it). I also have a further 11 (marked in red) on Mount TBR. Many of the others I'm just not bothered about reading though...

I LOVE checking out the books in pound shops - great bargains. I often come out with multiple hardbacks at a quid each.

There's definitely sexy stuff in the Southern Vampires books, but the show was definitely raunchier - lots of nekkidness in the show! And yes, they're different books. Sometimes (although very rarely) I have as many as four or five different books on the go, but more often than not it's just the two. I read my hardbacks at home and paperbacks (often from the library) on the go.

Hilarious! I especially love the "drop bears" and the map of Oz.

W... W... W... Wednesdays * What are you currently reading? * What did you recently finish reading? * What do you think you’ll read next? What are you currently reading? Titania Hardy – The House of the Wind (reviewing for publisher) This one’s been sent to me by the publisher to review. I’m about 1/3rd of the way through and although it’s beautifully written, I’m finding it a little slow. Still, I’ll continue with it because, slow as it is, I am enjoying it… Alyson Noël – Blue Moon (Immortals 2) Just started this one. I enjoyed the first one (Evermore) which was a straight forward, easy read, so I’m hoping this one will match up to its predecessor. What did you recently finish reading? Kelley Armstrong – Spellbound (WotOW 12) - 3/5 I was a little disappointed by this one, actually. I’m a HUGE fan of the series but Im’ not enjoying Savannah as a leading lady as much as I’d hoped. Waking the Witch (WotOW 11) was pretty good and Spellbound follows directly on from there, but it just didn’t get me anywhere near as excited. It’s still good, just not quite as good as the others in this series. Unfortunately, it’s been left wide open for another installment in this story arc. I just hope the next one will wind that story up and then we can move onto a different character in the driving seat – perhaps another Hope Adams or Jaime Vegas story, or coming full circle and returning to Elena Michaels – that would be very welcome! What do you think you’ll read next? Philippa Gregory – The Lady of the Rivers (Cousins’ War 3) (own) Erin Morgenstern – The Night Circus (own) Alyson Noël – Shadowland (Immortals 3) (library) G.P.Taylor – The Ship of Fools (Mariah Mundy 3) (library)