Flight of Shadows Review

Flight of Shadows by Sigmund Brouwer

(from the back of the book)

Looming buildings rise into the sky of a near-future America, shadowing the desperate poverty of the soovie parks, death doctors, and fear bombs. In this world of walled cities, where status matters most, Caitlyn Brown is desperate to remain invisible, wrongly believing what she needs to hide is the deformity on her back. The powerful want her for so much more.

She’s forced to take flight again, relying on the help of Razor, a street-smart illusionist she can’t trust. Her only hope is to reach friends already tracked by government.

With a twisted bounty hunter in full pursuit, she and Razor begin to learn the unthinkable about her past and the unique gifts of her DNA. It leads Caitlyn to a choice between the two men who love her, and whether to keep her freedom or sacrifice herself to change human destiny.



This book is a sequel, which I didn’t know until after I was about half way through. Although looking back it makes sense. Obviously I didn’t even notice and was able to jump into the story without any trouble but there are things that you can tell had some history behind them and it would have been nice to know what it was. In this book Caitlyn and some of the other characters have come from Appalachia, which is cut off from the rest of the world, and are now in a whole new world and things work differently then they are used to. It makes for some interesting situations for the characters but it also makes for some lengthy explanations as well. There are spots where someone is explaining to one of the characters (and to us as the reader) how the social hierarchy works or what has happened in world history and at times it sounds a little like a lecture. The story switches between Caitlyn, who has everyone chasing her, and her friends, who have troubles of their own, and all the various people who are chasing Caitlyn so there is a lot of action that keeps the novel moving at a very fast pace. The secondary characters are sort of a mixed bag. Razor and Pierce are interesting and complex but Mason, the bounty hunter chasing her, becomes over the top in his sadistic nature and pushes credulity. Her friends, Billy and Theo, have potential but most of the focus is on Razor here and you don’t get to know they as well as I would like. I wonder if you got a better picture of them in the first book. Caitlyn herself is confused and hurt and dealing with hard issues of freedom, abandonment, love and forgiveness all while she tries to escape and figure out who she should trust and what she should do. She is sympathetic to a point because you can understand that she is put in the middle of something beyond her control and she doesn’t know what to do and she is young, scared and in many ways alone even among her friends. But I don’t think I ever felt for Caitlyn like I wanted to, I was interested but I don’t think I ever cared about her the way I was meant to. The story is interesting and there are a lot of characters, plots, twists, motivations and surprises so you don’t know what is going to happen next, how it will all turn out in the end, or even sometimes who are the good guys who are the bad guys and you keep reading because you really want to know. It was a good, rather dark adventure and reading this one made me interested to go back and see how it all began.

B I N G O

Bookin' With Bingo once again has some wonderful gives that you should check out.

For 101 Things I Learned in Culinary School by Louis Eguaras go here. Ends at 6 PM, EST, June 5th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

For 101 Things I Learned in Fashion School by Alfredo Cabrera go here. Ends at 6 PM, EST, June 5th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

For Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott go here. Ends at 6 PM, EST, June 6th. Open to the US only, no PO boxes.

For The Cradle by Patrick Somerville go here. Ends at 6 PM, EST, June 7th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

For Spent by Avis Cardella go here. Ends at 6 PM, EST, June 12th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

For Deliver Us From Evil by David Baldacci go here. Ends at 6 PM, EST, June 12th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

For Three Wishes by Carey Goldberg, Beth Jones, and Pamela Ferdinand go here. Ends at 6 PM, EST, June 13th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

For Fever Dream by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child go here. Ends at 6 PM, EST, June 15. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.


Make sure you read the rules for entry for each giveaway.
Go back often and check out the entire list here.
Good luck!

The Friday 56, The House Without a Key

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of Storytime With Tonya and Friends.
*Post a link along with your post back to Storytime With Tonya and Friends.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

My book this week is The House Without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers. It's a Charlie Chan mystery. Chan can actually be funny. Sometimes it is the actual things he says but sometimes it is just the way Biggers does his accent.

The sentence:

But it was blurred, indistinct. All Boston was blurred in his memory. The blood of the roaming Winterslips, the blood that led on to blackbirding and hot breathless kisses in the tropic night - was it flowing in his veins too?

Well, one can only hope so. It sounds like it might be fun.

I Won! I Won!

I won an award!!

That’s so cool!

I want to thank Jackie from Housewife Blues and Chihuahua Stories for giving me the Versatile Blogger award.

The Rules for the award are:
1. Thank the person who gave you this award
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic for whatever reason! (in no particular order…)
4. Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.


1. Thanks Jackie! (See above)
2. Hmmm… 7 things that people would actually want to know? That’s going to be hard.

1. I play the saxophone. But I don’t practice much so I’m not very good.
2. I work in a library but I’m in human resources so I don’t actually see the books very often.
3. I like Slurpees from 7 Eleven but for some reason I’m slightly embarrassed to be seen buying them.
3b. I like Coca Cola too, but I do not like Coca Cola Slurpees.
4. I’m a terrible speller.
5. I hate talking on the telephone or to people I don’t know and panic when talking to people I don’t know on the telephone.
6. At any one time I have about 10 different types of tea in my house.
7. I baked something for a church function once and got a reputation as a baker. Although I do like to bake I now contemplate bringing bad baked goods to functions so people will stop asking me to bake things. (Does that make me a bad person?)


3. My 15 blogs that are new(ish) to me and fantastic:

1. Michele at A Reader’s Respite
2. Karissa’s Reading Review
3. Tory at The Book Faery
4. Tez at Books and the Universe
5. Dead White Guys
6. Jennifer at Crazy-For-Books
7. The Friande
8. Shelah at Shelah Books It
9. Christina at Reading Extensively
10. Jennifer at Reading With Tequila
11. Fantastic Book Review
12. Books I Done Read
13. MizB at Should Be Reading
14. Katy at A Few More Pages
15. Greg at The New Dork Review of Books


4. I’m going to go do that right now.

(Did I make the lists within lists convoluted enough?)

We can always use more werewolves

Fantastic Book Review is giving away 5 copies of Claire de Lune by Christine Johnson.


Rules:

1. Comment on the review here: +1
2. Link to blog: +1
3. Follow Fantastic Book Review on Twitter +1
4. Be a Follower of Fantastic Book Review: +2


Contest ends @ 11:59pm (CST) June 5, 2010. U.S. Residents Only

Fairy Tales Come True

Musings is giving away a copy of Fairy Tale by Cyn Balog. You do have to be a follower of Musings to enter, but come on, you know you want to anyway so now is the perfect time to start.

After you become a follower or if you already are one all you have to do is fill out the form provided.

Extra entries you ask? Of course!

Tweeting about the contest (+2)
Posting about the contest on Facebook (+2)
Blogging about the contest (+3)
Putting the contest on blog roll/side bar of your blog (+5)
For being referred (+2)
Each person who says you referred them (+2)

Make sure that you leave URLs so your extra entries can be verified.

It runs until 11:59pm EST June 21st and it looks like this one is international so everyone should run over there and enter.

The Firm, book vs. movie

The Firm by John Grisham
The Firm with Tom Cruise

The book is about a lawyer, Mitch McDeere, who ends up working for a firm that is majorly corrupt. So is the movie, only, of course, different. As with any longish book that gets turned into a movie things are shortened and left out. The movie leaves off a lot of the beginning of the book when Mitch is getting to know the people and getting involved in the work and his attachment and involvement seem less because of it. It also shortens the time that the firm is talking to him before he takes the job and a few strange things happen that make you wonder why he took the job in the first place whereas in the book the warning signs were less obvious. Everybody’s character is slightly different in the book as well. For the most part it didn’t make too much difference to the plot but in the case of Avery, Mitch’s mentor, they made him a much more sympathetic character and it changed the whole feel of the relationship between him and Mitch and the way that it all played out. Of course, by that time they had changed so much other stuff that a few more things couldn’t have made any difference. There were little things like the fact that the FBI had to tell him things that he worked out for himself in the book and he worked things out for himself things that the FBI had to tell him in the book. And though there were more times in the movie that he was literally running from the bad guys the book was more suspenseful because everything was based on timing. But then there were bigger things too. Abby, Mitch’s wife, ended up playing a different part in the plan, the plan that Mitch comes up with is totally different, and most important, the ending was completely different as well. I thought at first the movie was trying to make the ending work out better for Mitch and Abby, have a slightly happier ending, but Mitch seems more bitter at the end of the movie than he did at the end of the book so I don’t think that was it. In fact, I think the book might have had a happier ending in the sense that the characters were happier. Once again I was left to wonder why the movie changed so much of the book. I understand that some things simply will not work in a movie and that there are time constraints and you want to make a movie more sensational and all of that but it isn’t like they are trying to hind the fact that the story has been done before. It is based on a book. It should be a story we have heard before. I was mad through the entire movie at the things that had been changed. Am I overreacting? Yes. I know I am. I don’t know why this particular book to movie conversion irritated me so much but it did. Maybe it’s because I felt like the story had potential as a movie but the actual movie didn’t cash in on any of it. Maybe I just don’t like Tom Cruise. Or that Gene Hackman (who I do like) had anything to do with this clunker. I don’t know. But watching this just confirmed for me that when I write my best selling novel I’m not going to let anyone turn it into a movie. I don’t want to see my carefully plotted novel ravaged and all my hard work thrown out the window. But since I will never write my novel I will just be indignant for those who have, since they don’t seem to be indignant themselves.

(In case there was any doubt, I'm on the side of the book here.)

The Friday 56, Unperfect Souls

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of Storytime With Tonya and Friends.
*Post a link along with your post back to Storytime With Tonya and Friends.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.


The book this week is Unperfect Souls by Mark del Franco. It's number 4 in the Connor Grey series. At this point I think readers would be slightly lost if they hadn't read the other ones first. There is just too much going on that started in the other books.

The sentence:

He told me to wear clothes and boots I didn't care about, so I wore the oldest pair of jeans I owned and an extra layer of sweatshirt.

If someone tells you that it can't lead to anywhere good. In this case it led to the sewers. I really think Connor should have seen it coming.

*This is linked to last week's Friday 56. I will check for a new one later and change the links if I can.

Godmother Review

Godmother by Carolyn Turgeon

(from the back of the book)

Lil is an old woman who spends her days shelving rare books in a tiny Manhattan bookstore and lonely nights at home in her apartment. But Lil has an intriguing secret. Tucked and bound behind her back are white feathery wings – the only key to who she once was: the fairy godmother responsible for getting Cinderella to the ball to unite with her Prince Charming.

But on that fateful night, something went terribly and beautifully wrong. Lil allowed herself the unthinkable: to feel the emotions of human beings and fall in love with the prince herself, going to the ball in place of Cinderella in her exquisitely gorgeous human guise. For her unforgivable mistake, she was banished to live among humans, far from her fairy sisters and their magical underwater world. But then one day she meets Veronica – a young, fair-skinned, flame-haired East Village beauty with love of all things vintage and a penchant for falling in love with the wrong men – and suddenly it becomes clear to Lil that she’s been given a chance at redemption. If she can find a soul mate for Veronica, she may right her wrong and return to the fairy world she so deeply longs for…



A dark twist on the Cinderella story. Poor Lil, once Cinderella’s godmother, has been banished from her fairy home to a life among mortals and the story switches between her two lives. You get to see her life as a fairy and the events that led to her banishment parallel to her life as a human and her efforts to get back to her fairy home. Lil is likeable and you feel for her as she aches for what she has lost and you wonder what she could have possibly done to be banished from her home. It is a sometimes heartbreaking story about loss and the search for redemption. Although based on the Cinderella story this is a unique story all of Turgeon’s own and I enjoyed the small things about the fairies, living under water, the fact that they have different kinds of wings, that made them different then ones I had read about before. In both story lines you can feel something coming. You are aware from the beginning that something goes wrong with Cinderella and in the human world you can see Lil start to fall apart. It fills them with tension and foreboding, almost dread, of the crash you know is coming. It grabs your attention and pulls you along to the stunning conclusions to both, conclusions that you anticipate but somehow still don’t see coming. I really enjoyed the book but it is not to be read if you are looking for happily ever after.

BookHounds

BookHounds is giving stuff away!


For Castle in the Mist by Robert McCarty go here. Ends May 30th. Open to the US only.

For a box of 3 ARC mysteries go here. Ends May 31st. Open to the US only.

For A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve go here. Ends June 4th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

For the audiobook Men and Dogs by Katie Crouch go here. Ends June 6th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

For the audiobook Eat the Cookie, Buy the Shoes by Joyce Meyer go here. Ends June 7th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

For the audiobook Deliver Us From Evil by David Baldacci go here. Ends June 8th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

The Friday 56, Sandman Slim

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of Storytime With Tonya and Friends.
*Post a link along with your post back to Storytime With Tonya and Friends.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

The book this week is Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. After eleven years James Stark escapes from Hell and he has some anger issues. Apparently when your friends send you to Hell it can make you a little testy.

The sentence:

I can get shot, ripped apart, dropped in a Cuisinart, and I just get up and walk away.


That has got to come in handy. But it still hurts so maybe avoiding all of that would be better.

Big May Giveaway

Library Girl Reads is having a big May 2010 giveaway.

Here are the books to choose from for May:

1. The Recipe Club by Andrea Israel & Nancy Garfinkel
2. Letter to My Daughter by George Bishop
3. One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
4. Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo
5. Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch
6. Fragile Eternity by Melissa Marr
7. The Lumby Lines by Gail Fraser
8. Longbourn's Unexpected Matchmaker by Emma Hox
9. The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb
10. Master Your Debt by Jordan E. Goodman

Just leave a comment saying which book you would like to win and at the end of the month Library Girl will pick at least one winner.

Make sure you leave your email address.

You can get an extra entry for following or subscribing and yet another for promoting the give on your blog, Twitter, or another social media site.

You can enter through May 31st. However, the giveaway is limited to those in the USA.

Mini Reviews

The Terror by Dan Simmons

It is very long. And there were points where I thought if Simmons gave one more list of names (the men who had died, the men who were still alive, the name of every officer) or described the symptoms of scurvy one more time I was going to scream. But I think he did a good job of keeping the reader interested because you never really knew what was going to happen. The men fighting the cold, hunger, each other, personal demons and the ice was just as suspenseful as their fight against the unknown enemy that stalked them. I'm glad that he explained that enemy and how it all came about but I was a little disappointed that it didn't meld into the rest of the book better. It was more like the story you had been reading stopped and another, rather long, story was stuck in the middle to explain. I think it was a pretty good horror story, with death and mayhem, terror and suspense, but I would have enjoyed it more if certain pieces were left out and the size cut down a little bit.




Unquiet Dreams by Mark Del Franko

The second book in the Connor Grey series. I don’t think you have to read the first to enjoy this one because it does explain all the most important parts but it also refers back to things that happened in the first book and it was nice to have the background. I like the friendship between Murdock and Grey, the way they relate and get along is interesting and sometimes hilarious. As are some of the relationships between Grey and the other characters as well. Characters you do come to like and care about. But I like a sarcastic hero so that helps. It is urban fantasy so you have the fey running around on the streets of Boston that you could recognize today, which makes the book fun. And, as in the first book, Del Franko delivers a huge dramatic earth shaking climax to what started as a simple little mystery. I liked it a lot and plan to read the others in the series.

Win Win Win

Head on over to Winning Readings where, appropriately enough, you can win some stuff to read.

For How Do You Tuck In A Superhero by Rachel Balducci go here.

For Catherine's Gift by John Little go here.

For No Greater Love by Kathi Macias go here.

For Witness by E. G. Lewis go here.

The deadline for all four is May 25th. All are open internationally.

The Friday 56, Hold the Enlightenment

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of Storytime With Tonya and Friends.
*Post a link along with your post back to Storytime With Tonya and Friends.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

This week the book is Hold the Enlightenment by Time Cahill. It is classified as 'travel' because Cahill travels around and writes about all the places he goes. And he goes to a lot of interesting places, some of them not so safe, as in the story the sentence comes from where he is in the Sahara in Mali where there are bandits and such.


The sentence:

Some, it was said, were still fighting. Plus, the army hadn't been able to take every former rebel who wanted a job, so there were still some bands of hard men in the desert, former rebels who were in fact out-and-out bandits.

Enlisting the rebels in the army is a good way to stop the rebellion. Too bad there were more rebels then they knew what to do with.

Shades of Grey Vocabulary

Once again I found that my vocabulary skills were not equal to the task. This time it was Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde.


Pergolas: an arbor formed of horizontal trelliswork supported on columns or posts, over which vines or other plants are trained.

Sycophancy: self-seeking or servile flattery

Retrousse: (esp. of the nose) turned up

Fenestrated: having windows; windowed; characterized by windows

Conurbation: an extensive urban area resulting from the expansion of several cities or towns so that they coalesce but usually retain their separate identities

Recce: (esp. in British military use) reconnaissance

Parochial: of or pertaining to a parish or parishes.

Tympanum: the recessed, usually triangular space enclosed between the horizontal and sloping cornices of a pediment, often decorated with sculpture

Insouciant: free from concern, worry, or anxiety; carefree; nonchalant

Ameliorated: to make or become better, more bearable, or more satisfactory; improve; meliorate

Cloche: a bell-shaped glass cover placed over a plant to protect it from frost and to force its growth

Jim Bernheimer Giveaway

Karissa's Reading Review is giving away 2 Jim Bernheimer books. The winner will get both Horror, Humor, and Heroes and Dead Eye: Pennies for the Ferryman. And they are signed too. To enter hop on over to Karissa's and fill out the handy form.

There are a few rules though:

- You must be a follower of Karissa to enter
- You must be a US resident
- You must be 13+ or older to enter

You can get an extra entry if you blog about the giveaway.

The contest is open until May 24th 2010.

Shades of Grey Review

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

(from the book jacket)

It’s summer, it’s hot, it’s our world, but not as we know it. Entire cities lie buried beneath overgrown fields and forests. Technology from another time litters the landscape, and there is evidence of great upheaval. Welcome to Chromatacia, where for as long as anyone can remember society has been ruled by a Colortocracy. From the underground feedpipes that keep the municipal park green, to the healing hues viewed to cure illness, to a social hierarchy based upon one’s limited color perception, society is dominated by color. In this world, you are what you see.

Eddie Russett wants to move up. He has better-than-average red perception, and he is on a half promise to Constance Oxblood, whose powerful family want the reddest possible son-in-law to strengthen their hue. But once Eddie and his father relocate to the backwater village of East Carmine, these carefully cultivated plans and expectations are quickly upended. In this new town, Eddie must contend with lethal swans, sneaky Yellows, inviolable rules and an enforced marriage to the hideous Violet deMauve. But then he encounters the intriguing Grey named Jane, whose bold defiance of the Rules makes him realize that the apparent peace of his world is as much an illusion as color itself.

As Jane opens Eddie’s eyes to the cruel regime that lies behind the gaily painted façade, he realizes that understanding the social order is one thing, but questioning it is quite another. Questions are considered unthinkably rude, and rudeness, along with bad manners, uncouth language and inadequately shined shoes, leads to one place: permanent relocation, or Reboot. Eddie must tread a very fine line between total conformity – accepting the path, partner and career delineated by his hue – and an instinctive curiosity that only gets him into trouble.

In a world of enforced simplification, answers are in short supply, and every question begets another: What was the “Something That Happened”? Why does no one ever return from the long-abandoned village of High Saffron? Where did all the spoons go? Is there more to color than just color? Most important, can Eddie ask Jane out for tea and cakes at the Fallen Man before she has him eaten by a carnivorous tree?



The world has become a place where seeing in color is becoming a thing of the past and no one knows why. Something terrible happened in the past and no one knows what that was either. There are rules you must follow and conventions you are expected to conform to but no one knows where they came from. Fforde throws you right into this new world without any warning. I like the fact that he does not feel the need to take us by the hand and carefully explain every little thing. But it does mean that you have to give the book a chance. At first there are a few things that just don’t make much sense but as you move along things start to fall into place. Some things at least. Some things continue to elude you as they do for the characters themselves. Why is no one allowed to make spoons? It is a rule and must be obeyed but no one knows why. Why can’t poor Eddie make suggestions for a better queuing system? Well, it just isn’t done. People have been following the rules so rigidly for so long that no one can remember what they were made for in the first place. The lack of colored sight has made color so important that is rules everything. And everyone lives under the constant fear of Reboot, this vague punishment that you know is bad but are uncertain of the specifics. It is a depressing place if you think about it. But Fforde manages to work his wit and humor into the book so that it is not all depression. He tells you that librarians draw circles around their eyes and connect them with a line cross the bride of their nose as a sign of their job but no one can remember what it means. The people have to be on the look out for killer swans. And the characters are fun and entertaining. But it all happens in a world where people who can’t see any color are treated as inferior. Where strict conformity to the rules is expected and enforced. Where curiosity and questions will get you in trouble. Where Eddie is forced to find out cold, hard things that there will be no turning back from. Where he will have to decide what is the greater good and how much he is willing to give up for it so he can make life and death decisions. So it isn’t that Fforde does not address serious issues in the book but they are blended with a subtle lightheartedness that stops the entire tone of the book from being depressing and at the same time manages to make the ugly parts of the society stand out and still look ugly. And in with the humor there is a slight sense of dread always hanging over everything. It is an oddly fun book for one that deals with issues that are not traditionally funny like prejudice, the dangers of asking no questions and trying to eliminate the past, the consequences of finding truth and figuring out what to do with it, and making hard choices about what is truly important. It is the first book in a trilogy so there are many things that are left unexplained and unresolved at the end of the book but it did come to a nice place to take a pause before the next book which you will want to read to see how everything works out.

Bingo Giveaways

Bookin' With Bingo is having some giveaways you should really go check out.

For Sugar and Glorious by Bernice L. McFadden go here. (Winners will get both books.) Open to the US only, no PO boxes. Ends 6 PM EST May 10th.

For the audiobook Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith go here. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes. Ends 6 PM EST May 10th.

For Buying Time by Pamela Samuels Young go here. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes. Ends 6 PM EST May 11th.

For The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker go here. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes. Ends 6 PM EST May 13th.

For So Much For That by Lionel Shriver go here. Open to the US only, no PO boxes. Ends 6 PM EST May 19th.

For A Change in Altitude by Anita Shreve go here. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes. Ends 6 PM EST May 21st.

For Just Let Me Lie Down by Kristin van Ogtrop go here. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes. Ends 6 PM EST May 22nd.

For The Host by Stephenie Meyer go here. Open to the US only, no PO boxes. Ends 6 PM EST May 24th.

For Hannah's List by Debbie Macomber go here. Open to the US only, no PO boxes. Ends 6 PM EST May 24th.


And make sure you keep checking the list to see when more giveaways are added.

Books I finished in April

I managed twelve in April but only because most of them were short.


A Corpse at St Andrew's Chapel by Melvin Starr
See my review here.

Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green
I read the first one in this series but it was so long ago I couldn’t remember if I liked it. So I gave the second one a shot. Not bad.

Hawk by Brian Neary
See my review here.

The Time of Terror by Seth Hunter
A good historical fiction with lots of adventure, intrigue and romance.

The Pencil by Henry Petroski
Some of this is rather dry reading but there are some very interesting things about pencils that I did not know.

Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing With Fire by Derek Landy
Still good but I don't think I liked it quite as much as the first one. Maybe some of the novelty has worn off.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! by Richard P. Feynman
Feynman is a very interesting guy. Sometimes he talked about things that were over my head but they were not really the focus of the story so it didn’t matter that I didn’t know what they were.

The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Classic Edgar Rice Burroughs. Heroes, beautiful women, dinosaurs, adventure and all that good stuff.

The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Sequel to the one above. This one was good too.

Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
What is there to say? Shakespeare is always good.

Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Comes after The People That Time Forgot. I had to find out how it all turned out.

Shylock's Daughter by Mirjam Pressler
It seemed appropriate after Merchant of Venice since the Shylock in the title is the Shylock from the play. Things don’t happen exactly the same in the book as they do in the play but all the major points are there. You get a more complete and human look at Shylock and learn a little Jewish history too.