Dragonbreath Review

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon

(from the back of the book)
Danny Dragonbreath is the only mythical creature at a school filled with reptiles and amphibians. He can’t breathe fire like a normal dragon. The school bully keeps stealing his lunch. And now Danny has to rewrite his report about the ocean and use, ahem, actual research. His loyal but nerdy best friend Wendell suggests the library, but Danny has a way better plan.


This book is sort of like but not quite a graphic novel. There are pages of text but there are also pages of illustrations where the only text is the word bubbles. The illustrations are cute and deceptively simple with just green tones but they are very expressive. Danny and his longsuffering friend are both very relatable with the banter between them and the regular growing up and going to school issues. The parents, the bully, and even the potato salad are interesting characters even though they have smaller parts. There is a lot of humor throughout the book and I like the relationship between the two friends. Danny does learn some things about the ocean but it is rather mixed up with some mythical things as well so I wouldn’t say it was educational. It’s a quick and fun read.

Theme Thursday -- Animal

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Hosted by Reading Between Pages.

Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:
•A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
•Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
•Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
•It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”

This week’s theme is – ANIMAL

Eventually one wolf sat on his haunches a mere dozen feet away. He yawned massively and I could clearly see his huge tongue and his teeth glinting in the light of a great full moon.

-- Outlaw by Angus Donald

WWW Wednesdays (March 30th)

To play along just answer the following three (3) questions...

*What are you currently reading?
*What did you recently finish reading?
*What do you think you’ll read next?

Leave a link to your post (or the answers themselves if you do not have a blog) in the comments of Should Be Reading.

What are you currently reading?

Outlaw by Angus Donald
I’m still working on this one. I like it but for some reason it seems to be taking me a long time to get through it.

What did you recently finish reading?

Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth
I was ambivalent about this book for the first 20 – 30 pages or so and then I really got into it and enjoyed it a lot.

What do you think you’ll read next?

Well, Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran is still on the list but I had thought I would have started it already and now I have Ex-Heroes by Peter Clines that I ordered from the library and has come in so it might be that instead.

Check out these giveaways!

I Am A Reader, Not A Writer is giving away books! I love when I get a book in the mail, especially when it was free. You should enter some of these wonderful giveaways and see if you can get a free book in the mail.

For How Lamar's Bad Prank Won a Bubba-Sized Trophy by Crystal Allen go here. Open to the US and Canada.

For Welcome to Last Chance by Hope Ramsay go here. Ends April 18th. Open to the US and Canada, no PO boxes.

For Twisted by the Wind by Tom Hays go here. Ends April 19th. Open to the US and Canada.

For Haunted by Joy Preble go here. Ends April 19th. Open to the US and Canada.

For Gifted by Karey White go here. Ends April 20th. Open internationally.

For Fern Valley by Aileen Stewart go here. Ends April 20th. Open to the US and Canada.

For One Bird's Choice by Iain Reid go here. Ends April 20th. Open to the US and Canada.

For 12.21.12 by Killian McRae go here. Ends April 21st. Open to the US only.

The Friday 56, Outlaw

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it to Freda's Voice.

The book this week is Outlaw by Angus Donald. A tale of Robin Hood, but it is not a romantic, sweet story. Robin is a hard man and his rule of the forest is filled with blood and violence.

The sentence:

But above all that, above the pain and death and horror and filth, I felt a great swooping, skylarking joy at merely being alive, joy that the enemy was beaten, and that we were victorious.

Theme Thursday -- Building

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Hosted by Reading Between Pages. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

•A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
•Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
•Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
•It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”

This week’s theme is – BUILDING

Our church was not grand – it was not much bigger than a village house, but built of thick stone with a thatched roof.

- Outlaw by Angus Donald

WWW Wednesdays (March 23rd)

* What are you currently reading?
* What did you recently finish reading?
* What do you think you’ll read next?

Leave a link to your post (or the answers themselves if you do not have a blog) in the comments of Should Be Reading.

What are you currently reading?

Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth
A vampire working for the president? I hope it’s as good as it sounds.

Outlaw by Angus Donald
Robin Hood is always a good story.

What did you recently finish reading?

Chicken a la King and the Buffalo Wing by Steven Gilbar
A lot of this is interesting but then there is a whole lot of things that are named after the city or place they are grown or were first made and after a while that grows less interesting.

All's Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare
Not one of my favorite of his plays.

What do you think you’ll read next?

Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran
Michelle Moran was kind enough to send me a copy of her new book so I’m looking forward to getting into it.

Colony Review

Colony by Scott Reeves

(from the back of the book)
On New Earth, it’s the same old, same old…
In the 30th century, a group of colonists arrives on a far-off planet to begin new lives free from the taints of old Earth’s corrupt civilization.
But they’ve unwittingly brought a snake with them into their Garden: a ruthless, violent thug plans to seize power and bring the entire galaxy into his bloody hands.
Only one man stands in his way…


Earth is over populated so they send people into space. It’s not an original idea and at first it doesn’t seem like this story is going to be anything new. But as you go along and the story starts to take shape little pieces and ideas all begin to add up to an original spin. Some of the characters are slightly one dimensional but they still manage to be interesting. The aliens are interesting and original as well. There is action, suspense and a little bit of romance. The danger of the terrain and of the struggle within the group keeps you wondering who will survive and who will win. There are small twists along the way that keep you from figuring out how the whole thing will turn out so the story keeps your interest until the end. I like that Reeves gives the colonists the hope of the new life that they can make for themselves but at the same time doesn’t let them just escape all the troubles of Earth but has some of those troubles follow them. Unfortunately there are typos that are distracting at times and interrupt the story slightly. But as a whole it’s a solid and entertaining story.

The Friday 56, Get Real

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it to Freda's Voice.

The book this week is Get Real by Donald Westlake. It’s from his Dortmunder series. Some of them are better than others but I haven’t found one yet I haven’t liked.

The sentence:

You heist somebody already committing a crime, he doesn’t call the cops.

Now that’s thinking. Besides if you’re going to steal it might as well be from crooks.

Theme Thursday -- Crockery/Utensil

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Hosted by Reading Between Pages. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

•A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
•Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
•Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
•It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”

This week’s theme is – CROCKERY / UTENSIL

I thought of using a sentence with ‘a glass’ in it but this one was just more fun.

He took down the frying pan, a nine-inch cast-iron model, satisfyingly heavy. “This seems good,” he said, hefting it in both hands, then swung it sidearm with all his might into the side of that head, just above the left ear.

- Get Real by Donald Westlake

WWW Wednesdays (March 16th)

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

* What are you currently reading?
* What did you recently finish reading?
* What do you think you’ll read next?

Leave a link to your post (or the answers themselves if you do not have a blog) in the comments of Should Be Reading.

What are you currently reading?

Get Real by Donald Westlake
I can’t resist Westlake’s Dortmunder books.

What did you recently finish reading?

It wasn’t all that recently but the last book I finished was Skellig by David Almond.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I’m thinking Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth. I bought it a while back and never go to it. But the second one is coming out so I thought I would read the first one and see if I’m interested enough to get the second one.

Special Movie Review

Special
With Michael Rapaport

(from the DVD case)
Les Franken is a kind-hearted and soft-spoken man who loves reading comic books. He’s the type of guy who most people walk by on the street without even noticing. However, everything changes for Les the day he is accepted into an experimental drug study. As he begins to take the drugs, an unexpected side effect occurs – he develops special powers. In an effort to use his new talents for protecting others, Les finds himself in a predicament to save himself.



This movie has its comic moments but it is more often tense and dark and sometimes brutal. Les is a sad figure but he is a likeable guy and you want things to turn out for him in the end. He tries to do something good with the gifts that he is given and his life starts to fall apart. It is a sometimes heartbreaking story as you watch Les try to figure out what is going on and what to do about it. I like the ambiguity of being able to see through Les’ eyes and the eyes of those around him without it leaving the audience completely lost as to what is going on. It does have a low quality feel to it like it didn’t have much of a budget and there are some slow moments and even though the ending wasn’t as much of a wrap up as I usually like my endings to be I still think it is worth a look.

Like to Sew?

There are a couple of places you can win Miss Scarlet's School of Patternless Sewing and Waking Up in the Land of Glitter by Kathy Cano-Murillo.


You can go to Books and Needlepoint. Open to US and Canada, no PO boxes. Ends at midnight March 28th CST.

Or you can go to A Bookworm's World. Open to US and Canada, no PO boxes. Ends April 2nd at 6pm EST.

Theme Thursday -- Vehicle

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Hosted by Reading Between Pages. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

•A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
•Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
•Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
•It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”

This week’s theme is – VEHICLE

I know I missed Thursday, again. I even had the passage all picked out but then the days just got away from me. Anyhow, I finally got here. So…

Soon after he’d gotten off the interstate, he came upon the same car folded up against a bridge abutment on the underpass.

-- God of Beer by Garret Keizer

The Friday 56, God of Beer

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it to Freda's Voice.

This week the book is God of Beer by Garret Keizer.

The sentence:

I could have managed to take a leak about then, right off the deck, but I was in pretty clear sight.

I’m glad he managed to contain himself.

Silver Review

Silver by Edward Chupack

(from the book jacket)
This being the last testament of the infamous pirate Long John Silver, you would do well not to trust a word in its pages. Held captive aboard his own ship, the Linda Maria, he is to be taken to England, where he will hang at the king’s pleasure. But he has another plan: to tell a tale of treason, murder, lost treasure that would rival King George’s own riches, and what really happened on Treasure Island… if Silver is to be believed.

But is he?

His beginnings as a pickpocket on the streets of Bristol are as dark as the rest of his deliciously devious life. Taken to sea by the pirate captain Black John, Silver soon learns the arts of the sword, saber, and pistol. He makes his trade in plundering, cheating, ransacking, and murder – more murders than he can bother to count. British, Frenchmen, Spaniards, and Portuguese all fall before him. He takes exceptional pleasure in murder, but never such pleasure as he finds in his search for a most uncommon treasure. To find that treasure he must heed the words of a dead man, solve the ciphers in a well-worn Bible, forgo the love of an extraordinary woman, and climb over the corpses of friend and foe alike to arrive at Treasure Island and find his fortune.

Silver’s tricks are never done. Before he greets the hangman at Newgate Square, he will have one last secret to reveal. Hidden in these pages are clues that lead to his remarkable treasure. And although King George’s bounty for this notorious scourge may be handsome indeed, the captain who has captain Silver would not mind adding the pirate’s riches to his own purse. He will let Silver tell his tale in the hope of learning clues to the treasure’s location. And if you were to mark his words as well, you might discover the whereabouts of that fortune yourself.

So we shall, for now, allow Long John Silver to spin his stories, tales of adventure and betrayal, gold and jewels, love and murder.

And he will never leave out the murder. Not Long John Silver.



The book took a while for me to get into. Silver is captive on his own ship and he isn’t happy about it, nor is he happy with the man that has him there. And he rants about that for a while. And he keeps going on about the clues he had to follow to find the treasure. He tells them over and over and then goes over all the things the clues could mean. And this was all before we even knew what clues he was talking about. It grew tedious. And his narrative was constantly interrupted by his conversations with the boy who brought him his food. I was having trouble getting into the story and just when I felt like it was starting to really get going he would stop his tale to throw insults at the boy and the man who held him captive and it made getting into the book even harder for me. I do like the tone of Silver’s narrative. He has a wit and is often funny even though he is talking about murder and mayhem. He is proud of his less than honest living and you can hear the satisfaction with his misdeeds in his story. It was fun to hear how Silver got his name, became a pirate and a captain; to find out how the treasure got on Treasure Island in the first place. It isn’t exactly a swashbuckling story but there are fights and killing and treasure and that makes for some excitement. Silver is telling his own story and tells it like he is talking to the man who holds him captive but who that man is is not revealed until the end of the tale. I think you can probably figure it out but I thought it was a nice touch of mystery. Getting more information about the characters that you know from Treasure Island is fun but I was disappointed when the stories began to overlap because I could not fit Silver’s tale into the story I knew. It was completely different. Overall I think it is an entertaining story but there are parts that drag and if you want to give it a shot I think you have to be willing to push through a slow start.

The Friday 56, The Spider

Rules:
*Grab a book, any book.
*Turn to page 56.
*Find any sentence that grabs you.
*Post it.
*Link it to Freda's Voice.

The book this week is The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham by Norvell Page. I have a weakness for pulp fiction.

The sentence:

He was gazing at the glimmering steel helmets of an entire squad of robots.

An army of robots? Can’t beat that.

Theme Thursday -- Furniture

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Hosted by Reading Between Pages. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

•A theme will be posted each week (on Thursday’s)
•Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
•Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
•It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word)
Ex: If the theme is KISS; your sentence can have “They kissed so gently” or “Their lips touched each other” or “The smooch was so passionate”

This week’s theme is – FURNITURE

I thought it would be an easy theme but I had two books to work with and I still had trouble finding something.

What I came up with is this:

There were still a few tables dotted around, and one or two dusty chairs, but apart from that, the room was as empty as everything else around here – the cigarette machine behind the door, the reception desk at the end of the corridor, the leaflet rack on the wall. All empty.

- The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks

Books I Finished in February

A lot of kids books (again) this month. There was a while there where I felt like I was picking up the books every day and reading but getting nowhere. I hope I’m over that now.

Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey
I like the Zorro feeling this book had but for some reason I expected it to be more Zorro-like than it was. Ended very openly with lots of room for a sequel.

Dragonbreath: Curse of the Were-Wiener by Ursula Vernon
I really like these books. They are funny and the pictures are cute.

Amulet: The Stonekeeper by Kazu Kibuishi
It was okay but I wasn’t bowled over by it.

Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
I like werewolves. But… I wanted more werewolf stuff and less listening to her trying to get her boyfriend into bed.

The Elephant to Hollywood by Michael Caine
Caine is an interesting man and knew a bunch of interesting people. And I think that he has a good perspective on his life and career.

Outrun the Dark by Cecilia Bartholomew
I liked this book but it is not really the mystery I expected. You kind of know what happened early on so it becomes more about the physiological aspects of how everyone deals with it.

The Big Splash by Jack D. Ferraiolo
A noir mystery in a middle school. Sometimes it went a little too far and the characters don’t sound like kids any more but most of it works well and is fun.

Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
A story about Alice trying to live in social circles that she doesn’t have the money to support. You do feel sorry for her at times but other times you are not sure you like her. I like how he ended it though.

Interred With Their Bones by Jennifer Lee Carrell
A lot of history here. Which leads to a lot of names. Pay attention or you might lose track of who is doing what.

Colony by Scott Reeves
People are sent out from Earth to start a colony on another planet. It starts out not sounding too original but it does pick up.

Collected Alison Dare Vols. 1& 2 by J. Torres
Simple little stories that are fun and fast.

WWW Wednesdays (March 2nd)

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

* What are you currently reading?
* What did you recently finish reading?
* What do you think you’ll read next?

Leave a link to your post (or the answers themselves if you do not have a blog) in the comments of Should Be Reading.

What are you currently reading?

Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks
Someone asked me for book recommendations and when I asked what kind of books he liked he said Walter Dean Myers and this one. That wasn’t much help to me so I’m reading it to try and figure it out.

The Spider: Robot Titans of Gotham by Norvell Page
I like pulp fiction. Not literary genius but fun.

What did you recently finish reading?

The Collected Alison Dare by J. Torres
Quick and fun.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I was thinking of Hoops by Walter Dean Myers (see the answer to the first question). I know I have that around the house somewhere.