Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

I suspect I'm not going to get my current book done by tomorrow night, so I'm going to post this now.

Total books read in 2013: 53. Goal was 50/50bookchallenge, so yay!
"Read" counts as reaching at least the 50% mark (ebook readers usually display a percent instead of a page number, so it's easy to judge that).

Of the 53 I finished:
Loved: 21
Liked: 5
Okay: 6
Disliked: 7
Hated: 14
(For 2014 I want to post a rating, 1-5, when I do the review. For this year, I had to reread my review and make my best guess as to liked/loved/etc.)

New this year:
1) "Book 30" a catch-all "book" for all books I didn't finish, all books too short to count as a real one (like graphic novels), children's books, etc, so I'd get credit but not too much credit for them. 26 books fall into book #30.

( List of 26 partial/short books and links to my reviews back here. )

2) "Challenge books". On 50bookchallenge, someone posted a challenge her library was doing. ( The challenge is to read six books that meet requirements from this list. )

I did:
Read a book published in 1913: The Iron Trail: An Alaskan Romance
Read a memoir by someone you've never heard of: Letters of a Woman Homesteader
Read a book where one of the main characters is an animal: Call of the Wild/White Fang
Read an award-winner: A number of this year's books won or were nominated for something.
Read a debut novel: The Narrowing Path
Try a new format (listen to an audiobook, read a graphic novel) : Read a few graphic novels.

So I succeeded at the challenge, but only by chance. After the first two books, I decided my reading time was too short to read books I didn't really want to. I'm not going to do this sort of thing again.

So! Now, the big part of the post. All 53 books I read, a quote from my review of each, and a link to the full review.

( Click to see list. )

I think that covers everything! There are a ton of links, so if something is broken, let me know and I'll track down the right one.

2014 goals:
1) 50 books. I had quit WoW and RPing for a while early in 2013, so I had a lot of reading time for a couple months, which gave me a big leg up on hitting 50 for the year. I suspect it will be more of a challenge in 2014.
2) Accept fewer books for review. Often they come with deadlines to get reviews in, which makes reading them less fun and more like work.

I hope everyone read some great books in 2013 and will get to read even more in 2014!

Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat/freece.

It's nice when a great fanwriter is picked up by a big name publisher.

Captive Prince is a story about relationships -- relationships between nations, between a leader and his people, between two men, and between many people and power. After a war, a power struggle in the country that won resulted in a younger brother successfully plotting to overthrow his older brother, after their father the king was killed. The older brother was sent off as a slave to the country that lost the war.

The older brother/prince had to hide who he is, since that country hates his, while trying to deal with a culture that's polar opposite the one he grew up in (his country is straight forward, value privacy for personal things, and generally say what they mean; the other country everyone is plotting, words have multiple meanings, and power shifts endlessly).

This story wouldn't have worked nearly as well if the author hadn't been such a great writer. Every character felt real, every one had a unique voice, and it was great fun keeping track of all of the motives.

I was very happy to see that Penguin has picked up this book series. It had originally been offered as free fanfic online (I think I must have read it that way years back, it was vaguely familiar now). It looks like the ebook version I linked above is the self-published one, so you might snag it for $4 before Penguin raises it to $10. (It's worth the $10 price, but who can resist a discount!)

Next up: The Hunger Gays. (They finally sent me a copy, yay!) I suspect it's going to be amusingly bad.

Ellie New Cat: I've created a monster. One of the first tricks I taught her was High-5 (she taps my hand with her paw to get the treat). That was fine, but with the introduction of the bird laser pointer? Some kind of connection has been made in her kitty brain. She now thinks tapping is the solution to her every want and need. Hungry? She endlessly taps my mouse hand. Bored? Taps my foot/leg. It's not just one tap, she taps again and again (because hey, one tap sometimes doesn't make the bird laser work, right?). So far she hasn't been waking me up in the morning, but I worry that soon will come a tap...tap...tap to my cheek because she wants breakfast.

Edit: Know those videos where they take a normal looking woman and photoshop her into a supermodel? There's a new one out for this year:

Video is 100% work safe, but the display image is a woman in bikini bottoms and what looks like no top (nothing shown), so I'm putting it behind a cut just in case.

I wish there were a longer version, I'd like to see more of the details of how they did that (especially the part where the grid was over the whole body).

I'm sad to report that I gave up on Lord of the Flies. I reached the 60% mark, so it still counts as the 50th book of the year, but that doesn't make me any less disappointed. I had decided to go check the wiki page about it, because I thought finding out more of the background and symbolism might help me enjoy it, only to be majorly spoiled. (Can I get a big "Duh!" to that?) I knew how the book ended, so I thought spoiling wouldn't be an issue, but I had forgotten there were character deaths.

Still, I enjoyed reading the wiki page a lot more than the 60% of the book that I got through, so I suppose it's for the best.

I'm currently reading The Darkling Sea, which I'm loving! I accepted it free to review, which I had intended to not do anymore, but it sounded interesting so I made an exception.

I've mentioned it in comments a couple times, but I haven't written about it in a post, so I'll explain that now. While my reviews have been 100% honest, when someone gives me a free book for my review, I feel like I owe them something. I know that's silly and wrong, but it's how I feel. Add on to that that I have to link them my review -- I have a really hard time being critical to someone's face! So, while I was honest, I focused on the good parts as much as I could, and that felt dishonest.

I'll still accept books to review when I know I'll like them (I'm really hoping the next Narrowing Path/Cruel Path book will be offered!) or when they sound interesting (Darkling Sea), but otherwise I'm going to cutting way back. My number of books read/reviewed won't change, I'll just acquire them myself.

Birthday/Christmas: In general, I don't waste money. I don't buy toys. I don't buy things I don't really need. So once a year I try to "waste" money on something I don't need but might just be fun to have. One year I spent $90 on popcorn (a special kettle, special kernels, "movie theater" salt and oil -- enough of the last two to last for decades, it's only too bad they both sucked). This year I decided to buy a Soda Stream, a little machine that will carbonate drinks/make soda. I've been wanting one for a long time, but couldn't really justify buying one. $80 at Amazon, with $25 off -- Happy birthday/merry Christmas to me!

It should arrive on Monday, I'll review it in more detail then.

More Than This by Patrick Ness.

After finishing Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy, I wanted to read more by him. More Than This is his latest book (released last month), so I bought a copy.

Based on the prologue, I thought I'd love it even more than I did Walking. You can go to the Amazon page and click the "Click to look inside!" cover image on the left to read it. (Warning: Character death. It's a description of the main character dying.) It was so intense and realistic, and the main character died! How exciting!

Unfortunately the rest of the book in no way held up to that start. It seemed like such a good idea for a story (what happens to the boy after he dies? Or did he really die? Or what was happening just his memories as he died?). The first 50% was so slow and pointless. It could have all been told in one chapter, maybe stretched to two. Nothing came out in it other than some backstory for the main character. Nothing plottish at all.

Then suddenly at the 60% point there was a major twist. Out of the blue, with no warning or build up, it came out that in fact there was no world, everyone basically retreated online and lived their whole life there, their bodies left in giant coffins. I say 'out of the blue', but in fact one of the other characters somehow figured it out. No rhyme or reason to her knowing, she just did even though no one could have known about it.

There was also a subplot about a character chasing the kids, popping up out of the blue nearly on top of them over and over. Kind of ironic, since there was an Amazon comment criticizing that happening in the Chaos Walking trilogy. Since it was done in this book, maybe it was done in those books as well and I just missed it.

I got to the 75% point before I gave up. The "twist" felt so cheap and annoying, no lead up to it, no possible way to guess it, it felt dishonest. I didn't like the characters and didn't buy any of them as real. I even less bought the world as real. The whole book just didn't work for me, no matter how much I wanted to like it.

Three reviews, from least review-y to most:

#1: I got my third Graze box, yay! I haven't tried any of the four snacks yet. (Still no dippers! Arg!)

For new people on my friends list, Graze is a healthy "snack of the month" company. Once every two weeks or four weeks (your choice) they send you out a box of four snacks to try. $6 per box total (shipping included). Unfortunately I'm out of friends codes for it at the moment.

My box:
1) Summer berry flapjack (rustic rolled oat flapjack with berry-infused cranberries) -- the only repeat so far, but I loved it so yay! Will likely save it to eat last.
2) Raspberry and coconut muffin (amaretti drops, raspberry infused cranberries, almond slices and coconut flakes) -- I don't like coconut (or at least I didn't as a kid and haven't tried it since), but I'll give it a chance this time.
3) Hot cross yum (sponge pieces, cinnamon and honey almonds and orange infused raisins) -- Mmmm sounds really good!
4) Herby bread basket (garlic crostini, mini basil breadsticks and oregano rice crackers) -- I suspect I might like this one the least, but looking forward to trying it.

#2: Someone on a food comm mentioned jerky bacon. He said it tasted just like regular bacon, only not hot. How could I not want to try that? When I went to Target today, I saw a bag. It's sitting here next to me right now. I'm going to open it up and try it real time!


(Not my picture, I'm lazy tonight.)

Disclaimer: I've only had jerky once before. I didn't like it, but I know there are tons of different kinds out there, I just never got around to trying another one.

Opening the bag, it smells like bacon (good sign). Not really strongly, but maybe half as strong as I would expect from real, just-cooked bacon. Also has a bit of a chemical smell.

It's rubbery and floppy, sort of like real bacon. Trying it... It tastes like it smells. Like bacon, but really, really weak flavor. Also, I don't think this could be called jerky at all, it's like the pre-cooked bacon you get in the store. (Though I'm no expert on jerky, as I said. But I thought it would have to be thicker and take a while to chew to be jerky. Maybe it's just the drying process?)

This little bag (2.5 ounces) cost $5. The flavor is okay (even bad bacon is still bacon). The calories aren't bad (130 for about half the package), so I'll probably finish the bag, but I won't buy it again. (On second thought, I'm going to toss it in the fridge. Maybe I can microwave it a bit to heat it, then use it in sandwiches.)

#3) Book #46 of 2013: Monsters of Men (Chaos Walking book 3) by Patrick Ness.

Oh what can I say about this book. The first book of the trilogy (The Knife of Never Letting Go, my review) was easily the best book I've read this year. It's one of the best books I've ever read, period. The second and third books were a little less to my taste, through no fault of the books. (Edit: I should note that that's going from "OMG BEST BOOK EVER WONDERFUL LOVED-LOVED EVERY PAGE OF IT BEST THING I EVER READ" to "OMG BEST BOOK EVER WONDERFUL LOVED EVERY PAGE OF IT BEST THING I EVER READ". The sentence before the edit does not properly convey how much I still loved the books.) I enjoy world building, learning new things about a new world slowly, piece by piece, character by character a lot more than I enjoy the plotty parts. In a trilogy, most of the first book is often world building, then the plot kicks in in the last third and through the next two books. I like that first part best, when you know so little and everything is new.

While this book is marketed as a YA book, there is no way in hell that I would describe it that way. Such serious, violent, dark (sort of -- the kind of dark normal humans in bad situations might do), human things happened! I loved morals/theme of the book: That people have a hard time changing. If you live a violent life, you'll likely die a violent death. That the older you get, the harder change is. That anyone, adults included, can make bad decisions. (I almost didn't want to mention the moral of the story, because it wasn't in your face at all, it's just impossible for me not to think about it now as I look back on the story.)

I wish I could describe the plot. I wish I could describe even just the setting! But everything is a spoiler. (I'd highly suggest you don't even read the summary on Amazon. Going into it totally blind is the best way to experience this book!)

I'm so depressed I'm done with it. Even the aliens were so human! I swear, I've never met such realistically human characters in a book before. So perfectly flawed. So grey (non-black/white). When a "good" character did a bad act, his resulting behavior was so painful and believable.

I'm dying to see how they'll make it into a movie. If the Hunger Games books weren't being handled so well, I'd be afraid of how they'd ruin this trilogy. I really, really hope it gets a similar treatment!

If you buy one book based on my reviews, I'd suggest it be this one (er, the first one of this series). I know it's hard to buy a book without knowing anything about it, but I bet you'll love it. :) And if you do pick it up? Please let me know what you think!

1) I got heat in my apartment. After a cold weekend, this afternoon they got it working. Darned good thing I live in California and not somewhere really cold.

2) The change in gyms was lest costly than I thought it would be! Turns out the Y has a 30 day money back guarantee! So I got a $70 refund for the month of membership (though I still had to pay the initial $160 membership fee). Plus the new gym gave me three free weeks to make up for the Y, which comes out to about... $30-something dollars.

I'm going to go swimming there tomorrow. I really hope it works out. It's going to be a wonderful thing to be able to go anytime or day I want, instead of having to go during a brief window a couple times a week. (The place is open 24/7, so really, anytime I want.)

Oddly there's no life guard for the pool. I can swim just fine, but still, that's a little worrying.

3) I finished book #45 for the year. The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, book two) by Patrick Ness. A good book, but not as good as the first one. Two POV characters instead of one is really dampening my enjoyment of it. The POV changes between them as frequently as every paragraph (with a header over each paragraph). Having two POVs in the same room/scene looking at the same thing just doesn't work for me.

I'll post a better review after the third and final book, which I'm reading now.

4) Bonus item! Had doctor appointment today, she was very happy with my bloodwork numbers. One day soon I will post a write-up of medical stuff, but I keep dragging my feet on it...

Two books: One I only got a chapter or two into, so it doesn't count towards the 50/year. The second I reached the halfway point, so that one counts.

It feels like I'm in a downward spiral with my books. I can't remember the last one I liked or finished. With each of the books below, I picked it because I thought it would break that trend.

Survivors by Erin Hunter.

A couple years ago I read books by this same "author" (pen name for a collection of writers). The Warrior Cats books. Very simple plots, but they were about talking cats and the characters/worldbuilding was interesting enough, so I read maybe 20 of them. Eventually the plots started going in a cycle (the same exact plot happened with each new generation of cats), so I gave up on the series. When I saw the author-group came out with a new series about talking dogs, I thought it would be just the thing to break my series of bad books. I knew it wouldn't be wonderful writing or challenging at all, but I thought it would be entertaining enough.

Unfortunately I hated it. I didn't buy the dogs as dogs. I didn't like the worldbuilding. The plot made no sense: the world ended in a giant earthquake (a "big growl"), and all humans ("longpaws") were now dead. But there was only one single body in a whole entire city... I understand it's a book for young people, but let's be reasonable here. The dogs should NOT be starving in the city, they should be feasting on the dead bodies. (The dogs were all previously feral, so had no emotional ties to people.)

The writing felt lazy. "Longpaws" for humans was the best term they used (and I use "best" loosely). The Sun Dog lived in the sky, the Earth Dog lived in the ground, every name was -Dog. Yes they're dogs, but it would have been easy to be more creative.

I forced myself through a couple chapters before giving up.

A string of young adult books had failed me, so I decided to go as far in the opposite direction as I could for my next one:

The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke.
Book #43.

I had not read anything by him before, but I knew he wrote very sciencey science fiction. Great! I love learning things while I read! And I keep meaning to get back to reading more scifi and less fantasy! Plus it seemed like I really should read something from him, since he's such a Big Name.

I did like Songs a lot at first. The first quarter of the book was nicely science-heavy, but soon enough that fell away and was replaced by nothing but characters I felt nothing for and relationships I didn't care about.

I did something I've never done before: I went to wiki to see if the plot would change again. I usually hate spoilers, but I didn't want to force myself through reading the second half of the book if I wouldn't enjoy it. It sounded like it would be more of the same, so I gave up on it.

I had been doing so well in the beginning of the year -- I was certain I'd reach 50 well before the end of it, but now it's not looking so good. I keep telling myself my count really isn't important; I'm posting here instead of in 50bookchallenge because I'm not officially taking the challenge. Two months left to read seven books, so basically a book a week. That's very unlikely to happen. :/

In the continuing list of unexpected things halted by the US government shutdown: Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch TV series. The ships are stuck in dock because quotas are set by furloughed workers. The ship captains are paying $1,000 per day (for insurance, food, etc) while waiting for this to end. The show isn't being filmed and one of the captains went to Washington to testify about how the shutdown is harming the industry.

In general movie news: For a long time I thought I wasn't going to movies because they were too expensive. Which they are, but then I discovered a cheap theater nearby, and I still didn't go. A movie I really wanted to see (Pacific Rim) was played there and I still didn't go.

Today I watched it in the comfort of my home, and realized I'm just not a going-to-the-movies person. I really, really liked Pacific Rim, but man I can't sit and watch something for two hours straight. I got up multiple times to do other things, including a hot shower in the middle of it (I was freezing!) and a load of laundry. The idea of seeing a movie in the theater, where you'll miss part of it (and likely disturb everyone around you) if you have to get up to go to the bathroom... I'm just happier at home where I can pause it at will. I think it would have been an amazing movie on a giant screen, but I enjoyed it on the small one, too.

One of the reasons I wanted to see it was that people said it was really slashy. I didn't really see that at all. The framework of the story could be used for it (and has, there's a fun Pacific Rim/Avengers fic out there). But the story as-is? Maybe the scientist dudes, at the very most.

And speaking of science dudes, I hate to say this, but I'm getting bored with Agents of SHIELD. Oh I like Coulson, but I wish the rest of the team would get sucked out of the plane. I hate Skye more every time I see her (and she's in every damned scene). I hate the male lead character whatever the hell his name is. The two science geeks are meh. The pilot lady seems fine, but she doesn't have that much of a personality yet. It's sad because I really, really want to like the show. What's sadder: I hear the ratings aren't that good. I don't want it to be canceled! Just fixed!

And lastly, I got offered an interesting sounding book to review, so I'm going to give up on stupid vampire name book for a while. (Or forever. I rarely get back to a book if I move on to something else.) Mind Bond. In it a very few people become "Interspecies Telepaths" and bond with an animal. Sounds like just the kind of story I'd like.

Sekret by Lindsay Smith.
(Book received for free for review from Macmillan Publishing Group.)

This may sound looking gift horse in the mouth-ish, but when a publisher offers a book for review, I wish they'd include what format it's in.

Sekret sounded like a really interesting book. The summary:

Yulia's father always taught her to hide her thoughts and control her emotions to survive the harsh realities of Soviet Russia. But when she's captured by the KGB and forced to work as a psychic spy with a mission to undermine the U.S. space program, she's thrust into a world of suspicion, deceit, and horrifying power. Yulia quickly realizes she can trust no one--not her KGB superiors or the other operatives vying for her attention--and must rely on her own wits and skills to survive in this world where no SEKRET can stay hidden for long.

I've become more and more interested in Russian things (100% of the thanks/blame for that goes to loupnoir :) ). Set in Russia, and lack of trust should have made for interesting character interactions. The psychic element could be hit or miss, but I was interested enough to give this book a try.

Unfortunately it came in .acsm format. .acsm is Adobe Digital Edition, which means you can only open it in a controlled Adobe program -- only on your computer, not on your ereader. That's a problem for me as I do not read books on my computer. I sit at my computer all day at work, I sit at it all evening doing other stuff. Reading is my time to get away from my desk. If I had known its format, I would have respectfully turned the book down.

But, like I said, it sounded like an interesting plot and I did agree to review it, so I tried. I massaged it as best I could, then moved it onto my iPad. The results were basically unreadable.

A bad page and a "good" page:


What I could read of it seemed good; I'll happily buy it once it's available as an ebook. I had to give up in the second chapter, it was just too hard to read, so it'll be new-to-me when I purchase it.

Book #41: Dark Lover by J.R. Ward

This book. Oh this book. So bad, yet so very good. There was so much wrong with the book (most of it mentioned in my previous post about it), but I loved it. I have no idea how that works. I'm ashamed of myself for enjoying it as much as I did.

The problems were so many. Names were perhaps the biggest one. The vampire names were awful (Rhage, Zsadist, Dhestroyer, Vishous, and Phury), but the bad guy's name was worse. Mr. X. Okay, so all the bad guys get letter names, and the main character JUST HAPPENS to get X, the best "Mr. (letter)" name to be. (Edit: Wait, no, Mr. T would be even better!) I would have respected the author so much more if he had been Mr. I, Mr. B, Mr. Y, Mr. U -- any not-so-cool letter.

There were other big issues, like that it was the men (or "males" as the book annoyingly called them) who did everything, and the women ("females") just cowered in hidden away places and wore nice dresses and were there for their males to feed off of (literally, the males sucked their blood to live) and/or have sex with them. When the males weren't having sex with human females.

So how in the world did I enjoy it? I have no idea. I think the author stumbled upon some secret formula, because somehow she made me love these characters. I even got used to the god awful stupid names.

I just can't explain it. I thought of the story all the time. At work, driving, all I wanted to do was get home so I could read. And I swear, I grinned nonstop as I read, from cover to cover I grinned, interspaced with giggles and toe-curlings. I think something must be wrong with me. Send help! Just don't send it too soon, I'm about to start the second book...

Other than a short period in high school, I've never read romance books. In truth, I now mentally scoffed at them. As it's been decades since I last read one, I'm aware I could be off-base in looking down on them, but I've never been curious enough to read one and see if I needed to revise my opinion.

A while back my To Read pile was getting small, so I was looking at recommendations and reviews. Someone posted a review of Dark Lover (Black Dagger Brotherhood, Book 1), and there were a lot more comments left than usual, so I read through them. Seemed everyone either LOVED that series or hated it endlessly. It sounded interesting though, so warily I bought a copy.

Why warily? It's about vampires. While I haven't read Twilight, I've read enough reviews and live readings of it to feel burned on the whole vampire genre.

And so the book sat in my To Read pile, getting further and further buried. Sometimes I have to just randomly pick a book from the bottom, otherwise I'll never get around to the oldest ones. Over the weekend, I did that, and came up with Dark Lover.

I almost gave up on the book before it began. I've mentioned before how much I enjoy it when an author trusts their readers enough to not lay out every detail of the world and plot right from the start. This book did the polar opposite of that: Before the story it had a many-paged glossary of terms, words, and phrases used in that world. ARG! No! Bad author! No cookie! If you must use other words for things, use them in a way that explains the meaning as part of the story! If I wrote:

I know most people don't like mossroot, but it's good for you, so I have it with dinner a couple times a week. Plus, it grows like weeds around here.

You may not know exactly what mossroot is, but you know enough for the story! You can get plenty of details out that way! /froth /froth

Anyway. Surprisingly I'm liking the story. A lot. The glossary isn't the author's only sin (her characters are named things like Rhage, Zsadist, Dhestroyer, Vishous, and Phury, which makes me froth at the mouth ARG THERE BETTER BE A GOOD IN-WORLD REASON FOR THEM USING STUPIDLY MISSPELLED NAMES*!), but still. It's one of those books I think about during the times I'm not able to read, wishing I could get back to it.

Her writing style is very familiar. It reminds me a lot of fanfic (which is ironic, since she's one of those anti-fanfic writers). Her writing feels like it comes from LJ or some other blog site. It surprises me how comfortable and familiar a style can seem -- the author feels like she's one of us. (Which, again, ironic that she's anti-fanfic.)

In googling to find if she had previously written fanfic, I found out Dark Lover was classified as a paranormal romance. Ack! I would never have guessed! There's been no romance at all so far... (One sex scene, but no romance at all, the two were strangers. Oh, and one attempted rape scene, but that of course is the other end of the spectrum from romance.)

I'm only about a third of the way into it, but if it keeps up as it's going, it's going to get quite the positive review from me.

* I skipped reading the glossary, so if the reason for the misspelled names is in there, I'm going to laugh at myself. Also, dear author, I'm reading your book just fine having skipped it, so please leave it out from now on? Trust your readers, we're not stupid!