Some more of what I’ve been reading

Since I last posted about my reading in early July, I've read another twenty-four books. I'm up to 63 in total for the year (three of which are re-reads, so don't count for the annual total). In May, I posted that I was reading so well I thought I'd get well into the 60s and maybe even past 70.  Now, who knows – 100 perhaps?

There's only been one book that I haven't finished. It was an urban fantasy and after about ten pages, I couldn't go on. The world-building just wasn't good enough to my mind – things were happening already just to make the story easier. I put it down and moved on.

I've not finished Dracula yet, although I'm not going to give up on it. I think I need a couple of days in which to sink into it and finish it as it's not the easy read of say most urban fantasy or romance, which has been a lot of what I've been reading.

I read my first BFF in quite a while in August – Russell Kirkpatrick's Husk trilogy. I was finding it hard going, until Tansy Rayner Roberts posted that she was having to remember to let herself sink into BFF in order to read it properly. Once I did that, the trilogy screamed along and I finished all three books in a week.

Favourite books since July 12 (when I last posted)

* Madigan Mine by Kirstin McDermott – absolutely loved this book, beautifully written, enticing, thought-provoking

* Scent of Shadows by Vicki Pettersson – book three of the Signs of the Zodiac. I love how Vicki is ramping up the tension not just within a book but within the series – really well done

* Death Most Definite by Trent Jamieson – a really original take on urban fantasy and I loved the anti-heroness of the protagonist, Stephen.

* Stardust by Neil Gaiman – picked up one of the signed copies from Kinokuniya and devoured it, just love how I could hear Gaiman's voice in my mind as I read it and also from the point of view of adaptations, working out how and why they changed things for the movie

* Bleed by Peter M Ball – sequel to Horn and another fantastic read, thankfully not as squicky as the first one

* Kitty's House of Horrors by Carrie Vaughn – grabbed this in Melbourne when I met Carrie and really enjoyed it, was able to get into the story and the characters even though not the first book of the series and the tension build really nicely

* Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond – read as research for Battle for Odana and gave me a lot of food for thought.