Lara > Recent Status Updates

Tip: one of the very few genres where it's okay to have an "as you know, Bob" infodump is alternate history. Please offer me a Powerpoint presentation on how a slight alteration in just how the Titanic sank led to Japanese-occupied NYC, a second secession of the South, and a passing mention of Anne Frank's novels. Then you can have all the fun you like with your spy derring-do.

Holy mother of *thud*, the sexual tension in this book is off the charts. It helps that the protagonists are married (if mad at each other), so literally the only thing keeping them from tearing each others' clothes off is their rapidly-eroding self-control.

I'd forgotten how *happy* these books make me. Being back with Nita and Kit and Dair is like meeting old friends.

Holy everything, there is snark and razor-sharp dialogue and slavery and political maneuvering and culture clash and sexual tension so thick I'm not entirely sure it can be cut with a knife. BRB, I have to go buy the next two books RIGHT NOW.

Okay, I'm invested, I want to find out what happens. However, I think I may have guessed what's happened, since one of Allanon's druidic powers is apparently being Lord of Foreshadowing. Also, there is literally no humor in this book. Everything is deadly serious. I know the demons may be coming to destroy everything, etc, but can't two pretty young people banter a little?

Dear Terry Brooks, I tried twice to read The Sword of Shannara and just couldn't. This book is already better, but you can stop slathering flavor text all over everything and layering on foreshadowing.

Heroine's first act of the book was to shove her cheating brother-in-law into a koi pond, then refer to him as "a boor--and something else that rhymes with boor" in the middle of a giant house party. Whatever else may happen, Heroine, I LOVE YOU.

Heroine, you are in a Gothic horror of a house on a blasted heath twelve miles from nowhere, full of old people with "feral" eyes who are all so delighted to have you here at last, child, and you just woke up with a mysterious sexy guy in your room saying he's been waiting for you for thirty years. YOU IN DANGER GIRL GET OUT NOW.

Here we go. Looks like it's going to be a marriage of convenience for the sake of getting a child away from an abusive ex--because of course all a family court judge requires to modify custody is that a kid have two parents and live in a picturesque small town in Oregon.

Got this unexpectedly from the library and had to start reading it right away!

Why oh why do I have to go back to work instead of finishing this book?

The protagonist is Scarlett O'Hara/Elle Woods with superpowers. I...had no idea how much I needed this. *reads happily*

I will now pause in the plow through the library pile for my annual rereading of "Hogfather". HO. HO. HO.

Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are three of my favorite novels...but every time I read any take on how horrible the Bronte sisters' lives were at Cowan Bridge School, I just want to hug them and tell them I can live without Jane and Cathy and Heathcliff and Helen--I just want you girls to grow up and be *happy*. And in the case of Mariah and Elizabeth Bronte, to be *alive*. *sobs*

Halfway through the book, and all I can picture is both Simon and Baz's beds having giant portraits of the other hanging over them, with a banner beneath saying "NEMESIS" a la Kate Beaton. This is a ship-tease worthy of "Supernatural".

Pausing in my routine plow through my library stack to reread Bear and Monette's "A Companion to Wolves" and "The Tempering of Men" before diving gleefully into the long-awaited "An Apprentice to Elves". I love my gay/bi vikings with their giant telepathic wolves and sarcastic kickass elf/blacksmith allies.

This is the dorkiest, goofiest romance I've read in a long time, and it's just what I needed this week. Maddie Gracechurch, stealth cuddler and heroine with social anxiety, is my new favorite person.

This is everything I never knew I always wanted, and I love it so much.

Finished "The Thin Man". A lot lighter and more fun than "The Maltese Falcon"--although lord, I'm surprised Nick and Nora have any semblance of livers left to them.

Spacing myself and alternating Hammett with other books because I think if I read all three in a row, I'd become the sourest misanthrope on the planet.

The problem with books like this is that I've added 12 more books to my to-read list, with notes to re-read at least four more. And I still have 200 pages to go...

There's just enough of a gap between these books that I mostly forget how much I love them...then I start reading the newest and find myself grinning at each new chapter.

Annnnd there's the crushing agony, right on schedule. Nobody purees your heart quite like Elizabeth Wein.

Must remember not to read E. Wein at work. While reading over lunch, I said "You precious babies, I love you both so much and you are going to break my heart" out loud, and my boss said "What?" very confusedly from her office. Also, INTERRACIAL BISEXUAL PILOT GIRLFRIEND PARENTS.

It's a hybrid of The Hunger Games and Red Rising, and by all rights should be derivative...but it's very readable, and Mare's narrative voice makes me grin. Guess I'm adding another dystopian series to the reading list.

Well, on page 48 and already the adorable child, big protective dog, and anxious-woman-on-the-run-who-doesn't-know-how-beautiful-she-is have been introduced. Definitely a Catherine Anderson novel.

This book is very good, but also very disturbing. The heroine has twice been forced to submit to something she does *not* want to do, explicitly saying "NO" the entire time until she's unable. It's difficult to read without flinching, and I think it could be triggering for some people.

Well, one chapter in and I am already freaked the hell out.

Rereading for the umpteenth time. I'd forgotten just how good this book is!