Group Reading Log: August 2008

as requested, a new Group Reading Log for the new month :)

I'm currently reading The Memory Room and enjoying it more than I expected to ('literature' makes me nervous)

And after a month of erratic bedtimes I'm still reading Flush to my kids (six chapters/three nights to go)

I'm reading Pardonable Lies which is the third Maisie Dobbs mystery by Jacqueline Winspear. I've read them out of order (one, four, three) and it doesn't really matter much EXCEPT that I think it's important to read number one first as it gives all the background to how she got where she is etc. After that it doesn't matter so much. Am enjoying this one more than the other two so far - less back story etc.

If you are not familiar with Maisie, her card will tell you that she is a "Psychologist and Investigator" working in London between the two world wars. Something different.

Thanks freelunch. :) I was thinking of starting it myself, only, well, work got in the way. (How dare it! ;)

I finished Sorry on the bus home, and found it very moving, even if I was a bit disappointed in the ending. But so beautiful overall, it's still recommended. (Although don't read it in parallel with The Book Thief, as both are about young girls during WW2 and I managed to keep on getting Liesel and Perdita and their families all muddled!)

I then dived into J is for Judgment which has been on my really-MUST-read list for far too long (I got sent about 7 Sue Grafton novels last November from a mostly-absent bookcrosser, and it's a bit daunting, having so many at once).

Mr Bear & I are also started How to Speak Dragonese by Cressida Cowell, and he's a bit confused that there's no Chinese in it (he's learning Mandarin at Kindi this year, and hasn't quite grasped that there are *other* other languages).

Crimson-tide, the Maisie Dobbs mysteries sound like fun! I every now and then dip into the Amelia Peabody mysteries (by Elizabeth Peters) which is about Miss Peabody, running around Egypt in the 19th century, outwitting baddies and digging up mummies and being very dismissive of men. Huge fun.

My son (9) has been reading the Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III books (How To Speak Dragonese, etc.) on and off - I've given him the first 3 or 4 so far and he's enjoyed them.

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III was recommended by a mate of mine who has read all the books and passed them on to children of her best friend (and said kids devoured them as well).

I think the humour might be going over Mr Bear's head a bit. :)

Oh, and at the cafe today I picked up a copy of Go Ask Alice because I've got that "I read banned books" bracelet and it's got cover art from GAA, so I thought I'd better get around to reading it. Read the first few diary entries while the kids ran amok. (It's a good cafe, they let parents and kids have the upstairs with the bookshelves and lots of toys and cushions, and they do excellent breakfasts and a number of child-friendly dishes too.)

finished (and thoroughly enjoyed) The Memory Room. my copy is now travelling as a bookring and is still open to additional participants if anyone would like to read it.

next up: Things The Grandchildren Should Know (which will also be travelling as a bookring shortly)

I'm reading Living, my third Henry Green novel in faithful accordance with the 1001 list. Unfortunately it's the first Green I've really enjoyed - I've finally learned to slow down the reading voice in my head so that I can actually appreciate his dialogue (of which there is a lot!). Never mind, there are three more Greens on the list :)

Other than that, I am spending my alleged free time going through my English Extension 2 students' major works (short stories of 6000 to 8000 words) as submission date looms... wonderful, wonderful, but painstaking reading.Their topics range from cyborg existentialism to pomo gothic and an appropriation of Lolita(!).

Hey, wookiebender - I'm jealous! Love that "banned books" bracelet!

Now finished Pardonable Lies and enjoyed it as much as the other two I've read of the series. Started really well, but tended to lag a bit towards the end, and you need to play your "suspend belief" card occasionally. A good read though.

Next up is The Children of Men by P.D. James, which I'm reading for freelunch for the "Make Me Read It - Australia Only" relay.

finished Things The Grandchildren Should Know and it is absolutely marvellous - I'm sending it out as a bookring this week and I strongly recommend it to everyone!

next up: Twilight - now that the series is complete I'll give the first one a go, if I don't like it I'm sure my daughter will...

Ah, finished the ever-delightful Kinsey Millhone mystery J is for Judgement. And then realised there was a major plot point that was never resolved. Hey! But, still, always like those books.

crimson-tide, I don't think you'll be disappointed in The Children of Men! Quite different from the movie, but a fascinating read. I devoured that one last year.

And freelunch, I am tempted by Things The Grandchildren Should Know, only I think it might be a keeper, so I might just buy it on my own and save the postage costs. (Makes sense to me. ;) And deense (sort-of bookcrosser) on her blog panned the Stephanie Meyers series so mercilessly I don't think I'll ever be able to look at them at the bookshop again. "Fanfic gone feral".

I (sort of) started Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin this morning on the bus. (An old Uni mate is currently working around the corner from me, so not much reading, and quite a bit of chatting happened instead.) Another 1001 book!

freelunch, I'd like to hear what you think about Twilight. It's all the rage at school & the kids were almost doing backflips when we ordered in a class set for study. But... well, I'll reserve my opinion till you've read it, but I think deense (message 10) may have a point...

Still reading Living for pleasure but have also added Catcher in the Rye for school & am absolutely loving teaching it.

And in my complete inability to focus on any one book, I finally started Storm Front by Jim Butcher last night (I bought it as a staff-recommended book from my local fab bookshop a few weeks back and have been dying to start it ever since).

It's rather fun, think contemporary crime with magic and supernatural, and he's a freelance wizard helping the police with their creepier murder investigations. It's got that fun sassy feel to his comments (think Kinsey Millhone et al), an interesting plot with lots of backstory to explore, but the gender politics are a bit old-fashioned for me (but at least our hero agrees, and it is amusing watching him run with the (female) detective he's working with to see who can get to the door first and open it). Hopefully he'll stop being such a "gentleman" in later books...

Twilight initial impressions: has the feel of a manga (Kare Kano to be precise). I like Bella, Edward is a manga cliche and the cast of school chums are too one-dimensional (after only 100 pages) to judge.

I know I'm not the _target audience and I'm sure my daughter will love it, but as there is clearly SEX happening at some point (and I don't think Bella is the type to do it in the first book) I'm going to have to read the rest of the series to see how it is handled before passing it on to my impressionable twelve-year-old.

freelunch, I read a couple of the LT reviews of Breaking Dawn, the recently released final (fourth) book of the series. The reviews are all over the 'Hot Reviews' column and I have no intention of reading the whole series so didn't worry about spoiler alerts. I did read Twilight a while ago to see what all the fuss was about and decided that was enough for me (unless book 2 just happily landed in my lap of course *lol*).

I understand that SEX doesn't actually happen as such until the fourth book. I may be wrong, but this would fit with Stephanie Meyer's philosophy and world view etc etc (she is a practicing Mormon). So there's lots going on in the subtext about restraint and abstinence without any overtly religious 'stuff'.

>14 crimson-tide: Thanks, I figured it probably wasn't happening anytime soon.

I'll see how I feel about continuing once I finish the first book. with so many people loving the series I can probably find out for sure if there's any sex before book four - if not I may just need to read that one.

(not that I'm naive enough to think my daughter can't borrow books with adult content from the public library, but if I'm going to give her such a book I want to be aware of the message it sends)

...and I finished reading Flush to my family tonight, our next read-aloud book will be Sick Building

Quitting Twilight - I'm halfway through and I can't bear to spend another minute with Bella and Edward. I'm sure my daughter will like them.

next up: Newton's Wake (chosen for its probable dearth of teens-in-lurve)

And I just finished Storm Front and do recommend it as a fun read in supernatural crime (with a good sense of humour). I shall be buying the next in the series, next chance I get.

I'll probably start next Driving over Lemons which I owe to livrecache from the Oz VBB...

Jim Butcher's books have caught my eye several times in a bookstore (ouch!), but I've never remembered to research them when I got home - I think next time I might have to grab Storm Front.

freelunch - I thought Twilight's better half was its first, so looks like you quit at the right time!

I've just started The Hobbit - my very first Tolkien, I am ashamed to say. Oh well, better late than never!

I read The Hobbit to my kids a few years ago - I found the prose awkward to read aloud but I think they enjoyed it. I hadn't read it previously since I was a teenager.

Finished The Children of Men this morning. It's a powerful story, and very different from her usual. I'd forgotten what a good writer she is. I think that it's a pity she didn't write more books outside the 'murder mystery' genre. I didn't realise it had been made into a film until you mentioned it, wookiebender.

Next up is Ten Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino. It's one of my October 'Books by the Numbers' books and should be a quickie.

Hey crimson-tide, the movie of Children of Men is really quite excellent, I do highly recommend it. (With the proviso that it's a very visceral movie, quite violent. But *excellently* done.)

I just registered Ten Italian Folktales for the challenge too! I was wondering if I was going to read it first... Had dinner at my parents' place tonight and ended up walking out with a fruit box filled with trashy thriller novels from Dad. I might be spending a bit of time registering, and not much time reading for the next while!

And speaking of The Hobbit, I was thinking of reading it to Mr Bear (after we finished The Secret Garden) and got shouted down for it being too wordy and slow. So we chose the silly Viking story instead (and Dragonese for fart is "botti crackers" or "buttock thunder" or "smelly breezer", so my linguistic skills are getting a workout, and Mr Bear canNOT stop laughing...). I'm kinda regretting not at least trying The Hobbit first now.

Ten Italian Folktales was indeed quick, and fun. Do read it, wookiebender - it's only 85 itty bitty pages after all. Some of the stories had the occasional 'interesting' turn of phrase that made me laugh out loud. Not sure if these were intentional or not, or were the result of the retelling of the tale or the translation of the retelling. A bit like Chinese whispers perhaps!

Next is The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble which is for our bookclub. I've only read one other of hers (The Witch of Exmoor, which was also for bookclub) and her style irritated me so much that I vowed and declared I'd never touch another! Oh well. This time the 50 page rule will be applied; which in itself will be difficult for me as I find it really incredibly hard not to finish a book once I've started. Has anyone else read it?

I've never read Margaret Drabble. I believe my Mum has, and I get the impression they're a bit heavy and bleak. Which is probably why I've never looked at them, I do like my fluff. :)

Speaking of which, we took yesterday off work, dropped the kids off at their respective school/day care, then went into the city, stuffed ourselves STOOPID at yum cha, then hit King's Comics (best comic shop in Sydney). Mr TQD snaffled "Wanted" (he's been intrigued by the ads for the movie adaptation) and I picked up the second Books of Magic graphic novel. Only ten years after buying the first one. Ah. That does happen some times, a looooong gap between books. I started reading it on the bus home, then when I got home, picked up the first and devoured it (better than I remembered!), and now I'm halfway through the newly purchased second volume, Summonings.

I remember stalling on this series because it wasn't as good as the fabulous Sandman series by Neil Gaiman (the first Books of Magic was written by Gaiman, and the rest have been written by John Ney Rieber). After enjoying it so much yesterday though, I really need to re-read my Sandman graphic novels and rediscover their brillance! And it's all LibraryThing's fault, since they're the first books to hand when I decided the other week to catalogue ALL the books in my house (less than 4000 I think, freelunch!). Now I can see gaps in my collection, and I want to re-read some, and...

Which means I've gotten not much further on the bookrings/OzVBB books I really should be reading. Oh dear, I'm a bad bookcrosser this week.

(But yayayayayayayayay! for John Constantine and Dream!)

Reading Sandman for the first time is going to be my Christmas treat - I've bought the first three "absolute edition" omnibii and the fourth should be out sometime soon.

I've released 927 of the 4,034 books I have catalogued, so you might yet catch up to me :)

Oh, I *drooled* all over those "absolute editions" yesterday. Most plush. :)

But I do refuse to re-buy books, unless I *know* my original copy is well and truly lost. So I shall just have to drool over the copies in the bookshops...

I was quite intrigued to find out that I don't actually own the first Sandman book! I must've borrowed it at the time. I really do have a terribly patchy collection which must be remedied. (And, to paraphrase the eternal Homer's "does whiskey count as beer?": "do graphic novels count as books?". And I shall answer "No! Well, okay, yes, but not if I'm not allowed to buy any more books, then they shall be classified as comics, so I can buy them". Ah, I can't even keep to my own rules. :)

The only Drabble I've read was The Witch of Exmoor. I lent it to a friend, who dropped it in the bath. That about says it all, really.

Speaking of Gaiman, has anyone read The Tragical Comedy, or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch? It's an amazing picture book - not for the kiddies, but amazing nevertheless.

I haven't read Mr Punch, I heard it was terribly violent and have a fairly low tolerance for violence. (With many exceptions to the rule, however.) I wouldn't mind reading it, but might see if I can track down a library copy first in case I really don't like it.

Finished Summonings and realised that the whole Books of Magic thing is confused in my mind. Neil Gaiman wrote the first, then there's a whole series written by John Ney Rieber, starting with something that's #1, and then Summonings which is #2. Oh well, another trip to King's in my near future (yayayayay!) to find this mysterious #1 in the series, and I'm glad I'm not as fussy about reading things out of order as I used to be. :)

And only a few pages to go on Goodbye to Berlin. Should have finished it this morning, but the buses actually ran efficiently (!!!) so my reading time was pared down by 15 minutes. I'm never entirely sure if I'm happy when buses run well or not.

finished Newton's Wake by Ken MacLeod, the first new (to me) hard sci-fi I've read in years. When I could follow it I enjoyed it, though I lost the plot for several pages more than once - but that may have been my failing and not the author's.

next up: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Finished Goodbye to Berlin and thought it was very good, in that whole atmospheric sort of way. Bought and reading Bindings which is the first Books of Magic in the series. Filled a few holes in the plot between the Gaiman book and Summonings. Finished Driving over Lemons which was quite charming.

I now have a large pile of books all bundled up and ready for the post office. :) (Freelunch, I'll send you an email to confirm, but all my Oz VBB books should be in the post this lunchtime.)

I have since picked up The 158 Pound Marriage by John Irving, L is for Lawless by Sue Grafton, and The Last Temptation by Nikos Kazantzakis. The first was donated to my Books By The Numbers release challenge by servalan (and I thought I might read a few more books I wild release this year, and I've never read any Irving before). The second is a bookring that's been languishing at home for far too long (I got about 7 Sue Graftons all turning up in the one parcel, and it's been a bit daunting starting them). And the last book is a bookring, one of the 1001 books you must read before you die (no pressure) list. It's a bit hard going so far, being a confirmed atheist and it's all about Jesus (too much assumed knowledge), and a nasty headcold isn't helping. But I think I was getting into the swing of it when my bus arrived at my bus stop.

The Seven Sisters turned out to be be much more enjoyable than I'd expected. Very different style and attitude from the other one of hers which put me off so much before.

Now for some light relief with Cairo Jim and the Sunken Sarcophagus of Sekheret by Geoffrey McSkimming.

> McSkimming

sounds like a quick read :oP

> McSkimming

It *should* be a very quick read, but there is always so much else that seems to get in the damn way here! lol

btw freelunch, 'The Children of Men' will be in the post for you on Monday.

thanks, as will Dearly Devoted Dexter for you (I'll finish it before I turn in tonight) - lots of fun, though I had to visit Wikipedia to remind myself of the differences between the end of the first book and the end of the first season of the TV series.

next up for me: Something More

Cairo Jim was a quick one, as expected. Silly but fun.
Next up is We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which is a 1001 bookring. Looks interesting. The touchstone thingy for this book doesn't want to work properly though.

Re Dexter on TV: unfortunately we haven't been able to watch this series on TV here in the country - WIN Television in their wisdom decided not to schedule it.

Edited to try to get the link to work, but it refuses. It consistently takes you to an Ayn Rand book. Could be worse I guess.

OK, now it's working thanks to wookiebender's help below.

To get those touchstones to work, select the "others" to the right of the touchstone info. Then you'll get a list of all the works that should be relevant. Choose the right one, and voila!

But if you go back in to edit, you'll get reset to the default book (in this case, an Ayn Rand). We for me should link to the Yevgeny Zntayin book.

No Dexter on TV?? The Horror!!

We're country too but our TV reception is so poor that we don't even bother - I wait for the DVD sets to go on sale :o)

Thanks for that wookiebender. Don't know why I didn't see that!

Ah, I'm quite addicted to Dexter on TV. I found the books a bit too disturbing however. (Still, I am still reading them.) Was too tired/headcoldy to watch it last night though, so have a nice treat for tonight. (Fast-forwarding through ads is the only way to watch tv anyhow. :) We have talked about buying the DVDs, but I keep on spending my money on books...

Oooh, and Doctor Who with Agatha Christie. I'm looking forward to catching up on that one too! (And last week's Dr Who. I seem to spend a lot of time recording TV, but not much time actually watching it!)

Back onto books: finished L is for Lawless last night, and it was another enjoyable Kinsey Millhone mystery. Will probably start the third Amelia Peabody mystery tonight (The Mummy Case), it's been tempting me from the top of Mt TBR for far too long now.

I'm abandoning Something More - Paul Cornell wrote two of my favourite (Doctor Who) novels, Love and War and Human Nature, and I've been saving his 'original' work as a treat. Sadly Something More seriously failed the '50 page test' for me.

moving on to A Brother's Price as I need good sci-fi/fantasy books to release myself from a VBB I'm stuck in. I've not yet read Wen Spencer but I've heard good things about her work and I've been saving this book as a treat too. I hope it works out that way this time...

The only Wen Spencer I've read is Tinker, which I thoroughly enjoyed. In fact it was a bookray of yours freelunch. I'm hanging out for you to read it and then Wolf Who Rules, so you can send that one out on a ray too.
;-)

A Brother's Price is fabulous! definite bookring material, though my copy will go in my wife's TBR stack once I'm done with it (from whence it may not return anytime soon)

I gave up on The 158-Pound Marriage, it was just too boring. I even sat next to the SysAdminFromHell on the bus the way home so I could have an excuse to not read!!! That's real desperation, he's a complete oxygen thief. So, needing a new book on the way home, I popped into Galaxy Bookshop and bought Tinker. It's all your fault, freelunch and crimson-tide! :)

A couple of chapters into it, and she doesn't let up, does she? Should be a fun bus read for the next few commutes. (The 1001 bookrings can go hang until my headcold is completely gone.)

you're welcome :o)

I tried to read The 158 Pound Marriage many years ago and couldn't get into it, ditto for Setting Free the Bears -- but I did enjoy Irving's The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire and especially The Cider House Rules (all of which I think I read before seeing the film adaptations)

Mr TQD loves The World According To Garp, so I really must read that one!! And I've got a copy of The Cider House Rules on the TBR pile. I've also heard good things about The Hotel New Hampshire.

So I haven't given up on Irving, just on The 158-Pound Marriage. :)

Enjoying Tinker in the meantime (and The Mummy Case), although I do wish this headcold would just Go Away. (How funny, the Touchstones are insisting that The Mummy Case was written by Barbara Mertz, not Elizabeth Peters. And I've checked all the options! Oh well. Maybe she changed her name overnight or something. ;)

finished A Brother's Price - my first Wen Spencer. I was expecting Fantasy and I got Romance but it is fast paced with likable characters and an amusing premise. very highly recommended (this copy is going into my wife's TBR stack)

next up: Quiet Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian

still reading Quiet Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian and enjoying it, but I feel the need for a novel so I'm starting on Ingenious Pain

I seem to be abandoning a lot of books lately, and Ingenious Pain just became the latest. I made it to the end of Part Three (of eight) without finding anything to like about it.

Here on librarything it has a bunch of high ratings, but the written reviews mostly reflect my sentiments.

I'll be sending it on to someone who wants it, I hope they get more from it than I have...

Finished We yesterday. Shouldn't have taken me so long to read but real life got in the way last week. Strange book, and a bit disjointed; obviously didn't grab me that much or even with the RL happenings I would have been done before now. I can see why it's included on the 1001 list - as it is supposedly a sort of role model for both Brave New World and 1984.

Next up is The Clock Winder by Anne Tyler.

I'm running low on books for my BCZ at work, so I'll start reading Odd Thomas today.

And I finished Tinker which was awfully good fun, and I shall have to pop into Galaxy to pick up the sequel! Going to finish my fun Amelia Peabody (The Mummy Case) before diving back into the serious bookrings/rays/1001 books.

Amelia Peabody is great fun, but even she had to be put aside for every grrl's tech heroine,Tinker. :)

All this talk about Tinker and Wen Spencer forced me to go off and order the sequel Wolf Who Rules from The Book Depository. I'll read it within a month or so of it arriving and send it on a ring/ray if you can wait that long wookiebender. Tinker is just such a great character, I agree. Love the attitude!

I haven't read any of the Amelia Peabody books as yet. Have seen some float by on relays etc but never actually nabbed one.

Ah, finished the third Amelia Peabody, and enjoyed it just as much as the others. :)

crimson-tide, I do recommend reading the first one first, Crocodile on the Sandbank as it does set up the characters. It's not necessary (I read them out of order!), but it's not like the Sue Grafton series where you can pick them up in any order.

And I might buy my own copy of Wolf Who Rules. These books are keepers, and ones I'd like to push onto my friends for them to read as well. Thanks for the offer of a bookring though, it is appreciated!

Now that my headcold seems to be a thing of the past, I shall restart The Last Temptation on the bus home tonight, and then will probably start Spirit Fox as my trashy night-time read as I owe it to JennyMidget on the relays.

(And crimson-tide, I am still aware of owing you Use of Weapons from the relays from many (MANY!) months ago! I was all set to finally get it back from TuesdayNext this week, but she had to cancel because of sick kids. And I'm getting messages from the BookObsessed moderators about it again. Yeesh, one book. You'd think they'd go after the people with dozens of owed books outstanding... Sorry, minor vent there, I'll get over it.)

{bitch}
(re: bookobsessed.com - I've been waiting on Nineteen Minutes from someone there (who I believe remains plenty active) since Aug 21st last year. I told them at the time there was no rush, but a year is a bit excessive. I was keen to get it at the time as it wasn't out in paperback yet.)
{/bitch}

I don't mind how long it takes you send Use of Weapons wookiebender. It's not as if I haven't enough books to read . . . and another two big baggies of books just landed in my post box today. What fun. One from a generous bookcrosser, and one is a stack I bought on OZtion recently. I don't need them. I probably won't read most of them for ages. I should feel guilty. Do I? Ummm . . . thinks for a split second . . . . . . . are you serious?
:-D

The BO moderators obviously don't have enough to do by the sound of it! They need a "delayed by mutual consent" clause or similar.

I am currently half way through The Clock Winder and thoroughly enjoying it. She is such a great writer.

If it continues to be a problem, I could probably get a copy of Nineteen Minutes to you at some stage. :)

I bought a cheap copy to share with a workmate, and neither of us have had time to read it. (We're both full time workers, and she's got *three* kids!!) I might actually pass it on unread by me, I just have too much to read as it is. (You would still have to wait until it was read by my workmate first.)

And your outstanding bookcrosser is probably on the blacklist as well. http://bookobsessed.com/index.php?showtopic=5048 - I'm on the list as "inactive", presumably because I don't chat much on there. (Read quite a bit though, but they obviously don't track that.) I got noticed offering books on a relay to JennyMidget, which is why I got another PM. They've listed all the outstanding books on another website, which I refuse to join so I can update (you can read the data without joining). I've got enough bloody logins as it is!! http://owedbooks.bookobsessed.com/

Looking at the list, your outstanding book isn't listed. Maybe you could chase it up with the moderators (?) of BookObsessed.

I do have the occasional outstanding book (those damned Sue Graftons!), but Weapons of Use is the really (REALLY!) embarrassingly outstanding one.

thanks for the offer wookiebender, but I already have a (cheaply bought) paperback copy - if the hardback ever comes I'll release it to my BCZ at work once I've read it (or immediately if I've already read it by then)

the person who owes me is on the blacklist, and I joined the other website specifically to list this one book (it isn't the only one owed to me) but someone seems to have deleted it from the table!

I'm winding up my bookobsessed.com involvement - I'm stuck in a sci-fi VBB because nobody likes the books I offer, but once I'm done there I'll stick to the Australia-only relays (if anything)

Yeah, I'm getting out of bookobsessed.com too. It just piles up too many commitments. And I've avoided the international ones, I got burnt a bit too often on them in the old bookrelay.com site. I don't mind posting overseas on occasion, but I do like my books to be acknowledged and (if a swap) a return book to arrive!

Sci-fi is tricky. It's a huge genre, and some is excellent, and some is fun trash, and then some I wouldn't touch with a barge pole. Yet it's all classified as "sci-fi". Like any genre, I guess. :)

Oh, back to the reading! The Last Temptation didn't make the 50 page test for me (and frankly, getting to 50 pages was a trial). So, between buses in the city this morning and with **NOTHING** to read (meep!!) I dashed across the road to Galaxy and bought First Among Sequels. Read the first chapter or so on the bus to work, sniggering happily.

Was tempted by Wolf Who Rules and Fool Moon, but will have to get those another time....

> **NOTHING** to read
(oh the horror!)

I finished Odd Thomas and it was fun once I got over the mildly irritating tone of the narrator. And the (fairly predictable) 'surprise' 'twist' at the end actually caught me out because I'd convinced myself I was being set up for a *different* 'surprise' 'twist'

I shall finish Quiet Please (which is very good) before I start another book.

I finished The Clock Winder yesterday and continued to enjoy it all through. Not a lot of 'action' in her books but interesting characters, realistic dialogue and intelligent writing.

Now I'm into Booked to Die by John Dunning. Been looking forward to settling down with this one for a while now and don't think it will disappoint. The first of a series with the major character being a cop who also collects first edition books (and according to the blurb then opens a secondhand bookshop); and written by a guy who is an expert on rare and collectible books. Sounds just the thing!

crimson-tide, I hope you enjoy the John Dunning series! I've read the first three, and liked them (with some reservations, that I'm happy to discuss once you've finished at least one).

I got briefly distracted by The Dark Knight Returns which was foisted on me by Mr TQD after seeing the latest Batman movie. And, let's face it, I put up very little fight. Rather good, I hope to find some more time today to get distracted by it again. :)

> > **NOTHING** to read
> (oh the horror!)

*laugh* It was a potentially horrendous situation. Usually I have a back-up book in my backpack, but I didn't think I'd give up on The Last Temptation that thoroughly or that quickly so all I had was wild release fodder. (Unlike today, when I came home from a bookcrossing brunch with six Really Good Books...)

wookiebender, if you delve occasionally into graphic novels I *highly* recommend Adam Warren's Empowered series {I'm reading Empowered Vol. 2 at the moment, so it is allowed in this thread :)}

the important thing with the Empowered series is not to dismiss it as endless gratuitous nudity and bondage jokes - the author set out to create likeable characters in an incredibly cheesy setting and he succeeded admirably (I'd compare them to Joss Whedon's TV creations for 'special-ness')

I have heard of Adam Warren, I'll keep my eyes open. :)

I used to read more comics before the kids were born, with a standing order at the comic shop in the city (anything by Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, J. Michael Straczynski, Neil Gaiman, basically). It was my first luxury item to hit the wall when the budget had to accommodate childcare fees... So it feels awfully wicked to buy the occasional graphic novel now. (I know I'll never have time to buy a series as individual comics again!)

finished Empowered Vol. 2 (excellent! but should definitely be read after Vol. 1) and Quiet, Please which I loved. I've never considered myself to be a reader-of-memoirs but after this book and Things The Grandchildren Should Know I might need to reconsider my stance.

next up: The Lady and the Unicorn (owed via a bookobsessed.com relay)

...and we had time to finish Sick Building (one of the better New Series Doctor Who novels I've read) before my kids' bedtime tonight.

the next book I read aloud to my family will be Lemony Snicket's The Vile Village

And since these were finished in August:

Mr Bear & I finished the last chapter of How to Speak Dragonese. Fun, but really only if you're under 10 years old and a mad fan of bottom humour. Not that it was bad, I just wasn't its _target audience. :)

And I also finished The Dark Knight Returns which was very impressive. Batman with politics and age. And so, so, much more that I can't say without spoilers. (But I did always dislike Superman, and now I have ever so many more reasons to do so...) One for the fans, however, I wouldn't particular recommend it to people new to graphic novels. (I still had to double check a few things with Mr TQD while reading it.)