Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Whoohoo! Finished book number three of the year!

And what was my third book? Bitten by Kelly Armstrong. Originally, I had G pick this up as a possible Christmas gift for my mother. I had mistakenly thought it was about vampires, but it ended up being about werewolves. No biggie though, my mom is equally fond of both. However, it ended up that G found the book he originally wanted to give my mom (which was about vampires), so I ended up keeping Bitten.

I'd heard of this book awhile ago. Kelly Armstrong is from Toronto and took the same Romance Writing course I took, from the same instructor. As she has gone on to be published, of course Brian (the course instructor) trotted out her name to prove that some of his alumni do go on to get published. Which actually, was nice to know.

So, having the book in my posession, I decided to give it a shot.

It's not great.

I's not bad either; the fact that some of it is set in Toronto is always amusing, since not a lot is actually set in Toronto. It's told in a first person narrative, through the eyes of the 'only female werewolf in the world', Elena. Elena has a cliche ridden angsty background that drove me up the wall (orphaned tragically at a young age, brought up in foster homes and abused repeatedly. I don't doubt this happens, but really, it would be so much more refreshing if this sort of thing didn't happen all the time in order to make a character more... edgy) and she dithers more about decisions than Hamlet does, which also makes her rather annoying.

Armstrong does create her own werewolf mythology, and she maintains her internal consistency well, but I find her writing style falls victim to her often repeating herself, or hitting you over the head with her central motifs of how angry Elena is with everything, but how she has to accept it etc. The secondary characters aren't all that interesting, in fact, I also found them pretty cliche; the attractive, intelligent, dangerous, lone wolf ex-boyfriend; the patient, intelligent, talented Alpha male pack leader, etc. I found that I didn't really bond with any of these characters much at all.

As I said, it wasn't a horrible read, I mean, I did finish the book, but I know there are more in this series about Elena, and I doubt I'll be rushing out to pick 'em up.

And now after three fairly 'fluffy' books, I'm feeling the need to read something a little more... weighty I think.

Oh, and I'm half way through a re-read of Guy Kay's The Summer Tree.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Yay! First post of 2006! And I've already read two books!

Ok, so one was pretty damn short, but still, two books! Two weeks into January!

I'm not going to keep this pace up...

So, what have I read? Well, I read Inheritance by Devin Grayson, and Five Hole Stories by Dave Bidini. What are they about? Well two of my very favourite things, superheroes and hockey, respectively, and even better, there's sex in 'em!

lol. Yes, I'm juvenille.

Devin Grayson normally writes comic books. She normally writes comic books that I don't read because I don't like her writing. She took over the writing chores on one of my very favourite characters, Nightwing, and I had to drop the book, I was so unhappy with her writing on it. Now, I understand that she probably feels kinda like how I do about Nightwing... i.e. she's got a bit of a fetish about him. So while I can totally get on board with that, I still think her writing style stinks, its way too soap operaie. Why did I want to read Inheritance then? Because, way back when, Rich Johnston of Lying in the Gutters fame, posted a couple of passages from this book and they were DELICIOUSLY awful and I decided right then and there I had to read it. Plot doesn't really matter, it has to do with a (made up) foreign dignitary's son nearly being assasinated in Gotham, so Batman, Nightwing, Green Arrow, Arsenal, Aquaman and Tempest team up to find out whodunit. So, with all these heroes and their side kicks running around, you see where the title came from. The thing I took most from this book? Devin must think Green Arrow has bisexual tendencies as she has him comment on how good looking Nightwing is NUMEROUS times, and she is terribly concerned with both Nightwing and Arsenal's sex lives. Unfortunately, she doesn't go into quite salacious enough detail to really make this book worthwhile. As far as superhero porn goes, it wasn't that good.

I'm a big fan of Dave Bidini's. No, not his band, The Rheostatics, but his writing. Another of his books, Tropic of Hockey, ranks up their amongst my favourite books. So, when I heard he'd published a book of erotic hockey stories, well, lets just say I was thrilled and rushed out to buy it as soon as I could. Five Hole Stories is not very long, there's only about five short stories in it, but they're well written if not very... titilating. A few of the stories were even tinged with a bit of sadness; there's nothing graphic about them, and the most controversial one of them got was about a goalie who feels unrequited love for his team star player, a very thinly disguised Wayne Gretzky. I mean, I enjoyed the book, I guess I was just expecting something more... erotic.

Hmm, these reads seem to have left me rather frustrated. lol

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

In the words of Daniel Cook; "Here we are!"

That's right, 2007. So... what did I read in 2006? What was the final count?

Well, 22 new books were read, 20 were re-read, plus one re-read of an epic poem, for a grand total of 43 books read this year...

Wow that seems low. Of course, I chalk this up to numerous things, mainly just having less time to read and my dear G passing on his bad habit of watching television on DVD :)

Of course, this also doesn't keep track of all the comic books I read. With at least 3 or 4 a week, that's a lot of comic books over the year.

I have quite a pile on my bedside table right now, latest Dave Bidini offering; something that could end up being deliciously smutty from Devin Grayson; Gaiman's Anasasi Boys still; and a book on the Cohen brothers, are all things on my reading list for the new year.

Let's start the count again!