Month: December 2011

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 12-4-11

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

We’re back again for another edition of Marlene’s weekly reading diary. Or is that weekly reading planning session? I can never decide…

I just looked at my upcoming review schedule and discovered that my long-anticipated reviewing break is here. I think I hear a rousing Hallelujah Chorus somewhere off in the distance. I may finally get a chance to catch up with myself.

But maybe not. We will be moving house and home the weekend of December 15-18. So things will be slightly disrupted. Or, as they used to say, “at sixes and sevens”. I always liked that phrase.

Reading Reality will be hosting the Unacceptable Risks blog tour on December 18. So one of the books I will be reading in the next two weeks is Jeanette Grey’s Unacceptable Risk. I love science fiction romance, so I’m really looking forward to this one. Jeanette will be writing a guest post on December 18 for the blog tour and she has graciously agreed to give away a copy of her book as part of her stop here for the tour. This is a real wow for me, so I’m really looking forward to it.

I’m also hoping that my connectivity that weekend will not be in the Barnes and Noble in the mall down the street. And I’m trying to figure out whether having a B&N within easy walking distance of our new digs is a bug or a feature of the new place. Browsing in bookstores used to be a serious addiction. “See all the pretty covers…”

The next new book on my list is Rise of Empire, by Michael J. Sullivan. And, if anyone is keeping track, I still need to review Theft of Swords, since it comes first in the Riyria Revelations, and I skipped over that 500 page monster before Thanksgiving. Well, it’s back. Now I need to read it and Empire before December 14. The third book, Heir of Novron, so far has not shown up on NetGalley, unlike the first two. Since it’s not due out until January 31, there’s time yet, but it would be really annoying to have to buy it to find out what happens!

Even before Riyria, I have to go to Hell. (Got your attention, didn’t I?) Last week I picked up Hellsbane, by Paige Cuccaro, from NetGalley. Unfortunately, I picked it up on Tuesday, and it came out on Thursday, and I was already up to my eyeballs in reviews. So I’ll be reading it this week. Hellsbane is the main character’s name, Jane Hellsbane, and this looks like the start of an interesting paranormal series. We’ll see.

Since last week I was already a week behind, this re-cap may be more like a re-top-hat. It needs more capacity than normal.

I did send out my review to Library Journal for Holiday Kisses. I really liked the book–it’s a great collection of holiday love stories. One thing I found interesting, all the stories had an underlying theme of second chances. I don’t know if that was intentional or not. I wish I had more space for the reviews in LJ, I could easily have written a 250-word review for each novella, instead of trying to squish.

Out of the other stuff due for this week, A Clockwork Christmas is done, I just need to write it up. Deadly Pursuit is next.  I just did my ‘mea culpa’ about Theft of Swords, so I won’t go there again, except to read it.

I will probably read Honor Among Thieves first, if only because it finishes the Ancient Blades trilogy, and I get to find out how everything turns out. I like ticking things off the ‘to do’ list. Then it’s on to Laura Anne Gilman’s Paranormal Scene Investigations Series, Hard Magic and Pack of Lies, just so I can review Tricks of the Trade and click that off my NetGalley queue.

Six or seven books will get read this week. Six or seven books will drop out of my queues. The only question is, which six or seven? (Now you know why I like that phrase so much!)

Don’t forget–Samhain Publishing is the featured publisher in tomorrow’s edition of Ebook Review Central.

 

 

 

Unacceptable Risks and Collateral Damages

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | About> books> house hunting

On December 18, I will be hosting the blog tour for Jeanette Grey’s new book, Unacceptable Risk. This is the first time I’ve ever hosted a blog tour, and I’m really excited.

And two weeks from today. Today! OMG! We’re moving again.

For anyone who knows us, that again comes with a serious groan. We moved less than six months ago, from Gainesville Florida to the Atlanta suburbs, and here we go again.

But this is different. We are not moving because we planned this. We are, as so many people are right now, collateral damage in someone else’s story.

We rent. We do move a lot. And buying and selling property would be difficult even without the real estate meltdown. So we rent. You could say we beat the trend. Renting is difficult enough for us, because we have four cats. Two wouldn’t be a problem for most landlords, but four does give some people pause, no pun intended.

There was enough drama in finding this house. We didn’t know there was more to come. If you ever rent a place where they offer you a lease where either party can get out of the lease with 60 days notice, it just might be the proverbial ‘red flag’. We saw it as an advantage to us. Silly us.

The owners of our current house invoked the option because the current economic crisis has caught them in serious difficulties. They will be moving into this house, and the house they have been living in (it is closer to a McMansion) is a casualty of the economic downturn.

Unlike many people who have been renting houses or apartments and paying the rent faithfully each month, only to face eviction because the owners have not made mortgage payments, we did get those 60 days notice.

Since we received that notice at Halloween (do the math, it put the expiration at New Years’), we’re moving in mid-December. Weather in Atlanta in December isn’t a big deal, but the Holidays are the Holidays pretty much anywhere.

We did have the usual drama finding a place, but that isn’t the point. We just went through this. We’re doing it again. The expense of the move, while less than the cost of moving to a different state (we’ll even be in the same town) is not trivial.

We haven’t completely unpacked yet. We still have about 2,300 books. We’ll be going through them again, seeing if there are a few more (maybe a couple of hundred more) we can sell or give away. What Powell’s doesn’t want to buy, I may do some giveaways right here on this blog, so stay tuned!

Anything we haven’t unpacked since June, I wonder if we still need it?

8 the previously untold story of the previous unknown 8th dwarf

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

8 by Michael Mullin is just the kind of fractured fairy tale that might have been told in an alternate universe Rocky and Bullwinkle. That’s high praise, I loved those stories. The sly humor operated on multiple levels, which is why more folks than just the famous moose and squirrel attended “Wossamotta U”

But 8, and yes, the title is just the number 8, is the story of the heretofore unknown eighth dwarf, named “Creepy” by his better known brothers.

Creepy’s just moody. He’s kind of a night owl, and he’s not into the whole “Hi ho, hi ho” business. Well, would you sing if you had to work underground in a mine every day? I ask you, would you?

Creepy also had a slight touch of Renfield. He ate spiders. At the dinner table. It kind of creeped his brothers out. A lot.

So they locked him in the basement and slipped his meals under the door. Just for a few less than cheerful comments and a bit of raw spider on the hoof. I mean really, was that so bad?

So Creepy lived under the house, and got, well, creepier. And even less cheerful, listening to his brothers continue their rather carefree life without him.

Then “the Maid” showed up. Fairy tales usually refer to her as Snow White. Creepy saw everything! Absolutely everything. And heard everything too. The floors, well, there were some holes in those floorboards.

His brothers never told the poor girl that there was dwarf literally under her feet. So she cooked and cleaned while he spied on her. What else was he supposed to do? She kept sweeping the dust from the floor into his living space!

But when the Evil Witch knocked on the door, he heard everything then too. Did you ever wonder why Snow White let the witch in? Creepy’s “floor’s eye view” of the classic tale, his understandably jaundiced view, is laugh-out-loud funny. And not to be missed.

Escape Rating A: This is hilariously funny. Also a little sad, because Creepy has been abandoned by his brothers for being just a bit different. But it is an absolutely perfect fractured fairy tale, and it is done completely in verse!

Creepy is an unsung hero. Without him, Snow White would have suffocated in her glass coffin before Prince Charming ever came along. If you want to find out about Creepy’s heroism, spend a few moments with Creepy. He’ll make you smile.

Ready Player One

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is a veritable tour de force of storytelling. This dystopian near-future novel is absolutely fantastic science fiction of the cyberpunk school, but it is also an intense commentary on modern society, with more than a dash of nostalgia and a slap upside the head, for anyone, absolutely anyone, who spends their life looking back at their “glory days” instead of living their real life in the now. A lesson that does not just apply to geeks and video gamers.

James Halliday was dead, to begin with. So this is not his story. But it is. Because Ready Player One is about the fight for the world he created, and the company he left behind. And James Halliday left himself as the ghost in his own machine. Until someone solves the ultimate riddle in the ultimate quest, and proves themselves worthy of becoming his heir.

Wade Watts is just one of many players in the OASIS in 2044, when every player receives Halliday’s last message. And Wade embarks on that ultimate quest. Not in pursuit of worldly glory, but because the real world seriously sucks, and the OASIS and the quest for Halliday’s ultimate “Easter Egg” is the only good thing Wade and a whole lot of other people, have.

What is the OASIS? Think of Facebook and World of Warcraft and Everquest and Second Life and every massively multi-player and multi-user everything you’ve ever heard of on serious steroids. And why does the Wade’s real world suck? We can see it from here. If we make all the wrong decisions about everything, like global warming actually happening, and the recession not ever going away and unemployment going up instead of down and the global economies getting worse…well, we could easily end up in the world of Ready Player One. Unfortunately it isn’t much of an imaginative stretch.

But the story is about the quest. Halliday left instructions. And tied them up very tightly, with lots of lawyers. James Halliday loved the 1980s. (Beats me why, the fashion sense was absolutely horrendous.) However, that was when video games got their start, and when Halliday went to high school. And before the world started going to hell in the proverbial handcart. He was obsessed. Halliday buried three keys inside the world of the OASIS, and whoever found those three keys, and the gates that they opened, and solved the riddles they unlocked, would inherit his company, Gregarious Solutions, which was worth mega-billions.

The race was on. It took five years to find the first key. Wade Watts, in the person of his avatar, Parzifal, was the first. Along the way, Wade made friends with another gate hunter, or ‘gunter’ known as ‘Aech’ (i.e., just the letter ‘H’). They never met in person, only in chat rooms on the OASIS. Wade developed a major crush on a female gunter blogger named ‘Art3mis’ — well, he hoped she was female. On the OASIS, a person could be anyone, or anything. And Wade grew up. When Halliday died, he was just a kid; by the time he found the gate, he was a senior in High School. OASIS High School, of course. Even school was on OASIS.

And that was part of what Wade and his friends were fighting to protect. Gregarious Solutions offered OASIS education free, and OASIS access free to anyone. There were paid add-ons, but basic access was free, and it was the only escape from the decaying world outside. Everyone conducted their business and their pleasure in the OASIS. But naturally, there was an evil empire, trying to win Halliday’s contest in order to take it over and turn every transaction into profit. Once Wade found the first key and cleared the first gate, he became a target.

Wade’s quest, and his fight to keep the OASIS out of the hands of the evil ‘Sixers’, proceeds at a breakneck pace. The story is not just a quest story, but a thriller, also a marvelous coming-of-age story and absolutely a love story.

Escape Rating A+: First, this is simply a terrific story. There is a tremendous amount going on, and it is all fun and it keeps going at the speed of the fastest roller-coaster imaginable. There is a nostalgic aspect for anyone who even remembers the 1980s or 1990s, because every video game, TV show and movie gets mentioned at least once. But that’s only part of the fun.

This is a quest story. It’s not really about the video game, although that part was very cool. It’s about saving OASIS. It’s about solving the puzzle so that the world is saved from the big, bad evil dudes. And they are very, very evil.

It’s also about second chances. Halliday made himself a ghost in his own machine. He programmed his avatar in so he can speak with his ‘heir’. On the one hand, he makes sure that whoever picks up the reins is versed in the same minutiae that he was. On the other hand, the advice he gives about not living totally inside the computer is very good advice. Which Wade takes to heart.

I listened to this book. The performance was by Wil Wheaton. I would have to also give the performance an A+ rating. Because the book contained a lot of references to the 1980s and 90s, Wheaton was a perfect choice for the reader. There is a reference in the text to the actor being voted in as OASIS user representative, and my husband and I both wondered how many ‘spit takes’ that had taken, but he was the right choice for that reason. In this alternate future. Wheaton so would have filled that role! The book contains a tremendous number of footnotes with citations for all the references,  in the audio, those work better. Wheaton read them as asides, and they flowed in seamlessly. We took a longer way home to be sure we’d finish the book before we got to the house, he was that good!