August's reading

Another not so great reading month:

1.  Rites of Spring (Break) by Diana Peterfreund.  Chick lit-ish.  Sort of YAish.  Kind of.  Third of a four book series.  I'm not sure why I keep reading this series, because it has consistently disappointed.  Ms. Peterfreund's blog and posts are well-written and thought-out, and I want to like her fiction...I just find it rather flat.  I may check out the last book of the series, just to see how everything ends up, but it will be a library borrow only (like this one).  What in particular doesn't work?  Well, mostly I keep getting told how smart the characters but they never actually demonstrate any intelligence or common sense.  C

2.  The Chef's Choice by Kristin Hardy.  Category, contemporary.  Fairly good.  B-

3.  Just Too Good To Be True by E. Lynn Harris.  Contemporary, AA fiction, urban fiction.  I had to pick this one up when I saw it on the "new reads" shelf at the library, if only because I wanted to read about Brady Bledsoe -- was it going to be some sort of adulatory fanfiction homage to a New England QB?  Eh, no, it was not.  It was worse.  Marty Stu mama's boy hero; and the mother -- where to begin?  DNF.

4.  Bliss Inc. by Chamein Canton.  DNF because of the Mary Sue heroine, whom I wrote about here.

5.  My Lord and Spymaster by Joanna Bourne.  Objectively, this was a well-crafted book.  I just didn't care about any of the characters.  C+

6.  Warrior or Wife by Lyn Randall.  Roman-set historical, read for the TBR challenge and described here.  C+/B-.

7.  Lord and Master 2: Taking Work Home by Jules Jones.  M/M, ebook.  Liked it.  B

8.  Caught Running by Abigail Roux and Madeleine Someone.  M/M contemporary.  Purchased after reading SB Sarah's review.  B

9.  Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer.  YA.  Journal style tale of life after an almost extinction level event.  A- 

10.  Not Another Bad Date by Rachel Gibson.  Contemporary.  The character in purgatory as the deus ex machina for this plot?  Did not work for me.  Think I'm finished with Gibson, even as a library read.  C-

11.  Countdown by Michelle Maddox.  Futuristic, sort of urban fantasy.  The author gets points for creativity, but not much else.  The reality tv angle didn't appeal, and the basis of the conflict didn't really work for me.  If the AI is in control, how does the other consciousness ever take over without AI knowing?  And why keep the hero alive at all?  Obviously in order for there to be a story, but it seems like a huge plot hole for this "intelligent" entity to miss.  D+

12.  Another Thing to Fall by Laura Lippman.  Mystery.  Most recent of the Tess Monaghan series.  I tend to like LL's Tess Monaghan books better than her stand alone mysteries, because I like Tess as narrator.  This one felt a little stale.  Love seeing Baltimore as a character, though the whole Natty Bo thing is over done.  Also, the restaurant mentioned in the book and the afterword?  Closed this spring, which dates the book.  B 

13.  Just One of the Guys by Kristan Higgins.  Contemporary, category.  Borrowed this from the library after reading the review over at DA.  Felt sort of chicklit-ish.  Was rather disappointed, mostly because the heroine felt like a caricature.  Turned 30, so she must be married and have children.  Her brothers are all married and having children so she must.  I never got that she wanted those things for any reason other than that was what one did.  And I thought she was a huge honkin' hypocrite for saying that she wanted a committed, monogamous relationship, then sleeping with someone else, then accepting a proposal without admitting what she'd done.  The purported hero?  Pretty much a blank slate.  C-/D+, depending on how charitable I'm feeling.

SBD: yanking me out of the setting

It's Monday, which normally means it's time for SBD.  But it's also a holiday, so who knows? 

I've had this thought bouncing in my head for a bit and it needs out, so here goes:  how often have you read something and then thought, that doesn't seem quite right.  And you haven't been able to put your finger on exactly what the problem was, but it was like there was a pebble in your shoe, running the entire experience?

I read Joanna Bourne's latest book feeling that way.  If I hadn't read Lynneguist's post on dialectical differences between American English and British English for the word slut, I would not have thought twice.  But in one passage, the characters are observing sluts and other people of low morals doing business in a bad neighborhood.  Except at the time, that doesn't seem to have been the exact usage of the word.  I read that passage a couple of times; maybe I was reading too much into the word choice?  I don't know, but even looking up the etymology of the word online didn't make me feel better about its usage in the text.  It felt too modern, despite the relative age of the word, because the usage was more suited a 20th or 21st century American speaker than to a 19th century Briton.  

Unrelated:  Hello Cupcake is open.  Yum.  On Friday, despite the holiday weekend and rain, there was a line out the door at 2pm, and a limit on the number of cupcakes any customer could purchase.  My goal was a "maya favorite" or a "peanut butter blossom" but since they were out, I made do with a root beer float.  Wow.  The cream cheese icing was sweet but not too heavy and the root beer cake rocked.

Also unrelated:  I may have mentioned once or twice before the terrible crush I have on Rafa Nadal and his arms.  Plus, the rolling of the rrrrs -- Rrrrrrafa Nadal.  Anyway, today, during his very long match with Sam Querrey in the fourth round of the U.S. Open, CBS slow-motioned his serve to show the working of his upper arm.  There may have been drool.  Certainly there was snickering on the part of my company as I had to stop talking and listening in order to watch.  But since he's ogling one of the Williams sisters now, he has little room to comment.