Readathon final meme (fashionably late)

1. Which hour was most daunting for you?
For me, the first couple because I started before the official launch time. It was very very quiet - lol. I appreciated the people who dropped by to say hi in those hours :-)

2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year?
I really only finished two books: Memories of My Melancholy Whores, and The Forests of Hands and Teeth. They were both short though, so quick reads, and definitely engaging.

3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year?
Not really, no. Great work like always. :D

4. What do you think worked really well in this year's Read-a-thon?
Everything. :D

5. How many books did you read?
Two.

6. What were the names of the books you read?
See answer to question two. :-)

7. Which book did you enjoy the most?
The Forest of Hands and Teeth.

8. Which did you enjoy least?
I enjoyed both but some of the themes in Whores were a little .... off.

9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year's Cheerleaders?
I wasn't this time, but I have been in the past. Relax, and have fun. Try and leave personal comments rather than generic, if you can.

10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? Very likely. What role would you likely to be take next time? Not sure. Might do a little of both, maybe. :-)

Random readathon update

I thought I'd pop in and leave a quick update. I haven't been doing any of the memes/contests apart from the introductory one because I've been reading/twittering/hanging out with Patrick/cooking/stuff.

You know, the usual.

I finished Memories of My Melancholy Whores last night, took a  small Fellowship of the Ring break, and now I'm about half way through The Forest of Hands and Teeth, so I'll at least have finished two books.

Not *too* shabby at all. :-)

Read long, and prosper \\//

Readathon introductory meme

 1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?
Middle Earth :D Er, I mean, Invercargill, New Zealand :-)

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Hmmmm .. I've already powered through the shortest, Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez so .... I think maybe The Forests of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, because I've had it on my shelf for quite a few years. I understand there are zombies.

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

I'm looking forward to trying these: (to your right). Pizza flavoured twisties!!!! But that's for tomorrow :D

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

Uhhhh .. I'll be 42 this year, but my inner 14 year old is winning, I spend too much time on the internet and I'ma little hopped up on sugar right now.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? I did, as a cheerleader. I've been  a cheerleader since the first readathon, and it's fun and I love it, but I wanted to do one readathon where I was just a reader, so here I am. :-)

Readathon is upon me!

Well, nearly. I'm starting in about an hour because the official start time is 1am here, so I'm getting the jump - lol.

I have a smallish pile of five books, and I'm going to start with the shortest which is Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

In fact, here is the pile  I prepared earlier. :D From the bottom up we have: The Best of Both Worlds by Karen Lord, The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, The Fellowship of the Ring (which I'm about halfway through in a very lazy re-read; I wanted something cosy and familiar in the pile) and Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears, short story fairytale retellings, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

I'm not expecting to get through all of them because of sleep and Patrick, but I'm just reading this year and not cheering (though cheerleaders are awesome), so I'm going to get through as much as I can.

I have potato chips, chocolate, coke in the fridge and ice cream in the freezer.



Hit it.

Readathon ... and Once Upon a Time

It's getting to that time of year again - readathon time. Hie thee here, if you're wondering what I'm talking about: http://24hourreadathon.com/

One of Dewey's passions was building a community of book bloggers, and I know she'd get a kick out of how many people participate in the readathon every April and October.

I feel like quite the old-timer now, I have to say - lol.

I hummed and hawed over this one, I have to admit. Do I do it, do I not, do I read, do I cheer ..

Usually, I cheer, and I encourage anyone who doesn't have time to dive in as a reader, to join a cheering team. The cheerleaders do a great job at keeping readers motivated, and I always have fun doing it.

But this year, I'm being selfish. I'm doing readathon for me, which means being just a reader (I've tried both at the same time, and I found it stressful).

I'm going to start early, because the readathon starts at midnight-1am my time, which is a bit late to settle in and start reading. So I'm going to start on the Saturday night after Patrick has settled - about 8pm NZ Time.

My plan is to read for a few hours on Saturday night, do the first mini-challenge, get some sleep, then spend as much of the Sunday as I can reading.

There will be food, of course as well, I just need to decide whether I'm going to vlog it this year or not. And decide what books I'm going to stack up, which leads me to ...

http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/once-upon-a-time-vii - a reading challenge run by Carl every year. I tend not to do reading challenges now, but I do love at least TRYING Once Upon a Time, and RIP, both hosted by Carl.

So my readathon stack (short stack probably), will also be my Once Upon a Time stack.

I'm just going to sign up for the journey, which is beautifully open-ended and means I can draw from any number of books.

I'm also going to do the journey on screen. I bought LOTR extended edition on blu-ray, but haven't revelled in it yet, so that will be my Once Upon a Time on-screen journey.

So. Are you readathon-ing? Are you Once Upon  a Time-ing? Let's talk. :D

Very short reviews

Somehow I ended up about four books behind, given that I'm making an effort to, like, write reviews ..

Four books. I'm not writing separate reviews for four books, I'm far too lazy for that.

I'm going to, instead, give very short reviews for all four books.

Starting with ...

When We Wake by Karen Healey.

This is a good one to start on, as it's NZ Book Month (which I haven't blogged about at all. Um. It's NZ Book Month. You should read a book by a Kiwi author this month. They're awesome.)

When We Wake is also one of my favourite genres (though for some reason I haven't read as much in it as I'd like to have) - YA Dystopia. Sixteen-year-old Tegan pretty much has it all - a loyal best friend, a cute new boyfriend, and her future looks bright. That, is until, she's shot in the chest, is cryogenically frozen and woken up 100 years later to a very different world ...
MMm ... yes, good. Strong female protagonist? Check. Believable dystopic future? Check? Kick-ass friends? Check. Cute love-interest but no love triangle in sight? CHECK CHECK CHECK :D

Next up is Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I've had this book for a few years, but finally made a concerted effort to read it, and I'm glad I did, and this won't be a revelation to anyone who HAS read it but it's so good.

It focuses on Thomas Cromwell, who  was an adviser (I think? To be honest my English history is extremely shaky) to Henry VIII and apparently all up in the whole marriage thing. This is the kind of historical fiction that I love because it makes my brain go OM NOM NOM NOM NOMMMM

I honestly can't remember all that much about this book. Something about a woman who'd been in prison for shooting her husband after he'd shoved her hand in a box of rattlesnakes at gunpoint or ... something?

When she's parolled, she ends up living above the garage of a single professor at the university she starts attending and then ... uh ... stuff happens?

It was fine, I remember reading it in a day, so it wasn't bad. I just haven't retained very much about it at all.

Last but not least: The Shining by Stephen King. Well. IT gave me a fear of clowns. Now, I have an irrational fear of topiary animals. Thanks for that, Stephen King.

Jack takes his wife and young son to the Overlook hotel, where they're going to act as caretakers for the winter off-season.

The Overlook is, of course, haunted ...

The Shining is vintage Stephen King. Don't read late at night, or on your own, or get it wet or feed it after midnight ... wait, that's Gremlins.

Killing the Shadows review

I have to be honest and say I tend to be a bit wary of modern British crime-writers. I love a good mystery, but for some reason I have the impression that there’s a lot of … what I call “Oi, Guv,” in my head in them.

You know – rebelling Against the System and Working too Hard and Having Troubles at Home because of it, and so, usually, I  don’t read them, because I’m not a big fan of personal lives in crime stories. (I’m aware of how that sounds. Hush.)

However, I picked up Killing the Shadows at the library and decided to give it a shot last weekend, and I was pleased I did. I got an intelligent thriller with a solid plotline and characters that I could invest in on a personal and professional level because they had their shit together.

Which just shows, for me, that  you don’t have to produce 500 pages of miseryguts lit to make a decent thriller.

Anyway, that’s enough of that mini-rant. On to the book itself.

Psychologist Fiona Cameron is just coming off the back of working a case with the Met, that ended up going badly and led to Fiona severing her relationship with the System.

However, she gets drawn back in when a killer begins targeting mystery writers, and her partner happens to be bestselling crime writer Kit Martin …

I’m not big on feelings in crime stories, like I say, but I liked Kit and Fiona – they’re a happy, successful couple and goshdarn, I like that.

Killing the Shadows taps along at a pretty good pace, with plenty of gruesomeness – actually, a bit more gruesomeness than I’m comfortable with, and it doesn’t normally doesn’t make me squeamish.

But it’s a good thriller with well-rounded characters and a who-dun-it that really does keep you guessing.