Reading report for June 2012

If you have been wondering why there have been so few posts this month, it‘s because I have been reading: voraciously, almost manically. I finished 17 books in June, reading most of them from cover to cover within the month. Three of them were rereads, the In the Garden trilogy by the fabulous Nora Roberts, who is also my most read author of the month. 13 of the books were romances, with a 14th being romantic but lacking the clear-cut happy ending of the others. Of the rest, two were mysteries, one of them a short story collection and the other the first book in the series. Lastly I read one book on language history.

The best read of the month was Morgan Matson‘s Amy and Roger's Epic Detour, a romantic coming-of-age epistolary road novel for young adults. It reaches into picaresque territory, with the eponymous characters going on a road trip across the USA and taking a route not sanctioned by the adults who planned it for them, doing things they aren‘t supposed to do and making discoveries about themselves and others. The writing is fresh and it takes you to several interesting places around the USA, besides containing some cool music playlists that could be fun to recreate.

The discovery of the month was the Black Dagger Brotherhood urban fantasy series by J.R. Ward. They are so very addictive that I read four of them back to back, three in June and one in July. Once you get over how badly the first one, Dark Lover, is written, it‘s difficult to stop. The writing improves book by book, the world-building is fantastic and keeps getting more and more involved and detailed with each book, the romances are blazing hot and the fight scenes not as sketchy as they often are in romantic suspense/thrillers. I am trying to back away from reading all of them one after the other, as I would like to stretch out my reading of them.

News of the month is that I finally got a Kindle and discovered that I actually read faster on one than I do from a book, much as I do from a computer screen. As a result, the TBR challenge has suffered, with only 2 TBR books finished in June. Even if I had not got the Kindle, I think the TBR challenge would have suffered anyway, because I keep discovering more books my grandmother owned that I am unable to resist taking for my own, so the stack continues to swell. I am therefore changing tack and abandoning the idea of reducing the stack down to a fixed number and will instead aim to read at least 50 TBR books – newly added or old relics – from the stack in 2012. I have already finished 20 and there are six months left of the year, so it will be a realistic goal while still being a challenge.

The Books:

Rachel Gibson: Tangled Up in You. Romance, contemporary.
Molly Harper: How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf. Romance, contemporary, paranormal.
Michael Innes: Death at the President's Lodging.Mystery, police.
Michael Innes: Appleby Talking.Short mysteries, police.
John Bemelmans Marciano: Anonyponymous.Language history: people whose names have become words in English.
Morgan Matson: Amy and Roger's Epic Detour.Young adult novel.
Patricia Potter: Cassidy and the Princess. Romantic suspense.
Nora Roberts: Command Performance, The Playboy Prince. Romance, contemporary.From a series of 4.
Nora Roberts: Summer Desserts, Lessons Learned. Romance, contemporary. Paired novels.
Nora Roberts: Blue Dahlia, Black Rose, Red Lily. Romance, contemporary.Trilogy.
J.R. Ward: Dark Lover, Lover Awakened, Lover Revealed.Urban fantasy/paranormal romance, suspense. Books 1-3 in a series.

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...

Reading in Reykjavík

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