Good morning fellow bookworms. The big news in my family this week is that we adopted a cat! Meet Pavlushka, a seven year old female adopted from the Montreal SPCA. I have tried for many months to fill the cat shaped hole in my soul without success, and I am so, so grateful to Thad for accepting a new feline into our home. Lushka is a curious, affectionate cat according to her profile and she was certainly happy to be petted at the SPCA. Lushka really enjoyed being out of the shelter and being fussed over last night. She spent most of the evening on the sofa next to me demanding pets. She has already worked out how to open our kitchen cupboards. I think she’ll be a wonderful fit for our household. In more reading-related news, I did something I don’t often do this week – consigned a book to the did not finish pile. This was Ice Like Fire by Sara Raasch. As I mentioned in my review of the first book Snow Like Ashes, I found the plot rather predictable, and unfortunately for book two, the interesting worldbuilding was not enough to carry me through this…
Good morning. This week I’ve been really unfocussed in my reading. I’ve dipped into several books, but not finished that many of them. It’s been a crazy busy week for me at work, which hasn’t helped. OK I admit it. Any free time I’ve had I’ve spent playing Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens rather than reading. Those games are addictive. One book I did finish and enjoyed was His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik. This is the first in the Temeraire series in which the Napoleonic Wars are reimagined with dragons. I loved the concept, characters and themes. I especially enjoyed the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire, the dragon. The ninth and final book in the series, League of Dragons, has just been published. Much as I enjoyed the series, I’m not certain I want to invest the time to read the rest of the eight, so I cheated and read Tor.com’s Temeraire reread. I’m hoping this will catch me up sufficiently and I will pick up League of Dragons in audiobook format – narrator is Simon Vance, how could I not go for the audiobook? – as soon as I have a spare Audible credit. I gave His…
Hello and welcome to my reading roundup for this week. I have read/listened to a couple of books about which I’d like to tell you. [book-info]The first of these is Caraval by Stephanie Garber. Now, you won’t find this in the stores yet; it was one of the Advance Reader Copies I picked up at BEA and it won’t come out until January 2017. I won’t say too much about it – I’ll post a full review nearer the time – but let me say you have a treat in store. Garber has created a wonderful, whimsical world in Caraval with lots of mysteries, red herrings and weird characters. I have the feeling that this first book is only starting to scratch the surface of what we will find out about this world. This is a definite five out of five for me. [book-info number=1]I wasn’t nearly so happy with the second book I listened to, which was The Star Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi. This is a retelling of the Persephone/Hades story and unfortunately, it failed to grab my attention. I kept falling asleep while listening to the audiobook. I forced myself to finish it, but it was a…