48

Ah, number 48! This novel is very hard to categorize. It could be older YA, a bit sci-fi, a bit urban fantasy, a bit steam punk and more than a bit enjoyable.

"The Bone Season" by Samantha Shannon is the first in a planned series of 7 books. If you don't have patience for authors who take their time world building, don't bother with this one. The story unravels this world, a very complicated one, rather slowly. Paige Mahoney is a special young woman, with very special powers that allow her to dreamwalk inside other people's heads. She can reach the aether. And her skills allow her to work for a criminal overlord in Scion-London. Until she gets caught and hauled off to a city that everyone thinks is dead. Instead it is a penal colony for other folks with special powers and it is run by beings who came to Earth from the aether. And of course, they have their own agenda and a "traitorous" rebel group that wants to stop them from inflicting more damage to the Earth.

This is Shannon's first novel, and as she was only 21 when it was published, I fully expect her writing voice to change a bit as the story progresses. The Bone Season isn't the best book I've read so far this year, but it is far from the worst. If you follow the link, it seems most reviewers gave it a 3 star rating, and I would say that is very fair.

I look forward to reading more of Shannon's stories and I fully expect the few rough spots I sensed in the book will be handled better the next time out.

I also read a collection of short stories from Lisa Shafer and left reviews for her on Goodreads and Amazon. I'm eager to see the world building she does in the full length novel these short stories are inspired by. And who doesn't love the title, "The Chocolate Smuggler's Notebook?"

This is my last post of the week, and yes, it is only Monday. I'm on VACATION at 3:30 today. And I very excited and very happy to enjoy a nice long holiday.

Until December....toodles.

the girls are coming home

My girls are coming home, but so are all of their friends!! Yeah!! I would love to pack this house with all of those former soccer girls (but once a soccer girl, always a soccer girl?) and just listen to them visit and have a good time being together. Miss them and the energy they bring.

All the Mamas are posting how excited they are to have their kids back home for the holiday. And then in just a few short weeks they are home for Christmas!!

And the Ville is getting ready for the holidays. Our tree lighting happens on the 3rd. So magical and amazing. It never gets old, never.

While this time of the year can be a bit stressful and we seem to put a lot of stuff on ourselves, I'm really pumped to enjoy the holidays this year. I have a lot of time off, which is super nice. All of my kids will be home. Christmas shopping has been almost fun this year. It is all good.

So, Happy Happy and Merry Merry time is coming!!

And it is Thursday.......

magazine time

We are in a crunch. The December issue of the magazine was scheduled to go to the printers today. Well, that won't be happening as we just got the final files for the features.

We layout out some pages, our contract graphic designer lays out some pages, and then the company we hired to create the 'look' of the magazine layouts out some pages.

All the pieces/files are now in the office and we have to merge them. I'm hoping (fingers crossed) that our designer will have merged the files for us last night. She sometimes does super nice things like that for us. Merging all those pages is a pain in the A$$. Last time my boss and I royally messed it up and she had to fix it all. So, maybe she will just do it for us on the front end.

Then it is time to proof. Argh. Make sure everything is set to style. Argh. I swear gremlins get in those files once I import the Word docs into InDesign and they mess things up. Spaces show up that weren't there before. Punctuation marks move. The list is endless.

So, that is what I have to look forward to today. And instead of taking a week to get this sucker ready to go, we have 2 days. It really needs to be out the door come Friday morning.

Let's hope we can get March ready earlier and out the door on time. I don't like being late. Not one bit.

Yep. It is Wednesday. Argh.

the moon

When I let Duke out for the paper, the moon was shining bright and had a halo around it. The clouds were just perfect and the halo was almost orange in color. So pretty. By the time we left for our walk, the moment was gone. The clouds had moved away and the sun was up just enough to make the halo effect impossible to see.

So much in life is about the right moment.

Reminds me a bit of Ferris Bueller and his line in the movie regarding how fast life moves. "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Happy Tuesday.

47

So....I read quite a bit this weekend! Number 47 was a YA title I downloaded from our library. "The Testing" by Joelle Charbonneau is in many ways a typical dystopian teen book, but the writing was solid, the characters were interesting, and the plot had enough twists and turns to keep me engaged. It is a bit "Hunger Games-ish" as kids are selected for testing by a central government. The ones who pass go on to the university...the rest are never heard from again. The test is more than book smarts, it is also survival skills and interpersonal skills.

Bottom line, I'd read the next in this series. I really grew to like Cia Vale, our heroine, and am quite interested in how her story continues.

Monday. ugh. ugh. ugh.

46

Number 46 is "A Rescue for a Queen" by Fiona Buckley. This is the 11th title in the Ursula Blanchard novels. Ursula is a spy for her half sister, Elizabeth I. Love this series!

45

And the 45th book of the year is "After Dead" by Charlaine Harris. As the cover says, this book explains what came next in the world of Sookie Stackhouse. I read it in less than 30 minutes and have to say that the majority of the characters Harris wrote notes about,  I don't remember!!

I was interested in Sookie, Eric, Bill and that was about it.

Onward to book number 46!