Tag Archives: TBR

Reading

Tackle Your TBR Read-a-thon!

Clearly, I need a break. (Ha.) Okay, that’s not going to happen. (EVAR!!!) But I can always read! Although I sometimes have a hard time reading while writing, sometimes you just need a break. Plus, my summer reading list got totally shaken up—I decided I’d rather only pack my Kindle for my beach trip, so my print TBR is still languishing. (Sad.)

So when Tressa of Tressa’s Wishful Endings invited me to join her Tackle Your TBR Read-a-thon, I jumped in—you can too!

Read-a-thon Tackle Your TBR

As you can see, the TYTBRRAT (uhhh) begins September 8th and ends September 21st. You can participate on a blog or on Goodreads, Twitter (hashtag: #TackleTBR), Facebook, or Tumblr instead (wherever you’re going to post updates).

Tressa says:

You’re welcome to participate as much or as little as you’d like. The read-a-thon is to encourage us all to read so that we can tackle those tbr piles, not to cause extra stress. 😉 . . .

Want to know what to expect each day besides our daily posts? There will be author guest posts, challenges, and giveaways, including the grand prize giveaway with multiple winners sponsored by the hosts that will end on September 22nd.

So what’s on my print TBR (still)?

Shadowed by Stephanie Black Broken Harbor by Tana French
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A Way Back to You by Emily Gray Clawson Second Chances by Melanie Jacobson

I won’t tackle it all, but anything is progress!

To join for the giveaways & challenges, hop on over To Tressa’s and sign up at the linky by September 16th!

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: Dead Running by Cami Checketts

I don’t really do beach reads. I just keep reading at the beach. So on a recent family reunion to the beach, the Kindle got a little sandy 😉 .

First up, I read Dead Running by Cami Checketts.

Cassidy Christensen is running. Running from the mercenaries who killed her parents. Running from a scheming redhead intent on making her life miserable. Running from painful memories that sabotage her dreams of happiness. With two very tempting men competing for her attention, she hopes she’ll finally have someone to run to, but can she trust either of them? When secrets from her past threaten her family, Cassidy decides to stop running and fight for her future.

A light-hearted suspense with a side of PG-rated romance, Dead Running will have you lacing up your running shoes and impatiently waiting for the sequel.

I wholeheartedly agree with the last line of the summary: this is definitely a lighter suspense novel, though the suspense is still there. I thought the bad guys’ ultimate scheme was well done. I started to get a little annoyed at Cassidy for not being able to choose between the two men pursuing her—love triangles, blech—but I managed to forgive her because her voice is so much fun to read! I really missed it when we were in sections of the book not narrated by her. Those sections felt almost bland and distant.

Like Cassidy at the start of the book, I hate running. But following her journey throughout the novel made me believe I could run a marathon. (Almost thou persuadest me to be a runner…) We get into the technical side of running and marathon training without feeling like we’re reading a manual (though there is a little jargon—I’m the kind of reader who tends to gloss over that without being overly bothered, though).

Some elements of the plot might be a little unrealistic, but, hey, it’s fiction. It’s fun. Run with it 😉 .

I got this book during a free promo on Amazon.

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: The Light Between Oceans by ML Steadman

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I read The Light Between Oceans by ML Steadman for a long-distance book club with my mom, sisters & best friend!

After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

SPOILER ALERT: that one other person so devastated by their choice is the baby’s surviving relative. (Um, duh.) You can see right away that this is leading up to an emotional trainwreck, right?

I liked the book: it was interesting and compelling. I enjoyed the writing and the imagery (though sometimes there were too many images too close together, too incongruous: let them breathe! Let them resonate! Sheesh), and I found the plot very interesting. I liked how the past influenced the present, and the reverberations of the war and the loss of children echoed through so many characters.

The book is (about 98%) a tragedy. I like tragedies. However, I’m not totally convinced this is a great tragedy. Take a Shakespearean tragedy: Hamlet shows us how he who hesitates is lost. Macbeth shows us the consequences of “vaulting ambition.” Romeo and Juliet shows us the folly of feuding.

And The Light Between Oceans? It might want to show us that honesty is the best policy (yay aphorisms), but I’m not quite sure it achieves that, since even the honest and innocent characters reap negative consequences as shown on the pages. So to me it felt like rather than reaching for some sort of overarching, universal truth, the novel seems to point toward only a specific solution for these particular characters in this particular situation.

To quote one Amazon reviewer:

I do not feel enlightened, or that I have understood a moral quandary any better. I just feel terribly sad about what happens to all the main characters . . .

According to Aristotle, the point of tragedy is catharsis, right? An emotional release and a lesson learned through vicarious pain, basically. But if the lesson isn’t learned, then is the tragedy working? What do you think?

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: INDIEpendence Day Blogfest

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Happy INDIEpendence Day!

The book

I thought and thought about what indie published book I could highlight today, and finally I remembered ones that I just recently got during their free promotions. I heard about them direct from the author, Dene Low, who happened to teach the one creative writing class I took in college. Years later, I ran into her at a writers’ conference and looked up her books.

When she mentioned these freebies on Twitter, I snapped them right up! They’re regularly $3.99 on Kindle, so even full price, they’re a bargain!

Crimson Blues Write Like Your Brain Works
Thirty-year-old lawyer Amanda Taylor moves to a small town after winning a sensational criminal case that got national attention. She’s tired of criminal law and just wants to settle into private practice in a place that will allow her to recoup her energies and her belief in human beings. However, although she loves her new home, after she meets her handsome neighbor, Kevin Blakely, she realizes that something isn’t right in the town. Kevin has been brought in from another state to be the new county school district supervisor. He thinks it’s so he can bring the school district into the technological age, but he becomes suspicious when the district budget doesn’t add up and certain members of the school board, who had welcomed him with open arms, begin to distance themselves from him. When he realizes he has been set up to be the scapegoat in a case of fraud and embezzlement, he goes to the only lawyer who isn’t part of the good old boy network in town—Amanda. As the case becomes more complicated, so do Amanda’s and Kevin’s feelings for each other. Learn how to write more easily, more creatively, and more effectively by taking advantage of the way your brain is hardwired to use language. You can write thousands of words a day by using this system and knowing the strategies that will appeal most effectively to your readers. You can learn how to revise easily and with purpose. I’ve done the research so you can have access to my knowledge and thirty years of experience without having to go through all of the work I did. By using my writing system, you can be more productive and inventive and strategic as you write.

I’ve previously read Dene’s trade published MG novel, Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone: The Entomological Tales of Augustus T. Percival. It was nominated for an Edgar Award (I can hardly believe someone I sort-of know was nominated for an Edgar!), and it’s absolutely adorable! It also happens to be $3.99 on Kindle. I’m really looking forward to both of Dene’s books on my electronic TBR!

The Giveaway!

I’m giving away your choice of one copy of Dene Low’s Kindle e-books! You must leave a comment on this blog post AND fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter, and additional entries are available through the Rafflecopter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You may enter through July 8th; winner will be announced here July 9th & contacted via e-mail.

Join the blogfest!

Want to join in the INDIEpendence Day blogfest? Here’s how it works:

  1. PICK A BOOK: Pick an indie (self-published or small press) book that you either HAVE READ AND LOVED or WANT TO READ.
  2. WRITE A POST: On INDIEpendence day (July 2nd), write a post about that book. It can be a review, an interview with the author, or simply a post highlighting the book. In your post, be sure to include: 1) HOW you found out about the book and 2) WHY you liked it (or WHY you want to read it). Make it easy for people to sample your indie author by providing buy links as well.
  3. DO A GIVEAWAY (optional): You can give away swag, or a copy of the indie book you’re highlighting, or don’t do a giveaway at all – it’s up to you!
  4. IMPORTANT: you may NOT highlight your own novel or one of the Indelible’s novels (this is a Pay It Forward event!)
  5. GO TO GOODREADS (optional): Add the Indie book or books you’re featuring to our ever-growing INDIEpendence Day List.

Which of Dene’s books would you pick? What indie published books are on your TBR??

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter

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Apparently, now is the perfect time for me to finally read Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter. I’ve read all of the Heist Society books (still catching up with the later Gallagher Girls books), and this has been out since February—so what took me so long? Cheapness. I waited for a library hold to come in. Then, strangely, when I was almost done with the book, I hit the top of the Lendle waiting list, too, and ended up with a loaned e-copy as well.

K, message received: next time I’ll just buy the book.

Katarina Bishop and W.W. Hale the fifth were born to lead completely different lives: Kat comes from a long, proud line of loveable criminal masterminds, while Hale is the scion of one of the most seemingly perfect dynasties in the world. If their families have one thing in common, it’s that they both know how to stay under the radar while getting—or stealing—whatever they want.

No matter the risk, the Bishops can always be counted on, but in Hale’s family, all bets are off when money is on the line. When Hale unexpectedly inherits his grandmother’s billion dollar corporation, he quickly learns that there’s no place for Kat and their old heists in his new role. But Kat won’t let him go that easily, especially after she gets tipped off that his grandmother’s will might have been altered in an elaborate con to steal the company’s fortune. So instead of being the heir—this time, Hale might be the mark.

Forced to keep a level head as she and her crew fight for one of their own, Kat comes up with an ambitious and far-reaching plan that only the Bishop family would dare attempt. To pull it off, Kat is prepared to do the impossible, but first, she has to decide if she’s willing to save her boyfriend’s company if it means losing the boy.

I really loved this book. I love Ally Carter’s storytelling. The voice in the Heist Society series is different than the Gallagher Girls series—and that’s great. Gallagher Girls books are narrated in first person by Cammie, the protagonist (with some epistolary stuff thrown in for fun). The tone is very conversational, very funny, very fun. It’s something like what I hoped to achieve in I, Spy.

Heist Society not only uses a third-person narration style, at times we even take a step back from the third-person limited style and slip into something much more omniscient. The opening scene of Perfect Scoundrels, for example, reads almost like a modern fairy tale—it’s not told from the main character’s POV.

As much as I love deep POV, this is totally the right choice for this series. There are reasons for narrative distance sometimes, and this series has several. But the analysis is for another time. Right now, I just love basking in the rich story world of the Heist Society series. I was sad to see this book end, and I hope there are more adventures for these characters in the future. (*cough*cough*Disney*Hyperion*cough*)

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: Latest library loans

There’s still a little room on the I, Spy / Mr. Nice Spy blog launch tour, but it’s filling up fast! More details here.

Who doesn’t love libraries? One of my favorite things about libraries is using the hold system. Okay, so it’s not so great when the book you want isn’t available right away, but with the hold system, it takes like five minutes to get a book you already know you want to read (once it comes in, of course). So here are the last three books that came in on hold for me.

Paige by Annette Lyon
After a bitter divorce from her unfaithful husband, Paige moves from Utah to California with her two little boys and vows to make a fresh start. She finds a job at a dental practice that helps her get back on her feet, but it’s the friends she makes at her new book club who help her realize how strong she is and who give her support to carry on as she faces the challenges of being a single mom. She also meets Derryl, a wonderful, kind, attentive man who treats her right—something her ex never did. Yet, Paige struggles to figure out who she is as a woman rather than a wife, how to help her boys adjust to a broken home, and whether she can ever trust a man or love again. As Paige leans on the book club ladies and Derryl’s ever-present care, one thing becomes clear: healing from the past requires more than a change of address.

With my birthday book budget, I decided I’d rather buy Annette’s Band of Sisters: Coming Home (Side note: Band of Sisters is currently $1.99 on Kindle!), and I put Paige on hold from the library. It finally came in, and it was the first book I picked up off the stack! But then life sucked up all my reading time. Darn life.

Reached by Ally Condie
Cassia’s journey began with an error, a momentary glitch in the otherwise perfect façade of the Society. After crossing canyons to break free, she waits, silk and paper smuggled against her skin, ready for the final chapter.

The wait is over.

One young woman has raged against those who threaten to keep away what matters most—family, love, choice. Her quiet revolution is about to explode into full-scale rebellion. With exquisite prose, the emotionally gripping conclusion to the international–bestselling Matched trilogy returns Cassia, Ky, and Xander to the Society to save the one thing they have been denied for so long, the power to choose.

I’ve read the first two books of this series, Matched and Crossed. I’ll be honest: the characters and the story don’t totally grab me and glue my eyes to the page (which sounds like a horrible, violent torture anyway. . . .), but I can’t stop reading Ally Condie’s beautiful, perfectly poetic writing. Love it!

The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Steadman
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

This last book is for my new long-distance book club, composed of my mom, my sisters, and my BFF. (With a roster like that, you’d probably think the book club was my idea. Nope.) One of my sisters has already read and enjoyed it and it sounds great!

What are you reading? What should me new book club tackle next?

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: Writing craft books

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Shocker: one of my favorite types of books to read? Writing craft books. Here are a few of my favorites that I reference over and over again (Amazon affiliate links—I get a tiny percent of any purchase you might make within 24 hours of following one of these links; it costs you nothing and helps me out.)

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks I’ve used Larry Brooks’s story structure in every successful story I’ve written since I first encountered it.
Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder Like Story Engineering, Save the Cat! has become a staple in my story structure outline. (In fact, I combined the two to create the plotting roadmap freebie you get when you join my newsletter.)
Scene & Structure by Jack Bickham This model for scene structure is another that I use every. single. time.
How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey This was one of the first books on writing craft I read that went deeper than the basic principles of line editing, and Frey’s books taught me a ton about creating character sympathy. It’ll always have a special place in my heart for that.
Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass With a forward by Anne Perry, who gave a PHENOMENAL keynote at the LDStorymakers Writers’ Conference last week, this book of writing advice from an agent/author is a perennial classic. It also comes with a workbook, but having read all of his stuff, I’d actually recommend starting with The Breakout Novelist, as it covers most of the material in his other books.

What do you think? What are your favorite books on writing craft?

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: Auto-buy authors

Inspired by my friend Debbie Cranberry Fries and an Internet meme I’ve seen on Twitter today, I’m sharing a couple of my favorite authors.

To be honest, I don’t spend a lot of money on books. Libraries are my friend 😉 . But there are several authors that I know are worth my money every time.

Tana French

Tana French writes mystery/suspense novels set in Ireland. That was enough to get me to read the first one, In the Woods—but it’s her plotting and flawless writing that have kept me reading everything she’s written. (There’s some language and adult situations—and, you know, murders—in these novels, so be warned if that’s something you avoid.) Hard to pick a favorite, but In the Woods might be it.

Ally Carter

I’ve gushed here recently about her two YA series, Gallagher Girls, about an all-girls’ boarding school for spies in training, and Heist Society, about a family of storied thieves. I first started reading her books because I followed her agent’s blog, and I’m so very glad I did 😉 . Again, it’s tough to pick a favorite among her books, but I think Heist Society has to take the prize.

Stephanie Black

Stephanie writes keep-you-up-all-night suspense novels with LDS characters. I actually met Stephanie by sitting next to her at my very first writers’ conference, and I didn’t know who she was. She was up for an award, and ended up winning, so I immediately read her books, and every one that’s come out since then. If I had to pick a favorite, I think I’d have to go with Cold As Ice, but it’s hard to go wrong!

Edith Wharton

Okay, so maybe there’s not a whole lot of new material coming from this Pulitzer Prize–winner (seeing as how she’s very, very dead), but I love her works exploring the themes of the repressive Golden Age society and love versus obligation. I don’t think I’d like to be one of her characters, though. Favorite? Ethan Frome.

Melanie Jacobson

Melanie writes humorous romance with LDS characters. I love her voice and I find her books hilarious, cute and fun. I read one of her books from the library and liked it enough that I bought her next two. My favorite so far is Not My Type, but I think I have some catching up to do!

James N. Frey’s writing craft books

I honestly wouldn’t care if I were reading the same advice over and over again, and although it does sometimes bug me that a large proportion of his craft books go into detailed examples (then again, it’s super helpful), I can’t stop reading them. I don’t know if I could pick a favorite, since they cover such different areas, but I like that his genre-based books (mystery and thriller) cover the broad strokes from his other craft books and a step-by-step novel construction.

What do you think? Who are your favorite authors? Who would you automatically buy a new novel from? Come share!

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