Booking Through Thursday #2

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly bookish meme about (mostly) books and reading.

 

This weeks' questions are:

1. Do you read books about sports?
2. How about AT sporting events? (Kid’s soccer practice?)

 

I have read a couple of books with sports themes, mostly YA Contemporary or Adult Contemporary Romance.  Some I've liked, others not so much.  The sports theme doesn't do a whole lot for me even though I grew up playing sports and was a bit of a tomboy as a kid.  I guess I've kind of grown out of sports in general.

 

As for sporting events, I've never read at one.  There's too many distractions and you just can't get comfy enough on the bleachers or whatever you might be sitting on. lol  I don't have kids, but if I did, I would probably want to focus all of my attention on them anyway.

 

 

Have any thoughts or answers about the above questions? 

Leave me a link or comment below and have a wonderful Thursday!

 



Insatiable Reading Trend

I love to read!  It's the next best thing to writing.  Well, that and chocolate and other things I won't mention here. lol

Anyway, as much as I love to read, I sometimes go through dry spells where I won't touch a book for months.  And it just so happens that I was going through one of those dry spells towards the end of last year, beginning of this year.  But then one day, I picked up Nearly Departed in Deadwood by Ann Charles and suddenly my reading passion is back with a vengeance!  Yay!!

Since picking up that book, I've read every book in the series up through book 4 (actually I'm about 30 pages from the end of that book which I should finish today, but I'm counting it as having read all the books) and that includes the short story she released not long ago to compliment the series.  This woman has astounded me...seriously!  Sure, it's your basic murder-mystery, but she's thrown in ghosts, a middle-aged single mother of twins, a crotchety old man that has sex on the brain constantly, a Dirty Harry style detective, and a smokin' hot alpha male for the heroine to lust after.  Add in all the humor that mixes so well with the story and it's no wonder I have devoured this entire series within two weeks!  Ann Charles, you are a goddess of humorous, ghostly murder mysteries!

As I mentioned during that ramble, I'm about 30 pages away from finishing the last book in the series (please, please, please let there be more books in this series) and I realize that my reading frenzy is just getting started.  So, I was pondering what to read next.  Enter George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.  Game of Thrones anyone?

Yeah, I got hooked on the HBO series and decided I needed to read the actual books.  I was curious as to whether HBO kept fairly close to the plot line or if they went their own direction with it.  From what I've heard, they stay pretty close with the storyline, but I recognize that there's so much going on behind the scenes that you can't fit it all into an hour episode.  So, with my sudden craving for all things Game of Thrones, I ordered a box set of the first four books which arrived in the mail yesterday...woot! 

So, to answer the question of what I'll be reading next....A Game of Thrones....hopefully starting tonight!  I plan to envision Peter Dinklage every time Tyrion Lannister makes an appearance in the book.  I'm completely in love with this character and feel that Peter Dinklage does an astounding job in the HBO series!

Anyway, I guess we'll see how long this latest insatiable reading trend lasts and I'll be sure to share my thoughts on books that I find worthy of expounding on!

The Leaning Tower of Books

I love books!  I've been a voracious reader since I was 9 and was first introduced to The Nancy Drew Casefiles series (I still have 117 books out of this series...just couldn't bare to part with them).  I wanted to be Nancy Drew and travel to all the places she did, solving mysteries and catching the bad guys.  I even remember one time telling my mom to call me Nancy instead of Wendy (I was big into playing Pretend at that age and who better to pretend to be than Nancy Drew?). 

Anyway, as I got older, I slowly branched out into the paranormal realm (vampires and ghosts mainly with the occasional witch thrown in).  And then my last couple of years of high school, I was introduced to Fantasy with Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.

Then life hit and threw me some major curve balls which caused me to stop reading for quite a while - about 10 years or more, to be honest.  It also caused me to stop writing for the same amount of time.  Some things in life are hard to get past and they tend to take away your enjoyment in things that you once were completely immersed in.

So, with that void of books and writing in my life, I completely lost touch with the literary world and a lot of things had changed (for the better, I believe).  When I was a teen, there wasn't really such a thing as Young Adult books.  Everything was lumped into Children (or if you had a progressive bookstore in your town, they called the section Teens).  But the books at that time were pretty generic and not very mature.  And I was on a very mature reading level back then.  So, most books (with a few rare exceptions) were boring to me and I ended up reading more adult books (Robert Jordan, Dean Koontz, and a freakin' ton of romance novels).

So, imagine my pleasant surprise when the Twilight series and the Harry Potter series came out and I actually picked them up to read.  I couldn't believe how amazingly different these books were from the books I'd read as a kid and as a teen!  These two series alone broke the non-reading spell I was under and over the past few years, I have begun to devour books again like I used to.

The difference this time is that I feel I've truly branched out in my reading interests.  Whereas I typically stuck with mysteries, vampires, ghosts, some fantasy, and a ton of romance (especially Regency Romance), I now find myself reading so many new and intriguing subgenres in both the Young Adult and the Adult realms.  Dystopians, Psychological Thrillers, Zombies, Werewolves, Contemporaries, Historical Fictions.....and the list goes on and on. 

And now there are Indie Authors, Self-Published Authors, and Traditional Authors all turning up the notch and raising the bar for all these different genres.  And with the creation of the ebook, books are so much easier to come by (and relatively cheaper too).  But, I will admit that even though I have almost 400 books on my Kindle and Nook apps combined, I still much prefer to have either paperback or hardback. :)

Which brings me to why I titled this post the way I did: According to my calculations, I currently have almost 300 books on my TBR pile that I actually own but have yet to get around to reading.  I'm working on that pile and trying very hard not to add more to it, but it seems that I have a slight book buying addiction.  Even if I manage to not actually spend money on books, I still find myself occasionally going onto Amazon and finding Free books to download, which then sit on the pile for way longer than they should because really I was just trying appease the urge to own more books.  Sigh.  It's a vicious cycle but one that I am determined to someday break.

And the reason I'm rambling on about all of this is to let you all know that at the end of each month, I'll be posting an update that shows which books I read from the TBR pile that month and what, if any, books got added to the TBR pile.  Maybe someday I'll have the pile completely reduced to 0 but I highly doubt it.  My goal right now is to try and concentrate on some of the books that were added to the pile more than 6 months ago.  We'll see how well that goes. :)

Do you have a Leaning Tower of Books?

If so, how many books make up that Tower and how do you go about reducing the number?

 

I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments, so please feel free to leave me something below and have a wonderful weekend!



Fall Time!

I love the fall...the changing of the leaves, the crisp, cool mornings.  Such a beautiful time of year that really gets my creative juices flowing.  My Muse and I take more walks outside, which gives me many flashes of inspiration for scenes and interactions I'm writing.  Fall is just my favorite time of year!

I also enjoy the idea of curling up on the couch with a good book, glancing up occasionally to see the colorful foliage outside, the sun glinting off leaves of orange and red and yellow.  Sipping on coffee or tea or hot chocolate and getting lost in other worlds.

Then there are the puzzle evenings with my Muse.  We choose a 750 or 1000 piece puzzle and work together to make all the pieces fit.  We usually have music going in the background while we sometimes chat, sometimes remain quiet as we stare intently at the section of the puzzle we're working on.  And whether it takes us an evening or several evenings, we eventually snap every last piece into place and grin like little kids at each other when we're done.

And let's not forget the awesome food!  My Muse is the cook and boy is he talented!!  Everything from homemade New England clam chowder to vegetable-beef soup to very spicy chili and all other assortments of extremely yummy food get put in front of me and I promise, I devour every delicious bite.  It's a wonder I don't turn into a blimp by the time Winter sets in...lol.

So, yeah, I love the Fall and am so glad that it's finally here.  Now if only I could get it to stay until Spring....