Street Magic - Caitlin Kittredge

"At 16, Pete Caldecott witnessed the apparent death of punk rocker Jack Winter after he raised an ancient spirit. Twelve years later, Det. Insp. Caldecott has followed in her dead father's footsteps at Scotland Yard. She follows a tip about a missing child and finds Jack, now a heroin junkie claiming intimate knowledge of a parallel realm called the Black. As Jack detoxes and more children disappear, he joins Pete's quest to find them, teaching her to use hexes and spells as well as her physical abilities in the fight against a rising dark power. "

( Probably not book ruining-spoilers but.... they're rather specific. ).

So, the_sun_is_up found a list of 1,001 books to read before you die.

Below, I've marked which ones I've read in bold and which ones I've read part of, heard of, intend to read, etc in italics. Plus snarky comments, because who doesn't love snarky comments.

( An embarressing fraction of the total list.... )

Okay, about a week ago I was talking to my mom - or, well, whinging about how I was reading only textbooks or travel books and all I wanted to do was read a novel. To which my mom went, "so read a novel."

So I picked up Martha Wells' Wheel of the Infinite. Now, I bought this paperback from a used bookstore, so it had that really nice, really intense used-book smell. You know the one I mean, right?

Last friday, I went down to the local independent bookstore, which has an espresso book machine (aka, a machine that can print a book in about, oh, fifteen minutes. Watching it was so cool - it had this great hot ink smell too.

All of which makes me know that books are not going anywhere in the long term. I highly doubt that most people who be able to give up the sheer tactile pleasure of books.

Now, on to the books themselves....

Like Death of a Necromancer, Wheel of the Infinite suffers from not being The Fall of the Ile-Rien trilogy. ( more )

Now, on to The Shadow Queen, which I loved so, so, so, so so much. Not since Queen of the Darkness have a loved an Anne Bishop book this much.

( deliciously dark details )

I want to read books for pleasure again!

On of my professor's required that we visit a bookstore this weekend, which was both fun and made me crave pleasure-reading. (Which is so not happening right now because any time I'm not reading textbooks I'm researching for my Europe trip).

Also, I bumped into the book A Northern Light, which I remember reading and loving. Even more than Maddie herself (the protagonist), what I recall most is here poetry-publishing, cigerette-smoking suffragette teacher and her black best friend. I didn't care about it being early 1900s - I wanted him (I can't remember his name) and Maddie to wind up together. They would have vocabulary duels, people. That is how adorable and OTP they were.

I reorganized my bookmooch account (canceled one, opened another, put some books up for mooch that I likely won't be rereading), did more research for SakuraCon hotels, bought text books and now am organizing my checkbook.

Thus, meme.

1. Pick 10 of your favorite books or series'.
2. Post the first sentence of each book. (If one sentence seems too short, post two or three!)
3. Let everyone try to guess the titles and authors of your books.

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Some of these - most of these - I will be quite impressed if people guess correctly.

[ETA: sorry about the lack of cut. It vanished when I edited this post, and I'm afraid to fuck with the formatting more.]

 Some of it is excellent (I prefer the original Alanna covers, sans Lioness Rampant and this reissue series, the original Daine covers sans Wolf-Speaker and In The Realms Of The Gods - that artist couldn't draw Numair right to save his life, and this reprint series. I like the original Kel covers and think her UK covers rock) and some of it is terrible (the UK reissues, the Japanese Alanna covers).

In case you couldn't guess, I'm falling in love with Pierce all over again.

Dead Beat is just about my least favorite Dresden Files and for the life of me, I can't figure out why. All I know is that after ( spoilers for all published Dresden books )

When I went to pick up the Immortals Trilogy for the next leg of my 2009 Tamora Pierce Reread, I saw First Test. Kel's books are one of the few of Pierce's that I haven't reread (actually, I wasn't impressed the first time I read them) so I read The Protector of the Small Quartet and loved it. Seriously, I think this safe to say that Kel and Alanna are my favorite characters.

( more )
I've also reread the first six Dresden Files novels, and had some thoughts.

( spoilers )

gacked from aj :

These are books that aren't written, haven't been written, and I'm not sure will ever be written, but they are books I WANT written.

1.) Tamora Pierce writes a novella about the next generation of lady knights centered around a badass, blonde noble with feminine wiles. (And a willingness to use them.) Plus, no fucking cutesy-cutesy animals.

2.) Molly Carpenter and Karrin Murphy fight the forces of darkness.

3.) Patricia Briggs comes back from whoring herself to all the bad Urban Fantasy tropes and writes a swashbuckling high fantasy novel again.

4.) Jennifer Crusie writes the continuing adventures of Rachel, from Welcome To Temptation.

5.) Martha Wells writes the further adventures of Ilias and Tremaine.

Okay, so I have a rocky relationship with the Sookie Stackhouse series.

They've never been ohmygod great but I've keep up with them. I really liked the first one, Dead Until Dark, and the next couple. However, imho, the books took a dive when around when ( spoilers begin here )

That said, I can't wait for the next Harper Connelly book, which is a series that is much darker and more entertaining than the Stackhouse books - it has a more realistic set-up, I really like the heroine's power and it has a romance ( spoilers )

Backstory: I found Alanna: The First Adventure when I was eight and it is the single most influential work of fiction of my entire life. I truly believe I would be a slightly different person if I had not read these when I did. I have reread this quartet so many times that years later and I still have chucks memorized (I also did this with the Immortals quartet - I took Emperor Mage with me to Hawaii and read it at least six times just in those two weeks.) Which is to say - I love these books on a deeply personal and subjective way.

However, it's been at least five years (probably more like eight) since I've given this series a reread. Partially because of time, partially because I was afraid they wouldn't hold up. They did.

( Futher Thoughts )

So... now it's time to get cracking on my reread of The Immortals Quartet. I was at the library a couple weeks ago and they had a couple of the whole series checked in, which seemed like a sign to me.

 Okay, so I finished Bloodhound a couple days (okay, a week) ago.

I just love Goodwin more and more and more with every delicious detail we find out about her.

 Oh my god you guys.

yukitheawesome utterly and totally lived up to her lj name with my birthday present.

She got me a signed first edition of Kelly Armstrong's Dime Store Magic, which is NOT ONLY my very, very, very favorite Armstrong book but one I have bought and rebought several times because I keep losing it. (Trust me, this copy is not leaving the house.)

*glees*

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

Read this:

-If you like villains.

-you like smart, hilarious villains.

-for all the soul missing from Watchmen.

-iff you ever thought to yourself, 'hey, Superman's kind of a dick.'

-Mad science!

-hot cyborg girls with good character arcs!

Along For The Ride - Sarah Dessen

( spoilers )

Turn Coat - Jim Butcher

( Spoilers )

So, my mom and I are giving Gargoyles a rewatch. It's almost as good as Avatar in the made-for-children, good-enough-for-adults way and I remember an insane amount of detail from when I first watched it at eight. Like, I remember specific scenes in great detail. It's really fun watching it with my mother, who has quite the eye for little details. "Why doesn't he just through that guy off the castle? Why do all the bad guys keep missing when they shoot?" Me: "Children's cartoon mom, children's cartoon.

Also, from this week's fannish5 :

Name your favorite character's five favorite books.

I picked Hatake Kakashi, because he was the easiest of my favorite characters to come up with favorite books for. I would do Sumire, but I don't know enough of Japanese literature and pop culture to do her justice.

5.) Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence

4.) The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

3.) That really good book about the Vietnam triage nurse that I read at least five times but can't remember the exact title and amazon is being unhelpful.

2.) Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie

1.) Icha Icha Tactics by Jiriaya

Dishonorable mention: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. This was the most terrifying book Kakashi has ever read and made him beyond grateful that Sasuke never loved Sakura back, that Sakura went to the Fifth for training and that none of them lived in Rain country.

Reply to this meme by yelling "Words!" and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your LJ and explain what they mean to you. These are the words given to me by edenfalling :

( feminism, Naruto, writing, Tamora Pierce, women in fiction )

So, when I got back from college, I finagled it so I had one free bookshelf for library and to-read books.

I was thinking this would
It's already full, even before I got to the library.

The Summer Reading List:

All The Fishes Come Home To Roost, Dracula (the original), The Sound & The Fury, Nation, The Audacity of Hope, Coin Locker Babies, Blood Cult, White Witch Black Curse, Wicked Lovely, Song of the Lioness (reread), Finders Keepers, Whitechapel Gods, Kitty & The Midnight Hour (reread) A Necessary Evil, Soul Music, Soon I Will Be Invincible, and a couple volumes of Basara

*deep breath*

Just to let you know? All the books I mentioned? Don't all fit of my To-Read bookshelf. So much for my clever plot.

gacked from despairinbeauty :

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."

2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.

3. You will post the answers to the questions (and the questions themselves) on your blog or journal.

4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions. And thus the endless cycle of the meme goes on and on and on and on ...

( She Asked Me... )