Book Binge 2009 tally

April hasn’t been a good month to binge on books, I’m afraid. The real world kept intruding, and I didn’t get as much reading done as I was hoping to. Also, I hit a mini-slump mid-month where I just couldn’t manage to drum up much interest in my TBR pile.

But anyway, here’s what I managed to get through. I haven’t written reviews for most of them yet, but I’ll try to remember what I thought about each book.

1. Grimspace by Ann Aguirre (re-read)
2. Blue Diablo by Ann Aguirre
3. The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan — Beautiful narrative voice. My review is SO overdue.
4. The Chase by Lynsay Sands — Not bad for a Scottish historical, and I even managed not to dwell too much on hygiene issues
5. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi — Excellent sf book about a world where old people are recruited to the intergalactic defence force. It sounds like a novel premise, and I was expecting more brawn than brain, but the story explores all sorts of interesting issues about what it means to be human—and does it well.
6. The Australian Housekeeper’s Bride by Lindsay Armstrong — I can’t remember, and I can’t look it up because I lent it to a friend. I don’t normally like porny covers, but I looked at this one quite a bit. It’s rather tasteful for scantily clad people.
7. Lady Be Bad by Candice Hern — Not as much fun as I was expecting, but it had some lovely moments.
8. Aussie Rules by Jill Shalvis — The hero didn’t sound all that Aussie, apart from a few “mates” and “no worries”. Convoluted plot.
9. Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas — Oh, Team Sebastian. I now understand. But, really, I’m Team Evie. A classic Regency romance with a reformed rake. The kind I love best. :-)
10. See Jane Score by Rachel Gibson — It was okay, though not as good as I thought it would be, given that so many people love it. I didn’t buy Jane as a porn writer.
11. Gone Too Far by Suzanne Brockmann — Not bad, but I didn’t like having so many points of view. The middle part of the story sagged.
12. Breaking Point by Suzanne Brockmann — The structure of the novel bugged the heck out of me. I couldn’t see the point of using flashbacks when the whole thing could’ve been written as events unfolded. It was like the book was trying to be a movie, and it didn’t work. Which is a shame because some of the emotional scenes between Max and Gina were very good.
13. Betting Hearts by Dee Tenorio — Such a find! Great friends to lovers story. Heat level is relatively low. I loved the beginning when the hero really did treat the heroine as one of the boys. So funny. (The author told me that this book is now out of print, so if you can’t get a copy, you can always buy the ebook version direct from Samhain, the publisher, or through Books on Board and Amazon Kindle.)

Books I’m reading but didn’t finish before the deadline:

14. Lover Avenged by J. R. Ward — It’s taking me forever to finish this. It gets good about halfway in. *sigh* Update: Click here for my review.
15. Interpreter of Maladies by Jumpa Lahiri — This is a Pulitzer prize-winning anthology, and I’ve only read 2 stories so far. The second story was subtle and quite beautiful.

16. I also attempted to read Into the Fire by Suzanne Brockmann, but it was DNF for me. I read the first chapter and stopped. Too many POVs and setting up a jailbait heroine did me in. Maybe these Brockmanns aren’t meant to be read one after the other.

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