Follow Friday!!

It's Follow Friday!

Today's Follow Friday question is:

Question of the Week: When you've read a book, what do you do with it? (Keep it, give it away, donate it, sell it, swap it..?)

 

Lately, I've found myself reading more ebooks than print books and there's not much you can do with those besides lend them out.  However, I do belong to two trade sites:  PaperBackSwap.com and Bookins.com and I post my print books for trade on both.  I get a lot of books for my kids on these sites and I trade their books once they have out grown them.

Another New Series!!

I have found another new series!  The Stacy Justice series by Barbra Annino.  I found this series through the compilation Every Witch Way But Wicked.  As you may know from previous posts, I can not stand to start in the middle of a series, so when I started reading "A Tale of Two Witches" by Christiana Miller and Barbra Annino and realized that the characters mentioned within were established in other series, I immediately stopped reading the story and started the respective series'.  I did enjoy Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead by Christiana Miller (where some of the characters in the story originate) and will post my review soon.  However, I was really drawn in by Annino's Stacy Justice.  Opal Fire is the first book in the series and it introduces us to Stacy Justice, a woman born into a family of witches but does not want to accept her prophesied role as the Seeker.  She has recently moved back to the small town of Amethyst and the lives of her family, including her grandmother Birdie and great-aunts Fiona and Lolly, collectively known as the Geraghty Girls and revered as the local witches.  Stacy believes and understands the magic held by her family but refuses to embrace the magic as a part of her.  However, when her cousin Cinnamon's bar, The Black Opal, burns to the ground under mysterious circumstances, Stacy has to harness everything in her power, including her powers, to prove Cinnamon wrongly accused and bring justice to another lost soul.  In the second book, Bloodstone, Stacy is faced with accepting her role in the family in order to help a long lost sister (?) and protect a centuries old secret.  She must learn to face her own demons regarding magic and find her place within the family hierarchy.

Both books are well-written and contain compelling characters.  The Geraghty Girls alone are worth reading both books, but the other characters are as well-written and likable.  Stacy is real, with real problems, magic aside, and very likable.  She is surrounded by friends and family that are both skeptical about her family and supportive of the craziness.  You want to read about her, her life and the town and you want her to triumph over whatever circumstances she finds herself in.  I thoroughly enjoyed both Opal Fire and Bloodstone and look forward to reading the third Stacy Justice book Tiger's Eye due out in 2012.

Follow Friday!!

It's Follow Friday!!

Today's Follow Friday question is:

Question: Keeping with the Spirit of Giving this season, what book do you think EVERYONE should read and if you could, you would buy it for all of your family and friends?

Interesting question.  For my children, the Harry Potter series.  I have the series in hard bound for them once they are old enough to read them.  Besides the magic of an amazing story, it teaches that everyone has something special about them & everyone can make a difference in the world. Also, The Princess Bride by William Goldman and Stardust by Neil Gaiman, wonderful modern fairy tales that tell incredible stories.

For older readers, I have to stick with the classics.  Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Plague by Albert Camus and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.   Each is a wonderful study of human nature and society as a whole.

I realize that most people are writing about their favorite read from this year, but these books are timeless, to me, and have been my must reads for a long, long time.

 

 

Follow Friday!

It's Follow Friday!

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted!  I've really got to get back into blogging, so today's Follow Friday is my new start :)

Today's Follow Friday question is:

Question: What is your biggest pet peeve when it comes to books? Maybe you don't like love triangles or thin plots? Tell us about it! 

Like many of you, I have a few pet peeves when it comes to books.  First off, I have been trying to read more independent authors because I think it's important to support new authors and I love discovering someone new to read and to share.  However, I have literally stopped reading in the middle of a story because the errors in the book were so bad.  I understand that self-published authors don't have the advantages of professional editors and proof readers, but ask a friend to take a look at your work before you publish it.  No matter how good your story, a work filled with bad grammar, run on sentences and misspellings seriously detracts from your work.

My second major pet peeve when it comes to books is lazy authors.  I love to read series--finding a great author that writes engaging stories is a treasure.  However, what I don't like is when an author gets lazy and insults readers by recycling plot lines and, in some cases, actual lines from previous stories.  I have stopped reading two series' by a very famous and popular author for this reason.  I feel insulted--like I'm not intelligent enough to realize that this same plot happened to the same character three books ago.  If an author can't think of new stories for a series, end the series.  Simple.

My final pet peeve ties into the previous one of lazy authors, but this is about convenient endings.  Nothing is more disappointing than to reach the end of a trilogy or series only to suddenly have everything fall into place for a happy ending.  I know this example will bother some readers, but I was massively disappointed by Breaking Dawn.  I mean, come on, imprinting Jacob on the baby to resolve the love triangle--it felt like something from an old Soap Opera.  After having read the other books and been impressed by Meyer's storytelling, I was very let down her ending.  It felt like she was trying to please readers with a happy ending for everyone instead of writing what she truly felt would happen in the story.

Anyway, that's my list.  Hope you all have a great weekend!