I managed to finish a few more books this week. Two were by Victoria Laurie. Her website is http://www.victorialaurie.com. She is a professional psychic who became fed up with all the media portrayals of pyschics as total flakes. Her 2 books are in response to that portrayal. I found the books to be rather fun. The ist is Abby Cooper, psychic Eye and the 2nd is Better Read Than Dead. For a fun romantic mystery without a lot of sex and some actual thought involved then try them.
The main character, Abby Cooper, is a psychic who gets involved in a dating service, meets her date, and then is involved in a murder case her date is investigating because she gace a reading to the woman murdered. The man she thought was in "securities" is actually a detective who thinks she is a flake and possible the murderer. It all gets worked out, but the problems! Sheez! If they were not realistic, one-after-the-other type problems, the book would have been ruined. As it is, it actually made the story that much better.
The next book I read this past week is Julie Kenner's The Givenchy Code. I like her writing because the romance scenes appeal to me and while I can easily pass over the sex scenes (mostly because my memories are so foggy it is hard to tell how good the scenes are), the book is basically a fun summer beach read. I liked how the book ended with all the main mystery threads ties up, but there were several unanswered questions and plenty of room for more stories with different characters, or even the same characters but as supporters instead of as the leads.
Changing genres, I also managed to finish Steve Whites The Demon Gate. It was pure fantasy fiction. The setting was about the bronze age, but a lot of the problems I had were that after all the attention to detail to make sure that the setting was as close to accurate as possible, he blew it with the mind set of the characters. A person from the Bronze Age would never have the thought processes these characters followed. I am not saying that a Bronze Age person is dumb as dirt, just that they would not have logically cause and effect trains of thought. The last time I checked, the Bronze Age was still heavily superstitious and based heavily on "I saw it happen once and so it will hopefully happen again if the gods allow it to." Not "I saw "x" happen under these circumstances, so logically, if I duplicate these circumstances, it should happen again."
Fortunately, I am used to ignoring such blatant problems and once I figured out why I kept sneering at what I was reading, I was able to laugh, go back to the beginning of the book, and read the book with complete abandonment & enjoyed it immensely.
I really should make it clear that I love to read. The number of books I have not been able to read is an amazingly short list. In fact, the only book I can think of recently is the new book called The Historian. I tried to read that but it was so badly written and such a bundle of trite mawkishness that I never could get past page 2. Now, for me to say this given my horrible taste in reading should be a sign of just how bad the book was. I am not saying that it was a badly written book in the sense that it was ungrammatical or the ideas were bad, or there were gaping holes in the plot. From the 2 pages I read that is not it at all. The problem was that the author spent 2 pages delving in to why she was so passive about following her fathers orders involving her home and education while growing up. For 90% of humanity, it would take maybe a paragraph to delve in to that particular topic, and then get into stories and examples if necessary. The author took 2 pages just to explain that she was very passive about her educational life, how that played a role in where she lived, and then about 1/2 way in to page 4, I saw that was where she started giving examples. Quite honestly, I can't stomach that sort of mentral purging. Especially when I am reading for pleasure.
This past week I also managed to watch a few movies. "Ocean's Eleven" was a fun flick and I am not going to bother saying anything else beyond how Brad Pitt is an exceptionally attractive man & I really do prefer him over Clooney. Clooney is always too smarmy while Pitt seems smother & more solid - and not just in the chest.
I watched a few episodes of 1 of my favorite anime's. InuYasha is really just a fun story line and I like how I laugh when I watch the antics of the characters as they continue in their search to find all the sacred jewel shards and destroy all evil demons. I mean, that's a world of laughter in & of itself if done right. The fact that InuYasha has puppy dog ears and is an obnoxious white knight is tarnished armor & would deny all nobility just makes him that much cooler. And watching him try to not care is just sweet.
I watched a piece of teen drivel just so I could figure out who Hilary Duff was. I watched A Cinderella Story. I can not recommend it for anyone over the age of 13, unless you are like me & prefer having the TV on instead of the radio while reading or just taking care of those odds & ends that need to be done all the time. Then, maybe, if there is nothing else available, it might be suitable. I doubt it but I'll be generous. To put it another way, I not only read a book while watching the movie, but I made a pitcher of tea, cleaned the litter box, gather trash, cut my nails, weeded my cook books out, reorganized some files, and worked on a puzzle. All within the 2 hours this piece of intellectual stulification was playing.
No comments:
Post a Comment