Little Thoughts About Books and Stuff

I'm an eye-phone for Halloween!

Yesterday I attended the NJLA Adult Services Forum (don't worry you don't need to know what it is for this post) and while there attended one panel and spoke on another and walked away with a list of some new books to read.  Since I'm really behind in writing reviews I decided to just share these new books so I at least had a post for today!

The Marked Men series by Jay Crownover



Real series by Katy Evans



Vintage by Susan Gloss



I Love This Bar by Carolyn Brown

Matt Hoyle's new book, Comic Genius: Portraits of Funny People, is a collection of portraits of some of the funniest people around.  Included in this collection are some of my favorites like Mel Brooks, Billy Crystal, Carol Burnett, Jon Stewart, Joan Rivers, and the two in the video below.


Steve Martin and Kermit the Frog in "Dueling Banjos" from Steve Martin

kind of.

With school work and work work I feel as if I don't have the time to write.  When I'm not at work, and not working on school stuffs, I really have no desire to be in front of the computer.

With National Novel Writing Month approaching I'm considering if I'll be attempting the challenge this year.  I'm leaning strongly towards 'no' for those reasons stated above. I am however determined to write in November.  While I won't officially be participating, I am planning on focusing on some writing.

I started working on turning one of my failed NaNo novels into  short story.  I think I write better as a short story author.  I started my editing of the original text and weeding out the sub plot lines that just won't work in the shorter version.

Besides not writing I haven't been going to writer's group meetings.  I'm going to start to go back, at least to help the other members with their writing projects. I'm also going to do the writi…

A friend posted on Facebook yesterday that we have just entered the last quarter of the year. (It's a little depressing.)

Anyway I thought it would be a good idea to see where I stand with my Reading Challenges for 2013.

Nora Roberts Reading Challenge
I don't really set any goals with this one. I try to stay current on her new releases while putting  dent in her back list.  I've pretty much current (just need to read the novella and wait for the new series to start). I've read about 30 of her back list titles.  I read the MacGregors series. It also helps that they have been re-releasing her back list.  Of course it's two titles to a book so my overall book title count is lower (if I'm reading them in one book, it counts as one book).

The 2013 TBR Challenge
I started off strong with this one, and then hit a wall. I just couldn't get into the one book I picked up, and then everything just seemed to bump those books down the list. It looks like at least 4 of my …

This semester I am taking Graduate Seminar in British Literature: Written Revolutions.

We are in week 4 and I can say already this is an interesting topic.

Here's some of what we've read already:

Section from Milton's Paradise LostA number of 18th Century poemsThe Rover by Aphra BehnThe Beggar's Opera by John Gay What we're reading this week: A section from A Vindication of the Rights of Men by Mary WollstonecraftA section from Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund BurkeA section from The Rights of Man by Thomas Paineand other selected works by all Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Richard PriceA Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Some of what we will be reading: Poems of the Romantic PoetsReadings about the abolition of slaveryGender issues in Victorian SocietyWritings on the Industrial RevolutionWorks of Moderism from James Joyce, Virginia Wolfe and T.S. Elliot Unlike last semester I don't have access to our full reading list a head of time, just se…

Sometimes in Dreams by G. L. Helm
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For the first part of this stop of the blog tour, G.L. Helm wrote a guest post which you can find here. 

It's very rare for me to like a book while disliking the main characters of a book.  It's rare for me to even finish a book if this is the case, yet I found myself compelled to finish this book.

Synopsis: Daniel Pentland is a broken man; torn between the two women in his life. He is tormented by guilt over his love affair with a beautiful English girl he met while living in Italy, and the loyal devotion of his wife, Amanda.
Two years after the tragic death of his lover Kit, he is continually haunted by her memory. Across the sands of the Mojave Desert, her voice calls out to him, pulling at his heart and his memories.
Each night as Daniel wakes screaming and fighting against the phantom of Kit’s killer, his wife does her best to soothe his pain and help him overcome his grief.

Sometimes in Dreams is a story of redemptio…

I'm happy to be participating in the Blog Tour for G.L. Helm's novel Sometimes in Dreams. Today he has written a post about his novel.  On Thursday I'll have my mini-review of the novel. 


Sometimes in Dreams: Fact or Fiction
There is always a question when an author writes a book. “How much is fact and how much is fiction?” In Sometimes in Dreams that is a very hard thing say for sure. All the places and settings in the story are completely real. Some of the settings have been bent around to fit a particular need, but not bent much. Everything in Venice is completely real with the exception of Campo Redemptor, which doesn’t really exist, but Bar Redemptor does exist in a different part of the city. It is much more of a working man’s bar than a restaurant bar I created. The barkeep in my Bar Redemptor is like a hundred real ones all of whom had their own coffee and drink ballet performed behind their bars, and the bar itself was patterned after a bar-restaurant where I reall…