Bed with Books

Throwback review from February 2014: Persuasion is a classic novel (that hopefully all bibliophiles have heard of) by Jane Austen. This was the only Austen novel I had yet to read – and I had to fix that! Anne Elliot is seven and twenty and not yet married. Eight years ago she had been in love. She had been engaged. But as he was a poor, lowly Royal Navy man, her family and friends persuaded Anne to break it off with Captain Wentworth. She is still unmarried – because she knows she will never love another man as she loved him. When circumstances throw them together again, Anne finds it difficult to ignore the searing pain of seeing him – the look of low regard in his eyes that she has resigned herself to deserve. And yet – is there hope? Her heartbreak all these years later leads her to realize that her feelings are no less deep – and the persuasion that led her to give him up all those years ago could not touch her now… if he would only have her once more. Oh wow. It’s been a...

Throwback review from April 2014: Soulless is the first in Gail Carriger’s alt-Victorian England steampunk humorous paranormal adult series The Parasol Protectorate . I was recommended this book by a friend before I even had gotten a chance to read Carriger’s Etiquette & Espionage (first book in the YA series The Finishing School that takes place in the same universe as The Parasol Protectorate ). Once I’d read that and the second book in that series, Curtsies & Conspiracies , I knew I definitely wanted to read this series. So, I took a leap, and bought the box set of all five books in this series at a good price. A case of the Amazon.com bibliophile trigger finger, if you know what I mean. Twenty-five year old Alexia Tarabotti has been ruled a spinster. She has many marks against her in English society. Her father is both Italian and dead – and she’s inherited his darker coloring and more exotic looks. She also has no soul. Not that that is any one’s business, of course. ...

Throwback review! Every Day is a YA contemporary fantasy novel by David Levithan. Every morning A wakes up and is in a new body. They’re always A’s age, currently sixteen, but they can be male or female, plump or thin. Anybody. It has always been this way. Over the years A has accepted this. A works to make sure the day is seamless in the life of the body A’s inhabiting that day, tries not to get noticed, and definitely does not get attached. That was the hardest part when A was younger. But when A wakes up as Justin one morning he meets Justin’s girlfriend Rhiannon. Something about her changes everything. The rule about staying detached and not reaching beyond the personality realms of the person A’s occupying no longer matter. Here is someone A wants to be with – day in, day out, day after day. Every day. But A has no control over whatever A is. Tomorrow A will be somewhere else… As someone who reads a LOT, I have to say that this premise kind of blew my mind. Not just th...

I was a teenager during the 1990s. I loved horror movies and reading horror books (I still do, but this post is about then not now ). For a quick reading fix, I, along with countless others that were my age, would often turn to the line of Point Horror novels that were published by Scholastic. Those of us that had a desire to write our own stories tried our hands at crafting books that we thought were along the same line as those that we read (you can find a few of mine on my Facebook page). Anyway, one of the things that has always stood out the most about Point Horror are the covers. Many of the titles started with the word “The”. Here is a picture of a few of the ones that I own… The Waitress , The Invitation , The Train... See what I mean? Another thing about the covers that stood out was the tongue-in-cheek, campy artwork and taglines. I know that the taglines are hard to read in the above photo so I typed them out for you here: “The customer is always wrong...dead wrong” ,...

Throwback review fro June 2012! The Springsweet is a YA historical paranormal novel, and a companion to The Vespertine , by Saundra Mitchell. I warned you yesterday that my reviews were going to be sequels for a few days! If you haven’t read The Vespertine , you definitely want to avoid this review and seek it out after you’re done. Don’t ruin your experience!!! Instead, read my review of The Vespertine here . Last chance to turn away… Zora Stewart hasn’t been the same since her sixteenth summer. She’s haunted by her fiancés death and the amount of other losses in those few short months. She’s a shell of her former self, and her parents are worried. After an attempt to reorient Zora to Baltimore society goes scandalously wrong, it’s decided that she’ll join her widowed aunt in Oklahoma Territory in the hopes of some good old-fashioned hard work waking her back up to life. It doesn’t take long for Zora to see that the exciting, thrill-ride of an adventure the papers make the...