All tagged Patricia Briggs

Three Recent Recommended Reads

Night Broken by Patricia Briggs (Mercy Thompson series)

Night Broken, the eighth book in Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series, places Mercy in a precarious and dangerous situation.

Danger lurks as a threat to herself, her marriage and her pack.

You've all probably at least heard of the Mercy Thomson series, but for the few that haven't, here's the scoop: Mercy is both human coyote. She’s a shape shifter married to Adam, alpha male and leader of the Tri-Cities werewolf pack in Washington. A coyote and a wolf falling in love and marrying stands out as unique. They share a commitment to honor one another and their pack. They are both primal beings and human beings.

Recommendation Roundup: May 2014

Holla, people! 

Try not to be too stunned, but I think this is the first time ever I've managed to post our monthly roundup of recommendations on the actual first of the month. I know, right? Stunning!

I have to say, I read some pretty great YA this month, which was a real treat, since I've had a whole slew of not-finished YAs recently. Have you checked out the last book in Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke & Bone series yet? Woo boy, is that good. I listened to the audiobook because one of my favorite narrators does that series and it was loooooong, but so worth it. I also enjoyed Jenny Han's new book, Liz Fichera's seemingly under-the-radar sweet YA romance, Jennifer Echols new book and a couple of other goodies as well. 

Clock through for 14 recommendations we read this month! 

Links & Things: September 20th

Hi y'all! How was your week? Mine was... exhausting. I really don't understand why life doesn't stop so I can curl up with a good book and drink a cup of tea. That doesn't seem unreasonable, does it?  

Here's some interestingness--an abbreviated version, that is--I spotted on the web this week that you may have missed. 

Recommended Reading

The Bridge from Me to You is a YA novel that is part verse, part prose. It is told alternately by a 17-year-old girl who is new to a small town with a family secret, and the star football player she meets who is having a tough year and has big dreams beyond the field. Publication is planned for summer 2014.

Read the rest--> 

List-O-Rama: Thinking About Summer Reading

Summer reading tends to be feast or famine for me.

My work schedule gets a bit weird, so I alternate between no free time and loads of it. As a result, I tend to be a bit more random with my reading choices (which is saying something, since I specialize in random and don't keep a reading "schedule" like many folks do) and binge on series or authors and try a lot of stuff out that piqued my interest that I previously passed up due to business, etcetera.

Here are a few (actually, a whole lot) of books I'm thinking about tackling this summer.

Darkest London Series by Kristen Callihan

I picked up the third book in Kristen Calligan's Darkest London Series at ALA earlier this year, not realizing that it was part of an ongoing series (I started reading Winterblaze and was promptly confused). I find myself more and more intrigued by historical fantasy (is that what the sub-genre is called?) and this one while having pretty trashy covers, comes highly recommended by several folks whose taste I trust.

Amazon | Goodreads

The Paranormal YA Series Enders

I have a weird habit with series endings: I kind of hate them. There's so much pressure for series to end "right" and in the case of paranormal YA, since there's not a lot that I love, love, love, with Jeri Smith-Ready's Shade trilogy, Rachel Vincent's lengthy Soul Screamersseries and Kim Derting's Body Finder quartet, it's not just series ending stress I'm facing--I'm also looking at not having a lot left in the genre that intrigues me.

Shade Series on Amazon | Goodreads
Soul Screamers on Amazon | Goodreads
The Body Finder on Amazon | Goodreads

List-O-Rama: Eleven Memorable Settings

I read two great blog posts this week about the idea of setting. 

The first was from the ladies at The Readventurer who put together a fantastic post about settings from books they’d most like to visit. There are some awesome ideas—though most of them terrify me because I am not adept at hand-to-hand combat (or any other combat, if I’m going to keep it real). The second great post about setting was from Molly Backes who wrote a guest post on Stacked about the importance of setting in contemporary young adult fiction

Both posts got me thinking about setting in books and what works for me and what doesn’t—and why some books have such memorable settings, sometimes even overshadowing the characters and plot. And my conclusion is that when setting is strong and memorable, the place almost serves as a character itself. Think about Dillon, Texas in the Greatest Television Show Ever aka Friday Night Lights. The characters would not be who they are if they didn’t live in Dillon—and when they leave Dillon, they’re transformed too (i.e., Tyra and Jason). 

Earlier this year, I went up to Seattle for an event featuring Stephanie Perkins, Gayle Forman and Nina LaCour. Stephanie said something that’s stuck with me, that (I’m paraphrasing) she thinks about character first, setting second and plot last. As a reader, that’s the order I think about books too. I can’t buy into a plot if the first two don’t work.

Here are a few books or series with memorable settings.

The Mercyverse - Mercy Thompson; Alpha  & Omega Series
Author: Patricia Briggs
Setting: Pacific Northwest (Tri-Cities, Washington) & Rural Montana

I love the world Patricia Briggs created over seven Mercy Thompson books, numerous graphic novels and three books in the spinoff Alpha & Omega series. What strikes me most is that Briggs has taken a very ordinary place and made it quite extraordinary with an eery underworld. When the books shift to Montana for the Alpha & Omega series, the deep cold woods of the region looms large. 

 

List-O-Rama: Five 2013 Releases I've Already Preordered

There’s something crazy-making about forthcoming books by authors I love.

I obsess over their release dates, cover art, blurbs—and I know I’m not alone in this. Since I discovered the whole preordering thing a couple years ago (yeah, I was late to the party on that one), I take special care to preorder books I’m hotly anticipating in order to ensure that I’m not going to somehow miss one I’m hotly anticipating. Even though we’re barely into fall of 2012, I’ve already pushed that preorder button on five books coming out next year. 

Falling for You by Lisa Schroeder

Falling for You, Lisa Schroeder - January 1

When I first learned that Lisa’s next YA novel was not going to be in verse, I was a bit bummed out—The Day Before is one of my favorite reads and I just adore her approach to the verse format. However, now that I’ve come to terms with it, I’m actually very excited to see what she’ll do with a traditionally formatted novel. Lisa described this book as mysterious and about “darkness and light,” which really intrigues me, since that’s a theme I usually enjoy in novels. I have to admit to muttering some not-very-grownup words of jealousy when I saw half of Twitter talking about how they snagged ARCs of this one at ALA this year—and I rarely come down with ARC Envy Syndrome. 

{Amazon | Goodreads}

Gayle Forman, Just One Day - January 8

I really liked If I Stay, but Where She Went is one of my favorite reads ever—I was just completely gutted by Adam’s story. I was lucky enough to hear Gayle speak at a little event in Seattle this year and was really impressed with her thoughtfulness and insights into storytelling, so I’m an even bigger fan now. Like the If I Stay series, her next two books will be a duology form two different characters’ points of view, and I really like that style. I’m even more excited that this series is going to deal with the transformative power of travel, because that’s something that was very important to me at the time I was the age of the main character in Just One Day.

Editor’s note: As our Official Romance Correspondant, Rebeca aka “Renegade” has put together a little primer for the romance-curious. 

Romance gets a bad rap.

Actually, most of my favorite book genres get a bad rap: Fantasy, YA, Science Fiction, Romance. I guess you could say I go for the ‘bad boys’ of book genres. Of course, if you actually said that out loud, I’m pretty sure you’d be thoroughly mocked.

But I digress.

In the spirit of not assigning value judgements to our reading, I’ve compiled a list of some of my favorite Romance Novels for the Romance-curious. They are big-R Romance in the fullest sense of the word: they are about relationships and include hopeful endings. (Jennifer Crusie has a wonderful essay on what makes a book a romance novel, which is really required reading.)

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

For Fans Of: YA

Any Dessen book is guaranteed to rock. I think she must put it in her contract or something. Anyway, this is my favorite of her books in a large part because of Wes, the love interest. Trust me when I say that he is perfect in a completely three dimensional, I-am-not-Edward sort of way. Perfect. Okay, now I have to go read about Wes again… *sigh*

He wants more books in which werewolves fight vampires. 

Okay…

Anyway, Laura forced encouraged her husband to sign up for our hand-crafted book matchmaking service, since he has very, very specific tastes. Let’s take a look at his responses to our extremely scientific survey. 

YA or Adult: Surprise Me

Genres: Contemporary, Historical, Dystopia, Action/Adventure, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Paranormal 

POV & Narrative Style: Third Person, Multiple POV, Present Tense, Past Tense, Male POV, Main Character or Narrator, Female POV, Main Character or Narrator, Unreliable Narrator

Swoon Factor: 2

Gross Out Factor: 4

Smut Factor:  2

Fluff Factor: 3

Favorite Books: Nightwatch, The Name of the Wind, good vs. evil, post-apocalyptic, vampires vs. werewolves (not by themselves)

Hated Tropes:  No smutty romance novels

The results… 

Cal Leandros Series, Rob Thurman

This is a recommendation from our Twitter friend, Sabrina. She says that you have to wait until the second book to get to the werewolves vs. vampires story, but says it’s one of her favorite series and has a complicated and unique world with all sorts of strange creatures who, um, fight one another a lot.

I love to buy books. Ebooks, paper books, whatever. I simply love to own books. It’s probably a disease of some sort.

Sure, I use my library, especially my library’s ebook collection (more on that in a minute), since it always nice to visit my library without the hassle of, you know, leaving the house. But, ultimately, I feel good about buying books, because I know that it supports the people who create the books I love—authors, yes, but also the editors and book designers and everyone else who’s involved in the creation and curation* of what’s on our shelves, virtual or physical. 

However, as much as I love buying books, I hate feeling manipulated. 

And with the combination of publishers—particularly Penguin—simultaneously raising their ebook prices while yanking their titles from libraries’ ebook collections, that’s exactly how I feel. 

IceBound by Julie RoweUnfair Game?

Let me tell you a little story about my recent attempt to read one of Penguin’s new releases, Patricia Briggs’ Fair Game

I’ve been hit or miss with the Alpha & Omega spinoff series of the Mercy Thompson series. I liked the first book just fine and was rather “meh” on the second. So, while the books in the main series are auto-buys for me, because they’re guaranteed good reads, I’m not as confident in the Alpha & Omega series. 

But, since there’s not going to be a new Mercy book until 2013 (sob!), I decided that I’d been missing the Mercyverse way too much and would revist this parallel series in the same world. Since it was a hardback release, I knew it would be a perfect Kindle book. (I have tendinitis in my right hand so hardbacks, are murder on my hands—I’d quit reading any new releases unless they were in paperback before my husband bought me my Kindle three years ago. Additionally, our house is super-tiny—around 800 square feet—so I can’t bring paper books that aren’t part of my “permanent collection” into the house.)

Logging onto Amazon, I discovered that the book was priced at $12.99. Given that this series is iffy for me, and that it was fewer than 300 pages, I balked at that price point. Momentarily forgetting that Penguin had abandoned libraries’ ebook collections, I logged onto Multnomah County Library’s website to put a hold on the ebook. 

Oh, right… Penguin doesn’t want libraries to lend ebooks

 

[Editor’s note: Noelle shares with us her story about a fight many a reader has had—to read or not to read books with “those covers.” You know what I’m talking about.]

Round One: Scorn

I have always been a book lover.

I have always been a fan of awesome.

But unfortunately, I haven’t always been so open-minded about certain genres—-especially those with questionable cover designs. Nowadays, I usually subscribe to the Stephon Marbury philosophy that [book] love is [book] love but only a few short years ago, I was that girl side-eyeing your selections in the Barnes & Noble checkout line, rolling my eyes at the ratio of abs to cover space and assuring anyone who would listen that I didn’t read those kind of books.

That is, until I did…

Round Two: Begrudging Curiosity

One of my college roommates was what I affectionately refer to as a Romance Shark. She was unabashedly addicted to romance novels of all kinds and had a multi-state swap network set up with her extended family. I held out for as long as I could but browsing her bookshelves and observing what she was reading was inevitable. 

Slowly but surely, I succumbed to curiosity. After more than a few books were “accidentally” left on the coffee table, my snarking evolved from catcalls at the shirtless dudes on the cover to,

Wait—so he’s a time traveling highlander?

 

and

What’s an urban fantasy?

 

The Romance Shark immediately sensed a weakness in my defenses—-blood in the water, if you will—-and dared me to read one—just one—of those books. 

And, crap… I liked it.