Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Teaser Tuesday: Ash

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

1. Grab your current read.
2. Open to a random page.
3. Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page.
4. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!).
5. Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!


My Teaser:
Ash
"Numbed with cold, feeling as though the inside of herself had been scraped raw, Ash stood up on shaky legs several minutes later and turned her back on the grave to go back into the Wood. This time when she heard the music, she went toward it. Leaving the path, she picked her way across fallen branches and drifts of snow, and soon she saw flickering lights like fireflies in midsummer. The trees parted to reveal a mossy clearing hung with strings of silver lanterns, and in the center of the clearing a bonfire was lit, sparking and burning with unnaturally red flames. Around the fire a circle of girls danced, and some of the girls were human like herself, except when she looked at their faces, they looked mad." - pg. 121, Ash by Malinda Lo



What are you reading this week?


Sunday, May 2, 2010

Blog Post Bingo


For the month of April on The Blog Improvement Project, we had to write up to 14 different types of blog posts for the Blog Post Bingo. We were given links to several sites to give us ideas on what to write about for all of these blog posts, such as 20 Types of Blog Posts, The 5 Types of Blog Posts That Experts Write, and All 13 Types of Blog Posts. Of the 14 types that we were challenged to complete, I managed to complete 10 of them. Check them out if you haven't already read them!

1. A Link Post: For the Love of Books: Bookswim.com
2. A Short Post: Teaser Tuesday: Between Two Kingdoms
3. A List Post: For the Love of Books: Eco-Libris
4. A Long Post: Liberation Bibliography
5. A Review Post: Review: A Centurion's Wife
6. A Personal Post: We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Program...
7. A Resource Post: http://jacobsbeloved.blogspot.com/2010/04/communities-thrive-your-library.html
8. An Interview Post: Author Interview With Tina Turbin
9. A Profile Post: My Partner, the Book Vixen!
10. A Post Contrasting Two Different Options: To E-Read or Not to E-Read

The person who completes the most types of posts wins a $15 book voucher, and anyone that completes at least 5 different types is entered into a drawing for a second $15 book voucher. I rather enjoyed this challenge since I got lots of new ideas for posts from it, and it forced me to expand on my writing abilities to become more creative. I had ideas for the remaining 4 types of posts, but I ran out of time to act on them. The remaining types were an opinion post, a poll post, a how-to post, and a collation post. I'll be saving those ideas for a rainy day.

Which of my challenge posts did you like the most and why?

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Review: Midnight Alley by Rachel Caine

Midnight Alley (Morganville Vampires, Book 3)
Book Details:
Midnight Alley (Morganville Vampires, Book 3)
by Rachel Caine
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Published 2007, Penguin Group
Paperback, 245 pages
ISBN: 9780451222381

Synopsis:
"Claire Danvers's college town may be run by vampires but a truce between the living and the dead made things relatively safe. For a while. Now people are turning up dead, a psycho is stalking her, and an ancient bloodsucker has proposed private mentoring. To what end, Claire will find out. And it's giving night school a whole new meaning."
This is my favorite book in the series so far because the plot FINALLY focuses on Claire's schooling. When her schedule got replaced with harder classes, I went just a bit green with envy - I'm a nerd at heart, even though I haven't been to school in years. I also love that we get more background information about the town of Morganville, such as its purpose and an explanation of the more mystical aspects of the town. Myrnin was quite a fascinating character, and I would not have minded if the text spent more time on Claire's studies with him, as well as her advanced class studies. (And yes, my favorite parts of the Harry Potter series was the classroom stuff.)
I didn't like that this book did not have Eve's journal entries at the end like previous books have done. Those previously gave me clues into her mind and her relationship with Michael, as well as a taste of what happens in the next book, so I was rather disappointed when I realized it was missing.
I'm hoping that future books go into more detail about what the journals cover as well as what exactly the red crystals are and how they affected Claire. I'm hoping that the drama with Eve's brother Jason gets resolved quickly as I find him just plain annoying and obnoxious. The ending had me exclaiming out loud, and I can't wait to get my hands on the next book in the series, Feast of Fools (Morganville Vampires, Book 4).

The Cover: The girl on the cover must be Claire Danvers, although that's not how I've pictured her, and her clothing seems rather non-descript, with the exception of the stake in her hand. I don't recall Claire holding a stake anywhere in this book, so that seems out-of-place. I didn't even notice that alleyway behind her at first, but that must represent the alley that leads to Myrnin. And I have no idea what the line under the title means: "They're going to have fun even if it kills them. Again." Who is "them" and what "fun" is the line referring to? I distinctly recall a whole lot of eluding death and destruction, with very little fun in between.

First Line: "The instant the phone rang at the Glass House, Claire knew with a psychic flash that it had to be her mother."
Not a bad first line, especially with the "psychic flash" part - it makes me want to continue reading to understand the context of Claire's thought.

Favorite Quote: "If you ask me if I'm okay again, I'm going to smack myself in the face just to punish you."



Read For: Pages Read Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge, Fantasy Challenge, 101 Fantasy Challenge
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