Not in any particular order. This is just a small selection of the books I've come across or used, and basically all the ones I've read or downloaded from the library at work aren't on here because that's far, far too many to deal with. Links are Amazon affiliate links, for the hell of it.

Books I've used for research or inspiration: ( Read more... )

Books waiting in stacks (physical or digital) for me to get to:( Read more... )

Books I have in sample form on my Kindle to decide whether I want to drop the cash and put them in one of the aforementioned stacks:( Read more... )

A week ago I posted a list of several self-pubbed books I'd enjoyed. One series, by K. T. Davies, currently has the prequel novella up on a few giveaways. You have to sign up to the author's mailing list to receive them, but Davies only emails once a month, if that, and it's not like you can't unsubscribe. :) The links go to the giveaways, and they randomly shuffle the positions of the books, IIRC, so you'll have to look for the title.

The Best Laid Plans In this giveaway and also this giveaway.

If you've got Kindle Unlimited, Dangerous to Know, the first book in the series is there, and it's also $ .99 if you do't do KU.

How badly did I want to read The Grey Bastards?

On the surface, it ticks a bunch of tickyboxes that make something a telophase book:

[X] set in a pseudo-European, pseudo-medieval fantasy world
[x] down-and-dirty characters caught up in situations beyond their control
[x] orcs! and half-orcs! as viewpoint characters!
[x] and speaking of which, just one viewpoint character instead of a giant cast of thousands
[x] "Grey" spelled as "Grey" and not "Gray" which is just wrong
[x] OH COME ON LOOK AT THIS COVER: ( Read more... )

Specifically Regency romances, which I appear to be in the mood for. I recently read Carla Kelly's Summer Campaign, which I enjoyed, but then picked up another of hers, Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand, in which I am totally bogging down, and I think it's because of the ahistoricity.

*waits for people to stop laughing*

Yeah, yeah, I know they're all terribly not historically accurate, but the easy intimacy and informality between the hero and heroine is so incredibly modern that it's throwing me out of the book hardcore. (Well, it kind of exists in Summer Campaign as well, but there they had an excuse for it!)

Anyway. Suggestions? Preferably ones available in ebook format as I guard what precious little shelf space we have jealously and don't really want to fill it with books I'll only read once. :)

Been sort of slow around here lately. Toby ended up with a terrific cold from the party we went to a week ago, so has been croaking around the house. (He also went down to Austin on Saturday to game, before he realized it was a cold and not just allergies, so is now feeling terribly guilty about infecting anyone down there.)

I also recently finished Zen Cho's Spirits Abroad,( Read more... )

Spirits Abroad was good enough that I had the problem of trying to figure out what to read after it, because anything not as good would seem terrible in comparison. I ended up with Sarah Monette's The Bone Key,( Read more... )

I'd also read Mercedes Lackey's most recent, Closer to Home: Book One of Herald Spy.( Read more... )

And last night we finally sat down and watched the first episode of Constantine. Verdict: ( Read more... )

And one last media review. Toby and I went to see John Wick on Friday night. Verdict: ( Read more... )

And that is all the media I have been consuming recently, aside from the usual steady stream of House Hunters International, Face Off, and Project Runway (which, BTW, is getting suckier and suckier by the minute).

After waking up at 4:17 AM and not getting back to sleep again due to gut rumbling and brain whirring, I finally crashed at...12:30? 1:30? I don't know; I didn't check. Awake again at 5:30 PM. I could have slept longer, but I'd just wake up again at some wee hour of the morning whether I needed to or not so I'm trying to stay awake until closer to a reasonable bedtime.

The good part is that I got two books and a short story read! I've only been meaning to sit down and read actual books instead of the intartubes or something else since November. :/ But they were all good!

At any rate:

1. Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George. (Generic Western European-inspired fantasy)

Celie is the youngest daughter of a king who reigns from a constantly-shifting castle, which is always adding rooms or taking them away. She has a special connection to it. When her parents and oldest brother are missing, feared dead, she and her remaining brother and sister have to fight palace intrigue with the aid of the castle, which has its own ideas about who is and is not king.
( Read more... )

2. Pig, Crane, Fox (Lóng City) Short story in ebook format by Beth Bernobich. (East Asian-inspired fantasy)

I've had the sample for the book mentioned below lurking on my Kindle for quite some time, but couldn't bring myself to buy the full book because although there was no mention of a prequel, the book read as if there were a whole story that had happened previously to it, and I really hate the feeling that I've missed the first book in a series. Well, there was a reason for that: this short story was the story that happened previously to it. I bought it, read it, then immediately bought the novel.
( Read more... )

3. Fox and Phoenix by Beth Bernobich (East Asian-inspired fantasy)

One year after the events of the short story, Kai's gang is drifting apart in the aftermath of the events. Court intrigue has resulted in the king's falling deathly ill. Nobody can contact his daughter, and so the king of the ghost dragons, which has deep ties to the monarchy, sends Kai packing off to the neighboring Empire to go fetch her.
( Read more... )
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Anyway, my power supply is on its last legs. We replaced it, but the replacement turned out to have a fault, so it got shipped back today and the old one put back in until the next one shows up. I don't want to overstress the current one too much, so I'll be scarce online from anything other than my iPhone or Toby's iPad until it gets here and gets installed. If you want to talk about the above books, or recommend me ones that you think I'd like, I'll be checking comments via phone. :)

Mom came through with an Amazon gift certificate because I made her busienss cards at the last minute last week, so it was a nice haul. :)

( Books ordered )

I have a friend who works at a feminist bookstore and is trying to build up the juvenile fiction collection. She's looking for recs of girl-friendly interesting fiction for older children.

...in the continuing RPG tie-in novel saga. I'm going to be doing art for the rest of the evening instead of reading this book and thinking about all the skeevy gender and racial politics in the series, but I thought I'd let this part of the book speak for itself:

( Read more... )

...spoils of war:

Bleach 20
D.Gray-man 6
Hellsing 8
And Immortal Rain 1, solely because the description of it in the crack!poll was too crackalicious to pass up.

Off to a meeting where the topic is: budget. Joy.