Sillybean

Empire of Ivory was better than Black Powder War, lots better, but I still don’t think the Temeraire series is living up to the promise of the first book. I am enjoying them, but I thought the first book was mind-blowingly fun, and the subsequent books have been pretty low on whiz-bang-wow. Novik says that [...]

It’s Banned Books Week! Other blogs are doing a great job of linking to and reviewing various banned books, so I’ll just take the opportunity to link to the Banned Books Bracelet, a gift I got from Lisa last year that’s become my favorite piece of jewelry.

The fourth Temeraire book comes out today. Get thee to the bookstore!

(If you’re local, don’t bother with the Bryan Hasting’s. I just snapped up their last copy.)

Via Library Thing’s blog, I discovered that LT had created a handy little bookmark that would let you search the contents of your books — provided they’d been scanned by Google.

I’d been more or less ignoring Google’s new My Library feature, because a quick skim of the announcement told me more or less what Tim [...]

3:10 to Yuma: Wow. Russell Crowe and Christian Bale are outstanding, and so is the plot. (It’s Elmore Leonard, being great the way he does.) Gretchen Mol is still made of cardboard, and I continue to wonder why people keep casting her, but fortunately she doesn’t have all that much to do. This is a [...]

I really like both Rachel Cohn and David Levithan when they’re writing individually. But together they are amazing. I adored Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. I couldn’t let it out of my hands; I started over and read it again as soon as I was done with it.

I think Naomi & Ely’s No Kiss [...]

The neighborhood is terribly quiet today. I can only assume that my neighbors agreed with my own assessment: it’s too damned hot to do anything outdoors.

As luck would have it, thanks to several online orders and trades, no fewer than eleven books have arrived on my doorstep in the last 48 hours. No fear that [...]

I had a hard time with this book. I wanted to like it. I really tried to. And I do, a little… but only a little.

The premise is pure silly fun: Lila, a bionic spygirl, is assigned to bodyguard Zal, an elf rock star. (Think The Bionic Woman, War for the Oaks, and the first [...]

We’re flying to California tomorrow. I am so ready to be elsewhere for a week. The atmosphere at work is distinctly unpleasant.

I bought myself a little vacation treat: an ARC of A Companion to Wolves. I realized I’ll be on a business trip when it comes out in October, and I’ve been wanting to read [...]

My HP order doesn’t show up on Amazon’s recent order page. I can’t track it via the website. Their emailed shipping notification told me that it’s shipping via UPS, but doesn’t give a tracking number.

Are they afraid people will hunt down the UPS trucks?

... you know, that fear is probably justified.

... I suppose it [...]

New words: 781
Reason for stopping: oh so tired
Sustenance: Raspberry tea
Exercise: does slogging through rain count?
Teaching the spell-check to spell: Buffy
Mean things: a very, very bad date
Time wasters: the Cheney follies, day umpty-three

: 23,790 / 67,500 (35%)

In other news: Had dinner with Marsha and the writing gang before her signing at B&N. I called my mom [...]

You get two reviews tonight because this one was short and I finished it long before I thought I would.

Holy crap, where were books like this when I was a teenager? This is one fun, funny book.

Nick is a bassist who’s recently been dumped. His ex is heading toward him on the arm of some [...]

I don’t remember where I read or heard about this one, but it’s one of those times I got suckered by a great cover. I really, really like the art.

Story? Not so much.

Here’s the setup: Gabriel, an arrogant psychic hacker living in London, is asked to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend’s stepson. The boy, [...]

I’m going to try to remember to actually review the books I’m reading instead of just mentioning them in passing. We’ll see how long this resolution lasts, but in the meantime, here’s what I thought of Kat Richardson’s Greywalker.

This is yet another entry in the urban dark fantasy genre. Its premise is a little different: [...]

I stayed up until 4 a.m. finishing Sandra McDonald’s The Outback Stars. I really didn’t mean to, but I kept thinking, “maybe the next chapter will resolve x,” and the next thing I knew I was done. It’s not without flaws; the mystical elements didn’t always mesh smoothly with the space opera stuff, to my [...]