New Year Blog Party

I know, I know, all I mean by party is just posting music...but still, happy 2013! Take that, stupid Mayans! I'm planning on doing several posts this week, like 2012 in review, more of my own singing, another bookshelf tour, and of course the artist of the month, but it's almost 4 AM right now, and I'm beat! But I'm still not leaving until I finish getting my new year on my way, so here we go!

Beautiful Day - U2

Burn It to the Ground - Nickelback

Galway Girl - Steve Earle

 

 Auld Lang Syne - Dougie MacLean
Come on, now, you didn't think I was leaving this one out, did you?

Good night! Have a blessed year!

Your pal,
Angels

Reviews From an HBN (Temple of the Winds - Terry Goodkind)

Book four of the Sword of Truth series.

On the red moon will come the firestorm...

Wielding the Sword of Truth, Richard Rahl has battled death itself and come to the defense of the D'Haran people. But now the power-mad Emperor Jagang confronts Richard with a swift and inexorable foe: a mystical plague cutting a deadly swath across the land and slaying thousands of innocent victims.

To quench the inferno, he must seek remedy in the wind...

To fight it Richard and his beloved Kahlan Amnell will risk everything to uncover the source of the terrible plague-the magic sealed away for three millennia in the Temple of the Winds.

Lightning will find him on that path...

But when prophecy throws the shadow of betrayal across their mission and threatens to destroy them, Richard must accept the Truth and find a way to pay the price the winds demand...or he and his world will perish.

MY RATING: 3 STARS

The review:

Oy.

I think I'll tackle this one with a few main points of discussion.
- I despise Terry Goodkind as a person.
- Either I'm a prophet, or this series has just gotten that predictable.
- I no longer care that much for Richard.

I think that will work for the time being. Here we go:
I despise Terry Goodkind as a person.
I've never met the man, and I'm not sure I want to. As others have pointed out before me, these books are all filled with the same graphic, horrendous acts of violence, namely rape and torture. I mean it, if the shock of it hadn't worn off clear back in Stone of Tears, then this would have made me physically sick just to read about how eight out of ten female characters were treated. As I've seen it put elsewhere, when the men are killed, they're cut in half and they die. When the women are killed, they're raped, mutilated, raped after being mutilated, mutilated and raped some more, then they die. I'll say it again, plot elements such as these are best used in moderation, and with good reason. For one, they wear out with use and lose whatever shock and horror value they possess. For another, if you repeatedly fill your books with this kind of misogyny and torture porn (hey, I'm just calling it like I see it), it's in disgusting taste and really makes your audience start to wonder about you...I'm just saying...at this point, though, it hardly registers as it should with me. I'm not so much outraged on behalf of the characters as I am annoyed that it's popped up AGAIN. It's like mildew, really.

And I just realized that I said I viewed the whole thing as an annoyance as opposed to the horror that it is. Now I really despise Terry Goodkind as a person. I hope he's gotten himself a better editor since this was published, as he still tends to ramble off on tangents that have little to nothing to do with whatever happens to be going on in the story and he manages his characters better this time around, but the best ones get even less screen time than ever. That's the REAL annoyance.

Either I'm a prophet, or this series has just gotten that predictable.
All right, now I'll admit that there were a few things that took me by surprise, but they were few and far between. I was surprised, for instance, that the big conflict was something as mundane as a plague instead of yet another bad guy intent on conquering the free world (but maybe that's because Richard hasn't offed Emperor Jagang yet). But from that point on, I could just about see everything coming, from who was going to get the plague to what was really going on with Shota to the identity of the Jack the Ripper-esque serial killer that sliced up half the prostitutes in Aydindril (did I spell it right this time?), you get the picture. Where are the surprises lurking in this mess of almost-bombshells? I can't see them! I can't see them!

I no longer care that much for Richard.
I liked him better when he was Richard Cypher the Seeker, the stereotypical young hero that still had a lot to learn and had something endearing about him. Now who is he? He's Richard Rahl, lord and master of the D'Haran empire! What he says, goes! He doesn't know everything there is to know about everything, but he's the final word on everything anyway! Obey or die! *raspberry* Really, he's not terribly likeable anymore. Kahlan hasn't slipped that bad, but she's getting less and less interesting. The best characters are the ones who don't get enough focus, such as Zedd, Ann, Verna, and the Mord-Sith. Granted, Cara, Berdine and Raina had a much bigger part to play here, but I fail to see why Goodkind even bothered including Zedd, Ann and Verna this time around, they did so little. Now, don't get me wrong, the little they did was important, and I wouldn't have missed Zedd and Ann acting like lunatics to avoid being sacrificed for the world, but so much more could have been done with them! Yet they go to waste! Travesty!

My closing statement after venting a lot of spleen...if there was so much for me to complain about while reading this book, why, then, will I bother with the series any longer? Because the good stuff was just that good, gosh darn it! When it's bad, it's bloody awful, but when it's good, it's pretty freaking great! For the sake of the great stuff, I'm willing to endure the other unpalatable stuff! Curse you, Terry Goodkind!


Your humble book nerd,
Angels

Reading Challenge 2013 - Book to Movie

So, I wouldn't call the BBC's six or more (hosted by Alex @ The Blethering Bookworm) a bust, as I completed the challenge, I passed with less-than-flying colors. This year, though, I'm confident that I've found a challenge I can excel at!

hosted by: Doing Dewey

The Challenge:

Review books and the movies based on them.

You can change challenge levels at any time and the challenge levels are as follows:

Movie Fan - read 3 books and watch their movies
Movie Devotee - read 6 books and watch their movies
Movie Lover - read 9 books and watch their movies
Movie Aficionado - read 12 books and watch their movies

For more information, see the challenge page here: Book to Movie Challenge 2013

I think I can nail this one! I mean it! Movie Fan, that'll be a cinch! For the time being, I'll shoot for Movie Devotee, but if I move on past that one, I'll be even happier! I've got a few more days before the challenge starts, and then we'll see how it goes. This is going to be fun!

Your pal,
Angels

Reviews From an HBN (Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins)

As usual, I'm slow on the uptake, but I'm definitely jumping on the Hunger Games band wagon. Not because it's popular, but because it really is that freaking awesome.

Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol - a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before...and surprising readers at every turn.

MY RATING: 5 STARS

Review time (but if anyone has read this and wants to talk it over with me, I'm more than eager!):

Gotta bite the bullet and review this thing, even though there are few things more intimidating than writing a review for a book this popular, or as irritating as reviewing a book you enjoyed. What can you say that someone else hasn't? How do you keep the enthusiasm reined in? Is a puzzlement!

Forget comparing this series to Twilight. I'm comparing the experience of reading it to Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. I got sucked in quickly, ended up rooting for a bad ass female lead capable of ruthless acts all in the name of a very specific moral code (that doesn't quite tally with what most would call "moral"), found myself mentally screaming as I read WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!, and still have one book left to read! Fortunately, this series is easier to talk about than Millennium...which is why I'm going to quit rambling about the one and focus on the other.

I didn't say anything about Haymitch and Cinna in my review for The Hunger Games, and I have no idea why. Both of them are great characters! Matter of fact, I'm hard pressed to find a boring character in these books so far. Even the expendable ones like Madge and Greasy Sae aren't what I'd call boring, but Haymitch and Cinna both work as interesting father figures for Katniss. Ms. Collins also seems to have given them greater dimension, and development! Yay! I liked learning about Haymitch's experience in the Games in particular; it shows how cunning and calculating a person he really is, which is important later on.

I read most of this in a day because 1) I was sitting at home with nothing else to do (translation: nothing else I felt like doing) and 2) I couldn't for the life of me walk away from it. When I finally got the chance to just sit and read, that was it. It was intense and just so darn easy to read in the first place, and had I stopped to consider possible plot twists I might have seen a few of them coming, but that's just it! I COULDN'T stop! It had me by the throat, and there was no thinking to it! I actually felt like I hit a brick wall a few times, like President Snow dropping a bomb on everyone, and Peeta dropping a bomb on everyone, and Haymitch dropping several bombs on Katniss.

Katniss, by the way, I still consider emotionally retarded (Hello! Peeta, woman! Gale can go fly a kite in a lightning storm for all I care!), but she's still as awesome as ever. I rank her up with Lisbeth Salander and Jacky Faber as the coolest heroines I've read lately, if not ever. She may not always have a clue and she might shuffle her feet, but when she finally gets on course she commits and doesn't look back. Well, she doesn't look back in time...

Which brings me to one of the cruelest cliff hangers ever written. I've seen a few doozies, but that one had me nearly throwing the book across the room and beating my sister over the head for the next book until I remembered I have Mockingjay on ebook and could, in fact, read it before her. *insert evil laugh* What's going to kill me, if this series doesn't finish me off first, is waiting for the next movie to come out.

It might be premature, but I think Suzanne Collins might have earned a spot on my list of favorites. She's definitely earned my respect and admiration. 'Nuff said.

Your humble book nerd,
Angels

Jumping Out

Well, my initial plan was to knock that list of the BBC's out of the freaking park by reading at least a quarter of the books on it, but...*shrug* If it didn't work out that way, I'm at least satisfied with reading more than the required six. But what did I read?

Recap time!

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

The sad part of it is, I have even more off the list sitting on my shelf at this very moment, but I haven't gotten around to reading, much less reviewing, any of them lately. Darn.

Your pal,
Angels

Had to Share This 27

Well, it's the 22nd, and according to the Mayan calendar, we should be up to our eyeballs in the apocalypse right now, so I say we celebrate that we made it!

Drink the Night Away - Gaelic Storm

Your pal,
Angels

Reviews From an HBN (The Boleyn Inheritance - Philippa Gregory)

I know I've been absent for awhile, but blame it on a bad internet connection. The good news is, I've gotten caught up with my Philippa Gregory collection, at least until a new one surfaces at Goodwill!

Three Women Who Share One Fate: The Boleyn Inheritance  
Anne of Cleves
She runs from her tiny country, her hateful mother, and her abusive brother to a throne whose last three occupants are dead. King Henry VIII, her new husband, instantly dislikes her. Without friends, family, or even an understanding of the language being spoken around her, she must literally save her neck in a court ruled by a deadly game of politics and the terror of an unpredictable and vengeful king. Her Boleyn Inheritance: accusations and false witnesses.

Katherine Howard
She catches the king's eye within moments of arriving at court, setting in motion the dreadful machine of politics, intrigue, and treason that she does not understand. She only knows that she is beautiful, that men desire her, that she is young and in love -- but not with the diseased old man who made her queen, beds her night after night, and killed her cousin Anne. Her Boleyn Inheritance: the threat of the axe.

Jane Rochford
She is the Boleyn girl whose testimony sent her husband and sister-in-law to their deaths. She is the trusted friend of two threatened queens, the perfectly loyal spy for her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and a canny survivor in the murderous court of a most dangerous king. Throughout Europe, her name is a byword for malice, jealousy, and twisted lust. Her Boleyn Inheritance: a fortune and a title, in exchange for her soul.


The Boleyn Inheritance is a novel drawn tight as a lute string about a court ruled by the gallows and three women whose positions brought them wealth, admiration, and power as well as deceit, betrayal, and terror. Once again, Philippa Gregory has brought a vanished world to life -- the whisper of a silk skirt on a stone stair, the yellow glow of candlelight illuminating a hastily written note, the murmurs of the crowd gathering on Tower Green below the newly built scaffold. In The Boleyn Inheritance Gregory is at her intelligent and page-turning best.

MY RATING: 4 STARS

Onto the review:

OK, let's start with a confession: Philippa Gregory is my new guilty pleasure. She disregards historical fact when invention suits her better and reading her books is hardly a step above watching a soap, but still, I like her work. There's something different to each of the books I've read so far, and I enjoy them all for different reasons.

I did not, however, fully appreciate the gimmick of three different perspectives. They each had their own voice, but they all managed to say the exact same thing with only slightly different words. I feel like I can get farther if I break it down by characters, so I'll go with that approach. (By the way, I don't feel like I can call these spoilers, as it's literally history, for the most part, so if you don't know much about the Tudor dynasty, you might be in for some surprises.)

I liked Anne of Cleves as much as I liked Katherine of Aragon. I've always liked Anne of Cleves, though. Her marriage to Henry was the shortest of the six, but she came out of it with quite the divorce settlement, and she was only one of two wives to survive being married to the man. I'd call that an accomplishment! Not much else to say about Anne, so moving on.

I see in the author's note that Gregory wanted to portray Katherine Howard as something other than a stupid girl. Boy, she sure missed the mark enough...I've only read one other fictional account of Katherine (The King's Rose by Alisa M. Libby...a good one!), and the two seem to tally with each other, so I'm going to say that either both authors read the same sheep-spit histories, or this is how it really was for Kitty. Here, she struck me as vapid, idiotic for even a teenager, selfish, naive, and ultimately sympathetic. The poor girl was fifteen! Fifteen! She had no choice in becoming Henry's trophy wife, the "rose without a thorn," and it cost her her life! I thought I was going to lose it when she asked for the executioner's block to be brought to her cell so she could practice kneeling at it, and the way Gregory handled the execution itself was gut-wrenching. I mean, SHE WAS FIFTEEN! Put to death because a horny old man lusted after her and she happened to fall in love with someone else! That's always been a hard one to swallow for me. Henry, you sick bastard!

And then there's Jane Boleyn. At first I thought I was going to puke, I was so disgusted with the whole "Oh, how I loved dear George and dear Anne and I testified against them to save them and I can't believe they were killed after all" crap. Then I found out Gregory was playing up the insanity angle so far as Lady Jane was concerned, and it made a little more sense. But it still annoyed me. As a matter of fact, Jane herself annoyed me. I mean, really? I hope "no writer would dream up a horror like that," because this character sucks! She can't decide if she's jealous or in love, whether she's loyal to Uncle Howard or the many queens she serves (all of whom happen to end up in some kind of disgrace, thanks to her), whether she's really crazy or only pretending to be, and blah blah blah. I had to work to get through her parts, hoping that Anne and Kitty would come back around soon. I'll admit, though, her scene with Uncle Howard where he gives her a slap of reality gave me chills. Big time. I'm getting chills just thinking about how it gave me chills, it was that good.

So, third Philippa Gregory book, and another one I don't regret buying. Like I said, it's novelized daytime TV, but still, it's enjoyable.

***

You know, it really is more fun to discuss a book than to review it...if anyone reading this blog has read any of the books I've talked about here, feel free to have a nice chat with me about them! Please?

Your humble book nerd,
Angels