It's WWW Wednesday again!

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading. WWW Wednesdays is a fun way to share what you're reading. To play along, just answer the following 3 questions:

1. What are you currently reading?

2. What did you recently finish reading?

3. What do you think you'll read next? 

What are you currently reading?

I am still reading A Little Less Girl by Tess Oliver.  I'm only about five chapters in (GRR to life's interruptions), but I love Dani and Amy already.  I have 454 pages left to read and I can already feel me being swept off my feet. Today at work, I will ignore everyone in the lunch room and spend 40 minutes reading!

What did you recently finish reading?

I finished reading The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan and I have the review in draft mode (GRR to life's interruptions!). I am not shilling for Barnes and Nobles by any means, but I'm telling you, their eBook bargains bucket has been good to me.  If you have a nook e-reader and you have little scratch but a huge literary appetite, then sign up for those almost daily emails from B&N. It's totally worth it!  

What do you think you'll read next?

Dreams of Joy the sequel to Shanghai girls.

I'm always looking for the next best read, so please share what you're reading with me!

YA Review - A Million Suns

It was by sheer happenstance that I came across this exciting sequel to Across The Universe. I cannot stand cliff-hangers especially in books which take so long to write, print and produce. I strive to avoid reading works of art in motion. Had I known that this end of the story was yet to be printed, I would have avoided the series like a plague till the finale was firmly etched in ink.  At the conclusion of Beth Revis's first novel, I was pleased with my experience, ready to move on to something new when I came upon this book marked "to read" in a friend's feed. The whole series is a trilogy!  I was gobsmacked and angered all at once. I'm a greedy reader who needs to know all there is to know about a story immediately! How will I ever survive until 2013 when the finale is released? 

A Million Suns by Beth Revis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another fantasmic tale of love, learning and betrayal by Beth Revis.

My emotional roller-coaster and unreasonable love affair with the Amy and Elder, our two protagonists in Beth Revis' illustrious story is a testament to the fascinating tale that our author is taking us on. In this installment, we learn more about Orion and what he learned about the Godspeed during the twenty years he was hiding from Eldest. Amy and Elder learn about life aboard Godspeed before the Eldest System, the controlling force of Phydus and the mysterious plague. Amy remains an outsider on the ship, unable to meld into the fabric of her new home. She doesn't think like everyone else, doesn't look like everyone else, and is not content with the status quo like everyone else. As for Elder, he is learning truly - Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Life on the Godspeed is significantly impacted now by the three causes of discord. Regardless of his upbringing (by "nature" and nurture), Elder struggles to fill the fairly flawed and very large shoes of the ship's last leader.

In telling their tales, Amy and Elder reminded me that the two heros I am rooting for are still very much teenagers and are teenagers required to make very adult choices The older people in their lives are not much help to them and they have to trust each other more than ever. I enjoyed watching Elder come into his own and I wished there was similar growth in Amy. Amy held onto her petulant attitude a moment too long that shifted my allegiance away from her slightly.

While I enjoyed the mystery of unlocking the secrets of the Godspeed, I was not very surprised by the reveals. The surprises at the end of each corridor were ones I would expect from the story. The unravelling of the web of secrets was tense and engaging, definitely my favorite part of the book. I did not enjoy the rather rapid descent into anarchy of the inhabitants of the Godspeed. The escalation of events seemed rushed and inexplicable at times.

I am looking forward to the next chapter in the series. Beth Revis has woven Elder and Amy into the fabric of my consciousness. I am genuinely concerned about their future together and I am rooting for them. A great read and definitely worthy of purchase. 4 out of 5 stars!

View all my reviews

Keeping up with the basics

So in the last few weeks, my blog posting has slowed. Life has caught up to me, I have less time to dedicate to my online activities, work pressures, spouse time, kids stuff, house maintaining, blah blah blah.  The same old story that I'm sure everyone has heard before.

What I want to know is How do other successful bloggers manage? Because I know I am not the first, nor will I be the last blogger who has to deal with life in general. The first thing that comes to mind is to schedule my blogging, I know that most people schedule time in their day/week/month to get their blogging done and I plan to do the same. The head-scratcher is how much time to dedicate to blogging.  How much time should I allocate to posting, reading, reading other blogs, commenting and all the other activities that come with maintaining a good and active blog?

I've spent a lot of thinking time pondering this. The first thing I've asked myself, is well - how active do I really want to be?  I love my weekly WWW Wednesday update.  It helps me stay current on what I am reading and planning out what my next read will be.  I also love writing book reviews. I figured out how to write reviews on goodreads and auto publish them to my blog (work smarter, not harder folks!) which is great because I love being part of the literary community. However since my book reviews are dependent on my active reading time, and I really hate setting an amount of time to reading a book (a topic for another post), I am not always consistent with my reviews.  As a matter of fact, I am three reviews behind as I sit here and write. Perhaps before picking up a new book, I should write the review of the one I just completed? Hmm? or duh! whichever works.

The second thing I've asked myself is what does success look like for me? Right now, my blog would be successful if it is an active site that has regular followers and receives about 100 hits a week.  Small potatoes for some of you, but monumental activity for me!

Finally, what kind of posts will I publish? . For the blogs that I manage to read, I notice that the authors/writers have different features, post types and styles and generally have a nice variety. Well most do. So how can I emulate that without sounding insincere?

For all my bloggy friends out there - reviewers, writers or otherwise - how much time do you allocate to your blog activities and how much time do you think a new blogger should allocate to their blog to keep it fresh and successful?

WWW Wednesday

I know this is not Wednesday, but somehow my post did not go through. That's what I get for trying to this via my phone!

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading. WWW Wednesdays is a fun way to share what you're reading. To play along, just answer the following 3 questions:

1. What are you currently reading?

2. What did you recently finish reading?

3. What do you think you'll read next? 

What are you currently reading?

I am reading A Little Less Girl by Tess Oliver.  This is one of the cheap book finds I purchased at Barnes & Nobles. 

What did you recently finish reading?

I just finished reading The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan. Another cheap book find from Barnes & Nobles and this one was a somewhat pleasant, albeit unsatisfying read. 

What do you think you'll read next?

As I stated last week - Looking forward to reading the sequel to Shanghai Girls - Dreams of Joy. I forgot to buy it and read it *gasp*.

I'm always looking for the next best read, so please share what you're reading with me!

Adult Read Review - The Betrayed

The Betrayed by David Hosp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I always enjoy reading books set in D.C. Settling into the dark gritty streets of the city always makes me feel like I have been transported to Gotham City and I wait to see the Dark Knight lurking around the corner. It’s my love of D.C.’s grime that drew me to The Betrayed and made it such an entertaining read that kept me engaged from beginning to end.
There was a parade of characters that marched across the pages, each unique - telling the story from their point of view. Even the bad guys had their turn telling you their story!

Sergeant Deter Train and Detective Jack Cassian are the well-intentioned D.C. police officers assigned to the gruesome murder of Elizabeth Creay. The police officers were as different as night and day, typical of partners in this kind of tale, but the author kept their relationship and back-stories from feeling overly stale or hackneyed. I felt comfortable with both of them immediately, savored the snarky humor both Deter and Jack shared, and appreciated the dedication they had to their jobs and the people in their lives.

The Chapin/Creay Women – Lydia, Elizabeth, Sydney and Amanda were intriguing. Although Amanda featured early, it was Lydia and Sydney who represented the women most strongly. The loss of Elizabeth was a blow felt by all the women very deeply and very differently. Lydia Chapin the iron-willed matriarch was the rock that her daughters and grand daughter crashed against. Lydia was unflappable and she had my sympathy most of all, because in the midst of a terrible tragedy and loss, Lydia’s motherly instincts were smothered by her sense of propriety. No parent ever wants to bury his or her child, but for Lydia Chapin, burying her first-born child was another engagement penned into her planner. Sydney felt the most loss, as she mourned the death of a sister whom she’d grown apart from. The two women were just beginning to rekindle their sisterly bonds, when the unthinkable happened. Now Sydney is left with thoughts of what could have been. Sydney’s involvement in the investigation of her sister’s death did not have as direct a path as I would have liked. She seemed to fall into the investigation by sheer happenstance and through very unconventional and almost improbable means.

Of particular interest to me was the fact that with the exception of the two police officers in the case, all the male characters in the story were nefarious beings in one way or another. For each reveal that David Hosp deigned to give, there was another mystery waiting to take its place. And while the story could have survived without it, the romance between Jack and Sydney was a nice side story that did not detract from the main tale.

All in all, The Betrayed was a great read. Pop culture read that accomplishes the task of entertaining you and engaging you. Not a book for my physical or virtual bookshelf – this was a library read, but if you come across it in the marked down section of your local bookstore, you won’t regret picking it up.

3 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

WWW Wednesday

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading. WWW Wednesdays is a fun way to share what you're reading. To play along, just answer the following 3 questions:

1. What are you currently reading?

2. What did you recently finish reading?

3. What do you think you'll read next? 

What are you currently reading?

I just purchased A Million Suns by Beth Revis, book #2 in her Across the Universe series.  I thoroughly enjoyed her first book - Across The Universe and I am looking forward to reading about Elder and Amy's exploits on the Godspeed.  

What did you recently finish reading?

I just completed Shanghai Girls by Lisa See.  This was a fantastic novel about the coming of age of two Chinese sisters in the 1930s - 1950s. This book was particularly riveting for me because it told the story of family bonds, family strife and the eternal ties of sisterhood. This is definitely a book I intend to own in print. 

What do you think you'll read next?

As with Across the Universe, I realized that there is a sequel to Shanghai Girls - Dreams of Joy. This will be my next book read and purchase. 

Hope you're all enjoying some good reading!  

WWW Wednesday - My weekly infrequent update

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading. WWW Wednesdays is a fun way to share what you're reading. To play along, just answer the following 3 questions:

1. What are you currently reading?

2. What did you recently finish reading?

3. What do you think you'll read next? 

What are you currently reading?

I am reading Shanghai Girls by Lisa See.  A book about coming of age chinese women is a changing Asian world. It is really good so far!

What did you recently finish reading?

I just finished reading Across the Universe by Beth Revis. What a fantastic novel!

What do you think you'll read next?

I just bought the second chapter in the Beth Revis saga - A Million Suns.  I'm really looking forward to reading this one.  These books are ones I will own in print!

I'm always looking for the next best read, so please share what you're reading with me!

WWW Wednesday

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Miz B at Should Be Reading. WWW Wednesdays is a fun way to share what you're reading. To play along, just answer the following 3 questions:

1. What are you currently reading?

2. What did you recently finish reading?

3. What do you think you'll read next? 

What are you currently reading?

I just opened the eCover of Across the Universe from Beth Revis.  The table of contents made me smirk as a brushed by it on my nook.  I'm looking forward to reading this one. 

What did you recently finish reading?

I just finished The Betrayed by David Hosp. An intense thriller with loads of excitement and intrigue. Stay tuned for my review!

What do you think you'll read next?

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See. A goodreads review of this book by a friend of mine piqued my interest in this book.  Luckily like my copy of Across the Universe, it too was available for digital download at my local library and I promptly snatched it up.  

I'm always looking for the next best read, so please share what you're reading with me!