My To Be Read Pile

Image courtesy of Aprettybook.com

I finally finished The Night Circus - you can see my review here - so I'm heading back to The Sable City with a long sigh of relief. It's a wonderful book, and there are loads more in a series. So, yay!

I'm plop in the middle of Beautiful Creatures, and I think I'm going to have to call it DNF - Did Not Finish. I like the characters and the setting, but crazy things happen out of the blue - cough, family dinner and morphing characters, cough - and the locket flashbacks thing is getting old. If you loved it, let me know and I'll try again later on. Right now, though, I have to let it marinate.

Instead, I just picked up Wool by Hugh Howey. I cheated and started in last night, and it grabbed me right away. It's a post-apocalyptic story of humans who survive underground in a silo. Interesting!

I also got The Cloud Atlas. I have no expectations whatsoever for this one, except it looks very funky and different. We'll see. It's six interlinked stories that span the globe and go from the 1800's into the future, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the author, David Mitchell, does with it.

By the way, I splurged and got both of them in print. I'm flying to England this afternoon,* and I need something to read when you have to turn off the devices; heaven forbid I spend ten minutes without a book in my hand.

I also loaded up some new titles on my Kindle. Losing Hope is the second in a wonderful series by Johanna Garth about the Persephone myth and a modern retelling; I loved Losing Beauty, so I'm really looking forward to the next one. (I must admit that I cheated and started in, and Johanna hasn't let me down. Her writing is as compelling as ever. 

Forbidden Road is the next in the Tower of Bones series. Tower of Bones was a really exciting epic fantasy, so this will be a great read about a lifetime quest.

A lot of friends recommended Divergent, so I've loaded it as well. It's another dystopian book, and I see that it's written in present tense - first person. SIGH, not a fan of either. Still, it comes with such glowing reviews that I'll give it a whirl.

* Yes, I said Flying to England! I hope to get a few hours to go and tour Beatrix Potter's farm, so I'll return with pictures and a blogpost about that. In the meantime, look for a fantastic blog tour about Sacrifice by Coral Russell on March 24th, Sunday. 

Beautiful Creatures; What I'm Reading Now

I picked up Beautiful Creatures on a whim while I was shopping for a birthday present in Barnes and Noble. There was an entire table filled with the series: Beautiful Creatures, Beautiful Chaos....

The blurb at the top screamed something along the lines of "If you loved Twilight and The Hunger Games, read this book!" 

I put it down and walked away.

Something drew me back - the gorgeous font for the title, perhaps. Plus the back sounded intriguing. And inside, when I cracked a copy for that all-important peek, I saw that the writing was good - the authors, Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, were well-versed in Southern Gothic and the language of South Carolina.

And it's the first of a series of four, so if I like it, there are three more long books to enjoy. 

YESSSS.

I liked the characters too - Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes. I bought it, along with The Westing Game (can you believe I never read that before?) 

Honestly, sending me into a bookstore to buy a gift is like telling an addict to pick up your prescription.

So, here's what I'm reading now:

Beautiful Creatures (Sorry - Amazon wouldn't let me post a link to the first book. It's one of those "all media seems to be eating funky brownies" weeks.)



 The Night Circus



The Sable City - this is FREE. Just saying...



The Westing Game



Ah, the joy of having four books going at once. I'll report back on all of them to let you know how it's coming along.