Top Ten Series I Haven’t Finished

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish . I love this week’s list theme as I’m  hoping it will shame me into finishing some really good series that I’ve somehow lost the thread on.

I think the main reasons for me not finishing these series is because I read so much that when a new book comes out, I’m usually reading something else. I think I’d be better coming at something when it was already all out there, that way I could just order all the books and not have the waiting time! Anyway here is my entry…

1. Sookie Stackhouse by Charlaine Harris. Next to read: Dead Reckoning: A True Blood Novel (Sookie Stackhouse 11)

What? How? WHY?? I know, I know, I bought it straight away and somehow haven’t read it yet. I feel both wrists have been slapped and am quite ashamed of myself.

2. All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness. Next to read: Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy 2)

I absolutely loved A Discovery of Witches so how come I haven’t read this yet? I think the same reason will appear again and again, a very big book, not enough time and I can’t quite remember how the last one finished. So I’ll want to read the first before starting the second…

3. The Inheritance Series by Christopher Paolini. Next to read: Inheritance: Inheritance Cycle, Book 4 (The Inheritance cycle)

I love the dragon advertures of Eragon. But when it went from a trilogy to a series, I didnt get round to reading Inheritance, another one I already own and need to read!

4. Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. Next to read: Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London 2)

The first book featuring PC Peter Grant: Rivers of London, was one of the best genre cross-over books I’ve ever read. So why the delay…? There’s two more out there!

5. The Iron Witch Trilogy by Karen Mahoney. Next to read: The Wood Queen (The Iron Witch Trilogy)

The Iron Witch was a fantastic take on the witch genre. So let’s get on with number two!

6. Black Swan Rising Trilogy by Lee Carroll. Next to read: The Watchtower (Black Swan Rising Trilogy 2)

I loved Garet James, the New York jeweller/watchtower in Black Swan Rising. This was an urban fantasy with a really interesting and original twist. Time to revisit methinks!

7. Thursday Next Series by Jasper Fforde. Next to read: Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next 2)

I loved The Eyre Affair, quirky, original and full of literary references to tickle the serious reader! I am so ashamed that I haven’t got past book one that I’ve just ordered this one!

8. The Lorien Legacies by Pitticus Lore. Next to read: The Power of Six (Lorien Legacies)

I Am Number Four was a book I devoured, then I devoured the film. Then I anxiously awaited The Power of Six, purchased from a well-known bookshop and sat it by the side of my bed. Where it hasn’t moved for thirteen months! Oh the shame.

9.Mary Russell Mysteries by Laurie. R. King. Next to Read: The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (Mary Russell Mystery 01)

I accidentally bought book nine of this series at an airport before going on holiday, which is why I’ve added book one here as my next to read. It was a really great book so want to go back and start from the beginning.

10. Wolves of Mercy Falls by Maggie Stiefvater. Next to read: Linger

Another one I bought after finishing the wonderful Shiver, then popped on a shelf to read after finishing my current read before being distracted by something else. Such a great start to a series.

Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! This list has been the easiest one to do yet! I have so much to read, so many brilliant series that I want to follow and haven’t been able to, I hope we can do a completed series list soon as I need to restore my faith in my own book commitments! I’m very ashamed of myself and will sit in a corner for the rest of the day!

Top Ten Characters I Would Switch Places With For 24 Hours

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish . Today’s challenge is characters you would swop places with. I have a funny feeling there’s going to be a predominance of children’s books listed here… after all, they have the most fun!

1. Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

Who wouldn’t want to be the best witch at Hogwarts! To be able to do spells without even opening your mouth, to be bookish, well who isn’t? To be in Gryffindor and  have a time turner. It doesn’t get more fabulous than Miss Granger!

2. Elizabeth Bennett by Jane Austen

Hopefully on one of the days when she’s with Darcy otherwise it might just be embroidery for 24 hours! I’ve loved Elizabeth since I was about twelve and first read Pride and Prejudice. I’d love to step into Pemberley.

3. Skeeter Phelan from The Helpby Kathryn Stockett

A really, gutsy strong woman is Skeeter in The Help. I’d like to go back to the sixties in the South, at a time of change and be someone, albeit fictional, that tries to make a difference.

4. Eragon from The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini

Eragon has a dragon. An actual dragon, plus some pretty impressive skills of his own. I could live with being a man for 24 hours if I had my own dragon.

5. Miss Marple by Agatha Christie

Miss Jane Marple is an absolute legend. If I could be her for 24 hours, with everyone else thinking I was just a little old lady, then hit them with my deducing skills, I’d be a very happy lady indeed!

6. Tiffany Aching by Terry Pratchett

Yep, yep, yep, a witch on the chalk surrounded by little mad pictsies, what could go wrong?

7. Diana Bishop by Deborah Harkness (A Discovery of Witches)

Clever, feisty, end of a long line of superwitches, Diana Bishop would make for an amazing 24 hours.

8. Sookie Stackhouse by Charlaine Harris

Charlaine Harris writes her characters very well, would be interesting to be Sookie and telepathic in a world filled with interesting and danerous creatures.

9. Harper Connelly by Charlaine Harris

Another strong woman from Ms Harris – the Harper Connelly books are I think, my favourites over the True Blood books. Harper has a special gift, she can find dead bodies. A touch macabre but interesting all the same!

10. Matilda by Roald Dahl

Reading is your past time and you can move things with your mind. Fun!

This ended up being a very easy list to populate… I could go on with more, anyone with any magical powers ever!!

June Books!

I felt the need for a prettier, image led post. After all words are my currency but sometimes its nice to just look at the pictures! The books I am currently reading or would like to read in June are:

      

And am also very excited about the new Christopher Paolini but there’s a bit of a wait yet!

Book Review: Dead in the Family

Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris

The blurb: If you think your family relationships are complicated, think again: you haven’t seen anything like the ones in Bon Temps, Louisiana. Sookie Stackhouse is dealing with a whole host of family problems, ranging from her own kin (a non-human fairy and a telepathic second cousin) demanding a place in her life, to her lover Eric’s vampire sire, an ancient being, who arrives with Eric’s ‘brother’ in tow at a most inopportune moment. And Sookie’s tracking down a distant relation of her ailing neighbour (and ex), Vampire Bill Compton.

In addition to the multitude of family issues complicating her life, the werewolf pack of Shreveport has asked Sookie for a special favour, and since Sookie is an obliging young woman, she agrees. But this favour for the wolves has dire results for Sookie, who is still recovering from the trauma of her abduction during the Fairy War.

My review: *SPOILERS*
Dead in the Family is the tenth book in the Southern Vampire series and as such possibly not one to start with. I have loved Charlaine Harris’s creation from its beginnings and this is a worthy book for fans of Sookie and True Blood.

The end of book nine saw the most traumatic scenes in the series so far, torture, war and death. Sookie is no longer the same girl she once was with her sunny disposition – wishing to meet vampires and trying to find someone she can be herself around.

This Sookie is a different creature, angst ridden and needy, her relationship with Eric never seeming to quite satisfy her, she seems to have turned into the Carrie Bradshaw of Bon Temps. I was saddened by this change but needed to remind myself that her character has been through a hell of a lot! The harrowing scenes at the end of book nine have taken their toll and while I was keen to read more of Sookie and Eric’s chemistry, that area falls flat but with good reason. I implore Charlaine Harris to reignite their sparkle in the next book, Eric is probably the sexiest character ever written!

Don’t expect big things. This novel has a much subtler message. Emotional consequences to violent actions don’t often happen in fictional worlds and it’s a refreshing change that these are addressed. Sookie isn’t a superhero but someone much more relatable. Dead in the Family holds the ground work for some really interesting future developments. Not my favourite Stackhouse book but definitely not one to be left out in the cold.

7.5 stars out of 10! *******.5

(I havent reviewed all of the Southern Vampire books on this blog as I’m going for diversity but as a recommendation my favourites – the ten star entries are Dead to the World and Dead and Gone)

BUY ME! Dead in the Family: A True Blood Novel (Sookie Stackhouse Vampire 10)

Dead in the Family – coming soon!

Thanks to the wonderful Liz at My Favourite Books I have managed to get my grubby hands on a proof copy of the new Sookie Stackhouse! Yes that’s right I’m whizzing through Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris as I write this and will be posting my review in time for its release. What an author, what a book and what a lovely blogger as well! This is why I love the book blogging community.  Now I just have to wait for Season three of True Blood to air - come on June!

I’ll keep you posted!

Where I’ve Been….

So I have not posted anything for a whole month, for blogging standards thats pretty poor. All I can say is that Waterstones are to blame. I decided to purchase the Sookie Stackhouse boxset for the bargain price of £30 (RRP £40 although now its online for £20! Damn it!) from my local Waterstones. It was an impulse buy, I was in there looking for good Christmas presents and the boxset just looked really cool. I have always prefered the Harper Connelly series by Charlaine Harris but I was won over by the boxset. AND WHAT A SET!! It turns out her first book is nowhere near as good as some of the others! I am head over heals in love with the character Eric Northmann who is fantastically ruthless,  cheeky and the sexiest fictional character I’ve ever come across! I am halfway through the eight books and seem to find that I am unable to read anything else! If you put one thing on your Santa list this year I heartily recommend this boxset, I give it 10 out of 10 stars, and I’d give Eric 12!!

Book Review: Grave Sight

Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris

The blurb: Harper Connelly had a lucky escape when she was hit by lightning: she didn’t die. But sometimes she wishes she had died, because the lightning strike left her with an unusual talent: she can find dead people – and that’s not always comfortable. Everyone wants to know how she does it: it’s a little like hearing a bee droning inside her head, or maybe the pop of a Geiger counter, a persistent, irregular noise that increases in strength as she gets closer. It’s almost electric: a buzzing all through her body, and the fresher the corpse, the more intense the buzz.

Harper and her brother Tolliver make their living from finding the dead, for desperate parents, worried friends . . . and police departments who have nowhere else to look. They may not believe in her abilities, but sometimes the proof is just too much for even the most sceptical of police chiefs to deny.
But it’s not always easy for someone like Harper, for the dead *want* to be found – and too often, finding the body doesn’t bring closure; it opens a whole new can of worms.

My Review: So I decided, after reading the first Sookie Stackhouse novel by Charlaine Harris, that I would refrain from reading the whole series and try her other books, the less famous Harper Connelly books. It turns out I made a cracking decision as I was completely hooked from page one.

Harper Connelly had the perfect life until her parents shrugged off responsibility got into drugs and threw their lives into chaos. Consequently Harper and her step-brother Tolliver had to grow up fast. Especially when, at the age of 15, Harper was struck by lightening giving her special gifts and weaknesses like the ability to find dead people but coupled with crippling side effects that no doctor is able to fix. Harper and Tolliver make their living by travelling around the country and helping desperate people, parents, relatives, the police find the missing people in their lives, when they’ve given up all hope of finding them alive.

Not surprisingly Harper is not always looked upon favourably in the towns she visits, but thanks partly to her upbringing and her strong relationship with Tolliver is capable enough to deal with other people’s prejudices. This was a great read, engaging, interesting, sad and funny. I was drawn into Harper’s world and found myself firmly planted on Harper and Tolliver’s side! Definitely worth reading, a refreshing change from the Vampires in the world!

Brilliant book! (and the cover’s pretty cool too!)

9 out of 10 stars *********

BUY ME! Grave Sight (Gollancz S.F.)

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

DEAD UNTIL DARK by Charlaine Harris

The blurb:

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She’s quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn’t get out much – Sookie’s got a bit of a disability. She can read minds. And that doesn’t make her too dateable.
And then along comes Bill: he’s tall, he’s dark and he’s handsome – and Sookie can’t ‘hear’ a word he’s thinking. He’s exactly the type of guy she’s been waiting all her life for.
But Bill has a disability of his own: he’s fussy about his food, he doesn’t like suntans and he’s never around during the day… Yep, Bill’s a vampire. Worse than that, he hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, with a reputation for trouble – of the murderous kind.
And then one of Sookie’s colleagues at the bar is killed, and it’s beginning to look like Sookie might be the next victim…

Charlaine Harris’ deep south vampire series is a rare treat, it flows easily and is unassuming. If I am completely honest I came to the book after I had started watching the television series True Blood – I was intrigued by the product adverts in the states so tuned in to watch when it was screened in the UK. I am hooked on the show and am now very likely hooked on the books.

Review:

Sookie Stackhouse, our heroine, has the ability to read other peoples thoughts. It’s rather down played in the book which I think is a shame as it could go in so many different directions. (I’ll have to read the rest of the series to find out if its developed!) Her character has an appealing naiveté that’s not always found in this genre, she’s working class and proud, raised with good morals and a people first attitude. Bill Compton, her main love interest and somewhat dead partner has an old time gentlemanly way about him which makes them a pretty perfect coupling. True Blood, a synthetic blood drink, where the TV series got its name, means that Bill can ‘mainstream’ into human society however with any minority this is a difficult transition. The other potential love interest Sam Merlotte, is also a conscientious character with his own little secrets.

As a whole the book was pleasantly easy to read, there are some surprising twists and great characterisation. I really empathised with Sookie and read the whole thing in one sitting! A definite recommend for fans of Twilight, Harris has created a truly believable world in Bon Temps.

7 out of 10 stars! *******

Out now