June Reads: 50 Books for 2011

For some reason my reading picks up in the Summer. So I managed three new books in June (and some re-reads of course) and July is looking even better. Yay! My credit card bill? Not looking so good.

#12: Spoiled by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan - The fug girls wrote a book! The best celebrity fashion bloggers on the internet wrote a young adult novel, and it's fantastic. Brooke and Molly, who never knew they were sisters, have been thrown together as teenagers by their movie star father. It's Sweet Valley High meets Dynasty meets Beverly Hills 90210 meets every guilty pleasure you've ever loved. It's sweet and fluffy, and funny and poignant. If you love YA, and/or the fug girls, you should read this already.

#13: Tempest Rising by Nicole Peeler - The first book in the Jane True urban fantasy series. Jane is bookish and yet scrappy and does a helluva job adjusting to her new paranomal heritage. Oh, and she meets a hot vampire. Which, of course, is like the beginning of every awesome book. Loving this series.

#14: I'm Not the New Me by Wendy McClure - Amazon has recommended this book to me for years, and the cover art has always appealed to me. But this isn't your average chick-lit novel. It reads more like a blog (which is what it's based on) so I kind of felt like it lacked a clear plot and ending. But I LOVED the retro Weight Watchers recipe cards and witty commentary that were included, and that's where the author's humor really shines.

January and February Reads: 50 books for 2011

Below are the books I've read so far this year. I probably won't be doing individual book reviews anymore. It seemed to just be setting myself up for failure since it requires a lot of time. Which, I don't know if you've noticed this yet, but I don't have a lot of time.

#1 - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) by JK Rowling - Didn't really miss the lack of Quidditch matches in this one. Could NOT help picturing Robert Pattinson as Cedric Diggory despite not having seen any of the movies.

#2 - Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix (Book 5) by JK Rowling - This was the beginning of the series turning much darker. The Umbridge character was truly horrifying and there's an overwhelming helplessness about the entire story.

#3 - Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner - I was attracted to this book due to the plus size heroine (though repelled by the $9.99 Kindle price point for a 10 year-old book). It went the usual chick-lit path and then veered off in a direction I hadn't anticipated. Fairly long for the genre, but enjoyable.

#4 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by JK Rowling - Reviewers claim this to be when the series turned dark, but I disagree of course (see above). It's without a doubt building on the darkness, with a truly traumatizing ending.

#5 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by JK Rowling - The series came full circle and yet it's a fitting adult end. And war is hell.

#6 - For a Few Demons More (The Hollows, Book 5) by Kim Harrison - I was becoming apathetic about this series (the main character has never really clicked with me) and then Harrison blew the whole thing apart and everything has changed. I feel re-invested in the series.

100 Books for 2010... the first 6 months

I've been really into the Anita Blake series so far this year. However, I'm now on book 10 and it's growing increasingly intense: "porny-er" (as my friend Heather calls it) and also just really disturbing with its villains and crimes. But the reason I continue to stick with the series is that I really just love Anita. She's tiny and tough, and she worries a lot about whether she's becoming a sociopath because she kills so easily. But really, she nearly always kills to protect herself, and more frequently to protect others. She's always defending those that are weaker than she is, and hardly ever with her limited powers. She's much more likely to defend with her huge arsenal of weapons that she's adept at wielding. And I'm okay with that.

#1 - Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 1) by Laurell K. Hamilton
#2 - The Laughing Corpse (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 2) by Laurell K. Hamilton
#3 - Circus of the Damned (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 3) by Laurell K. Hamilton
#4 - The Lunatic Cafe (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 4) by Laurell K. Hamilton
#5 - Bloody Bones (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 5) by Laurell K. Hamilton
#6 - The Killing Dance (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 6) by Laurell K. Hamilton
#7 - Burnt Offerings (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 7) by Laurell K. Hamilton
#8 - Blue Moon (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 8) by Laurell K. Hamilton
#9 - Obsidian Butterfly (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 9) by Laurell K. Hamilton
#10 - Dead in the Family (Sookie Stackhouse, Book 10) by Charlaine Harris
#11 - Going in Circles by Pamela Ribon

This list does not include the number of books I've re-read (including the entire Twilight series- it's a sickness I tell you!) which I do over and over again, every year.

Maybe I should be shooting for 50 books in a year?

Book #51: Crazy for You

Jennifer Crusie's Crazy for You shares a title with my favorite Madonna song. The Madonna song is better.

Quinn MacKenzie is a high school art teacher who's living with the town's favorite baseball coach and pretty much just coasting through life. When she and her coach boyfriend have a disagreement about a stray dog she wants to keep, it spurs Quinn to finally make some changes in her life. She moves out, buys a house, cuts her hair, and keeps the dog. She also decides to pursue her sister's ex-husband Nick.

While Quinn is making the zany changes in her life, and pursuing the ill-advised affair with her sister's ex, who has always had the hots for her, Bill the baseball coach is convinced she'll come back to him. But when she doesn't come back fast enough, he starts breaking into her house and vandalizing things so she'll realize how much she needs him, and he begins stalking her. His cluelessness might have been comical if it wasn't so goddamned scary. As a result, it cast a pall over the entire rest of the story.

Book #45: Strange Bedpersons

Strange BedPersons by Jennifer Crusie is dated chick-lit.

Tess is a bleeding heart liberal who grew up on a commune, calls her parents by her their first names, and despises everything yuppie.

Nick is a wealthy Republican lawyer, desperate to make partner at his firm. It's very Wall Street.

Can these two opposites attract? Yawn.

What was interesting about this story is that at the beginning of the book, Tess and Nick had already dated and broken up, because they were two different. Second chances can be an interesting concept, but I prefer getting to experience the couple first meeting.

Book #42: Getting Rid of Bradley

Getting Rid of Bradley is the third Jennifer Crusie book I've read, and I have to say, I like her. They're light and fun, and her characters are insanely likable.

Lucy Savage (And by the way, Lucy is a great character name. It immediately conveys 'adorable' and 'quirky'.) gets stood up at her own divorce. She finally gets the guts to get rid of her boring and controlling husband Bradley, but not until she walks in on him with another woman, in her house. Lucy is a science teacher with a great old Victorian in need of some work, and three silly dogs that she's devoted to.

Due to absurd coincidences, (hey, I don't mind, if it's done in an entertaining way) Lucy ends up defending herself from a mugger, who is actually hot cop Zack Warren, as he's trying to save her life.

Zack ends up moving in to protect her from either someone who's trying to kill her, or someone who is just trying to break into her house. Of course sparks fly, so do bullets, and cats.

My favorite thing about Jennifer Crusie books are her characters. They all come across as real people. They're not ridiculously gorgeous, though they're of course attractive to the other person. They have typical human fears and insecurities that make them feel like people you know.

Book #39: Charlie All Night

Charlie All Night (titles again, I know, right?) by Jennifer Crusie is my second chick lit novel in a week. I was on vacation, don't judge!

Radio producer Ally has just been replaced. Her radio star ex-boyfriend has replaced her with a younger and thinner model in his bed and on his show.

Charlie has been hired to helm the 2am show and since he's not really there to deejay, he's perfectly fine with having hardly any listeners. But since Ally has been assigned as his producer, he has to work extra hard to keep her from making him a star, and to keep his hands off of her.

This was a somewhat enjoyable beach type read (sadly, I was not actually at the beach). But I didn't find the relationship to be as complex or as enjoyable as the one in Crusie's Bet Me. But I believe Charlie All Night was originally published as a Harlequin. And yes, I'm totally judging.

Book #38: Bet Me

Jennifer Crusie's Bet Me is chick lit. As far as I can tell, that means it's a romance novel, but an extremely modern one where the heroine has a career and doesn't always want children.

Of course it started with a bet.

Min (short for Minerva) has just been dumped by her boyfriend David, who she wasn't even sure she liked very much, three weeks before her sister's wedding. Min is an actuary, and on the chubby side, so she's pretty sure she'll have to listen to her mother's recriminations when she shows up to the wedding dateless. When she overhears David the ex, make a bet that his friend Cal can't get Min into bed, Min decides maybe she can get some revenge, and a hot (if worthless) date to the wedding in one swoop.

Cal hardly ever turns away from a bet, but he's actually not sleazy enough to bet on getting a woman into bed. What he does bet on, is that he can get her to leave the bar with him. He figures he's at least that charming. But since Min is onto him, he actually won't get very far with his legendary charm.

Through a series of extremely odd coincidences, and maybe a little fate, and despite their psychotic exes, Min and Cal keep finding themselves together. Jennifer Crusie actually does a really good job of making you see why a guy like Cal might fall for a girl like Min. And he even talks her out of her perpetual dieting. (But seriously ladies, diet if you want to, but nobody and I mean nobody, wants to hear you whine about all the things you choose to deny yourself.) This was a funny and frothy good book.

Book #37: Vision in White

Vision in White is the first in a series about a group of friends who run their own wedding planning business. And it's Nora Roberts' heralded return to pure romance. No sadistic murders to solve and no paranormal evil to conquer with magic. Kind of a bummer.

So Mackensie is the photographer for Vows, the wedding business she started with her three childhood best friends. She has an insanely disfunctional relationship with her manipulative mother, and is ambivalent about her historically absent father. So as a result, Mac is one of those tedious women from chick lit books who's incapable of having a healthy adult relationship with the opposite sex, because she's too afraid of getting "hurt". To quote Rayanne Graff on My So-Called Life: "Anything causes a scar. Living causes a scar. My mother has a humongous scar from having me. Does that mean that I should have never been born?"

Enter Carter, a high school English teacher who's had a crush on Mac since they were teenagers. He's far too nice, and well adjusted for her. But he wants her anyway. The usual roadblocks get in the way, but guess how it ends?

Since this is the first in a series, it's a lucky thing that Mac's best friends and business partners are entertaining and likable women (they'll be the subjects of the subsequent novals). Though it's a little hard to buy her relationship-phobia when she's able to have such long and healthy relationships with her friends.