We Have a Winner!

Sharing the Love Winner! Jen Congratualations, Jen! Your books will be in the mail soon. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have over the years. 

Friday 56: Fantasy in Death by J. D. Robb

Happy Friday everybody!!

Rules:

• Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
• Turn to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of Storytime with Tonya and Friends.
• Post a link along with your post back to Storytime with Tonya and Friends.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

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"Admiring you doesn't mean taking the fall for you. He's not quite as dumb as you think."

"Ro's not dumb." Dubrosky didn't miss a beat. "He just gets confused sometimes when it comes to reality. He's wired to games, and a lot outside his bubble gets past him."

J. D. Robb's Fantasy in Death Putnam Adult (February 23, 2010)

This is a "drop everything and read" book for me. Another 60 pages to finish my current read and I will find out what the heck that short snippet means. Who is talking? Who is Ro? Who is Dubrosky? I can't wait.

 

Review: The Last Colony by John Scalzi

The Last Colony
Author: John Scalzi
Publication: Tor Science Fiction; Reprint edition (July 29, 2008)

Product Information: Retired from his fighting days, John Perry is now village ombudsman for a human colony on distant Huckleberry. With his wife, former Special Forces warrior Jane Sagan, he farms several acres, adjudicates local disputes, and enjoys watching his adopted daughter grow up.

That is, until his and Jane's past reaches out to bring them back into the game — as leaders of a new human colony, to be peopled by settlers from all the major human worlds, for a deep political purpose that will put Perry and Sagan back in the thick of interstellar politics, betrayal, and war.

My Thoughts: I enjoyed this conclusion to the story of John Perry, Jane Sagan and Zoe Boutin. After some quiet time as colonists on Huckleberry political matters are disturbing them again. I like the interplay between John and his assistant Savitri. There were lots of humorous remarks. I like the relationship between Zoe and John too. I like learning more about Jane as she learns to be a regular, unenhanced human and how she reacts when she is enhanced again against her will.

Then John and Jane are chosen to be the leaders of a new colonial venture. Only the Colonial Union doesn't tell them that the Conclave (a group of over 400 alien races) has forbidden non-members to colonize new planets. Nor does the CU actually send them to the planet they think they are colonizing. After some adventures including discovering that they are not alone on the planet and the aliens are hostile and learning to survive without all their electronics, the CU comes back. Roanoke colonists are in danger and not only from the Conclave.

The story was exciting. My only complaint is that the story ended. I want to know more about these characters and what happens next.

Challenges: RYOB Reading Challenge, Bottoms Up Reading Challenge

Teaser Tuesday: Steamed by Katie MacAlister

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers

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Steamed: A Steampunk Romance
Author: Katie MacAlister
Publication: Signet; Original edition (February 2, 2010)

There was no sign of Hallie at all. "Great. We've lost her."

"She shouldn't be too hard to find in that ensemble," Octavia murmured, breathing heavily.

"You should take up jogging," I told her, turning to scan the opposite direction. "Does wonders for your cardio."

This one is next on my TBR pile. I can hardly wait.

Review: The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

The Ghost Brigades
Author: John Scalzi
Publication: Tor Science Fiction; 3rd THUS edition (May 1, 2007) (Purchased on Sept. 13, 2008)


Product Description: The Ghost Brigades are the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces, elite troops created from the DNA of the dead and turned into the perfect soldiers for the CDF's toughest operations. They’re young, they’re fast and strong, and they’re totally without normal human qualms. The universe is a dangerous place for humanity—and it's about to become far more dangerous. Three races that humans have clashed with before have allied to halt our expansion into space. Their linchpin: the turncoat military scientist Charles Boutin, who knows the CDF’s biggest military secrets. To prevail, the CDF must find out why Boutin did what he did. Jared Dirac is the only human who can provide answers—a superhuman hybrid, created from Boutin's DNA, Jared’s brain should be able to access Boutin's electronic memories. But when the memory transplant appears to fail, Jared is given to the Ghost Brigades. At first, Jared is a perfect soldier, but as Boutin’s memories slowly surface, Jared begins to intuit the reason’s for Boutin’s betrayal. As Jared desperately hunts for his "father," he must also come to grips with his own choices. Time is running out: The alliance is preparing its offensive, and some of them plan worse things than humanity’s mere military defeat.


My Thoughts: I love space opera science fiction. If you choose, you can read for the adventure and the cool planets and cool weapons and cool aliens. Or you can read a little deeper and look at the choices the character makes and the philosophy behind the world and the choices. This book has me thinking about the choices the main character -- Jared Dirac -- is making. Check out this quote:

"I've made a choice," Jared said, more than two hours later. "I want to go on."
"Can you tell me why?" Cainen said.
"Because I want to know more about all of this," Jared said. He motioned to the image of the third consciousness. "You tell me that I'm changing. I'm becoming someone else. I believe that. But I still feel like me. I think I'll still be me, no matter what happens. And I want to know."
Jared pointed to the Cainen. "You say we Special Forces are slaves. You're right. I can't argue that. But we are also told that we are the only humans born with a purpose: To keep other humans safe. I wasn't given a choice for that purpose before, but I choose it now. I choose this."
"You choose to be a slave," Cainen said.
"No," Jared said. "I stopped being a slave when I made this choice."
"But you're choosing the path that those who made you a slave would have you follow," Cainen said.
"It's my choice," Jared said. "If Boutin wants to harm us, I want to stop him."
"That means that you might become like him," Wilson said.
"I was supposed to be him," Jared said. "Being like him still leaves room to be me."

I enjoyed this book very much and am very grateful that I didn't find this series as it came out. Waiting for the next book would have been unendurable.


Jared Durac makes a number of difficult choices in this book beyond the choice quoted above. Although he is the clone of Boutin and has been given his memories, he is not Boutin. His choices are very different. It was intetersting to watch him grow up and learn about himself. The bits of humor in the book were engaging.


Charles Boutin makes a very credible villian. It is first thought that he turned traitor because of the death of his daughter Zoe. Boutin blamed the CDF for not protecting the space station where Zoe was. But Jared learns that the CDF's failure to protect Zoe was only one part of Boutin's treason. Boutin wants to destroy the CDF because he feels they are on the wrong course and holding humans back. He is willing to do anything, commit any atrocities, to bring the CDF down.


We also get to learn more about Jane Sagan in this book and more about the Ghost Brigades themselves. One review I read on Amazon says that the first book -- Old Man's War -- explores the consequences of old people in new, young bodies. And this book explores the consequences of newborns in grown up bodies. Both books have been very thought provoking and entertaining.


We also learn more about the Colonial Defense Force in this book that makes me question the choices and decisions that are being made by them and makes me rethink what I thought was true about the CDF. I can hardly wait to see how this plays out as I read the next book. The next book will reunite John Perry, Jane Sagan, along with the child Zoe Boutin.

I highly recommend this series to those who love character-driven science fiction.

Challenges: RYOB Challenge, Bottoms Up Reading Challenge

Monday Musings: Keeping Books

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about a keeping books.

Do you keep all the books you ever buy? Just the ones you love? Just collectibles? What do you do with the ones you don’t want to keep?

To comment or link to your post on this topic, go here to Just One More Page.

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I could not possibly keep all the books I buy. I buy, on average, 10 books a week. I live alone in a three bedroom house that has bookshelves in most rooms. But, even so, I don't have the shelf space to keep everything. Here is a look at my bookshelves as of Jan. 9, 2010.

I only keep books that I think I will read again someday or books that are parts of a series or by favorite authors. When my shelves get too full I go through the shelves and remove those books that no longer qualify as something I might want to read again.

I read a lot of middle grade and young adult books. When I finish them I almost always donate them to the school media centers where I work. Since I am the librarian in charge, I can add them to my collections. I know that others have reported that books donated to their public libraries end up in the Friends of the Library annual sales rather than on the shelves of the library. I do keep some of the MG and YA books if they are by authors I already collect like Tamora Pierce or Sherwood Smith. I have probably already purchased those books for my media center with my school budget. If I buy the book, I will get to read it sooner than if I add it to a school book order and I gain the tax deduction for donating the book too.
The adult books are more of a problem. If I don't want to keep an adult book after I have read it, I don't know what to do with it. Turning it in to a used bookstore for credit doesn't really help me out. My local used books stores are genre specific. The one that does romance doesn't accept books more than a few months old and the other one only does science fiction. Also, I have a hard time using up the credit I receive because I probably already own anything that they offer that I might want to read. I have over $1500 credit at one used bookstore and no way to use it.

I would like to give the books away to people who might enjoy them but most of my friends are not readers. I know that there are internet sources to do that but haven't investigated them yet. I don't really want to swap books. I want to get rid of books that I don't want. I will admit that I have been throwing books that I don't want to keep in grocery bags and then throwing them in the trash when I'm tired of looking at the bags.

Now that I have a couple of blogs, I could hold contests. The problem is that the blogs focus on YA and kidlit and I already have a way to recycle those. I need to find and follow some blogs that cater to readers of adult books (by which I mean books not designed for children and adolescents rather than erotic books).

Any suggestions on ways to recycle the books that I don't want to keep on my shelves would be gratefully accepted. I hate throwing them in the trash but haven't found another way to get rid of them.

In My Mailbox (Feb. 21, 2010)

The weekly In My Mailbox post is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren. It is fun to see what everyone else gets in their mailboxes, shopping bags, and library visits.

Click on the link to The Story Siren's site to see the rules and join in the fun. I guarantee that your TBR pile will grow when you see all the cool books everyone gets. You will discover lots of wonderful blogs and lots of books that you won't be able to live without.

This week I added books mostly to my Kindle. Here is what I added:

Wolf Signs by Vivian Arend was a free offering. Because it is a paranormal about werewolves, I snapped it up. It is somewhat unusual because the heroine is deaf.

Spellbent by Lucy A. Snyder got a glowing review on one of the blogs I read. I have been thinking about this one for a while and decided to buy.

Daring Chloe by Laura Jensen Walker was another free offering. "Safe-bookworm Chloe is stepping out of her comfort zone and having the adventure of her life." This sounds rather chick-lit for my usual tastes but also sounds like a quick, light read.

Off the Record by Elizabeth White was another free book. It sounded like an interesting romance.

Talk of the Town by Lisa Wingate was another free book. It also sounds like an interesting, cute chick-lit sort of title.

Into the Mist by Maya Banks was given a good review on a blog I read this past week. Since it is a paranormal about shifters, I decided to buy it.

Into the Lair by Maya Banks is a companion novel to Into the Mist. I like reading books in a series and it was not expensive.

Old Magic by Marianne Curley has also gotten good reviews on blogs I read. It is a YA paranormal with magic.

I So Don't Do Mysteries by Barrie Summy is middle grade mystery with ghosts. I have been hearing about I So Don't Do Spooky and wanted to read this one first.

I couldn't forget to get some print books. Here they are:

The Princess and the Hound by Mette Ivie Harrison is a fairy tale retelling. I really like those and was pleased to find out about them on a blog I read. The Princess and the Bear is coming one of these days too.

Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon by Buzz Aldrin is quite a departure for me. I read and own almost no nonfiction. But as a fan of science fiction, I am interested in space exploration and eager to find out what Aldrin has to say.

Shift by Rachel Vincent is the 5th in the Shifters series and an essential pre-order required book for me. I got it and read it in just two days. Now I have the long wait until August for the conclusion of the series.

While you are here, why not enter my contest to win two of my all-time favorite books? They can be in your mailbox soon.