Fell down on the job again. I feel this is so common that I should probably stop mentioning it all together. All together now!
Books Read: 19
Books Partially Read: 4
Books Bought: 5 (copies of my novel, Book ‘Em)
Money Spent: $25
Books Borrowed: 13
Books Given: 7
Money made (from selling books): Well…some? I don’t know, probably around $60 in sales of Book ‘Em.
Books on To-Be-Read Shelf: Not sure because I am house-sitting still and my shelves are all several miles away. Probably 60….Dammit.
Favorite Books this month: Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne, A King’s Ransom by Jude Watson, A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Darkness Falls by Cate Tiernan, Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm, and Showoff by Gordon Korman.
The Winnies were read for Finer Things Club this month. Of which you can see pictures of me dressed up as a small black rain cloud trying to get some honey here. I LOVED them. I’m sure I read them as a kid, or had them read to me, but I didn’t remember how fabulous they are. I also read several not written by Milne and they are just not as good. Other authors cannot approximate the same character voices. (I say that about the February books read but I also loved David Benedictus’ Return to the Hundred Acre Wood that I read in March. He came very close to Milne and was well worth reading.)
I read a lot of kids/tween books this month really. The Watson, Korman, and Holm were all great and very, very different. A King’s Ransom is the second book in the Vespers vs. Cahills series (the second series after the 39 Clue Hunt 10 book series). That is long and complicated. It’s about a sibling duo and their cousins and clues and you can collect trading cards for it. Yeah. Still, they are good. Turtle in Paradise is written by a Newberry Honor winner and is set in the Florida Keys in 1935. It’s an interesting glimpse of a time period and lifestyle I don’t know much about. Mostly it’s the Florida part I’m not conversant with. It was well written and had great characters. Lastly, Showoff is the…5th? maybe 4th in a series by Korman about the same group of kids and their wacky hijinks. My mom keeps getting them for her classroom and I keep reading them. Enjoyed this one and it’s dog show very much.
It was my birthday in February so I got some presents: Darkness Falls was one of them. Kris gave it to me. I devoured it with giggly horror. I wrote about the first one when I read it back in November. This was very second book in a trilogy typical. I can’t wait to read the third one.
Last book! A Princess of Mars which I read in prep for, you guessed it, John Carter, coming out tomorrow. Tomorrow! Ooh, I’m excited. I thought PoM was kind of amazing. It was written in 1917 and is set on Mars. Having read a book set in 1935 also last month, thinking about people in 1917 reading this sci-fi pulp, well, I’d guess it would have blown their minds. This book inspired so many other authors in the 20th Century. It’s just impressive to read it and experience a classic for the first time.
Least Favorite Books: Love in A Nutshell by Janet Evanovich. Why can’t she just write the second Diesel and Lizzy book? Dammit. This one was boring and badly written and I couldn’t even finish it. Heh.