So there’s a good reason for being late this month. I was driving from San Diego all the way back home on the 1st with a three hour stop in Los Angeles to hang out with Long-Hai. Blurgh. Love Long-Hai, hate driving from SD to the Bay Area. Too long. Too many horrible cow farms. Poor cows.

So books! Last month, I read some. Mostly I read parts of some and then threw them to the ground and yelled, “No!” Heh. It was a lot of partial reads.

Books Read: 14

Books Partially Read: 12

Books Bought: 13

Money Spent: $31

Books Borrowed: 9

Books Given: 3

Books Re-read: 1

Money made (from selling books): 0

Books on To-Be-Read Shelf: 35

So books read squeaked past books partially read. Go me. The books bought were 12 from the Alameda Public Library Book sale and 1 from Serendipity Books in Berkeley (which is an AWESOME used book store Tami introduced Kris and I too last month). The one book I re-read is a book I read like 2 months ago and then sat around on the library waiting list again for a month and read again. It was not quite as good the second time. I was sad. And To-Be-Reads…well it’s a little less than last month. Maybe I’m getting ahead (hint: I’m not).

Favorite Books This Month: Wither by Lauren DeStefano, Cloudy With A Chance of Marriage by Kieran Kramer, Vespers Rising by Rick Riordan et all, The Emperor of Nihon-Ja by John Flanagan, George and Martha: The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends by James Marshall and Abandon by Meg Cabot.

That was a lot. Sorry. Short now!

Wither is this awesome dystopic future novel where one generation tries to extend life spans and fucks up the genetics of their offspring so everyone dies in their 20s. Girls get forced in to polygamous marriages to procreate and the story follows one girl put in this situation. It is excellent. It’s also a trilogy. So I recommend reading this one but also caution you that you might want to wait for the second one to be out at least.

Cloudy With A Chance of Marriage is the third one in Kramer’s Impossible Bachelor series and I’ve already written about 1 and 2. This one was better than 2, I thought, but still not as delightful as 1. Maybe I need to read 1 again to see if it’s really as good as I think because Jocelyn was unimpressed with it and liked 2 better. Basically this one is about a navy captain and a bookseller and their romance on a foggy street plus all the wacky characters living on the same street. In Regency England.

Vespers Rising is the bridge book between the 39 Clues series and the new Vespers series which will be starting soon. Damn Riordan for these books. Because I like them but there’s so many and you have to wait for them to come out and they’re all written by different famous YA/tween authors and they’re all good in different ways. This one was pretty great. It was short stories to introduce the Vespers and I enjoyed 2 of them more than the other 2.

Nihon-Ja is the 10th book in Flanagan’s Ranger series. 10th. I have been reading this forever. Also they come out in Australia and then take months to come out here so I also own several Australian copies that I paid a pretty penny for (damn you, shipping). This one is set sort of in Japan (it’s total alternate reality) and is great but maybe not AS great as some of the middle ones which were super great. I mean, it is 10 books. And he’s not like a super versatile author. A lot of the jokes/writing/plot/themes are the same. Still, I enjoy them.

George and Martha is our next Finer Things Club book so I don’t want to talk about it much. But it’s a picture book about two best friend hippos and I love Martha.

Abandon is the story of Hades and Persephone basically. Not quite, of course because it’s set in present day and has different people. It was good. It’s the start of a new series for Cabot and if you know me you know I’ll read anything she writes. Still, I enjoyed this one. It’s set off the coast of Florida on an island and I like the girl, Percy.

Least Favorite Books: Green by Jay Lake, Hacking Timbuktu by Stephen Davies, and Hounded by Kevin Hearne.

Green, I got almost all the way through and then it just devolved into S&M and I was like, “Seriously?” I mean, I am not against S&M at all (see how I own Carrie’s Story?) but this storyline didn’t need it. It was totally gratuitous and when it came to doing it with her older female role models I just couldn’t take it anymore.

Hacking Timbuktu–uh. It’s hacking computers and non-hardcore parkour in Timbuktu. I’m horrified I even bought it. Fifty cents seemed reasonable. And now I can give it to my 12 year old boy cousin.

Hounded is the first in a series about an Iron Druid and his fights with the fae and gods and witches and possibly vampires and who knows what else. I couldn’t handle it after like four chapters. Soooooo badly written. And it’s the first of at least 3! The others are coming out later this summer. How are people that write this shitty getting awesome book deals? Why can’t I have one?

I’ve already read one book this month and loved it (the new Julia Quinn so, of course). We’ll see how many others I do this month. Got to work on my own projects more this June. So much to do!

Favorite Quotes:

“[The clouds] have seen abysmal oceans and charred, scorched islands. They have seen how we destroyed the world. If I could see everything, as the clouds do, would I swirl around this remaining continent, still so full of color and life and seasons, wanting to protect it? Or would I just laugh at the futility of it all, and meander onward, down the earth’s sloping atmosphere?”

“And here we are: two small dying things, as the world ends around us like falling autumn leaves.”

Both quotes from Wither by Lauren DeStafano.