Weekly Wrap-Up (2013-08-26)

Once again I had a busy week so only I read 6 books this week. And only one of the three books I planned to read were in my finished list. And I did no mini-reviews last week, but I did start working on the review for Unholy Ghosts; and spent a bunch of time talking about with some friends, so I did accomplish something. 

Read Last Week: 

• Kitty in the Underworld by Carrie Vaughn  
• What Happens in Scotland by Jennifer McQuiston
• His Risk to Take by Tessa Bailey
• Officer Off Limits by Tessa Bailey
• Son of the Morning by Linda Howard
• Fantasy Lover by Sherrilyn Kenyon

So with six books for the week I didn't do too bad. I did have a chunk of time wrapped up on getting a laptop fixed (died while trying to play Alan Wake from the summer Steam sale) and just general laziness. I don't know what is up with me this summer, but everything feels like it is just so much work. I did watch more Netflix and Amazon this week compared to other week, so maybe next week I will actually read more than I buy. Ha, ha!

So onto the TBR pile, well I only picked up 12 books. And I read six, so I only increased the list by 6. I really need to dump my entire list off of eReaderIQ. I swear the notifications I get from them are behind at least 70% of my purchases. And another 20% are Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books recommendations. 

So, the purchased book list from last week (read books in bold):

• Nobody's Baby But Mine (Chicago Stars / Bonner Brothers) by  Susan Elizabeth Phillips
• Tangled Up In You by  Rachel Gibson
• Truly Madly Yours by  Rachel Gibson
• Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars / Bonner Brothers) by  Susan Elizabeth Phillips
• Fool for Love (Duchess Quartet) by  Eloisa James
• Your Wicked Ways (Duchess Quartet) by  Eloisa James
• Omens: A Cainsville Novel by  Kelley Armstrong
• Blackwood (Strange Chemistry) by  Gwenda Bond
• Fantasy Lover (Dark-Hunter Novels) by  Sherrilyn Kenyon
• Chocolate Wishes by  Trisha Ashley
• Chocolate Shoes and Wedding Blues by  Trisha Ashley
• Freefall by  Tess Oliver

So, out of the twelve I bought, I read one. And it is not a new read for me. The whole series was on sale recently, and even though I had given up on reading them after the Bad Moon Rising debacle (I will do a review sometime and rant on that topic) it was the only new thing that really called to me. 

So for the coming week, I am going to read Dust (Hugh Howey) during the holiday weekend, probably my Sunday afternoon read. I do still want to read Sugar Daddy, but I think with Omens (Kelley Armstrong), For the Love of Magic (Janet Chapman) and Deception Cove (Jayne Castle) out this week I probably have a good number of things that I have been looking forward to reading. And I have a beta reader for a YA book this week. So that is probably tonight and tomorrow gone. :-)   

I doubt I will get to anything from the TBR. Oh well, there is always next week. ;-)

Weekly Wrap-Up (2013-08-19)

So, I did not read as much as I would have liked this last week. But I did finish Unholy Ghosts and will be posting my review in the next couple of days. In the meantime, this is what I have been reading:

Read Last Week: 

• Once Upon a Tartan by Grace Burrowes  Amazon BarnesandNoble Kobo
• Slow Summer Burn by Elisabeth Barrett  Amazon BarnesandNoble Kobo 
• Talking Dirty with the Player by Jackie Ashenden Amazon BarnesandNoble Kobo 
• Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane Amazon BarnesandNoble Kobo 
• All About Men by Shannon McKenna Amazon BarnesandNoble Kobo 

That gives me a total of five books for the week. To help flex my review muscles (which are very out of shape) I will be writing mini-reviews for these this week. I am going to try and stick to a format of just a couple of paragraphs: Category, Summary, Review and Rating. 

I will work on doing the same thing each week for all of my books and then longer reviews for the What Should I Read Next selection.

As for everything outside of books, I put together two accent tables (one black, one shell), a bamboo shelving unit and a new Ikea side table for my family room. I have been trying to motivate myself to finish up some home projects and getting these put together was one of them. Now I just have to finish my kitchen reorganization. Hopefully that will go as smoothly.

So that takes care of what I did last week. In the realm of the purchases for the week. As noted, I read 5 books. You would think I would try to buy 5 or fewer books to help drive that crazy unread number down right? Not exactly. I bought exactly 19 books during the week. Now, I have to say in my defense that two were free books and I read two of the books I bought. So I really only increased my TBR pile by, ummm... 15. Must read more and buy less.

Here is the purchased book list from last week (read books in bold):

• Talking Dirty With the Player: A Talking Dirty Novel (Entangled Indulgence) by Jackie Ashenden
• Slow Summer Burn: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance by Elisabeth Barrett
• What Happens in Scotland (Avon Romance) by Jennifer McQuiston
• Inside Out Girl by Tish Cohen
• Sugar Daddy (Travis) by Lisa Kleypas
• Nerds Like It Hot (The Nerd Series) by Vicki Lewis Thompson
• Unbuttoned (A Silver Creek Romance) by Maisey Yates
• The Gingerbread House (Avalon Romance) by Nell Carson
• The Second Chance Café (A Hope Springs Novel) by Alison Kent
• The Proposition (The Plus One Chronicles) by Jennifer Lyon
• Gingerbread Man by Maggie Shayne
• One Wrong Move (McClouds & Friends) by Shannon McKenna
• Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends) by Shannon McKenna
• All About Men by Shannon McKenna
• Dust (Silo Saga) by Hugh Howey
• All I Need Is You (An Over the Edge Novel) by Julia London
• One More Night (An Over the Edge Novel) by Julia London
• Fall into Me (An Over the Edge Novel) by Julia London
• Playing the Field: A Diamonds and Dugouts Novel by Jennifer Seasons

On the reading schedule for this week: Kitty and the Underground by Carrie Vaughn, Dust by Hugh Howey and Sugar Daddy by Lisa Kleypas. Hopefully, I will have few more from the TBR titles in the mix too.

And the first book is...

Since no one randomly dropped by, which I didn't imagine would happen, I have selected the first book via the random number generator. And the book is - #1136: Unholy Ghosts (Downside Ghosts) by Stacia Kane. 

As I noted in my previous post, I will be reading the book in the next 30 days and then writing a review of it within 10 days of finishing the book. In the meantime, I will let you know what else I am reading and I could start writing really short reviews of those books. Three or four sentences long. Maybe a full review if the book moves me in either a good or bad way.

So, look for a review of Unholy Ghosts within the next 40 days. 

Book Links:

Amazon   Barnes and Noble   Kobo 

What Should I Read Next?

So, I have several thousand books in my Amazon accounts and I often pick my next read from the whatever I purchased recently, since they are closer to the top of the list when I am looking for the next book or series. That has been going on for a couple of years now, so I think I need a little bit of help getting to some of my backlog. That is where you come into the scene. :-) I would like you to pick what I read next. I will read the selected book and write a review in the next 30 days. If things go well with the writing the reviews (the reading is not really a problem, I read a lot!) I will bump it up to every two weeks. So to kick things off I will pick 5 books randomly from the books I own in my primary Amazon account and let you vote on what I should read next.

Now the odds are that no one will find this blog, so on Sunday if there are no votes for any of the books I will use a random generator to pick one of the five and read and review. And I guess just keep doing it.

So the rules:

1. The book will be from my main Amazon account. 
• I do have two accounts and for most of this year I have purchased free books into my secondary account, but I haven't added those to my book list yet. When I do, I will include them in the pool.
2. It must be a book I have not read since I started tracking my books in my Shelfari. 
• Since I read a lot of books, I will stick with the ones that I have not read yet or haven't read in the last 4 years or so and I will discard any book that I have read during that time. 
3. I will write a review within 10 days of finishing the book.
4. Exceptions or books that will require an alternate
1. If one of the random books is from a series and is not the current book in reading order for me, I will select an alternate book. I do this because I generally dislike reading out of sequence. I figure the author went to trouble to put them in an order.
2. There are some books in my account like Daily Cat a Day or Dog a Day picture/funny comment books. I'll skip these too.

Okay, I will add any rules to my list as time goes on, if I find that I missed something important. 

So here goes, as of today I have I currently have 4175 books in that account and the first five random books from the list are: 

A Quick Bite (The Argeneau Family) by Lynsay Sands

Saving Julie by Suzanne Selfors

Outcast (The Cat Star Chronicles) by Cheryl Brooks

Dog Cartoon-A-Day: 2012 Day-to-Day Calendar by Jonny Hawkins

Unholy Ghosts (Downside Ghosts) by Stacia Kane

Out of the first five I will have to replace three. This is going well.

• Saving Julie  I read back on June 16th. It was a really sweet YA story about a girl from an acting dynasty that is transported into a real world version of Romeo and Juliet with her very famous co-star. I really enjoyed the characters and the plot.
• Outcast is part of The Cat Star Chronicles, a paranormal romance series, but is not the next book in the series for me. I read the first book titled Slave back in December 2010. I remember really enjoying it, but haven't gotten back around to the series yet. Maybe next time. 
• Dog Cartoon-A-Day is one of those page a day ebooks.

So the replacements (and a few extras, just in case) are 3383, 1317, 3729, 1274 and 2884.

The War of the Worlds (Atria Books) by H. G. Wells

Lord of Rage (Harlequin Nocturne) by Jill Monroe

The Duchess War (The Brothers Sinister) by Courtney Milan

The Scarlet Letter : Vook Classics by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Devil Rogue by Lori Villarreal

Once again, I have to discard two of the five (Lord of Rage not the first in the series, The Duchess War just read it and LOVED IT)

So my five options include a paranormal romance, an urban fantasy, two classics and a historical romance. 

• A Quick Bite (The Argeneau Family) by Lynsay Sands
• Unholy Ghosts (Downside Ghosts) by Stacia Kane
• The War of the Worlds (Atria Books) by H. G. Wells
• The Scarlet Letter : Vook Classics by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• The Devil Rogue by Lori Villarreal

This is the part where anyone who visits the page gets to help out. Please vote or leave comment and I will check on Sunday. If there are no votes (which is super likely since I am not going to promote this blog at this time) I will use the random generator to pick which of the five books I will read. 

Poll Removed 7/29/2013