Thursday, December 13, 2012

Audio Review: Dead Air

Doctor Who: Dead Air
Title: Dead Air
Author: James Goss
Narrator: David Tennant
Genre: SciFi/Fantasy, Adventure, TV tie-in
Rating:5/5
Favorite Character: Probably, besides the Doctor, it would have to be Layla. I mean, the whole radio crew is fantastic, but I think Layla is my favorite
Publication Date: May 11th, 2010

Plot Synopsis: (from Goodreads)
At the bottom of the sea, in the wreck of a floating radio station, a lost recording has been discovered. After careful restoration, it is played for the first time to reveal something incredible. It is the voice of the Doctor, broadcasting from Radio Bravo in 1966. He has travelled to Earth in search of the Hush a terrible weapon that kills, silences and devours anything that makes noise

Review:
I really liked this Doctor Who audiobook. I've been listening to a lot of them and none of them really stuck with me, this one, though, for some reason did. Maybe because it's just done really well. It's a great use of having David Tennant narrate it since it's suppose to be a lost recording found and it's suppose to be the (10th) Doctor speaking to us anyway, I just thought it was a nice touch.

Also, I really liked the story and something I didn't see coming and it really did surprise me and I love when something surprises me. I also felt that the Doctor didn't fall out of characters, sometimes with books based on TV shows it can feel like the character isn't themselves or that they don't feel right for whatever reason (one of my problems with many of the audiobooks I've listen to).

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

WWW Wednesday (11)

And it is that time of the week again. I was going to start with these every other week, like I was doing them before, but I kind of really enjoy doing them. I like seeing what other people are reading and sharing what I'm reading. WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading and it's asked you answer there three questions:



  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you'll read next?



Currently-Reading:
So, so many things. Why do I read so many books at once? But, in all seriousness, I am trying to get through quite a few books currently. So many. Recently, however, I started Treasure Island and am a good 1/3 through it, probably, and it's pretty good so far, I'm liking it. I alo found my copy of Throne of Glass that I started a long time ago and then couldn't find to finish.

Read:
How They Met, and other stories by David Levithan (5/5)
So very, very good. I've loved everything I have read by David and I expect to continue to.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (5/5)
I loved this one. I don't know why it took me so long to read, but it was just fantastic.

Daughter of the Blood (The Black Jewels Trilogy #1) by Anne Bishop (4/5)
I've been reading this one for what feels like forever and I was finally able to just sit down and finish it while I had a cold and it was pretty good, actually. I didn't really know what to think of this one, but I ended up really liking it.

Working for the Devil (Dante Valentine #1) by Lilith Saintcrow (5/5)
I'm going to be posting a full review of this very soon and I'll add it to this most when I do, however, I really did enjoy this book. There were a couple things that just annoyed me, but I'm good at just kind of accepting (ignoring) things like that. Technically finished it really, really early Wednesday morning, but - I don't count it as the next day until I've slept.


Want To Read:
Too many books to read. There are currently over 900 books on my to-read list on Goodreads and I'm sure that there are thousands more I simply just don't know about yet.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Book Review: Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter, #1)
Title: Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #1)
Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Romance, Mystery
Rating: 4/5
Favorite Character: Jean Claude, definitely. I try not to say the main character everytime because if I liked the book then it's probably a good chance I liked the main character (I did like Anita by the way), but I found Jean Claude every interesting.
Publication Date: 1993 (first published)

Plot: (From Goodreads)
"My name is Anita Blake. Vampires call me "The Executioner". What I call them isn't repeatable.

Ever since the Supreme Court granted the undead equal rights, most people think vampires are just ordinary folks with fangs. I know better. I've seen their victims. I carry the scars...

But now a serial killer is murdering vampires—and the most powerful bloodsucker in town wants me to find the killer... "

"In a world where vampires, zombies and werewolves have been declared legal citizens of the United States, Anita Blake is an "animator" - a profession that involves raising the dead for mourning relatives. But Anita is also known as a fearsome hunter of criminal vampires, and she's often employed to investigate cases that are far too much for conventional police. But as Anita gains the attention of the vampire masters of her hometown of St Louis, she also risks revealing an intriguing secret about herself - the source of her unusual strength and power.



Review:
This book was pretty good. I've heard that later in the series things get a little... weird, but I was willing to read the first couple. And this one as not half bad, I was actually kind of surprised about it, actually. I really liked the characters and what was happening. I also really liked the fact that she wasn't someone that was working with the police department, at least, that wasn't her main gig, because I have read that again and again and it's good to see something a little different.

I think the characters and Anita's backstory were my favorite parts of this. I like that she had this horrifying thing that had happened to her and yet she was still doing what she knew she was good at. I just like things like that. The characters, though, were very interesting. Aren't people around vampires always a little interesting?

Overall, it was pretty good. I mean, I don't really know what I was expecting but it wasn't what I read. It had much more to it then I thought it would. I'll probably end up reading the next couple, as I said, I've been told it's not really worth reading beyond like the 4th one, but if you've read this series, I'd be happy to hear your opinion on it!

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Book and Audio Review: World War Z

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War Title: World War Z
Author: Max Brooks
Genre: Horror, SciFi/Fantasy, Post/Apocalyptic. War
Rating: 5/5
Favorite Character: Probably the guy that is bringing us the story, our main narrator. Though, I did really enjoy some of the people he talked to, too.
Publication Date: October 16th, 2007

Plot Synopsis: (From Goodreads)

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. "World War Z" is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, "By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as 'the living dead'?"

Review: 
I really, really liked this book. I think that since normally dystopian and apocalyptic books, this is only the ones I've read, tend to just focus on one people, but I just feel like it tends to zero in on one person (or just the US). I don't know why, because it was so much more interesting to read it from all these different perspectives, all these different people who lived around the world and their different experiences

I think the best part was defnitely that it wasn't America-centric. It's pretty well divided, I think, between a bunch of countries. And I really enjoyed that, I also really enjoyed that it wasn't just what happened after everyone excepted it. I also really liked these zombies and how they worked and that was heavily investigated as people just really needed to know, to survive. And it's interesting how much you don't think about all the problems if something can only be killed with destroying the brain.

The way it was written was also, surprising, when I first started it. In the form of interviews, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. The different voices are very distinct, even just in writing, and the interviews are separated, so it was so interesting to learn about these specific people, what they faced, and then the overall outbreak. This book is, truly, incredible, and I'd highly, highly recommend it. (Also get the unabridged audiobook, the full thing, because it's incredible).

Audiobook specific:
I actually reading physically more. This has nothing to do audiobooks, it's just how I am. However - this audiobook was incredible - the way it was done, with different people, and how it wasn't dramatized (that can be annoying), it just had different people as the different voices. It was incredibly fantastic to listen to and I highly, highly recommend you check it out. If you're an audiobook fan or not, and I don't listen to a lot of them (my attention tends to wander), but this one had my attention.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

WWW Wednesday (10)

This is one of my favorite memes to do and to read. I have no idea why, I just find it kind of fun to share what I'm reading and to see what everyone else is reading. So, without any more of my rambling, here we go. WWW Wednesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading and she asks that you answer these three questions:


  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you'll read next?

  • Currently-Reading:
    I am currently-reading so many books, so many. But, mainly, Mort by Terry Pratchett (book 4 in the Discworld series) and for some reason I'm just having a hard time staying into it. It's good just... weird.

    Read:
    1776: A Story in Tweets by Maureen Johnson (5/5)
    I am including this just because I loved it so much. I got it through donating to the HPA for equality for the win and I'm kind of excited about it. It was really hilarious.

    Doctor Who: Ring of Steel by Stephen Cole (3/5)
    This was good. I've listened to many Doctor Who audiobooks lately I don't even know what to do with them. None of them seem really amazing, but this might because of the audiobook form. I just have such a problem getting really into the story even in the narrator is Matt Smith or Arthur Darvill (this one is narrated by Arthur, by the way. They're both really good at it, I'm just apparently bad at getting into Audiobooks sometimes).

    World War Z by Max Brooks (5/5)
    I have a book review coming out for this tomorrow (Thursday) so I don't want to say too much, but it was really, really good. I'm not going to tell you to read it, because I don't really like that, but if it's in your TBR I'd definitely say it's worth it.

    Succubus Blues (Georgina Kincaid #1) by Richelle Meade (5/5)
    I wasn't sure how I was going to feel going into this. I kept picturing the main girl from Lost Girl, which is actually not a bad thing at all, and I really, really liked this one. I actually didn't expected to, but it was well written, witty, and had me guessing (which I wasn't expecting). I'll be posting a full review of this soon.

    Jack the Ripper: Hell Blade, Vol 1 by Je-Tae Yoo (2/5)
    The only reason I gave it two instead of one star is because I wasn't exepecting the ending and it made everything more more sense (kind of). This sounds like an amazing idea is theory, but I was really underwhelmed by it. I noticed too many places where details could of been but weren't and the pentical wasn't inverted, and it annoyed me too much.

    Want to Read Next:
    So many books. I have so many books on be to-read list on Goodreads and some that I own I haven't even added to that list! This is definitely not a bad thing, just there are so many books! I did a December TBR, though, which lists what I basically want to read for the month.

    Monday, December 3, 2012

    I apologize (again) and December TBR

    And I am once again apologizing about not posting. I'm just not very good at posting regularly, apparently, I was getting better at it. It's not even lack of ideas or lack of stuff to share, I just forget. November is just the most crazy month and this past one was even crazier then normal. November for me in NaNoWriMo and since I barely had time to sleep, I had even less time to blog. November is National Novel Writing Month. Well, it is for me, anyway.  For those of you scratching your head in confusion, NaNoWriMo is a month long writing project where you try to write a novel or 50,000 (50k) words in a month. It's insane and awful and my favorite month of the year.
    And I devote any free time I'm not going school work to writing. And it definitely paid off this year. I overachieved last year, aimed for more then 50k, and this year my goal was 150k and I blew past that and ended up over 220,000 thousands words. So my not blogging showed, I just wish that I had remembered to schedule some posts.

    Now onto my December TBR, I'm not even going to bother to do a November wrap-up because I read1 short thing and listened to an audiobook so it's not even worth the words. However, I now have 11 books I need to read to reach my goal of 100 books. And that's doable for me if I just focus on reading, which I really want to do having not gotten any reading done in November.

    So there a couple books for some book clubs and such. There are also a couple books that I'm in the middle of.

    Book Clubs:
    • Succubus Blues(Georgia Kincaid #1) by Richelle Meade
    • Dragon Actually by G.A. Aiken

    And one of my book clubs is reading the Hobbit. I kind of want to read The Lord of the Rings before it, yes I saw the movies but I still want to read the books, and the Hobbit is coming out very soon. So I don't know if that will happen, but I'm hoping.

    Currently-Reading (and would like to finish this month):
    • World War Z by Max Brooks - This books is so very good, the only reason I didn't finish it during November was because of NaNoWriMo.
    • How They Met and other stories by David Levithan - I cannot tell you when I started this book, I could look it up on goodreads but that's not the point, it's so good, too, I just need to get to it.
    • Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas - I have an ARC of this and I started reading it in like late June/early July and then I haven't picked it up again. I don't know why, either, it was fantastic and I'm about 1/2 way I think.
    • Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - This one has been just a slow read for me, but I'm like to finish it by the end of the year, at least. It's good it's just something about it is making it hard for me.
    • Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - I actually need to finish this for school, I'm at the third part, I have to do school stuffs for it. So, basically, I need to finish this one, there's no question about that.
    I'm currently-reading a lot of books on Goodreads, I always am, but those are ones I'd like to finish. I would also like to pick up some new ones the second omnibus of The Walking Dead, for example. Also, I'm in a classics mood, so that's a good thing. Hopefully I can get some reading done for school and be ahead instead of behind, I hate being behind in anything.

    I am hoping you all take my apologizes for being such a bad blogger in November and maybe now that I have a desktop, I'll be able to get more on top of everything. Hopefully. I love blogging and reading and I really am hoping I can make extra time for it. I hope your days/weeks/months were well and, hopefully, I'll be posting again very soon.