Smile!

Just fancied doing a random blog to make you smile. So, SMILE!!!

GoodRead - A Touch Of Dead

As some of you guys know, I just got a Kindle (I've gone over to the dark side!) and a voucher to buy up to £10 worth of eBooks to get me started (which was nice. Shame I have LOADS of books to read before I can attack the Kindle). Was snooping something to add that would make a huge impact on me. I was going to add Kathy Reich's Virals, but saw that in ASDA for the STUPID price of £3.95 (basically 5p per chapter!!! BARGAIN OR WHAT?!), so bought on random impulse two Sookie Stackhouse eBooks - Definitely Dead and A Touch Of Dead.

Out of the two, I chose A Touch of Dead because of three reasons. First, I wanted a fast read and a collection of short stories seems the best way to go. Second, I haven't read the whole series. I jump in and out of it. I mean, read the first book in the series, watched the first and second series of True Blood, know vaguely the plotline for the third book in the series, listened to the audiobook of book 4 and then downloaded book 6 or 7 within the series and a collection of short stories. And third, I like the sound of the title. Lame but true. So… Not exactly a solid fan, am I? But I wanted to enter this world and understand it before I dive into it with Definitely Dead. So…

A Touch of Dead is a collection of five short stories, each with its our tale and each having a place in the series. The stories are Fairy Dust, Dracula Night, One Word Answer, Lucky and Gift Wrap. Each of these short story take place within the series and explains small things within the series that happened, but "off screen". The reason for that is because of the author wrote them and had to cut them out due to plot.

So in twitter form (140 characters or so), explain each story. Right?

Fairy Dust has Sookie investigating the mysterious death of Claudine & Claude's triplet, Claudette. Three humans are suspects… but who's the killer?

Dracula Night has Sookie been invited to Eric's bar to celebrate Dracula Night. But is all what it seems?

One Word Answer has Sookie discover that her cousin was a vampire. And is now murdered. But who killed the favourite of the Queen of Louisiana?

Lucky has Sookie investigate a break-in of a Insurance Salesman's office, who happens to be a small-time witch. Does his good luck charms have anything to do with it?

And Gift Wrap has Sookie alone at Christmas. Keeping busy, she goes into the woods and discovers a naked man who needs her help. But is all as it seems?

Now, if you're a fan of the Sookie Stackhouse series, you want to know where these stories fit within the series. Well, researched on Wikipedia for you and got the following: both Fairy Dust and Dracula Night happen after Dead to the World (bewteen book 4 and 5), One Word Answer happens just before Definitely Dead (book 6), and both Lucky and Gift Wrap happen after From Dead to Worse (between book 8 & 9). So, the short stories are set out in order of where they come in the series, but you need to research where…

Now, reactions of each story. Fairy Dust was good story to start with. If you haven't really read the series, like myself, you enter this story and a lot of details is given to you. The existance of vampires, weres, shapeshifters and fairies is said and briefly touched upon and then you get into the story. It was an good story. Not my fave out of the five, but a nice story to get my teeth into.

Dracula Night. Right, ok. Honestly? This story is random. It was a fun little story about Dracula and showing Eric, a character which is dark and will do things for himself, acting like a little kid on Christmas Morning. And it was nice to have Pam talk more. I don't exactly like Pam in the TV's True Blood, but while listening to Dead to the World audiobook, I quite liked her. She was an interesting and complex character so hearing her talk and react to Sookie (and over-excitable Eric) was interesting. But this story was pretty random.

One Word Answer is probably my fave story out of the five. It felt the strongest out of the five and the story that felt like it added something more to my knowledge of Sookie's world. How the story and the mystery were explain and concluded felt right within this world. Plus, it's leads very nicely into Definitely Dead (which I have on my kindle).

Lucky was a fun read. There's not much I can say about this one. I think this was because there was a two characters in here that been in the series that I've never met. But, I like this story due to it touchs on Witchcraft and Sookie's telepathic powers.

Gift Wrap is for those of you Sookie fans that read the book for the sexy-ness. Yes, we have sex in this story. This is just a fun story which kinda adds nothing to the series, but it's fun to read because it adds nothing to the series. It's a silly fun read. And it's the first time within the series that it isn't written competely in Sookie's point of view - this is because Sookie couldn't possibly know about it. But this helped the story for me as it was like "We know something Sookie doesn't!". But like I said, this story adds nothing to the series. It's basically fluff!

The stories were fun, fast reads. It took 40-odd minutes to read each of them, but I strenched it out over the course of several days. But if you sit down and read them back to back, you would be done within a hour or two...

My main problem with A Touch of Dead was that before every story, you had a drawing from the US cover designer. Which is fine, expect each of them just felt wrong. Each of them felt childish and never sat well with me. For the US audience, then this would be perfect as this is the style of the series's covers, but we (in the UK) only got 3 or 4 covers from the US before the cover design changed to the scarily white model with red lips and then, a few years later, the True Blood actors. Maybe if the UK has different illustrations from a different illustrator or five different drawings from five different illustrators, then I would be more happy with them. But to me, they didn't add anything. But for a true fan, maybe they do.

I know. It's a tiny thing that got me. That and no info on where the short stories fit in the series. But ha-ho!

Overall, this was a fun additional titbits to the series. If you're a fan of the series, then this is a must. Might not add anything, but it'll make you smile. If you're not a fan, then this is ok too. Just do some background research before you start because a lot of info will go over your heads.

Mortal Instruments Castings!

News has broken out on the Mortal Instument movie front that has got fans all excited! Now, as we know, Lily Collins was casted as the lead of Clary.



And now, Deadline has revealed who has be casted as the male lead, Jace. It's... Jamie Campbell Bower! Fans have been getting excited over this on Twitter as this was one of the main actors people imagined could play Jace.



Now, at the time of writing this blog post, it hasn't been confirmed by Cassandra Clare, ScreenGems (the film production company) or Mundie Moms (THE place to go if you want info on Mortal Imstruments & Infernal Devices), but the noises sound hopeful so fingers crossed. If I am wrong, will happily amend this blog post.

POST EDIT: MTV HAS CONFIRMED THIS CASTING! CONGRATULATIONS JAMIE!!! READ THEIR REPORT

Now, if the moviemakers could make this casting, I will be one very happy blogger!



COME ON, CAST CHARLIE BEWLEY! IN ANY ROLE! PLEASE!!!

GoodRead - Tiger's Curse

Hodder randomly emailed me, asking if I wanted to read this. I have heard about it through Twitter (actually, I read a review of it from Bookshelf Banter) and went for it! It looked like one of those reads. And have you SEEN the cover?! Lush or what?!

When Kelsey got a temp summer job about the circus, she had no idea that within days, she would be in India with a white tiger, trying to break a 300 year old curse... and yet, that what's happening.

As Kelsey begins to try and break the curse, she finds herself falling in love... But how far will she go to break this curse?

Quick backstory for you about this book: the author Colleen Hough wrote this after reading Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer. She wanted to write a story where you have no idea who would win the heroine's heart. And, because of that, she began to write Tiger's Curse. After she wrote it, she decided to self-publish the story as a eBook. And with this, she released the second book in the five-book series, Tiger's Quest, and the online presence exploded. Tiger's Curse was number 1 in the Amazon.com Kindle Children's Bestseller for several weeks. Both books recieved over 350 star reviews and publishers round the world wanted to get their hands on this series. Even the film rights to this series has been optioned for a film.

Colleen's story is the story that seems like fiction itself. But we're not talking about Colleen. We're talking about Tiger's Curse.

I LOVED THIS BOOK! There is no other way to talk about this book without gushing. But then, I am a Twilight fan and I found this book so delicious. Yes, I found the Prologue a tad confusing when I first read it (I reread it now and it makes perfect sense!) but once you get to Kelsey, I started reading through this book at a stupid pace. There were many a late night I spent reading this book, getting slowly more addicted to this book.

And India... oh, how I LOVE how this was set in India and we entered the world of India and all the myths and legends. There was something exotic about it and, because of that, it made the love story between Kelsey and Ren more exciting.

And oh, the love story... *smiles to himself*

This book is like catnip (pun intended) and I want the sequel, Tiger's Quest, at once (thank goodness it's out in the UK on 9th June)!

If you are a fan of Stephenie Meyer or Amy Plum, you will love Colleen Hough!

*

Right, here is some videos. And I should have music choices here as well. But I didn't listen to music when I read this. So, am picking one at random. ENJOY!

GoodRead - Break No Bones (Audiobook)

As you guys know, I am a bit of a crime nut. Even though I like reading them, it's rare that I do as I have a stupidly HUGE amount of YA books (and soon, a ton of eBooks). So, I kinda rely on audiobooks on the crime front of late.

So, Break No Bones. Where to begin…? Dr Temperance Brennan is on an archaeological field trip, working on a prehistoric graves. It's on the second-to-last day when a body is discovered… that isn't prehistoric. As she helps Emma Russo, the distant's coroner and a close friend, in the morgue with the bones, Emma suddenly collapses. Helping out her friend, Tempe slowly tries to figure out the identify of the body. And then a second body is dicovered…

With her husband in the area to investigate some legal matters and then, days later, her on-off partner Andrew Ryan on the scene, things get complicated. But when a bullet hits one of them, Tempe begins to wonder if someone is trying to stop her from discovering the truth. And the closer she gets to it, the more disturbed she gets. So much so, it changes her views on humanity. That is, if she lives long enough…

Right, before I get into how I feel about the story, let's talk briefly about the narrator. The narrator changed. From Bones to Ashes, Linda Edmond read the books. But this is a read by Dorothy Berryman (and Break No Bones is the book BEFORE Bones to Ashes). So, to listen to some books in the series and have the narrator change is a bit jarring so it takes you longer than before to get used to the narrator. But I never warmed to her. I found it really hard to relate to her, but like I said before, I relate Linda Edmond's voice as Tempe's voice in my head so it was going to be hard for like this new reader. There was times, though not often, I felt that Dorothy didn't "get" the story.

Speaking on the story, it was an gripping. Not as intersting as Mortal Remains (aka Spider Bones) or some of the other Temperance Brennan novels, but was still a gripping to listen to. I think I have read another novel (by Tess Gerristen) which touchs on the same subject at Break No Bones so it was interesting to see how these two authors tackled this subject.

I always read somewhere that Kathy Reichs previous novel, Bare Bones, has been considered by fans as one of the worse books in the series, so I suspect that people who have read the whole series love this book because it was better than that. I felt like that with several series hence my reaction.

So, basically, Break No Bones is ok. Not great but not awful. Will be intrigued to see what Kathy Reichs does next with Tempe in Flash and Bones, which will be out on 1st September 2011. Knowing my luck, will crack by then and read her first EVER YA book, Virals.

Wolfsbane Teaser

As you guys know, I LOVE Nightshade by Andrea Cremer and am quite excited that the second book in the trilogy, Wolfsbane, in coming out in about two months time!

So, I saw this on Facebook and I knew I had to share. In this video, Andrea chats to her US publisher about Wolfsbane and reveals tiny titbits of what's going to happen next...



Anyone excited?

CLOCKWORK PRINCE COVER REVEALED!!!

Today, the lovely peeps at Mundie Moms revealed the cover to the second book in the Cassandra Clare's trilogy, Infernal Devices, Clockwork Prince.

And here it is...



What do you guys? My reactions is that this, out of the last three cover releases (Clockwork Angel and City of Fallen Angels [and yes, I need to read them! Will try and read them in the next few months...]), this is the best one! I love it! It's striking and cool and edgy!

But what do you think? Yea or na?

Also, the lovely peeps at Mundie Moms are running an INTERNATIONAL contest to win some cool stuff linked to Clockwork Prince. If you want to enter, click here...!

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2 Posters

Over the past few days on Facebook and Twitter, Warner Bros has released posters for the last Harry Potter film. There should be more released over the next few days (I suspect Voldermort and Snape...) but here are the Trio's posters. Reactions?