Random Thought

I've been sitting here all night waiting for my team to get it together so that we can edit our assignment and post it. Needless to say one out of the 6 of us decided to not show until 12:30 am EST. Can you see the fire coming out of my ears. Due to me siting here all night in front of my computer, I haven't been able to read. At any rate, I took a look at the books that I've read so far in 2010 and realized that most, if not all are a part of a series. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading books in a series. However, I think I need to add some stand-alone books as well. Does anyone have any suggestions for me? 

Thanks for the Award

This is all so new to me. I never realized how much fun having a blog would be. I got nominated for the summer blog award by my BFF OutnumberedMama at Busy Moms Who Love to Read. It is called the Summer Blogger Award and is really easy. The rules for this award are simple. Just thank the person who sent this to you and forward this on to four bloggers who rock this summer!

So here are my nominees

Crystal @ My Reading Room

Shut up I'm Reading

Larissa's Life

Random Ramblings

Welcome Book Blogger Hoppers

Welcome fellow Book Blogger Hoppers! This is my very first time participating in a blog hop and I am really excited to make new friends. If you decide to give a follow, please leave me a message so that I can follow you back.
As for this week's question:

Who is your favorite new-to-you author so far this year?

JR Ward - Author of the Black Dagger Brotherhood Series - I didn't start this series until February of this year and I am so glad that I did!

Random Thought :That Cheating Feeling

When my random thought first popped in my head, I said to myself, you have totally lost it. But no, I often have random thoughts, I just now have a place to write them down. I mentioned in my about me blurb that I recently got an eReader. Well I love that thing and I don't leave home without it. Problem is, and here is the random thought, I feel like I'm cheating on my books...LOL. I know weird...and yes I am a tad bit weird but I claim it and embrace it...LOL. So it's not that I miss buying paper books per se, it's just that I miss touching them. I do still get my fix though. Every now and then I go to the book store and walk around like I used to before my Nook. I go look at books, touch them, read the flaps or backs and then write them down to go home and put on my wish list. So for those of you out there with eReaders, do you miss just holding or touching a book ever?

Review: There's a slight chance I may be going to hell

Review: There’s a (slight) chance I might be going to hell – Laurie Notaro

Book Description: The first novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club is a rollicking tale of small-town peculiarity, dark secrets, and one extraordinary beauty pageant.

When her husband is offered a post at a small university, Maye is only too happy to pack up and leave the relentless Phoenix heat for the lush green quietude of Spaulding, Washington. While she loves the odd little town, there is one thing she didn’t anticipate: just how heartbreaking it would be leaving her friends behind. And when you’re a childless thirtysomething freelance writer who works at home, making new friends can be quite a challenge. After a series of false starts nearly gets her exiled from town, Maye decides that her last chance to connect with her new neighbors is to enter the annual Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant, a kooky but dead-serious local tradition open to contestants of all ages and genders. Aided by a deranged former pageant queen with one eyebrow, Maye doesn’t just make a splash, she uncovers a sinister mystery that has haunted the town for decades.

“[Laurie Notaro] may be the funniest writer in this solar system.” –The Miami Herald

About the author: Laurie Notaro was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. She packed her bags for Eugene, Oregon, once she realized that since she was past thirty, her mother could no longer report her as a teenage runaway. She is the author of The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club, Autobiography of a Fat Bride, I Love Everybody, We Thought You Would Be Prettier, An Idiot Girl’s Christmas, and the novel There’s a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell.

My Thoughts: I have been a fan of Laurie Notaro since I read The Idiot Girl’s Action Adventure Club. Her writing is laugh out loud funny. There’s a slight chance I might be going to hell is her first fiction novel and to say that it goes along with the humor of her autobiographies, is saying it lightly. To me, when I first read this book, I immediately thought of the current town I live in and said ‘how in the world did she capture Eugene so easily and she’s from Arizona.’ Some may not notice the differences between Oregon and other states. But living in Oregon after living on the East Coast, I have seen and heard about a lot of the ‘circumstances’ and similar events from the book that Maye dealt with. From the recycling day to the sewer pipe queen event, I have seen it all in Oregon. I immediately passed this book around to some of my ‘local’ friends and they also thought what I thought. Laurie Notaro was able to create a character in this book that seems like an outsider in a town because she ‘thinks’ she’s normal…LOL. This book is definitely one to read especially for the laughs.

I GIVE THIS:

DISCLAIMER: I was in no way compensated to review this book. These are my opinions of a book in which I purchased on my own.

Review: Angelic Avengers by Kaye Chambers

Angelic Avengers by Kaye Chambers

Book Description:

The road to hell is paved with heavenly desire-

Angelic Avengers, Book 1

Fetch a soul

? No problem. Quell a little shape shifter rebellion? Sh

e can do that, too. Just an

average day in the afterlife of Arabella -Bella- Morrison. Or, what she hopes will become an afterlife after restoring the cosmic

imbalance caused by her suicide over a love affair gone bad.

Protect a willful fallen angel? That takes a little more teamwork than she's accustomed to. Especially when the team includes Gray Devereau, a sexy, half-breed angel who's got an eye on her, in more ways than one. Their attraction could set fire to Heaven itself. Normally not a problem for Bella, but Gray-s sights are set on something more than a fly-by-night affair.
Save mankind from chaos? Bring it on. Let her heart trust a man enough to love again? It-ll be a cold day in hell
Warning: Sexy angels running amok. Heroine hell-bent on saving the world, the rules be damned. Hero bent on making her his, come hell or high water.
About the author: Kaye Chambers has led a wild life. With her college degree in hand, she set off on an adventure to find herself. She’s soaked in the hot springs in Iceland in the middle of a blizzard, sat on a volcano to watch the magic of the Northern lights, stood on the coast in the eye of a hurricane, and been awed by ruins of pagan temples. Somewhere along the way, she found herself along with her wonderfully supportive husband. Marriage, children, and life went in a different direction and her personal goals went with off in another.
Finally, she decided it was time to return to those goals she’d left behind when she began her adventure all those years ago. Writing. With the new laptop her husband gave her for the effort, she hunkered down and found a writing group. This small group of women took her in hand, helped build her confidence, and encouraged her to do what her heart wanted her to. Finally, she started pounding out pages. When it was done, she had no idea what to do with it.
So, she started entering contests. Then she started revising…and entering more contests. Encouraged by the comments, she started submitting it out to publishers and agents while turning her hand to other projects.
Making friends along the way, she’s beginning to see the results of her efforts. Come look into her Chamber of Secrets and share her vision of reality…

My Thoughts: I thought Angelic Avengers was a pretty good read. It was light, filled with humor and beautiful men...hehe. Arabella Morrison's mantra has been to not do anymore favors for angels. Arabella, who committed suicide after her fiance leaves her, has been paying off her "sin" by taking a job as the grim reaper. Bella is contracted to harvests souls, keeps the local population of shifters in line, and - as she often gets talked into doing - does side jobs for the angels that pop in and out of her apartment. What she did not expect from one of her side jobs was to fall into a "relationship" with Mr. Gray Devereaux, half angel; become the guardian of a child whose mother was murdered by a rogue angel who is out to kill the child which in turn throws her into an engagement so that they can keep the child out of foster care. Oh and truly fall in love...NOT SO MUCH.

Bella holds a one-way ticket to hell because of her suicide. However, due to her living life on her terms and no one else's, you don't ever want her to cash in that ticket. Her relationship with Gray makes you smile, her friendships and banter with the angels are humorous and of course, do not forget Foras, the Devil's General who has always had a thing for Bella. Of course she never noticed. But between Foras and Gray, the testosterone level around her and that's just another thing Bellas has to deal with.

Angelic Avengers was well written and left me wanting more. Hopefully in the next installment of the series we will see more of Foras.

I GIVE THIS:

DISCLAIMER: I was in no way compensated to review this book. These are my opinions of a book in which I purchased or borrowed on my own.

Review: Lessons From An Evil Mind by Shawna Lynn

Lessons From An Evil Mind by Shawna Lynn

Book Description: It was the day I had been waiting for, the day I was to marry the love of my life.
I would have never thought I would spend that day and many more to come in a house filled with torture and evil.
I wake up, it's a new day. I look down at my hands, they are still covered in blood from the last punishment I had to endure. I wonder to myself when my body will finally give in . . . when I will die. I try not to let the depression overcome me, but with every new lesson I receive, my soul becomes weaker.
My mind begins to wonder as I think back to the day that I took another's life A chill runs through my body as I fi nd the memory hard to escape. I did not want to hurt her but I had no choice he was coming and it right thing to do.
Who would of thought me taking the life of another would bring on a chain of events that would lead to a different live . . . the life I now live.

About the Author: Shawna Lynn, born in California, raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is the youngest of nine children. At 14 she met the love of her life, later marrying him at 18. Together they now have three wonderful children. Suffering from an illness at age 29 she lost her memory and became chronically ill. Determined not to let it overtake her life she returned back to school where she is presently working towards her bachelors in literature and Psychology. Thanks to her son's suggestion, she once again began to write.

My Review: Despite some grammatical errors in this book, I enjoyed reading it quite a bit. This book made me cry, laugh, get angry, get a little scared...basically go through more emotions in one sitting than I would probably go through in a month. I loved Angel and John, I got mad at Lue sometimes, however I also feared for her life. I hated the masked man and worried sometimes that he or someone like him existed. Although this book was pure fiction, I often wondered and imagined if such evil can exist in real life. At the end of the book I found myself crying and now I sit waiting for the second installment in the series.

The author is a new author and this is the first in a four book series. Lessons from an Evil Mind is disturbing in many ways but it also makes you not want to put the book down. The second book in the series, Seeds from Evil comes out in late August and it will be on my "To be read" list.

I give it:

DISCLAIMER: I was in no way compensated to review this book. These are my opinions of a book in which I purchased on my own.