Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Sound off: What are you reading?

What are you reading this week? Are you enjoying it? Sound off in the Comments.

Me? I've just finished an historical romance, Laura Kinsale's Uncertain Magic. The plot had a few loose ends, but I loved the characters and their story was quite engaging. Here's a passage I liked a lot:

He fought to stand against the weight and weakness in his knees. The one thing he refused to yield...mad or sane, dream or lost reality--he would not forget her.

He tried to see her image in his mind--her face and eyes--but they seemed to shimmer and flow, at one with the strange light and the blowing wind. It was the memory of her smile that came clearer.

Stay with me. He'd said those words before--somewhere else--where?

But he could not remember; he only thought of how she'd lain warm and trusting in his arms, an heiress in a bed of straw. His wife...a sidhe gift, but there was more to her than moonbeams. There was what he'd come to love--plain stubborn guts and a lavendar-scented pig, and faith enough to keep her with him through a countryside in flames.


Your turn. What are you reading?


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14 comments:

jel said...

funny you should ask ,
because I just got though reading
"a Day with a Perfect Stranger",
the 2nd book of David Gregory,
the first book was "Dinner with a Perfect Stranger"! very good reads

the first book, a successful buusiness Nick Cominsky, get an invitation for dinner from Jesus of Nazareth, but Nick thinks its a joke that some of his friends at work are playing on him,

and book 2 ,
Mattie Cominsky ( Nick's wife)
is on a business trip,
that she is glad to go on so she can decide if she wants to end their relationship, but something happend on the way !

Susan Kaye said...

Be My Neat-Heart by Judy Bear. Neat Freaks meet, wacky antics tidily ensue. (Loved the beginning pages. The characters and settings were good, but at the 1/3 mark the plot was huffing and puffing, and had given out completely by the 2/3 mark.)

Word Work Surviving and Thriving as a Writer by Bruce Holland Rogers. Just as the name implies. These are essays written for Speculations magazine. Interesting, practical stuff from a guy who writes for money to support his habit of "serious" writing.

Stephen Dean said...

I'm finishing up Colleen Coble's Without A Trace today. Also, in progress is Comes A Horseman by Robert Liparulo and Relentless by Robin Parrish.

Todd Greene
Straitjacket Chillers:
Get Strapped In . . .
http://www.toddmichaelgreene.com
http://anewnovelistsjourney.blogspot.com
http://messagesfromtheasylum.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

Can't believe that I have not read a single romance by Laura Kinsale yet... Must remedy this.

My book of the moment is Elizabeth Adler's "The House In Amalfi", about an American widow who revisits the scene of happy childhood memories and for the first time starts looking into the mysterious circumstances surrounding her father's death years earlier. I am reading it rather slowly, not only because I am enjoying Adler's descriptions of an Italian idyll, but because (so far) the story unfolds at a leisurely pace. Pleasant reading for a romantic armchair traveller :-)

Danielle C.

Winter Peck said...

I'm currently reading two books.

Intimidation By Wanda L. Dyson

and

Night Song by Tricia Goyer.

Both are excellent books and I wish I just had time to sit and read them without interruption. I went to the library today and discovered they have two series I've been hoping to read one day and decide if I want to add them to my kept collection.

Storm Gathering by Rene Gutteridge

and

Wounded Healer by Donna Fleisher.

This last one might be a harder read for me as it deals with the Gulf War and my husband is currently serving in Iraq now. But we'll see.

Anonymous said...

Thinking about getting Robin Cook or Michael Crichton on my next library trip, since I'm in need of a good thriller. :)

Also like the sound of that romance, Brenda. (And your book, too!)

Anonymous said...

Currently reading Skeleton Crew: a book of Stephen King shorts. I'm enjoying it, but perhaps not as much as some of his other stuff, but then I have rather over-dosed on Stephen King lately, since I picked up a bunch of his stuff cheap a while back, and I think this is my fourth in a row.

Stephen King is very famous, and very rich, and I think because of that he gets rather a bad rap. He has the art of storytelling (presuming you like his genre), together with the talent to write engagingly, yet still intelligently. A rare combination. I have heard him compared to Dickens, and while for most writers that would be a wildly over-the-top comparison, in his case, I suspect it isn't.

BTW, on an unrelated note, I just upgraded to the new Blogger beta yesterday. I know quite a lot of commenters here use Blogger, and you should know that if you upgrade, you'll be unable to post to a non-beta blog (such as NRJW) using your Blogger account for the time being. I just discovered this and have been forced to post anonymously. If this bothers you, don't upgrade.

I may have missed something, but when I upgraded I didn't see any warning to that effect.

--
Neal Dench

Brenda Coulter said...

Thanks for mentioning that, Neal. I'll just add that some Blogger users (not this one, obviously) have configured their blogs to disallow anonymous comments.

I'll upgrade to the new version of Blogger when they work out a few more of the kinks.

Thanks, everyone, for sharing about the books you're reading. (This is my sneaky way of collecting recommendations for new reading material.)

Susan Rix said...

I'm behind on my TBR pile, but I'm currently reading Philippa Gregory's The Constant Princess. Non-fiction - I always seem to have a Joyce Meyer on the go...
Sue :-)

Trish Ryan said...

I'm halfway through Andrea Seigel's TO FEEL STUFF, and liking it a lot.

Next in line is Philip Beard's LOST IN THE GARDEN. I loved his first book, DEAR ZOE, so I'm excited to get into this one.

Anonymous said...

I'm reading Jane Kirkpatrick's third in the Kinship and Courage series, it's called What Once We Loved. Great series.
My 8 yo and I are reading aloud the Ralph Moody books (written in the 1950's), Little Britches, Man of the Family and we're on the third, The Home Ranch. Great books for read-aloud time!
Thanks for sharing that paragraph, beautiful writing!

Pilgrim said...

I'm not in the middle of anything except Zachariah, and I can't believe I blogroll someone who reads stuff like you just posted here, Brenda! Good grief! and your blog seems so normal, otherwise!

Brenda Coulter said...

Oh, it's even worse than you think, Julana. I read the backs of cereal boxes, too.
;-)

I'm enjoying the diversity of tastes and reading matter I'm seeing here. Keep going, people!

cantnever said...

A current bestseller (which I usually avoid like the plague) The Memory Keeper's Daughter, by Kim Edwards is my current read. Wow! It scoots along! My daughter has Downs Syndrome, so it has special appeal to me. I'm only 1/3 of the way through. So far, it's very good, can't wait to get back to it. However, confession - I couldn't stand the suspense ... I jumped to the last few pages. Now I can read without the trauma. Two hanky episodes already!