Friday, October 23, 2009

Book choices for the Readathon

As a pre-readathon (it's less than 12 hours away) post. I thought I would show my stacks of books I'm choosing from for the read-a-thon. No I don't think I can read all of these, not even near this number but I wanted a lot to choose from. They are all residing on my dining room table and I am sure when DH gets home from hunting in a little while he'll think I got them all in the mail today (I just received one book today and it's not in these piles). So here goes.

First my to-be-reviewed pile - these all have review dates soon, so I need to be working on these:
Next is my to-be-reviewed soon, but not immediately.
Next are books that are due back to the library (Take One - Karen Kingsbury, Maze of Bones - Rick Riordan, The Adoration of Jenna Fox and Hard Eight)
A couple of books for filler - Dairy Queen and The Clique
A few more books for filler - I love booksfree and these are the recent young adult selections from there.

That's it - I won't swear I won't find other books to read, but this is my pile right now. Now to decide what to start with in the morning.

See you at 8am EDT!

ARC Arrival: The Merchant Kings by Stephen R. Bown

The Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World 1600-1900 by Stephen R. Bown

Publisher:
D&M Adult
Release Date: September 1, 2009
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 336

I received this from Raz Godelnik of Eco-Libris for their new green lit campaign: "It's Time for a Green Book": 1 Day, 100 bloggers, 100 green books, 100 reviews coming up on November 10th.

About the Book:
An engaging blend of biography and economic/colonial history, "Merchant Kings" tells the story of the trading companies that monopolised vast territories all over the world during the first great period of globalisation. The leaders of these trading companies exercised dictatorial power over millions of people, and devoted their time and resources to the accumulation of wealth through hunting, trapping, trade and exploration. It was a harsh existence on the frontiers of the civilised world, and these kings of commerce were larger-than-life characters; adventurers as well as merchants. They included men like Peter Stuyvesant, the one-legged governor of the Dutch West India Company; Cecil Rhodes, founder of the De Beers company (and after whom Rhodesia was named); and George Simpson, the infamous 'Little Emperor' of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was chauffeured around his vast fur domain in a giant canoe, exhorting his oarsmen to paddle harder in order to set canoeing speed records. "Merchant Kings" examines their rise and fall in the centuries before colonialism and empire, analysing the political, social and cultural legacies of this fascinating, cut-throat age.
About the Author
Stephen R. Bown is the author of Madness, Betrayal and the Lash: The Epic Voyage of Captain George Vancouver (2008); Scurvy (2003), published in six territories, and A Most Damnable invention: Dynamite, Nitrates and the Making of the Modern World (2005). He lives in Canmore, Alberta.

ARC Arrival: Kissing Games of the World by Sandi Kahn Shelton


Kissing Games of the World by Sandi Kahn Shelton

Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books
Release Date: November 10, 2009
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 336

I received this from Priya Srinivasan at Random House Books and I will be holding a giveaway to go along with the review of the book the second week in November.

About the Book:

If there’s one point that Jamie McClintock and Nate Goddard can agree upon, it’s that love is overrated. Jamie doesn’t have time for it. Nate doesn’t need it. And they certainly don’t want it from each other.

Jamie, a struggling free-spirited artist, is a devoted single mother who hasn’t been in a serious relationship since her boyfriend abandoned her after their son was born. Nate, a charismatic jet-setting salesman, is widowed and estranged from his father and five-year-old son, Christopher. Jamie would rather glue glitter to pinecones than go out on a date. Nate spends most of his nights wooing his clients. Then one afternoon Nate’s father drops dead of a heart attack. In that moment, their highly guarded worlds collide.

When Nate shows up at his childhood home to settle the estate and reclaim his son, he discovers that Jamie has been living in the Connecticut farmhouse as his father’s roommate. Mistrustful of each other’s motives, Nate and Jamie bicker about everything from children’s nicknames to Jamie’s fashion choices to Nate’s home renovation methods. It doesn’t help that Christopher prefers Jamie to his absentee father.

But after the funeral, Nate and Jamie begin to see each other in a more forgiving light. Nate, traveling to sales conferences all over the country with a sullen Christopher in tow, learns he can’t breeze his way through single parenthood. Jamie, who has moved back in with her sister, wonders at the wisdom of her unconventional choices as a woman with a child to support. And both begin to realize they don’t know as much about love as they thought. Still wounded by past heartbreak and sorrow, can they learn to trust each other and open their hearts?




Review: Would I Lie to You by Cecily Von Ziegesar (Gossip Girl)

Would I Lie to You (Gossip Girl, #10) Would I Lie to You by Cecily von Ziegesar


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Another fun Gossip Girl romp.

This one finds most of the crowd out in the Hamptons with Serena and Blair functioning as live-in muses for the talented fashion designer, Bailey Winters. However they weren't expecting to meet their own trashy doubles. Hijinks, Blair and Serena-style, quickly follow and are quite fun.

Nate is still working for his coach trying to earn his diploma and trying to stay away from the coach's very tanned wife.

Vanessa is still chasing around her new charges as a nanny and when she gets a chance to go to the Hamptons and escape life with Dan for a little bit she jumps at it. But the Hamptons aren't really Vanessa, are they.

What follows is a fun book. It was one of the more enjoyable in this series and that is saying something since I enjoy all of them. It's just fun fiction and that's what I take from it. Just mindless entertainment and I love revisiting the characters that make up the Gossip Girl series.

I received this book with my Booksfree.com subscription.

Challenges:
100+ Book Challenge
Fall Into Reading Challenge 2009
Countdown Challenge 2010

ARC Arrival: Drive Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Drive Time by Hank Phillippi Ryan

Publisher: Mira
Release Date: February 1, 2010
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 400

I received this from Kim Miller at Nancy Berland Public Relations.

About the Book:
Investigative reporter Charlotte McNally is an expert at keeping things confidential, but suddenly everyone has a secret—and it turns out it is possible to know too much.

Her latest scoop—an expose of a counterfeit car scam, complete with stakeouts, high-speed chases and hidden-camera footage—is ratings gold. But soon that leads her to a brand-new and diabolical scheme. Charlie’s personal and professional lives are on a collision course, too. Her fiancĂ© is privy to information about threats at an elite private school that have turned deadly.

Charlie has never counted on happy endings. But now, just as she’s finally starting to believe in second chances, she realizes revenge, extortion and murder may leave her alone again—or even dead . . . .

About the Author…

As an investigative reporter for Boston’s NBC-TV affiliate with 26 Emmys to her credit, Hank Phillippi Ryan has wired herself with hidden cameras, chased criminals and confronted corrupt politicians. Her investigative reporting has changed laws and changed lives. Now Hank's writing what she lives in her engaging Charlotte McNally series about--you guessed it--a hard-hitting investigative reporter who calls Boston home.

The first two books in Hank’s sassy and fast-paced Charlotte McNally series were originally pubbed with limited distribution, but the response was so promising that Hank’s publisher reissued them as single titles, along with a brand new book, in back-to-back months last summer.

Check out www.HankPhillippiRyan.com for excerpts or additional information.

PRIME TIME by Hank Phillippi Ryan / Mira paperback / July 2009 / ISBN: 978-0778327172 / $7.99 U.S.

FACE TIME by Hank Phillippi Ryan / Mira paperback / August 2009 / ISBN: 978-0778327189 / $7.99 U.S.

AIR TIME by Hank Phillippi Ryan / Mira paperback / September 2009 / ISBN: 978-0778327196 / $7.99 U.S.



Friday Finds (Oct 23)


Friday Finds is hosted over on Should Be Reading. It's all about what great books you have heard about/discovered in the past week. Here is my entry, and head over to the Should Be Reading Blog to read others and find books to add to your TBR pile!

So here are a few of my finds (forgive me - this week I didn't make notes on which blogs I saw these on):

Kingdom by Tom Martin
When the Abbot spoke, his voice was thin and resigned. 'It is the end of our monastery. By nightfall I will be dead and our walls will lie shattered. A terrible evil is coming from the forest...' A monastery in Tibet is overrun with Chinese soldiers searching for a sacred relic. The monks flee to seek refuge in hidden caves, but their progress is hampered by an injured stranger, whose presence threatens them all ...Journalist Nancy Kelly receives a parcel containing a mysterious trumpet made of bone, and hears an account of a Westerner penetrating into a hidden kingdom in Tibet, where orchids cover the earth, pagodas hug the hills and soaring cathedrals hide underground. Soon she embarks on a dangerous journey into an ancient land of myth and legend, in search of a secret older than time itself.


The Winter Ghosts by Kate Mosse
March 1928. The Great War has been over for ten years, but Freddie Abrahams still hasn't recovered from the loss of his brother. Even now, on holiday in south-west France, he cannot escape his grief. When his car crashes, Freddie stumbles down from the hills to a village nearby. There he meets Marie, a beautiful young woman who is also mourning a lost generation. Her story of the fate of her family moves him deeply. But it will also lead Freddie to the caves above the village - and to the heart of a shocking secret. By turns thrilling, poignant and haunting, this is a story of two lives touched by war and transformed by courage



Sew Deadly by Elizabeth Lynn Casey
Ever since she moved to Sweet Briar, South Carolina, Yankee librarian Tori Sinclair has been the talk of the tiny town. But she’s been so busy at work, winning over the sewing circle, and trying to forget her cheating ex that she hasn’t even had time to baste together a pillow, let alone mind local gossip. Then she finds the hometown sweetheart dead at her back door…

Everyone believes the police investigator, who’s just fixin’ to link Tori to the murder in a love triangle gone bad. To clear her name, Tori will have to rely on her new sewing sisters and stitch together the truth— or be darned.



Heart's Blood by Juliet Marillier
Anluan has been crippled since childhood, part of a curse that has besieged his family and his home of Whistling Tor. But when the young scribe Caitrin is retained to sort through family documents, she brings about unexpected changes in the household, casting a hopeful light against the despairing shadows.

But to truly free Anluan’s burdened soul, Caitrin must unravel the web of sorcery woven by his ancestors before it claims his life—and their love…



So what have you found this week?