My Reading Room

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Book Review: Horns by Joe Hill

Horns by Joe Hill

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (Reprint Edition)

Publish Date: March 8, 2011

Trade Paperback, 416 pages
Fiction, Horror, Suspense
ISBN: 978-0061147968

****The first 1000 people to preorder Joe’s latest novel and then email joehill@harpercollins.com with proof of purchase will receive a specialized bookplate from Joe – he’s been signing and doodling all sorts of creations on bookplates for days now! ****

My Review:
Why I read this: I loved Heart-Shaped Box and could not wait to read Joe Hill's next book.

My thoughts: Joe Hill is a master of writing books on human depravity. What started with Heart-Shaped Box definitely continues with Horns. The first chapter captures your attention and does not let you go. Why does Ig have horns? Can people see them? What did he do last night? Who is Merrin Williams? These are just a few of the main questions you'll be asking after reading the first few pages and I have to say I was completely sucked in.

And after you are sucked in, the book is not quite what you expected. However it did keep me hooked until the final page. This is a very unique look at good versus evil and who is really good and who is really evil. And how hard it is to tell. I mean who hasn't wanted to tell a mom in a doctor's waiting room to make her child be quiet (I'm sure some have thought that about me at times) and who doesn't get mad at someone going down the highway. Hill manages to take these simple things and show us the bad side of it even though they are simple thoughts in our heads. When do those thoughts become actions. Now don't get me wrong, the book isn't preachy in the least, it just opens you up to questions of good and evil. In truth, the book is highly entertaining. I found the relationships of the characters interesting and the characters themselves interesting.

I'm going to be rather vague in this review and the point is I really don't want to give anything away. I read and thoroughly enjoyed the book, but want you as a reader to enjoy all the surprises. Just know Horns is entertaining, dark yet a little light and lots of fun to read. It's not for the faint-of-heart, but I think most people know that going into his books. But if you haven't read him and enjoy the horror or supernatural fiction genre, I highly recommend you try him. I think I like Horns more than Heart-Shaped Box, but it's really a toss-up. Since Horns just came out in paperback, I look forward to Mr. Hill's next offering soon as well.

My Rating: 4.5/5.0

About the Book:
The New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box returns with a relentless supernatural thriller that runs like Hell on wheels . . .

Merrin Williams is dead, slaughtered under inexplicable circumstances, leaving her beloved boyfriend Ignatius Perrish as the only suspect. On the first anniversary of Merrin’s murder, Ig spends the night drunk and doing awful things. When he wakes the next morning he has a thunderous hangover . . . and horns growing from his temples. Ig possesses a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look—a macabre gift he intends to use to find the monster who killed his lover. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. Now it’s time for revenge . . .

It’s time the devil had his due. . . .

About the Author:

Joe Hill is the author of a previous novel, Heart-Shaped Box, a story collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and an occasional comic series, Locke & Key. He is a two-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award and a past recipient of the Ray Bradbury Fellowship. His stories have appeared in a variety of journals and Year’s Best collections.
Connect with Joe:

On his website
On Twitter: @joe_hill

Joe’s Tour Stops

Tuesday, March 8th: Raging Bibliomania
Wednesday, March 9th: I’m Booking It
Thursday, March 10th: Luxury Reading
Thursday, March 17th: Sara’s Organized Chaos
Monday, March 21st: Jenn’s Bookshelves
Wednesday, March 23rd: Booksie’s Blog
Thursday, March 24th: The Ranting Dragon
Monday, March 28th: Debbie’s Book Bag
Tuesday, March 29th: My Life in Not So Many Words
Wednesday, March 30th: My Reading Room
Thursday, March 31st: MariReads

FTC Information: I received this book through the publisher for a TLC Tour for a honest review. I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws. I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.

Book Tour: Horns by Joe Hill

Horns by Joe Hill

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks (Reprint Edition)

Publish Date: March 8, 2011

Trade Paperback, 416 pages
Fiction, Horror, Suspense
ISBN: 978-0061147968

***My review will be coming later today, but let me tell you this is a great book!***

About the Book:
The New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box returns with a relentless supernatural thriller that runs like Hell on wheels . . .

Merrin Williams is dead, slaughtered under inexplicable circumstances, leaving her beloved boyfriend Ignatius Perrish as the only suspect. On the first anniversary of Merrin’s murder, Ig spends the night drunk and doing awful things. When he wakes the next morning he has a thunderous hangover . . . and horns growing from his temples. Ig possesses a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look—a macabre gift he intends to use to find the monster who killed his lover. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. Now it’s time for revenge . . .

It’s time the devil had his due. . . .

About the Author:

On his website
On Twitter: @joe_hill

Joe’s Tour Stops

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Winner - Texas Blue by Jodi Thomas

My winner of Texas Blue by Jodi Thomas (compliments of the author) is:

Pam Sinclair

Pam has been contacted. Thank you so much for entering this giveaway. And thank you to wonderful author Jodi Thomas for offering the giveaway!

Book Review and Giveaway: Dragon Lady by Gary Alexander

Dragon Lady by Gary Alexander

Publisher: Istoria Books

Publish Date: March 21, 2011

Ebook
Fiction, Historical

My Review:
Why I read this: Libby Sternberg is behind the new Istoria Books whose tagline is "eBooks You Want to Read at Prices You Want to Pay" and I have reviewed for her before. So when she contacted me about Dragon Lady and I read the premise I was very intrigued and could not wait to read the book.

My thoughts: Dragon Lady was an interesting and refreshing book. I loved the fact that the author made the narrator of the story looking back on his time in service in Vietnam and relating his present day life in "The Great Beyond". Yes, the narrator is dead. And yes, that makes the book very interesting.

I like how the author interspersed the after life and the past life. It was really nicely done and it never launched into the other life at a moment that felt wrong. The book is not jumpy at all. The after life adds interest without taking away from the storyline of the past. Both storylines just work very well together and I think this is something that is hard to do but Mr. Alexander does it well.

I really liked Joe. He was sarcastic, witty, had some anger management issues, was honest but the author made him feel really human as well. He's not one of those sarcastic characters that is removed from life, just living on his sarcasm and wit. No, there is a lot more to Joe, the sarcasm and wit just make him entertaining. I liked getting into his head both in the past and in "The Great Beyond". He's a fascinating character and watching him grow at times and backpedal at times is extremely interesting. Joe as a character drives the book very well. I also liked Ziggy in his past life - the man could come up with quotes at a moments notice and he's Joe's best friend/partner-in-crime in Vietnam. And I liked Smitty, Joe's neighbor in "The Great Beyond" who proves to be interesting as well.

The setting is wonderful as well. The book really benefits from the fact that the author served in Vietnam during the time of the book. The descriptions of places and people around Saigon were brought to life for me and I felt like I was there even though I know very little about the country and even very little about the war. Mr. Alexander has a way with words in his descriptions that make them interesting without becoming too wordy. He has a great balance that keeps the book flowing from the first page to the last.

This was an interesting look into the Vietnam conflict before it escalated. An interesting look into the inner workings of things going on with the Army in Saigon. I think Mr. Alexander's time in Vietnam brings a credibility to what is in the book though I'm sure it's not an overall reflection of all that was going on during 1965.

Dragon Lady is a highly entertaining book that I heartily recommend. The writing is very well done, the story is different and interesting and the characters feel like people you know. It's just one of those books that grabs you and doesn't let you go and leaves you thinking about it even when you are finished. So run, don't walk and try this author out, see if Dragon Lady grabs you like it grabbed me.

My Rating: 4.5/5.0

About the Book:

In 1965 Saigon, Joe, a young draftee, becomes obsessed with a Vietnam girl named Mai, his own "Dragon Lady" from his beloved Terry and the Pirates cartoon strips that his mother still sends him. As he pursues a relationship with her, Saigon churns with intrigue and rumors--will the U.S. become more involved with the Vietnamese struggle? What's going on with a special unit that's bringing in all sorts of (for the time) high tech equipment? Will the U.S. make Vietnam the 51st state and bomb aggressors to oblivion? But for Joe, the big question is--does Mai love him or will she betray more than just his heart? Gary Alexander’s intelligent voice, filled with dry wit, and his own experiences give this story a sharp sense of truth, recounting the horror and absurdity of war. Reminiscent of books such as Catch-22, Dragon Lady serves up equal measures of outrageous humor and poignant remembrance.

About the Author:
Gary Alexander was one of 17,000 US soldiers in Vietnam that spring. When he left in the fall, there were 75,000 troops in-country.

Website

Also see Gary's guest blog on The Genesis of Dragon Lady.

Giveaway:
Libby at Istoria Books is offering a code to receive a copy of Dragon Lady by Gary Alexander for free from Smashwords, so you can get it in the format you want. All you need to do is fill out the form below. Open Internationally, and the giveaway will run through 4/6/2011.

If you can't see the form below, you can find it here.

FTC Information: I received this book from Istoria Books for a honest review. I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws. I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.

Guest Blog: The Genesis of Dragon Lady by Gary Alexander

Istoria Books Presents...
Dragon Lady
by Gary Alexander
April 2011

NOTE: This book is available for only 99 cents up until the end of this week (April 1 - no joke!) exclusively at Amazon’s Kindle store. After that, it will be available at all major etailers for its regular price of $4.99!

In 1965 Saigon, Joe, a young draftee, becomes obsessed with a Vietnam girl named Mai, his own "Dragon Lady" from his beloved Terry and the Pirates cartoon strips that his mother still sends him. As he pursues a relationship with her, Saigon churns with intrigue and rumors--will the U.S. become more involved with the Vietnamese struggle? What's going on with a special unit that's bringing in all sorts of (for the time) high tech equipment? Will the U.S. make Vietnam the 51st state and bomb aggressors to oblivion? But for Joe, the big question is--does Mai love him or will she betray more than just his heart? Gary Alexander’s intelligent voice, filled with dry wit, and his own experiences give this story a sharp sense of truth, recounting the horror and absurdity of war. Reminiscent of books such as Catch-22, Dragon Lady serves up equal measures of outrageous humor and poignant remembrance. Gary Alexander was one of 17,000 US soldiers in Vietnam that spring. When he left in the fall, there were 75,000 troops in-country.

Istoria Books
eBooks You Want to Read at Prices You Want to Pay
www.Istoria Books.com

You can read an interview with Gary at the Istoria Books blog: http://istoriabooks.blogspot.com/2011/03/interview-with-irreverent-goldbrick.html

_________________________________________

The Genesis of Dragon Lady
By Gary Alexander

I began having doubts about our entanglement in South Vietnam years before I knew I
wanted to be a writer when I grew up.

In fact, I began having doubts two hours before arriving there. Fresh meat, including me, was on a Boeing 707 from Travis AFB, CA to Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut airport. It was a long island-hopping flight, on which they didn’t feed us for 10-12 hours.

Then they fed us twice in the last three hours. Hmm.

Duty was pretty good for most GIs in mid-1964. I don’t recall it yet being called the Vietnam War. We were even drawing $55 hazardous duty pay. We joked that the only hazardous duty we faced was being in a bar spending that extra $55 when a satchel of plastique was slung in.

Lost a few GIs that way, but not too many. I always wondered if the next-of-kin were presented Purple Hearts and got write-ups in the local paper.

The last war we’d been in was Korea. No, wait, that was a limited war or, more commonly called, a police action. Therefore it didn’t count, despite ending as a blood-drenched draw.

Our last war was WW II. We’d won every war from then back to the first, the Revolutionary War. We had a 163-year winning streak going.

No steamy, third world backwater was gonna break that string!

Prior to shipping out, we had to look on a map for South Vietnam and knew little of its history. We knew Vietnam had had another war that had ended 10 years earlier. The Commies had kicked the French’s ass at some place out in the boonies called Dien Bien Phu. That was France, though, not the United States of America.

Most of us did believe in the Domino Theory and the spreading danger of godless Communism. But we weren’t any more or less naïve than our superiors, all the way up the line to the White House.

Regardless, armed conflict seemed an abstraction. Really, who was the enemy? Just a ragtag mob of illiterate Marxists, sneaking around in the jungle in their black pajamas and Ho Chi Minh sandals*, which were thongs made of old tires.

Saigon then was still the Paris of the Orient. To us young troops, it was unimaginably exotic. Not Saigon’s sprawling, fetid slums we managed to ignore, but downtown, at and near fashionable Tu Do Street. You could spend more money eating and drinking and whoring in a single evening on Tu Do than the average Vietnamese earned in a month.

If the Vietcong guerrillas wanted to live in malarial swamps living on fish heads and rice, so what? That was their problem. We had French cuisine in downtown Saigon.

As for the beyond-exotic Vietnamese woman, the DragonLadyesque temptress, well, she was far less attainable than a Crêpe Suzette.

Lovely Saigonese women abounded. In their traditional áo dὰi, a silken tunic worn over pantaloons, they were head-turners. Once I saw a striking young lady in an áo dài riding sidesaddle on the back of a Honda motorbike. I walked into a lamppost.

Wisely, 99 percent of those beauties had nothing to do with us.

* I Googled “Ho Chi Minh sandals” and found a site that sells “100% authentic Ho Chi
Minh sandals, identical to the footwear worn by the Vietcong during the Vietnam War”.
They’re handmade near Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).

Thank you Gary for joining us today. My review of Dragon Lady will be coming later today and don't forget that you can get this book for $0.99 between now and April 1!

Monday, March 28, 2011

Book Review: Between Shades of Gray by Ruth Sepetys

Between Shades of Gray by Ruth Sepetys

Publisher: Philomel

Publish Date: March 22, 2011

Hardcover, 344 pages
Fiction, Historical
ISBN: 978-0399254123

My Review:
Why I read this: I was taken in by the starkness of the cover and the blurb.

My thoughts:
Between Shades of Gray is a beautiful and powerful book that tells a story of World War II that most of us don't know. It tells the story of the countries that were overpowered by Stalin and Hitler and what happened to the people who opposed these new governments and wanted to retain their patriotism to their home countries. I know I knew nothing of what happened to countries like Lithuania and Latvia. We mostly hear about the Jewish people during World War II and with good reason, but the Lithuanians and Latvians were also ripped from their countries and hidden in farming and work camps as free labor for the Soviets. Wow, such new knowledge and the book brings it to light in an amazing way as we follow Lina, her mother and her brother and their trek from their home country all the way up to the Artic Circle (and a map is provided in the book to show the various places they were and how truly long the trek was.

Lina was an amazing character. She demonstrates the typical teenage emotions. She just wanted to be a normal teenager, draw, create her art and go on to train with a great artist. Just a normal life. Instead her life is stormed into by Soviet forces and she is forced to travel is absolutely horrid conditions to work camps where the conditions are not much better. I like how she grows during the book from a selfish teenager to a strong young woman that just wants to hold the small group she is in together through the tough times. She truly makes the book and Ms. Sepetys has created an amazing character in Lina.

If you have been holding off on this because of what seems like harsh subject matter like I was, please get the book and read it. It's sad yes, but there is hope in the novel as well and strength of spirit. I truly found it as inspiring as it was sad. Ms. Sepetys does a marvelous job giving the book just the right tone so it doesn't cross over to completely depressing as it could easily have done.

I am so glad I read this book and learned about the little-known part of history. I admire the Lithuanians and the Latvians and the others who persevered in these harsh conditions and I admire Ms. Setpetys for telling their story.

My Rating: 4.75/5.0

About the Book:

Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously—and at great risk—documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.About the Author (from her website):

Ruta Sepetys was born and raised in Michigan in a family of artists, readers, and music lovers. BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY is her debut novel and is based on her family’s history. "It's a story of extreme suffering, tremendous hope, and how sometimes love reveals the miraculous nature of the human spirit," says Sepetys. Ruta now lives with her family in Tennessee.

Author Website
Book Website
Facebook

FTC Information: I received this book from the publisher for a honest review. I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws. I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.

It's Monday What Are You Reading - March 28

Come post weekly and see what others are reading too just so you can add to your tbr - I always do! For more information see Sheila at One Persons Journey Through a World of Books and join in!

Books Completed Last Week

Texas Blue by Jodi Thomas
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Reading Now:

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger (audio, car)
Drought by Pam Bachorz (audio, mp3 player)
Night Road by Kristin Hannah (review)
Dragon Lady by Gary Alexander (kindle, review)
Born at Midnight by C.C. Hunter (YA, review)

Horns by Joey Hill
The Arrow Chest by Robert Parry
Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult
Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution by Michelle Moran
The Emperor's Tomb by Steve Berry
Red Wolf by Liza Marklund

Summary -

I thought last week was crazy - this one was even crazier - my reading was definitely down and my big news of the week - I'm wearing reading glasses. I was having daily headaches and I thought about the amount I read, plus spending all day on the computer at work and then thought about my age (getting closer to 40) and decided to try them out. Would you believe, no more headaches!

I promise there will be more reading this week, but I do need to do start our taxes finally and get ready for some other things in April as well, so I don't know what next weekend will bring. This one brought a game for my youngest (they lost) and two games for my oldest (they won both) and a lot of fun for me at the ballfield. It also brought a flare-up which has confined me pretty much to my corner chair today (Sunday). Hopefully it will get under control and I will start off the week feeling well.

Best of the week: Both books read this week were great in their own way - one for the romance and escapism the other for it's realism so I can't choose this week.

How was your week?