Teaser Tuesday 2/3/15

February 3, 2015 - Ambrosia 2 Comments

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“An old house is alive with ghosts. Each person that lived there made some kind of mark; if not in the choice of paint or cabinetry, then in a ding in the wall, a faucet with the handles installed backward, or a name carved out in the wallpaper behind the bed in secret. In some way, each voice that wandered its rooms whispers, “I was here.”
― Jessica L. Randall, The Obituary Society

Musing Monday 2/2/15

February 2, 2015 - Ambrosia 5 Comments

Musing Monday is hosted over at Should Be Reading.

Musing Monday asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

Another Happy New Year from Fire & Ice and here is the first Musing Monday of the year!

Musing Mondays asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer each week…

I’m currently reading…
Up next I think I’ll read…
I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
I can’t wait to get a copy of…
I wish I could read ___, but…
I blogged about ____ this past week…

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: What do you think about re-purposing old books (eg. into art journals, etc)? Why?

This week I am going to show what I am currently reading. I made a goal to myself to try to have two books going all year. One E-reader and One Hard copy. So I am currently working on two books. I just started them both as last week I was busy dealing with some work things.

When Lila Moore inherits her grandfather’s house, she finds herself in a small Midwestern town where margarine is never an acceptable substitution for butter, a coveted family recipe can serve as currency, and the friend who will take your darkest secrets to the grave will still never give you the secret to her prize-winning begonias.

Lila is charmed by the people of Auburn, from the blue-eyed lawyer with the southern drawl to the little old lady who unceasingly tries to set Lila up with her grandson. But when strange things begin to happen, Lila realizes some of her new friends are guarding a secret like it’s a precious family heirloom. It’s a dangerous secret, and it has come back to haunt them. Lila is caught in the middle, and her life may depend on uncovering it. But even if she can, can she stay in Auburn when not everyone is what they seem, and even the house wants her gone?

Meg Wolfe, The Lady of Faire Isle, is a gifted healer who can find a cure for almost any ailment. But she’s also the daughter of Cassandra Claire, a mad witch and heretic with a notorious history.

Meg’s infamous lineage makes her a target from both those who want to use her extraordinary talents for good and those who want to use them for evil.

One man in particular needs her special skills: to execute his revenge on a king. History and a kingdom hang in the balance as Meg tries to navigate the delicate line between right and wrong. And what she discovers is that she can no longer trust anyone or anything…not even her own heart.

Book Review: Habibi by Craig Thompson

January 30, 2015 - Ambrosia Leave a comment

Sprawling across an epic landscape of deserts, harems, and modern industrial clutter, Habibi tells the tale of Dodola and Zam, refugee child slaves bound to each other by chance, by circumstance, and by the love that grows between them. We follow them as their lives unfold together and apart; as they struggle to make a place for themselves in a world (not unlike our own) fueled by fear, lust, and greed; and as they discover the extraordinary depth — and frailty — of their connection.

At once contemporary and timeless, Habibi gives us a love story of astounding resonance: a parable about our relationship to the natural world, the cultural divide between the first and third worlds, the common heritage of Christianity and Islam, and, most potently, the magic of storytelling

This one was the assigned read for my book club this month and I wish I had liked it better. The subject matter was pretty tense for a lot of it but overall I just felt kind of “meh” about the book. Maybe it is just because I am not a graphic novel reader?

The drawing and images were well done and you could really see the beauty in it but for me the story was just kind of meh. I think a lot of the Orientalist things brought about in this novel are what set me to not enjoying that much. I struggled a little but the beauty in the drawings can’t be missed either so 3 gemstones for this one mostly because of the beauty of the art.

My Gemstone Rating:

Book Review: Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #10) by Laurell K. Hamilton

January 28, 2015 - Ambrosia Leave a comment

Hamilton’s vampire-hunting Anita Blake faces a plethora of foes in her tenth outing. Just returned to St. Louis after six months away, Anita is still no closer to choosing between her lovers–Jean-Claude, a vampire, and Richard, a werewolf. But she has to rely on both for help after two of the wereleopards that she has been watching are abducted at a seedy club called Narcissus in Chains. Anita and her boyfriends rescue the wereleopards from the sinister people holding them, but Anita is wounded in the fight and put at risk of becoming a wereleopard herself. Richard angrily captures the wereleopard he believes is responsible and threatens to execute him. Anita must now rescue that wereleopard from Richard and the werewolves he leads, even as she mourns the apparent end of her relationship with him. Then she realizes that those who kidnapped the first two wereleopards are targeting other lycanthropes. Maybe she will be next. With plenty of steamy sex and graphic violence, this is engaging reading for vampire cultists.

Alright, I love this series. I have loved that Anita is a kick ass and ask question later kind of girl. I love that she doesn’t give into things easily and she is her own woman. With that said this has so far been my least favorite book in the series. It is not the sex, I have not issues with sex scenes in books. It is how much is going on, how much Anita seems to have no control and some of the reasons for the sex and how the scenes are.

Honestly there does not seem to be a whole lot of plot to this book, there are some bad guys and they are attacking as usual but the bulk of the book is spent fighting the Ardour. Having sex with people or close to sex with people, my least favorite is Micha. Anita was for all purposes raped. She said no. No many times and never actually said yes and they had sex anyways. I mean seriously? COME ON. Just seems very not Anita like to me. Richard needs to just be kicked in the face I am tired of his complaining. Who stands out for me as someone who grew in the right direction in this book? Nathaniel. He seems to be starting to get some back bone and be a bit of a man. Good for him.

Bottom line is I don’t hate the book but it was not my favorite at all either.

My Gemstone Rating:

Teaser Tuesday 1/27/15

January 27, 2015 - Ambrosia Leave a comment

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

“Before Henriette had sex with the King, she demanded the outrageous sum of one hundred thousand crowns, to which the love starved Monarch readily assented. His minister the Duc de Sully, who called Henriette the “malignat wasp” was obliged to pay her from the treasury.” ~ PG.74 Sex with Kings by Eleanor Herman

Musing Monday 1/26/15

January 26, 2015 - Ambrosia Leave a comment

Musing Monday is hosted over at Should Be Reading.

Musing Monday asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

Musing Mondays asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer each week…

THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: Give a list of 4 books you read last year that you’d recommend to others — and why.

I am going to answer the up next I think I will read today. I just finished a graphic novel for a book club and I think next I am going to read Sex with Kings.

Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshiped, feared, envied, and reviled. They set the fashions, encouraged the arts, and, in some cases, ruled nations. Eleanor Herman’s Sex with Kings takes us into the throne rooms and bedrooms of Europe’s most powerful monarchs. Alive with flamboyant characters, outrageous humor, and stirring poignancy, this glittering tale of passion and politics chronicles five hundred years of scintillating women and the kings who loved them.

Curiously, the main function of a royal mistress was not to provide the king with sex but with companionship. Forced to marry repulsive foreign princesses, kings sought solace with women of their own choice. And what women they were! From Madame de Pompadour, the famous mistress of Louis XV, who kept her position for nineteen years despite her frigidity, to modern-day Camilla Parker-Bowles, who usurped none other than the glamorous Diana, Princess of Wales.

The successful royal mistress made herself irreplaceable. She was ready to converse gaily with him when she was tired, make love until all hours when she was ill, and cater to his every whim. Wearing a mask of beaming delight over any and all discomforts, she was never to be exhausted, complaining, or grief-stricken.

True, financial rewards for services rendered were of royal proportions — some royal mistresses earned up to $200 million in titles, pensions, jewels, and palaces. Some kings allowed their mistresses to exercise unlimited political power. But for all its grandeur, a royal court was a scorpion’s nest of insatiable greed, unquenchable lust, and vicious ambition. Hundreds of beautiful women vied to unseat the royal mistress. Many would suffer the slings and arrows of negative public opinion, some met with tragic ends and were pensioned off to make room for younger women. But the royal mistress often had the last laugh, as she lived well and richly off the fruits of her “sins.”

From the dawn of time, power has been a mighty aphrodisiac. With diaries, personal letters, and diplomatic dispatches, Eleanor Herman’s trailblazing research reveals the dynamics of sex and power, rivalry and revenge, at the most brilliant courts of Europe. Wickedly witty and endlessly entertaining, Sex with Kings is a chapter of women’s history that has remained unwritten — until now

Teaser Tuesday 1/20/15

January 20, 2015 - Ambrosia 1 Comment

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Had a pretty busy week last week and I was not able to do much reading, so I am still on the Anita Blake novel but that is alright it is a good one so far and has some fun quotes.

“I knew from the moment I heard you, the moment I saw the gun and realized that this lovely, petit woman was the executioner, that you would never die waiting for me to save you – that you would save yourself.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, Narcissus in Chains

Musing Monday 1/19/15

January 19, 2015 - Ambrosia 3 Comments

Musing Monday is hosted over at Should Be Reading.

Musing Monday asks you to muse about one of the following each week…

Another Happy New Year from Fire & Ice and here is the first Musing Monday of the year!

Musing Mondays asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer each week…

How many books, approximately, do you think you have in your personal collection?

Oh dear well this is a thoughtful one. It has been a while since I have counted. I have a great deal of books on my readers and my TBR and such. do not tend to keep to many books that I have read so you have to be very special to be on that shelf. Overall I would say over 1,500 books or so. Perhaps more.

Booking through Thursday 1/15/15

January 15, 2015 - Ambrosia Leave a comment

This one is Hosted at the Booking through Thursday Blog.

Another week another Booking through Thursday

If you were going to write a book, what kind of book would it be? (And if you’re an author already, what kind of book would you LIKE to write that you haven’t written yet?)

I have written a lot of non fiction books and what I would really like to do in the future is write a Historical Fiction. Perhaps an alternative reality? Something with a little romance but with a focus on the historical part. I find there are not enough Rev war time period historicals so maybe that genre would suit me!

Book Review: Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles #11) by Anne Rice

January 14, 2015 - Ambrosia Leave a comment

The novel opens with the vampire world in crisis…vampires have been proliferating out of control; burnings have commenced all over the world, huge massacres similar to those carried out by Akasha in The Queen of the Damned… Old vampires, roused from slumber in the earth are doing the bidding of a Voice commanding that they indiscriminately burn vampire-mavericks in cities from Paris and Mumbai to Hong Kong, Kyoto, and San Francisco. As the novel moves from present-day New York and the West Coast to ancient Egypt, fourth century Carthage, 14th-century Rome, the Venice of the Renaissance, the worlds and beings of all the Vampire Chronicles—Louis de Pointe du Lac; the eternally young Armand, whose face is that of a Boticelli angel; Mekare and Maharet, Pandora and Flavius; David Talbot, vampire and ultimate fixer from the secret Talamasca; and Marius, the true Child of the Millennia; along with all the other new seductive, supernatural creatures—come together in this large, luxuriant, fiercely ambitious novel to ultimately rise up and seek out who—or what—the Voice is, and to discover the secret of what it desires and why…

And, at the book’s center, the seemingly absent, curiously missing hero-wanderer, the dazzling, dangerous rebel-outlaw—the great hope of the Undead, the dazzling Prince Lestat

I was excited when I heard that Prince Lestat was going to be published and yet I was also on the fence. The Vampire chronicles were my first big introduction into the world of vampires they got me involved with them and made me enjoy the genre. It was because of them and the bar that was set so high I did not read other vampire novels for a while. The reason I was on the fence however is because the last few chronicle books fell short for me and I feel as if there was some betrayal that happened within them. That aside I have read everything else by Anne Rice so I had to read Prince Lestat.

I liked it. The opening was solid and enjoyable. It was fun checking in with Lestat again and Louis and Armand. I truly enjoyed revisiting characters that I have loved for so many years. However, things started to fall apart. The story being told from so many points of view was just to much. There were to many new people introduced, voices that we did not need to hear and for my personal preference did not want to. I wanted to stay with those I already knew and get more from them.

The book jumps around rapidly from time period to time period from point of view to point of view and really at the end of the day it ended up being to much. I did not hate the book by any means but as much as I wanted to love it I couldn’t and if I am truly honest it was in the end a bit of a struggle to finish. Not the best start to a new year of reading but it could have been worse.

My Gemstone Rating:

The Purple Booker

Reading is…Bigger on the inside

Teaser Tuesday 2/3/15

Musing Monday 2/2/15

Book Review: Habibi by Craig Thompson

Book Review: Narcissus in Chains (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #10) by Laurell K. Hamilton

Teaser Tuesday 1/27/15

Musing Monday 1/26/15

Teaser Tuesday 1/20/15

Musing Monday 1/19/15

Booking through Thursday 1/15/15

Book Review: Prince Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles #11) by Anne Rice