In addition to reading books for pleasure, I spend a lot of time reading web sites, including blogs. There are about 50 blogs that I try to follow, using Bloglines to monitor these sites for new posts. And, I just started kicking the tires at del.icio.us, a social bookmarking site. So now I'm following more links to interesting stuff to read.
So what books have I read recently?
Set in the same universe as the Stardoc series, this novel introduces Jadaira, a young female resident of Kevarzangia Two. A member of the aquatic species native to K-2, Dair and others of her generation are serving in the military as pilots for planetary patrol. Life on K-2 is getting more stressful due to the large number of land-dwelling refugees who are crowding onto the planet. Dair and her fellow pilots are asked to pilot medical rescue crews to effect recovery of those injured while trying to escape the warring factions in the Pmoc Quadrant.
I was on a business trip & needed something to read, so I picked up Bio Rescue by S. L. Viehl. I had read her Stardoc novels featuring Cherijo Grey Veil and I knew that I did not want to read any more of those for a while. (Cherijo's perils include not only the normal action/adventure stuff, but some pretty heavy psychological abuse. I'm not up for that right now.) But, from the back cover, I saw that this book was not part of the Stardoc series, so I bought it.
I very much enjoyed this book and I'm glad to see that a sequel is already available in hardback. I'll pick it up next year when it comes out in paperback.
I picked up Luanne Rice's Dream Country at the library because I'd enjoyed the other books authored by her that I had read. This one did not disappoint. After her 3-year-old son Jake went missing in the Wyoming wilderness, Daisy took Jake's twin sister Sage and moved back to her home in Connecticut. Daisy's husband James could not bring himself to leave his family ranch, since he was determined to be there if Jake ever came back. When Sage runs away from home and toward the father that she's never had a chance to get to know, Daisy returns to Wyoming.
Dream Country is one of the better novels that I've read by Rice. The characters are well developed and the plot is expertly crafted. The inevitable romance just fits and doesn't disrupt the narrative. All-in-all, an enjoyable experience.
Anna Quindlen is one of the best authors around. She hasn't written many novels, which is a shame. I don't read much nonfiction, so I'm sure I'm missing out. Oh well.
Black and Blue tells the story of Fran, a battered woman who assumes a new identity as Beth to hide from her abusive husband. Quindlen avoids the cliche endings one might expect from a novel on this theme and brings things to a close which is realistic, although it's not the "happy ever after" ending you'd want.
Nora Robert's Chesapeake Bay trilogy introduces the three Quinn brothers, each adopted by Ray and Stella Quinn. Each book focuses on one of the brothers, from the delinquency which brought them to the attention of Ray and Stella to the healing these parents brought to their troubled sons. Sea Swept is the story of Cameron Quinn, oldest of the Quinn brothers.
The story begins as Ray Quinn is critically injured in a car wreck and Cam rushes home to be with his family. When he arrives at the hospital, in addition to his brothers, Cam meets 10-year-old Seth, whom Ray had rescued from his drug addicted mother. Ray extracts a promise from all the boys to keep Seth and make him a legal part of the Quinn family. There's a steamy romance and just a trace of the supernatural to keep Robert's regular readers happy.
The Mask of Ra
