Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Flirting with Pete

Wow! Flirting with Pete was definitely a great book, and I'm really glad that my mother-in-law passed this book along to me. Based on my past reading of Delinsky's books, I had kind of expected another steamy romance wrapped in a mystery, but this book was much more than that. Of course, there was a romance where the hero and heroine fall in love very quickly. But, there are two stories told in parallel and which eventually intersect; and the two side-by-side story lines were both captivating.

In one story, Casey Ellis is dealing with the grave illness of her mother and the sudden death of a father she had never met. Her father bequeaths his townhouse to her and as she is trying to decide whether to move into it or offer it for sale, she finds a manuscript left by her father. This manuscript tells the story of Jenny Clyde and her struggle to escape from an abusive father, our story number two. When these two stories converge, the characters discover unexpected ties and insights into their respective pasts.

I definitely recommend this book, and I plan to put a BookCrossing label into it and release it somewhere.

Books this year - 96

Books for the 50 Book Challenge - 2

Saturday, August 28, 2004

Riptide

On the trip home from Mississippi today, I read Riptide by Catherine Coulter. It's the fifth book in the FBI Thriller series.

I really liked Becca Matlock, the heroine of this novel; she had a lot more spunk than the women Coulter has introduced in the other books in this series. I would love to see her return in another book in the series.

Books this year - 95

Books for 50 Book Challenge - 1

Friday, August 27, 2004

Back on Track

I've now finished updating this blog, including the home page. I did have to delete one very old post because the web site that it linked to is no longer. It is now time to provide some information on reading activities.

I had finished all the books I took to NYC, so I picked up The Time Traveller's Wife in an airport bookstore on Monday. I'm 166 pages along in it, but set it aside to read The Cove, first book in the FBI Mystery series by Catherine Coulter. I had picked that one up on Tuesday, along with three others in the series. Yeah, I know that I had requested it via ILL, but I just couldn't wait.

Yesterday, having finished The Cove, I picked up Barbara Delinsky's Flirting with Pete which happened to be in the backseat of the car at the time. That means that I still have two books in progress.

I also checked out three books from the Sanger Public Library on Tuesday morning — just some things that looked interesting on the shelf.

In addition to getting this blog into order, I've been sorting through my BookCrossing bookshelf. I'm releasing some books and have been reading postings about BookCrossing activities. I decided to also join the 50 Book Challenge over at Live Journal. Since I've already read more than 50 books this year, I challenged myself to read 50 between now and the end of the year.

Sunday, August 22, 2004

Catherine Coulter

The last three books I have read are part of Catherine Coulter's FBI Series of suspense novels. I discovered this series by accident, picking up Blindside in an airport bookstore. I enjoyed it so much that I decided I would go back and read the rest of the series. So, for this trip to NYC, I checked three books out of the library: The Maze, The Target, and The Edge.

I missed the first book in the series, The Cove, but have asked the Sanger Library to locate a copy for me via InterLibrary Loan. Catherine's own web site is located at http://www.catherinecoulter.com/. Check there as well as Amazon for her bibliography and excerpts from the books.

Saturday, August 21, 2004

Reading in 2004

I'm not sure why I stopped blogging about the books I have been reading. I think it may be related to losing the BookPost bookmarklet that made it easy to create a blog entry from the ISBN or while viewing a book on the Amazon.com web site. So, although this blog has been idle for 8 months, I'm changing that right now.

One of my resolutions this year was to keep a record of every book that I read during the year. I had started keeping an art jounal last fall in an attempt to push myself into doing something creative on a regular schedule. But, I found that in addition to the illustration and collage which I stuck into the journal, I was writing bits and pieces, mostly about the books that I've been reading. So, I started a new journal to be primarily a text-only journal with a record of the books I've read, at the very least.

Statistics

January - 9
February - 6
March - 13
April - 10
May - 20
June - 16
July - 11
August - 8 (so far)

I'll create some additional posts with book titles, authors, and links to either BookCrossing logs or Amazon.com