April's Books....

I think maybe.... I've bought enough books this month.

We're not even to the half way point of the month and already there are 13  books in my "bought this month stack. To be fair, I only paid $5 for the first 10 this month... so there's that. Also, ebooks never make it into this stack (because of their physical restrictions), so I also bought Devil's Bride, and The Peculiar, but they're nonexistent in the physical sense.

MOON CALLED - Patricia Briggs
ZOMBIE LOVER - Piers Anthony
GEIST - Phillipa Balantine
THE BRIDGERTONS: HAPPILY EVER AFTER - Julia Quinn
DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY - P.D. James
UGLIES - Scott Westerfeld
PRETTIES - Scott Westerfeld
SPECIALS - Scott Westerfeld
EXTRAS - Scott Westerfeld
ENCLAVE - Ann Aguirre
OUTPOST - Ann Aguirre
CITY OF FALLEN ANGELS - Cassandra Clare
DR. HORRIBLE AND OTHER HORRIBLE STORIES - Zach Whedon

2013 Goal Updates: April

And boy howdy is this one late!

One Craft Project per Month

I managed to complete this: I made a set of homemade bath supplies! (Coconut Body Butter, Citrus Body Scrub, Sugar Hand Scrub and Bath Bombs) But I only managed to get a post up about one of them. I’ll get that up soon.

Review 4 Movies and 1 Season of TV per Month

Well, I failed miserably on both of these this month. I didn’t get a single one down! I’m going to have to do better with that one, methinks.

Read 60 Books (5/month)

This one I passed… I read 8 books this month. (they're linked if I reviewed them)

Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles)by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

An Offer from a Gentleman (Bridgertons) by Julia Quinn

When He was Wicked (Bridgertons) by Julia Quinn

Dead and Alive (Frankenstein) by DeanKoontz

Saga Vol. 1 by Brian K Vaughn & Fiona Staples

Clockwork Prince (The Infernal Devices)by Cassandra Clare

Lost Souls (Frankenstein) by DeanKoontz

Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices) by Cassandra Clare

March’s Goal: Get back into the swing of knitting!

(I learned how to knit in the fifth grade, and while I’ve since then not knit in over a decade – excluding the two rows I did when I bought a set of needles in January – I’ve found that its actually not that difficult to get back to! At least… I’m hoping not.)

I did not get this done. :(

April’s Goal: Get caught up on all the previous goals I’ve slacked on!

If You Give A Girl A Bookshelf...

She's going to want to fill it with books. And once she fills that bookshelf, she's going to ask for another... and another... and another....

I definitely went over my $30/month book-buying budget… Here's what I ended up with now that I've put myself on a temporary buying hiatus.

• A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady by Marie Brennan
  

  It's a fake memoir about dragons... how could I resist?
• Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carriger
  

  I love Gail's books, so this new series was a must. I preordered it back in September of last year. Review Here.
• Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
  

  Loved Cassandra's first Trilogy (The Mortal Instruments) so I had to get this prequel Trilogy that adds a steampunk twist to the world she created. Since the final book comes out next month, I picked up the first two! Review Here.
• Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare
  

   See above ;)

  The Dead Town by Dean Koontz
  

  My Mom has been awesome and has given me all five of the books in this series, This one arrived in the mail on Wednesday!
• V for Vendetta by Alan Moore/David Lloyd
  

   I've been wanting to get this for a while. And Earl has been getting more into the Graphic novel thing, so I caved and picked it up (and Judge Dredd below).
• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
  

  I was pulled to the book table at Costco, like I always am (moth to flame) and there was one copy of 1Q84 left on the table among the other masses. This gigantic tome has been on my wish list for a while and with a Costco mark down to $10, I figured I had to buy it.
• Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 01 – by John Wagner/Pat Mills/Brian Bolland/John Cooper
  

  Same situation as V up top.

Christmas Time Was Here....

Since we’re saving up for a wedding and to buy a house next year, most of our family opted to give us stuff toward that, and I am ridiculously thankful for that. But I thought I’d talk a little about the things we did get for Christmas….

(Please ignore the packing mess behind :/)

• Earl got me that lovely camera bag. I’m absolutely smitten with it. And the Where’s Waldo travel book! (I bought the Colbert book for myself :P)
• I got Earl a Zombie Head Cookie Jar and a (Not-lego) kit to build the Daedalus from Stargate Atlantis. And then I technically bought him half a PS3 – he used gift cards he received through training for the other half.
• My mom gave me the third and fourth Koontz Frankenstein Books (She hasn’t finished the fifth one yet,) and a packet of Pencils, erasers and a sharpener.
• Earls Dad got us a 1000 piece puzzle of Las Vegas – we sent him a picture of it the next morning. :D

• Earl’s mom got us “Smart Ass” A trivia board game. It looks really fun… and possibly very silly.
• Our Friends in Colorado sent us  a tin of Tea from the tea house in Boulder  and “Bubble Talk” a game that seems very much like Apples to Apples… but with pictures instead of green cards.
• My little sister got me that AWESOME purple French Press.
• My Dad and Stepmother got me a glass tea pot warmer (and potentially burglar bludgeon. IT IS HEAVY!) and a novel by Lynn Austin, and they got Earl Lego Set from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Lucy got a squeeky stuffed Reindeer (Notice she's in the back waiting for me to toss it)

Wordless Wednesday.... A Little Bit From The Beginning Of This Week...

And of course, you had to get in your weekly dose of Lucy!

WW: A Study in Black & White

My Amazon Cart – A List.

I think I’m going to make Thursday’s a day of lists – as such, this is a list of things I recently purchased at Amazon (they arrived on tuesday), and oh my gosh could this have been longer…

Kilkenny by Louis L’amour -
He came to the valley of the whispering wind a man who rode with the caution born of riding long on strange trails in a land untamed and restless with danger. Kilkenny could find no peace in the valley, for he came with a reputation for a lighting draw. Eager gunmen arose like coyotes to test him. One trigger happy victim was a Tetlow. Old man Tetlow was a hard man driven by greed to build a cattle empire. Now he would use every ruthless killer he could hire to fulfill an even more powerful urge--to destroy Kilkenny.

I realized the other day that I have never read a western. This is an odd thing to realize when you consider the fact that my memories of my father, from my childhood, always include him holding a Louis L’amour novel in his hands. So I added that to my mental list of things to talk about/ask on father’s day. He suggested Kilkenny (which I always want to spell with a double “L”).

Finders Keepers by Linnea Sinclair  -
Independent trader Trilby Elliot is making some not-quite-legal modifications to her starfreighter, when an unexpected visitor falls out of space. Literally. He’s crashed onto the uninhabited planet of Avanar in a crippled ’Sko fighter–the last place you’d expect to find a Zafharin military officer because the ’Sko and the Zafharin have been at war as long as Trilby can remember.


Rhis Vanur is your typically arrogant Zafharin. But to Trilby’s surprise, he doesn’t look down on her or her slapdash ship. Still, Trilby’s learned the hard way that even though she found Rhis, she can’t keep him. She’s just a low-budget jump jockey as far as men like him are concerned. She’s not falling for his offer to help…until Port Rumor reports her best friend missing and Trilby learns that the ’Sko are hunting both her and Rhis. Now they’re in it together for better, for worse–or till death blasts them to oblivion....

I’ve heard good things about this author. Good enough to buy the book. I found it odd that Amazon coupled this with the second Halo book “The Flood” which I will not be purchasing now, or prospectively ever. I’m twitching for more sci-fi in my reading list since I have a while to wait for Children of Scarabaeus.

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card  -
Aliens have attacked Earth twice and almost destroyed the human species. To make sure humans win the next encounter, the world government has taken to breeding military geniuses -- and then training them in the arts of war... The early training, not surprisingly, takes the form of 'games'... Ender Wiggin is a genius among geniuses; he wins all the games... He is smart enough to know that time is running out. But is he smart enough to save the planet?

My friend Morgan has ranted on about this novel enough to incite my purchase of it. I can only hope it lives up to his hardy recommendation. I can’t remember him steering me wrong before but we don’t often discuss books.

White Cat By Holly black -
Cassel comes from a family of curse workers -- people who have the power to change your emotions, your memories, your luck, by the slightest touch of their hands. And since curse work is illegal, they're all mobsters, or con artists. Except for Cassel. He hasn't got the magic touch, so he's an outsider, the straight kid in a crooked family. You just have to ignore one small detail -- he killed his best friend, Lila, three years ago.



Ever since, Cassel has carefully built up a façade of normalcy, blending into the crowd. But his façade starts crumbling when he starts sleepwalking, propelled into the night by terrifying dreams about a white cat that wants to tell him something. He's noticing other disturbing things, too, including the strange behavior of his two brothers. They are keeping secrets from him, caught up in a mysterious plot. As Cassel begins to suspect he's part of a huge con game, he also wonders what really happened to Lila. Could she still be alive? To find that out, Cassel will have to out-con the conmen.

I’ve heard things about this cat and it makes me curious… I couldn’t stop myself from keeping this in the cart.

Outland Staring Sean Connery -
In the distant future, a police marshal stationed at a remote mining colony on the Jupiter moon of Io uncovers a drug-smuggling conspiracy, and gets no help from the populace when he later finds himself marked for murder. (imdb)
Sean connery… space western… need I say more?