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finished the Cravings anthology from Jove Books. a collection of four short novels/novellas by Laurell K. Hamilton, MaryJanice Davidson, Eileen Wilks, and Rebecca York.

Hamilton's offering of a new Anita Blake story was excellent.

the real find, for me, was the inclusion of stories by Davidson and Wilks. Davidson's "Dead Girls Don't Dance" is a great, and funny, vampire story and has prompted me to seek out her novel, Undead and Unwed, which precedes it and which deals with another character that appears in the novella.

Wilks' "Originally Human" is an enjoyable tale about a 300-year-old fun-loving woman-cursed-to-be-a-succubus who manages to cope when a naked man unexpectedly and literally pops into her life. reminds me of some of Tanya Huff's best humourous short fiction.

the one disappointment is York's "Burning Moon" which is what i suppose a typical paranormal romance story featuring a werewolf leading man and a more-or-less normal woman who loves him is all about.

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Thanks, but I don't need any help getting into trouble since I seem to manage quite well on my own.

Thought I would pop in here and check out what everyone else is reading.    Hey is the Tanya Huff series good?  The show seems kind of lame but usually the difference is night and day.  I am thinking of checking out the books.

I have NEVER EVER had a passion for reading in my life...read The Black Stallion series when I was growing up and a scattering of others, but never got into it.  After watching The Dresden Files and finding out they were based on Jim Butcher's book series, I picked up the first one (Storm Front) out of curiosity.  I blasted through it in no time and craved for more!!!  I am currently on book 8 - Proven Guilty and oh boy....this man has absolutely given me a new love of reading.  I am a little sad that there is only one more book after this, then I must wait until April 08 for the next one.    What an awesome series, and waaaaaaaaaaay better than the show.

I am also thinking of reading the Weather Warden series by Rachel Caine...they sound pretty interesting and Halfway to the Grave by Jeanine Frost sounds good as well....I think this is her first book.

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Teresa
aka SciFiCanadian
aka SciFi Canuck

think you will enjoy Tanya Huff's writing, both long and short. i did a short review/recommendation for the Blood series based on reading the second novel, Trail of Blood, which concerns a case of Victoria Nelson's involving Canada's most endangered species, the werewolf... ;)... and i would also recommend the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series of novels, starting with Guilty Pleasures.

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Thanks, but I don't need any help getting into trouble since I seem to manage quite well on my own.

greggC:

think you will enjoy Tanya Huff's writing, both long and short. i did a short review/recommendation for the Blood series based on reading the second novel, Trail of Blood, which concerns a case of Victoria Nelson's involving Canada's most endangered species, the werewolf... ;)... and i would also recommend the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series of novels, starting with Guilty Pleasures.

Anita Blake....got it on my list.  Thanks! 

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Teresa
aka SciFiCanadian
aka SciFi Canuck

finished over weekend reading Le Vampire, a play by Alexandre Dumas Sr., based/inspired by Dr. John Polidori's short story, "The Vampyre", which was based on a novel fragment that Lord Byron began and then abandoned during that famous summer in Europe when Byron, Polidori and the two Shelleys (Percy and Mary) amused themselves trying to devise "terror tales" while stuck indoors because of rainy weather. while Polidori's story was later published (but wrongfully attributed to Byron at first), only Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley achieved anything in the way of literary fame with her piece during that period, her famous novel, Frankenstein.

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Thanks, but I don't need any help getting into trouble since I seem to manage quite well on my own.

I'm still making my way through the online version of Jennifer Rahn's The Longevity Thesis a first novel from a Canadian author published by Dragon Moon Press.She has a fresh vibrant voice and her story is quite original-- a welcome change from 'typical' fantasy.

http://dragonmoonpress.blogspot.com/2007/09/darwins-paradox-longevity-thesis-and.html

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what are Dragon Moon's download rates?

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Thanks, but I don't need any help getting into trouble since I seem to manage quite well on my own.

greggC:

what are Dragon Moon's download rates?

 you can download their titles FREE!!

 

http://dragonmoonpress.blogspot.com/2007/09/darwins-paradox-longevity-thesis-and.html

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for my own indulgence, and as part of one of my projects, now reading Vikram and the Vampire, by Sir. Richard F. Burton (free download of the original 1890 text).

this is Burton's translated abridgement of a classic Sanskrit text that some feel is a progenitor of The Thousand Nights and a Night (which he also translated) and also may have served as an inspiration (through cultural intermingling) for Apuleius' The Golden Ass.

the book is a colloquy between Rajah Vikram and a baital (a demon that may be considered a type of vampire, as it possesses and animates corpses), during which the baital relates a series of stories (which it claims are "true") concerning the foible and follies of humankind. the stories are, for their time, of the risqué sort, just as the original 1001 Nights that Burton translated are a bit more earthy than the sanitized version most of us have encountered as children in our Arabian Nights storybooks.

lessee, what else?

finished re-reading Dracula. still reading Gottlieb's Emperor, Swords, Pentacles.

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Thanks, but I don't need any help getting into trouble since I seem to manage quite well on my own.

got to admit, my reading habit has really slowed down considerably this past couple of years since moving east to be with my sweet anne.

'course, in other ways, it has expanded. more on-line stuff that i've found as part of my projects research.

currently on the active list is Wolf Justice by Doreanna Durgin (think that's how the name goes; working by memory here at the moment), a fantasy paperback that came out in 1998. i picked it up back then and it has since sat in the "to be read" pile until now.

so far, pretty decent read.

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Thanks, but I don't need any help getting into trouble since I seem to manage quite well on my own.

My reading has been severely curtailed as of late for obvious reasons...especially since baby is still sleeping in our room, so I think I'm on the second book in only two months...when I used to at least read one a week! Even a Star Trek novel, with all the white space, I'm having difficulty finishing, lol. When baby sleeps, so does mommy!

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Vampire Spot since her accident

I used up a gift card and purchased American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand, the first two books in James Ellroy's "Underworld U.S.A." trilogy. The series is a fictional history tale of the U.S.A. ,  1958 - Watergate. The fist book covers 1958 - JFK's assassination, the second from that point to 1968, the third (still being written) will pick up from that point and run up to Watergate.

Seeing as the first two books total over 1,200 pages, they should keep me busy until Spring/Summer at my current slow rate of reading. I just finished The Spike earlier today, that book took me two months to read.

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"... The night was filled with magic as they bid the sea goodbye. They swam into the heavens-they stayed up in the sky and all the island people when they wish upon a star, see the Dolphin and the Jolly Mon, who tell them where they are..." - Jimmy Buffett

the "alt history" genre can be most entertaining though i think it is also one of the most challenging (along the lines of the "historicals" genre) for an author, especially if the readers/fans paid attention during their high school (and maybe post-secondary) history courses and also kept up on current global and national events.

nothing is worse than an "alt history" story where the author obviously fudged the facts to make the plot work, either through simple lazy research or obvious contempt for the intelligence of the reader. so far, i've been lucky in not coming across that kind of stuff though i am sure that it is out there.

my own current reading at moment is The Werewolf of Paris, Guy Endore's 1933 classic, which became the basis for Curse of the Werewolf from the Hammer Films outfit, and was Endore's attempt to do for werewolves what Bram Stoker's Dracula did for vampires.

after that, on the "werewolf/vampire lit" list is a couple paranormal "romances" as the titles are listed: A Taste of Crimson by Marjorie M. Liu and Killing Moon by Rebecca York.

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Thanks, but I don't need any help getting into trouble since I seem to manage quite well on my own.

I'm really enjoying it (American Tabloid), so far. Funny thing is, whenever the dialogue is from JFK or Bobby Kennedy, I read it hearing their east coast accent in my head. Whenever Hoffa is speaking, I hear Jack Nicholson, LOL. Is it wrong to hear voices while reading?

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"... The night was filled with magic as they bid the sea goodbye. They swam into the heavens-they stayed up in the sky and all the island people when they wish upon a star, see the Dolphin and the Jolly Mon, who tell them where they are..." - Jimmy Buffett

finished Endore's The Werewolf of Paris and have begun Killing Moon now. after first few chapters, cannot say i would recommend this as even an average example of "werewolf lit" since the author has pretty much intro'd both major characters, the villain and a secondary antagonist and established what the danger is/will be. now it looks like about 200 or so pages to see how she drags these people together and delivers a plot resolution that was emailed in advance weeks ago.

hope the writing picks up.

also finished Emperor, Swords, Pentacles by Phyllis Gotlieb, Canada's queen of science fiction and also matriarch. good, decent read. now beginning Sing the Four Quarters, a Tanya Huff fantasy novel.

parrothead: given all the archival newsreel footage and various actor impressions of the Kennedy brothers, i would be surprised if you did NOT hear their Hahvahd accents while reading. as for Nicholson voicing Hoffa, well, jack might be a little upset at getting co-opted for work without even a hint of a contract...

as for hearing voices while you read...as long as you avoid any long, detailed personal discussions with them, you should be just fine until the guys in the white coats arrive with their net guns.

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Thanks, but I don't need any help getting into trouble since I seem to manage quite well on my own.