time of your life

This past week had several important and noteworthy book-related events for me, namely 1) finishing Mockingjay at last, and then 2) finally seeing some exciting news about the plots and release dates of the final book in the Georgina Kincaid series (one of my all-time faves) AND about the forthcoming VA spinoff series (which I've been dying to know about since finishing The Last Sacrifice last December)!

First, let's talk about the Richelle Mead-related stuff, beginning with the VA spinoff news...(which I took the liberty of finally getting myself an Adrian/Rose icon for, since I now have the space and a D/R icon just isn't appropriate for this post! ;)):

( Spoilers for new series and VA #6: The Last Sacrifice )

And then, after squeeing about having that summer blockbuster book to look forward to, I suddenly notice that the final Georgina Kincaid novel, apparently called Succubus Revealed, is coming out exactly one week later on August 30!!! (Or who knows, maybe it will come out earlier than that, with this series they often do show up early in bookstores). \o/ <333 I can't even...it's going to sure be a summer (or rather, month?) of Richelle Mead! :p I kind of wish that these two big summer releases were spaced out a little further apart in the summer, but on the other hand I'm going to have more free time in August than earlier to read them, so maybe it's just as well...I'll have to read the first one pretty fast to make sure I'm done in time for the GK novel! ;)

The book description for the GK book is also now on the website and quite interesting...

( Cover and Description for GK#6, spoilers for #5 )

Also I must as always take a moment to pimp both of these series, but especially the Georgina Kincaid series, starting with Succubus Blues, (since fewer people I know read it, lol), to anyone who loves supernatural/urban paranormal stuff...they are SO entertaining and funny/witty (the best of Secret Diary of a Call Girl or Buffy, what have you in terms of biting wit), but also have a fascinating supernatural verse and memorable cast of characters (which for instance an OCD Martha Stewart-wannabe vampire and an Archdemon boss who is a secret John Cusack fan and drinking buddies with the area's Archangel that he used to know before he fell from grace and became a demon and all--such a cute bromance, lol), and some really compelling drama and well-written romance all at the same time. I don't know if I've ever enjoyed a book series as much as I've enjoyed reading many of the books in this one.

And then there's Mockingjay...O_o  Big Spoilers Ahoy!

( You love me. Real or not real? )

I remember reading a F!S a while back (when I still read them, lol) that claimed THG was just like Animorphs--which is a ridiculous claim, but I admit that with this comparison on the mind as I finished this book, I did see several parallels between both series in terms of events, themes, moral quandaries, gritty realism, etc--all of which just show why both series are memorable and a cut above the average YA series:

( Brief meta about The Hunger Games and Animorphs, MAJOR spoilers for Mockingjay and The Beginning (#54)!  )

Speaking of The Hunger Games, while I was going to reserve judgment on the movie even with the questionable actors cast in the male roles (I only know JH from playing the evil douchey Steve in the Cirque du Freak movie, hard to imagine Peeta from that role, lol), the new spoilers about the script and what has been changed are making me begin to actually think this movie will be terrible, the script sounds in parts like a badly written fanfic...:/  Anyone else see them?

And lol, since beginning this post I now see that the next Sookie Stackhouse novel is also coming out soon at the beginning of May and has a description out?  O_o  Just book news galore this week...

So I keep meaning to post here about True Blood season 3, and I might as well catch up and do so now! This year marks the first year where I am able to watch every episode live on TV, which is awesome.

While I was pretty lukewarm about the season premiere, things have definitely picked up since then...Here are my thoughts about each of the first three epps.

TB 3x01

( Conscience off, dick on! )

TB 3x02

( I keep expecting Bill to come through the door and say "SOOKEH!" )

TB 3x03

( It's not me it's you?! If I had a nickel for every time...I'd have 15 cents. )

In other news, my mom picked up Wolf Hall from the library on a 21 day loan, and I promptly stole it from her and began to read it (since I keep hearing such great things about it!). Hopefully I'll find time to read it before it's due, it's such a thick book...

Well summer officially ended last Tuesday, and so I suppose it's time to make my end-of-summer-reading post. Overall I read a decent amount, and got most of the main books on my personal summer reading list read, with the exception of Jacqueline Carey's Naamah's Kiss, of which I still have about 75 pages to go, unfortunately.....I intended this to be the summer of Jacqueline Carey and Richelle Mead, my two favorite authors at the moment, because I was reading more than one book by each author this summer, but my reading list got unexpectedly hijacked by Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire or Sookie Stackhouse series, all 9 of which I also ended up reading this summer, while I also caught up with season 1 of TB and watched all of season 2--so one could say that this past summer was the "Summer of Sookie," just as I've dubbed some past summers as "The Summer of Buffy" (when I watched Buffy seasons 1-5 for the first time) or "The Summer of Harry Potter" (when both the 7th book and the 5th movie came out within a few weeks of each other and I got into FictionAlleyPark)! ;) Or, given the vampiric nature of the majority of the books I read by Richelle Mead, my viewing of the British series "Being Human" for the first time, and all the NM trailers and news, perhaps it could just be summed up as "The Summer of Vampires", period. :p

( My Summer Reading List 2009 )

I'm not sure when I'll be able to finish that book or City of Bones, since I'm so busy now....but yeah, I decided to check out The Mortal Instruments series as well, checking out the first book from the library, since I have heard so much about it on BF and around fandom....I'm halfway through the first book and it's gotten better, and is certainly intriguing, although I'm not fond of the overly-descriptive and flowery writing style, and think that it is definitely "inspired" by Harry Potter (which of course we all *know* Clare has read!). I still can't get over the fact that an infamous fanfic author and BNF like her is now actually writing published original fiction...

But back to Vampire Academy: It took me a little while to get into the first book, but once I did I was hooked, and it was quite an exciting read....I love that I was actually shocked by *two* plot twists at the end, it's nice to have unpredictability like that in a novel these days, especially a YA one! And the rest of the series has gotten progressively better with each book, with the latest two books, SK and BP being particularly fantastic and epic. I actually think I liked the fourth VA book better than the fourth GK book in fact, which is pretty significant since overall I have so far enjoyed and liked the GK series better than the VA books, even though the VA series is great as well! I would highly recommend it, don't judge it by its cheesy-sounding name, it's very a very smart and interesting series, with some memorable characters, just like GK. My favorites are Adrian, Christian, and Dimitri (in that order); I did not like Rose at first, but she has now grown on me....

( Spoilery Review of Blood Promise )

Oh and I was also lucky enough to actually get to see Richelle Mead in person at a signing a few weeks ago on September 9!!! It was wonderful to be able to meet her in person (especially after having met my other fave author, Carey, a couple of years ago), and to get books signed by her (I got GK 1 and 3 and VA, SK and BP signed, with BP personalized). I may get around to loading pictures and more someday....

So a little while back I asked an online friend, litzie, who has also read the Georgina Kincaid series if she could make me a banner of the characters Carter and Jerome, my favorite sardonic and snarky Higher Immortal Duo (and one of my favorite literary guy friendships), using Josh Holloway as Carter (since he was the closest actor I could think of to the book descriptions, with his long blond hair, somewhat scruffy look, and signature smirk) and of course John Cusack as Jerome, using the pictures seen below, and with the caption "Angels and Demons."  She came up with this incredible banner, which I just wanted to share here! :D

( Angels and demons come from the same stock )


In related news when I was looking for the second book in the series to look up a quote I finally found my copy of Succubus Blues!  xD  This is very exciting for me, since I have been missing it for some time (I thought I had lent it out to a friend and hadn't gotten it back, I looked everywhere!), and obviously have been wanting to re-read it from time to time.  Turnes out it was under a stack of books--I think I had been trying to flatten it out....:p  Anyway, I'm happy to have that back, I was thinking of re-buying it soon if it didn't turn up!