time of your life

( I'll unleash romantic surprises every week, such as: an impromptu picnic, roses, or a trip to Paris--but not actually any of those things because now they're not surprises. )

Anyone else here read it?

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....