ARC, Books

Book 948: Patricia Wants to Cuddle – Samantha Allen

What a wonderfully weird novel. When this landed in my inbox from the publisher I first thought WTF is that because the cover art screams pulp fiction and as much as I find those hilarious I’m not usually drawn to them. However, I’d decided I wanted to expand my LGBT novel repertoire, and knowing this featured lesbian/bisexual female protagonists I said sure why not.*

Billed as a satire of The Bachelor, Patricia Wants to Cuddle takes place in the final two weeks of The Catch‘s season with four female finalists and the catch going to the San Juan islands off the coast of Washington state. While it is that, it’s also a final girl thriller novel with murder and mystery and urban legends aplenty to keep the reader engaged.

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ARC, Books

Book 946: Just by Looking at Him – Ryan O’Connell

If I’m 100% honest I first was drawn to this book because of the cover art, a cropped version of Henry Scott Tuke’s The Critics (Wikiart link). Tuke does water like no one else and they pumped up the blues and greens on the cover.

Then when you add the title of the painting to what the main character does for a living: mind blown. So THEN I realized this was the same Ryan O’Connell who created, wrote, and starred in Special on Netflix, and of course, I requested a copy.*

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ARC, Books

Book 724: Boyfriend Material (London Calling #1) – Alexis Hall

If this doesn’t overtake A.C. Rosen’s Camp as the book of the summer, I’m going to be so mad (but not really surprised). I honestly can’t even remember where I came across this, but when I did I immediately requested a copy from the publisher.* And boy, am I glad I did—it was so good.

I first read Hall’s work five years ago with Waiting for the Flood and could see the potential, but never followed up on my hunch only to be blindsided by this one! I could’ve been reading his work this whole time and growing with him. Needless to say, I will be going through his back catalog in the near future.

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Updates

May Recap 2018

Trees by the oceanAnd with the humidity and mugginess June is here. May went by so fast that we were sitting on the porch last night and I turned to Tim and asked if he ever felt time was moving too fast. He just sort of looked at me like, well duh.

The good part of May was that I think the rainy days and flooding of April were mostly gone and we had beautiful days like the one in the photo to the right! I’ve been able to walk in the mornings (5:30am-ish) because the sun is rising so early and it’s warm.

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Books

Book 500: Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings – Jane Austen

You read that right, Book 500.

I purposefully held off reading this edition for over a year because I knew I wanted something special for my 500th book on The Oddness of Moving Things. Tim got me the whole boxed collection of Austen’s works in December of 2015. I didn’t think it would take quite this long to get to, but with my whirlwind year at my previous job I’m not really surprised at this point. I’m reading again and I’m glad I saved this one for my 500th book!

I know others in the book blogosphere have reviewed this collection of Austen’s juvenilia and they’ve probably done it better. I’m a bit blinded by Austen because I’m such a fan boy (read my 2013 response to Pride and Prejudice or just check out the page dedicated to Austen if you don’t believe me—or if you haven’t been around a while). I’m going to talk a bit about this work and the collection and then I’m going to have a brief bitch session about the physical book itself so fair warning.

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