ARC, Books

Book 348: In Youth Is Pleasure & I Left My Grandfather’s House – Denton Welch

The publisher, Open Road Integrated Media, reached out to me with this book as I’d previously read Jane Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies, and she is even mentioned in this work.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hesitant at first as Bowles’ work was very well written but I just didn’t like the characters. Thankfully, Welch’s characters were a bit more accessible for me. This is two shorter stories so I’ve separated my response into two parts. The publisher provided a copy of this book and I received no compensation for my honest opinion.

The one over-arching them the two pieces have in common is the idea of sexuality, specifically homosexuality, before it was commonly talked about and/or accepted. I tried (aka did a brief google search) to find out about Welch’s sexuality, but again this was a long time ago before our out and proud mantras of today. Welch died young, he was only 33, and there is only speculation outside of his written works which in today’s society seem pretty explicit. Regardless, I enjoyed both of these snippets of the past for completely different reasons.

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Book 330: Waiting for the Flood – Alexis Hall

If I didn’t know better I’d say one of my good friends from high school (cough Alexandra cough) was writing under a pseudonym, “Alexis Hall” – HA! But that aside, I requested a copy of this novella from the publisher as the synopsis (Publisher’s website) caught my attention. I received a copy from the publisher and below is my honest response.

This is the story of Edwin and how he’s finally ready to get over his 10 year relationship which ended, not on bad terms, but on terms that he wasn’t able to comprehend. Having never been in a 10 year relationship (holy shit that’s 1/3 of my life – and Edwin’s!) I can’t really relate, but I can relate to coming out of a relationship not knowing what happened because it ended in a way that didn’t make sense and we apparently both thought and had different feelings on where things were and were going.

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Books

Book 324: The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (Twilight Saga #3.5) – Stephenie Meyer

This novella takes place at the same time as the events in Eclipse take place. It gives a very small glimpse into Victoria and her vendetta over the last two novels. But what’s important to note is that it is by far the best written of all Meyer’s works that I’ve read. I’m sure it helped that it was a novella and she had a finite story to tell. It also probably didn’t hurt that Bella didn’t even appear in the novel until the last five pages of the novella 😀

Although we don’t learn much about Bree Tanner, we figure out pretty quickly that she is smart and a survivor. She doesn’t remember much about her human life and has only been a vampire for three months. As she develops within a crazy vampire coven, Bree begins to question her indoctrination through her time spent with Diego, another newborn vampire. I don’t know if we will get this same path to discovery and awed enthusiasm as there was in this novella. The discovery that vampires could spend time outside anytime and wouldn’t die, and the craziness of their blood lust through a non-vegetarian vampire was fascinating.

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30x30, Personal Project

30 x 30: #18 – Participate in NaNoWriMo

2014 12-01 NaNoWriMo TotalI knew when I made this list that there was no way I would be able to do 50,000 words in a month and boy was I right. However, that’s why I said PARTICIPATE in NaNoWriMo instead of complete! (I’m wicked smaht, right?)

It wasn’t for lack of time after I made it through the 15th, so much as lack of desire to sit in front of a computer and write and even though I came in just under 20,000 words I’m still really proud I got that much done. I was shocked at how easy it was to write the story I chose and am excited to finish it. Looking at the graph, you can see I wrote the what I did in three quick spurts with the final one being where I wrote nearly 12,000 words in one go.

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ARC, Books

Book 309: Outdated – Michael War

Talk about a pertinent novel. Outdated is a hilarious commentary on internet dating and what it’s like when you’ve been out of the game for a long time. I received a copy of this from the publisher in return for my honest opinion.

After the two main characters, Greg and Tim, split up, unceremoniously, Greg finds out just how much has changed in the dating world. There is such an endearing scene where Greg calls a friend and points at the chat room that he used to meet guys through and says “they’re all gone!” If you’re not aware of location-based dating, you’re either happily coupled, a technophobe or living under a rock! There are so many of them out there that I’m not going to link to them and their proliferation was exponential with the increase of smart phones!

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