This week’s Booking Through Thursday is an interesting query.
If you’re anything like me, one of your favorite reasons to read is for the story. Not for the character development and interaction. Not because of the descriptive, emotive powers of the writer. Not because of deep, literary meaning hidden beneath layers of metaphor. (Even though those are all good things.) No … it’s because you want to know what happens next?
Or, um, is it just me?
For me, the characters are a key to the book, but if the book doesn’t leave me wondering what is going to happen next, I’m bound to set the book aside and just not bother with it again. Once in a while I’ll pick up a book that I wasn’t interested in the story for later on and try it again, but to be perfectly honest if the book’s story doesn’t grab me the second time, I’ll post it on PaperBackSwap or I’ll find some other way of passing the book along and be done with it. It really is mostly about the story line. If the story doesn’t keep my attention, if I don’t care what happens next, if I’m not excitedly going forward (in a mystery book) to see if I’m right about who did it, then I don’t bother with it.
The other day I had the pleasure of finishing “Turbulent Sea” by Christine Feehan. It’s one of her Drake Sisters novels. I own three of them - “Oceans Afire”, “Dangerous Tides”, and “Turbulent Sea.” I’ve read 2 of them. I read “Oceans Afire” a couple years ago. I bought “Dangerous Tides” and promptly lost it among all the books I own.
I purchased “Turbulent Sea” when I needed to have a book to read with me. I wasn’t disappointed in it at all. Then again, I’ve never been disappointed in any of Christine Feehan’s books. Seriously, the woman writes the most amazing paranormal romance novels I’ve ever read. Well, her and Maggie Shayne. It’s a tie between those two for the best. 
Now Turbulent Sea is about sister #6, Joley. Joley’s gift is spell-singing. Not surprisingly, since she’s susceptible to sound and she sees music, she’s a rock singer and a very popular one. But she’s been marked by a Russian bodyguard named Ilya Prakenskii and he’s not about to let her get away from him! He shows some remarkable talents of his own as well!
This book was action packed, and a real page turner! It was hard for me to put it down when I had to. It made me realize that I need to obtain the rest of the series and read it from beginning to end. It’s an awesome series and I intend to get the rest and read them!
Tags: Christine Feehan, Drake Sisters
I just wanted to let you all know about something I found that allows you to make a little money off your blog. Whether you want to use the money to offset your hosting costs, or to save for a cool vacation - or more books -
Snapbomb is the place to be! I found Snapbomb because I’d been seeing quite a bit of buzz about them. Several of the blogs I read on a regular basis had posted about them and one even posted about how they paid!
Well, I know they pay because I used them on another of my blogs and let me tell you, they definitely paid! Now the way they work it is, you submit your blogs and they give you a range - for example one of my blogs that I entered is ranged from $3.17-$12.68. That’s the minimum and maximum your blog can be paid for a post. It’s an interesting new service and one that is promising in the
blog marketing industry. I know a lot of people don’t like blog advertising, but to be honest, it’s never bothered me. I figure, why not make a little money off my blogs? LOL
If you’re curious you can visit Snapbomb and check them out. You won’t be sorry.
This is a sponsored post.
Another question I can answer for Booking Through Thursday and if I hurry, one I can answer on time as well. LOL
Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from the library shelves NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library. (There’s no way my parents could otherwise have kept up with my book habit when I was 10.) So … What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any funny/odd memories of the library?
Actually I didn’t start off with trips to the library. My mom was a voracious reader, but the library didn’t have the books she preferred. (Romance) Also, our library was quite a ways away from us. My earliest memory of the public library was watching Uncle Remus and De Tar Baby/Briar Rabbit there. Most of my “library” experience was the school library.
The school librarians were supposed to stop me from getting books from the “big kids” section - finally someone pointed out to them that I was reading and comprehending at college level and that it was literally pointless to bother with it. LOL
Other than that, I didn’t go to the library to be honest. My mom picked up my favorite books at a used bookstore she found.
Yes, I’m aware that this is a week late. Do I care? Not really. LOL Here’s the August 14, 2008 question for Booking Through Thursday.
You, um, may have noticed that the Olympics are going on right now, so that’s the genesis of this week’s question, in two parts:
First:
* Do you or have you ever read books about the Olympics? About sports in general?
* Fictional ones? Or non-fiction? Or both?
And, Second:
* Do you consider yourself a sports fan?
* Because, of course, if you’re a rabid fan and read about sports constantly, there’s a logic there; if you hate sports and never read anything sports-related, that, too … but you don’t have to love sports to enjoy a good sports story.
* (Or a good sports movie, for that matter. Feel free to expand this into a discussion about “Friday Night Lights” or “The Natural” or whatever…)
First question - I have never read any books on the Olympics, factual or fictional. Not my style thanks. 
Second question - I do consider myself a sports fan. I love NASCAR, WWE, and to a lesser degree - football. I’m not too knowledgeable about football, but I can handle it. NASCAR is my absolute favorite though. I do read books about NASCAR - romance novels at least.
I found this on Julie’s blog and couldn’t resist.
The average adult has read only 6 of top 100 books.
Look at the list and:
1. Bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you LOVE.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (one collection)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
I’m not sure how many I’ve read, but I know none of the books I loved were on here. LOL
Well, this Booking Through Thursday answer is a bit late, but oh well.
Do you buy books while on vacation/holiday?
Do you have favorite bookstores that you only get to visit while away on a trip?
What/Where are they?
Unless I see a book I haven’t been able to find at home and haven’t yet ordered from Amazon or BN.com, I don’t usually buy books on vacation. I *might* buy a book on vacation if I finish the one I brought with me, but that’s a rare occasion. Then again, so is my taking a vacation. LOL
There is a bookstore, a used bookstore, that I can only visit if I’m in California called Book Chek. In fact, I’m not even sure if it’s still there. I just found it on Yahoo! Yellow Pages! I remember my mom used to take me there when I was little. She read darn near every Harlequin romance novel they had there, and she bought almost every single Nancy Drew book I owned there. In fact, one of the employees there attempted to teach me to knit. Another favorite of mine was a bookstore that I honestly can’t remember the name of right now, but it was in Copperas Cove, TX and I used to go there fairly often.
We’d had a couple of used bookstores here but they’re long gone now. They never seem to last long here. I’m not sure if it’s because they never advertise their existence or what, but they never seem to last very long. 
All I can say is Wow! This movie definitely lived up to the legacy left by the first National Treasure movie. Considering I’d never known there was a second movie until I saw an ad for it at Wal-Mart, I was surprised at it’s existence to say the least.
This movie was no less exciting or action packed than the first one, and frankly I was pleased to see that Ben Gates does have a mother. I don’t recall her even being mentioned in the first movie, so it was a pleasant surprise to see her in the movie.
One note though - if you’ve seen the movie, do you think that “page 47″ might just mean a 3rd movie? My friends and I do.
Night Game (Ghostwalkers, Book #3)
Easy Come, Easy Go: A Bomber Hanson Mystery (Bomber Hanson Mystery Series, 7)
Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner
Living Wicca: A Further Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (Llewellyn’s Practical Magick Series)
The Tunnels (Kelly Jones Novels)
BookSwim
