I love me some great books!

Yeah to good friends who look out for you!

Props to my girl Mac! She totally hooked me up with some awesome autographed books. A very good author, Charlaine Harris came to the Bookstore to sign some books (what was she supposed to sign? Shoes? Stilettos, size 9, black? Ooh, I have an awesome pair of them!) She's the author of the Southern Vampire Mystery series, aka the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries. She has three(?) other series that I haven't read yet, though I'm going to do the Grave series next. Mac had Charlaine sign the last 3 SS and the first 2 Grave books for me. Shiny! She's up there for some of my favorite authors. I used to sell her in the Paranormal Starter Kit along with LKH (before she insulted the intelligence of her readers), Kim Harrison ( love the pixies!), Kelley Armstrong (the best werewolf coming to terms story ever!!!!), Jim Butcher (how we loves the anti-hero) , Rachel Caine (fucking love this series, such an awesome idea, damn you for thinking of it first, ughhhhhh), MJD (asshat, hee),and Simon R Green (such a cool power!). There are tons of others though.

It's scary how many books I have. Having just moved, believe you me, I know. I'm estimating around 1500. Mostly MM thankfully. Mac came over to visit the new pad & I put her to work helping me unpack them. I'm an evil wench, but she took it in stride. It's scary because my books aren't just organized by genre, no, but by subgenre, mostly based on the Bookstore's guidelines, with some tweaking of course. I will always be a tweaker. That just sounded dirty & wrong. Ok, then. And the books are alphabetized. That's what you get when 2 booksellers get to organizing a library/den. How fucking cool is that! I have a library! Woohoo!

I'm in the process of reading 4 (?) books. I never know exactly, since I tend to put down a book if it's slow and something good comes out. Let's see: there's The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. The premise is really interesting, a nice twist on the paranormal. I'm enjoying the Communist era background. It seems refreshing compared to the uberhip locales of many paranormals. Exotic without being farfetched, since clearly this is a part of contemporary history. It's intriguing to see the mindset of the author, it's very telling of the era. We all learned about the communist era (well I hope you did), hell I even got to experience it for a bit, but as an adult, I'm appreciating the sociological aspects of the time. Or maybe I'm reading a little too deep into it. Anyway, it the 1st of a trilogy, so we'll see how sucked into it I'll get.

I'm also reading Ghosts in the Snow by Tamara Siler Jones. It always annoyed me that we had to shelve this in the fantasy section. Ok, so it's set in a traditional fantasy setting, but to me it seems it could be a historical mystery. There's forensics, (reminiscent of Caleb Carr's the Alienist, an excellent, intelligent psychological thriller) that relate to an accurate portrayal of the time, and it's a true whodunnit mystery, with a healthy helping of a paranormal twist. Now, Abby Cooper, P.I by Victoria Laurie (another fantastic series), is considered a cozy mystery, even though the main character is a psychic. Shouldn't it be categorized with scifi? Oh, and before you go into a "there's a big difference between fantasy & scifi and its actually science fiction blah blah yakkitty smakkitty", you're preaching to the unholy choir! However, I've never been allowed to split the categories up in either of the bookstores I've worked in. So, I did it at home. Ha. Regardless, the category sums it up: scifi (definition) : category of entertainment that accounts for anything not natural to the natural world and which most people are afraid to try to get into because it uses big words like terraforming, and android and thingiemabob. Just try it people, there's something in that section you will like! Just go and look for it! Alrighty, finding my center and yes, now back on track. The mystery & setting are well thought out so far and this is definitely the book I'm focusing on now.

I started Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry a while back and haven't gone back to it yet. It started when I saw Comanche Moon on TV, ooohhhh, Karl Urban & Steve Zahn. Made me remember that I like Westerns! Huge fan of the Young Riders & the Magnificent Seven (Eric Close was one of my first husbands and who doesn't love Michael Biehn? (Kyle I heart thee!) )
And it won a Pulitzer so I thought I'd give the first in the series a shot. Hee. I like puns. Well, I think I'd rather see a Western than read one, which is quite mind boggling. But, I will not give up without a fight. Speaking of westerns, I can't wait to watch 3:10 to Yuma with another one of my husbands, Christian Bale. See, now here I'm excited!

Finally, or at least the last one I can remember, I'm "reading" The Law of Attraction by Jerry and Esther Hicks. I am trying to get past the hokey aspects of the book and actually focus on the guiding philosophy of the text. For someone who enjoys preternatural topics like I do, it's disconcerting to find out that I'm a bit of a skeptic. Ok, more than just a bit, but I love to imagine these farfetched ideals but have a lot of trouble believing in them. I'm very realistic, pragmatic if you will, about faith and supernatural abilities. Ok, so it's like this:

1. I believe we are not alone
2. I believe that there are forces in the universe that science has not been able verify yet, due to lack of sophisticated technology
3. I believe there is the possibility of supernatural beings to be with us, I just do not believe that it is probable

I'm trying to change my attitude and focus on the positive so that more positive will come to me. I'm still working on the believing aspect of it. I will report on how things come about.

I'll end on that note tonight.

Have a good one!