CHOP IT UP: Slay by Laurell K Hamilton

 

First November 2023 New Releases are in...

November is already feeling kind of spicy and exciting. Don't quite know where to start. But these are at least four books on my November 2023 Reading Menu! FYI. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros made a surprise TBR visit, after having been recommended/suggested to me multiple times by different people since its release back in May. For once--which rarely EVER happens--I decided to bite the bullet and see what all the hype is about. Either way, let's go NOVEMBER Reading!

Edit: I'm about to go finish playing Alan Wake II while I'm between books!

November 2023 TBR Menu

Naturally, as all readers understand, this is fairly tentative. The idea is to read all the new releases I'm looking forward to, catch up on a series I gorged on back in July, and support an independent author. With that said, I just thought the whole dang thing was cute. You know, putting said TBR (tentatively) onto a makeshift wedding menu. How classy we've gotten lately.

FYI. The ultra-popular Rebecca Yarros book is on there because I kept hearing good things about it. While I'm not into dragons, I kind of decided I'd give it a try. See what all the fuss is about. Which is SO not like me. Anyway, bon appetit!

March Reading Wrap, Current & My Neighbor's Buzzsaw

 

What I Read in July (Filmed July 2022 or so...)

 

Nostalgic Urban Fantasy Reading (Filmed in August 2022)

 

An Anita Blake Limited Edition Lot Find I REFUSED to Leave Behind

Okay. Okay. Okay. So, Anita Blake and I have beefed back and forth for years. I stopped reading the series for a few years, jumped back on, stopped again, and recently decided to jump back on to catch up on Blake's (and Hamilton's) latest offering with 2020's Sucker Punch and 2021's Rafael. I had some deep, ripping issues with 2018's Serpentine; I welcome you to find the video in which I shared my concerns.

Nevertheless, my continuing to read Hamilton on and off is driven chiefly by the state of nostalgia her work generates. Summer of 2007. Just discovering how the urban fantasy/action woman stories stretched outside Buffy meant everything during that time. Not to mention how incredible the first nine Anita Blake books were (though I've gradually become accustomed to the tone change after book nine).

(2) Last Year's Disappointing Reads | Serpentine by Laurell K Hamilton

I.  Have.  Got.  To.  End.  Reading.  This.  Series.

Serpentine (Anita Blake #26) by Laurell K. Hamilton

"A remote Florida island is the perfect wedding destination for the upcoming nuptials of Anita’s fellow U.S. Marshal and best friend, Edward. For Anita, the vacation is a welcome break, as it’s the first trip she gets to take with just wereleopards Micah and Nathaniel. But it’s not all fun and games and bachelor parties…  

In this tropical paradise, Micah discovers a horrific new form of lycanthropy, one that has afflicted a single family for generations. Believed to be the result of an ancient Greek curse, it turns human bodies into a mass of snakes.  

When long-simmering resentment leads to a big blowp within the wedding party, the last thing Anita needs is more drama. But it finds her anyway when women start disappearing from the hotel, and worse, her own friends and lovers are considered the prime suspects. There’s a strange power afoot that Anita has never confronted before, a force that’s rendering those around her helpless. Unable to face it on her own, Anita is willing to accept help from even the deadliest places. Help that she will most certainly regret—if she survives at all, that is…"

SAVE US, BUFFY!  SAVE USSSSSSSSSS!

Book Buying Bargaining ~ With No Self-Control

Got rid of a lot, and brought plenty back in.  Oh course, through store credits and bargain-area shopping.  Kind of a strange mix–but not really.  The Susan Wittig Albert books were simple enough to pick up.  Toni Braxton memoir I found tucked in a low shelf in a bookstore bargain section for $5.  I went ahead and grabbed Laurell K Hamilton's A Shiver of Light, because I'm compulsive when it comes to completing series.  Even those I've grown to dislike.  And, because I want more fantasy in my life, I decided to go back to my initiation into fantasy via a T. A Barron novel.

Apprentice in Death came out on September 6th.  I moved heavy and earth to get to it.  (Currently reading it.  This is only the dust-jacket.)  Salvage the Bones and Speaking from Among the Bones I got for $2.50 apiece.  Both easily crossed off that Amazon wishlist.

Now.  Will this book craving stop?

Hell, no.

Creatures of the Night BOOK TAG (Video)

CREATURES OF THE NIGHT BOOK TAG
(All links are Amazon affiliate)

1. Vampire - Buffy, The Vampire Slayer: Child of the Hunt

2. Werewolf - Bad Blood by L. A. Banks3. Zombie - Devil's Wake by Tananarive Due & Steven Barnes4. Ghost - Remember Me by Christopher Pike5. Witch/Warlock/Spellcaster - Diana Tregarde Investigations by Mercedes Lackey6. Fairy/Fae - Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton7. Demon - The Bitten by L. A. Banks8. Angel - Surrender the Dark by L. A. Banks9. Alien - Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler10. Superpowered human - Lies & Omens by Lyn Benedict11. Robots - Christina Aguilera: A Star is Born by Pier Dominguez

#Friday Read | Surviving Another Go at Anita Blake

Do not judge, but this is totally happening...

According to Goodreads:

Anita Blake has the highest kill count of any vampire executioner in the country. She’s a U.S. Marshal who can raise zombies with the best of them. But ever since she and master vampire Jean-Claude went public with their engagement, all she is to anyone and everyone is Jean-Claude’s fiancée.

It’s wreaking havoc with her reputation as a hard ass—to some extent. Luckily, in professional circles, she’s still the go-to expert for zombie issues. And right now, the FBI is having one hell of a zombie issue.

Someone is producing zombie porn. Anita has seen her share of freaky undead fetishes, so this shouldn’t bother her. But the women being victimized aren’t just mindless, rotting corpses. Their souls are trapped behind their eyes, signaling voodoo of the blackest kind.

It’s the sort of case that can leave a mark on a person. And Anita’s own soul may not survive unscathed . . .

FRIDAY READ?  OR WEEKEND SURVIVAL?

I’ll see this series till the very end.  End of story.  Throughout all the sex and relationship vomiting and diarrhea combos this series produces (and fosters in me), I’m invested.  I don’t know what it is, but Anita Blake’s spell has yet to be broken by me.  It’s like nosy lurkers on your social media profile; I have to piece together her character from a distance, and understand how it has devolved over the series (while simultaneously bleaching my brain).  Well, that’s an awful perception, but a true one.  Nonetheless, it’s too complicated to make sense of, only that I’m a fan; severely troubled but loyal.  And possibly looking for more reasons to despise this series until I can finally get it out of my system.

Such a negative post, this is.  Wonder how steep my final thoughts of the book will also be.

And that’s the catch!  I gotta read it to know it.

So this is my Friday Read: Dead Ice by Laurell K. Hamilton.  I’m off today and tomorrow (this may be the one time I wish my job would call me to come in).  So I can stay up late with my energy drink and pulled pork sandwich (add the slaw and vinegar), and pray I don’t fall over dead from either the book or my survivalist binge eating.  Yes.  You read that right.  Survivalist.

This time I'm hoping I don't drop the book for eights months like I did the last entry in the series, Affliction.  That's right.  I started Affliction in June and didn't finish it until January.  Lesson, evidently, still not learned.

Pray for me, folks.  I'm going in...

What to Read Next Issues...

I finished Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes before noon today. Once finished, I spent an afternoon racing through Kroger with my aunt. We were buying groceries for my grandma, and had our asses out of that place in less than forty-five minutes.  I'm not a fan of grocery shopping.  Swerving carts, comparing off-brand from popular brands, calculating budgets; I rather do without all that fuss, though I know it's necessary if you want to eat.  

Okay, okay. I'm getting off track. This post is about books!

Anyway, after that was finished, I did something I haven't done in awhile: I visited the three used bookstores in my area. My immediate focus was to use a credit slip to buy Laurell K. Hamilton's new, ninth book in her Merry Gentry book, Shiver of Light. That's right. You read me correctly. Laurell K. Hamilton. Merry Gentry. I'm such a hack sometimes, feeding myself foolishly with both of this author's insufferable series. But see, it's hard for a completionist--such as myself--to walk away.  By the way, I didn't find it.  However, here's what's going on...

Bought 5/3/10 and never read

According to my receipt, I bought book eight in the Merry Gentry series, Divine Misdemeanors, from a used bookstore on 5/03/10. And I have yet to crack open the book! Seriously, it's been sitting on my shelf for that many years unread.  So now that the ninth book has recently released, after a five-year series hiatus, book eight is suddenly calling me. Seemingly... from the grave I should add. And so I hate this. I hate having to finish things! Especially concerning this series—this author! The truth is that without even reading it, I can review this book blindfolded without missing a beat.  How?  Because there's a 101% chance that there isn't a plot to construct a review with. I know this! I know this stuff for facts! Yet! I've held on to the book with the intention of one day plowing through it with a bottle of Vodka at my bedside to wash each wasted, printed word down. 

My fingers are itching to verbally bodyslam the book before I've read it. Can't you tell?

So that's part of my conundrum. As painful and insipid as it sounds. I know I should just do away with the whole idea and put the sonofabitch back on the shelf where it belongs. However, Shiver of Light is out there, and here I am with an incomplete series.  Grrrr!

It's especially hard when I have a stack of great books I just received from The BookOutlet. We're talking books by Nnedi Okorafor (an African-American female sci-fi writer the likes of Octavia Butler); P.D. James's first book in her Adam Dalgliesh mystery series; the biography of Madam Chiang Kai-Shek; and The Book of Night Women by Jamaican novelist, Marlon James. So I have books I can and want to read. They are definitely there calling out.

Back to the bookstore tour from today. I walked out with Julia Cameron's Walking in this World, the sequel to her highly inspirational book, The Artist's Way. I even snagged something off my Amazon Wishlist in Martha Grimes's crime fiction novel, Hotel Paradise. Then there's the third book in Barbara Neely's Blanche White mystery series. If you don't know what that series is about, it's about an African-American domestic worker who solves mysteries.  Which, of course, is right up my alley!

I have books to read. Better books. Greater books. And it's equally disturbing that I want to follow a Stephen King novel with a book about a faerie princess who whines about sex from a team of faire men with peas for brains.

Ah, the frustration.

I want to crack open a new book tonight, but I think I'll play some form of Resident Evil and figure this out in the morning.

EARLY MORNING UPDATE

On page 4 of Divine Misdemeanors comes this halting--yet familiarly expressed--form of thought:

"Detective Lucy Tate came to stand beside me.  She was wearing a pants suit complete with jacket and a white button-up shirt that strained a little across the front because Lucy, like me, had too much figure for most button-up shirts.  But I wasn't a police detective so I didn't have to pretend I was a man to try to fit in."

Yep!  Totally called it quits!  We're quickly back to focusing on body image and women in law enforcement again.  Something like a resident leitmotif in both Hamilton's Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series--among other tired conversations.  We'll put this book away until I have absolutely nothing else to read.

Pardon the rant!  But what do you do when you're trying to find out what you want to read next?  Top that by asking yourself what series do you loathe but find yourself unable to turn away with each new release?  Share your thoughts below.

Book/Manga Chat 1

Why of course Towel & Cornbread is a blog about books, manga, and the various methods I like to share concerning self-help.  So to tie those in, I’ve posted my recent book chat video.  Inside I discuss books by Gloria Naylor and Laurell K Hamilton (who I should do a blog post on because of my love-hate relationship for her Anita Blake series).  I touch a little on Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon English reissue of volume 12, as well as some bonus material from the depths of my general interest.

The Men of Brewster Place - Gloria Naylor
Linden Hills - Gloria Naylor
Mama Day - Gloria Naylor
Bailey’s Café - Gloria Naylor
Affliction - Laurell K. Hamilton
Sailor Moon 12 - Naoko Takeuchi
Time and Eternity - NIS America
Songversation - India.Arie