Re-Reading, Book Series, and Reviews to Come

There are some books and series that I go back to and re-read over and over — because I love them, because new releases in the series come out and I want to refresh my memory of the overarching storyline and world, and sometimes just because it’s been a really long time since I’ve read them. Re-reading not only pleases my mind, heart and soul by allowing me to revisit old friends, but when you’re as voracious a reader as I am, re-reading is also a money-saver too.

I’ve mentioned many times here on the blog, and on social media, that when new releases come out in a series I will most often re-read the whole series in the days before to put my mind back into the story. Some of the series I read have become so long though I have had to resort to reading only the previous 4-6 books before a new release. With the upcoming new release in Christine Feehan’s Dark series on September 1^st (Dark Song, book 34), I decided it was well past time to revisit the earliest stories in the series and so I’ve begun a series re-read. To be perfectly frank, the Dark series is one of my all-time favourite vampire series but because of the length of the series it has been more than 10 years since I sat down and began again at the beginning.

 

Since it’s been so long since I’ve read some of the books – I’m pretty sure I haven’t read any of the first 20ish books in nearly 10 years – it’s almost like reading them for the first time again. Years ago, more than ten years ago in fact, I wrote a series of reviews for (approximately) the first dozen or so books in the series, with a plan for the rest of the books which had been published at that time. Not all of those reviews even managed to make it on to the blog. So… I’m going to attempt to do it all again! 

 

The coming Feehan’s Dark Carpathians review series will start at the beginning of the series, with Dark Prince, and will move through the entire series of books. It’s going to take time – after all with the September 1, 2020 release there are 34 books to read and write about – but while every single book may not get it’s own individual post, all 34 books will be reviewed and discussed. Those early books I’ve previously reviewed will get new reviews, though I may quote old ones or simply include a link back to them. (I just re-read the Dark Prince review that made it to the blog and scanned the others too… some of them could use some major editing, while changes to the site over 10 years and dead links have made them all sort of painful to look at.) 

I invite everyone to read along with me. Start with Dark Prince and go from there. Check out the reviews when they come along – they will all be tagged with “Feehan’s Dark Carpathians” on the blog so you can search and find them easily. On social media I’ll be using the hashtag #FeehansDarkCarpathians so that posts and discussions will be searchable. 

 

And on Facebook you can join my (brand-new) reading and book discussions group: LD Ferris’s Book Club. I’m launching it to coincide with Feehan’s Dark Carpathians for anyone who wants to read-a-long and discuss the books (and reviews) as we go. After that we’ll try to have a monthly ‘book club book’ to read and discuss, as well as offering a place where anyone can post book recommendations and reviews. At least that’s the plan for now.

 

So at this point, I guess it’s time for me to focus on reading and reviewing. I have already finished reading book 1, so the review of Dark Prince and the first true post of the new Feehan’s Dark Carpathian’s review series will be coming shortly!

Coming Soon From Aimee Shaye

Aimee Shaye’s The Dead Daughter

The Cursed Kingdom Book 2
Releases September 19, 2020

(That's two days after Aimee’s Birthday!)
Available for Pre-Order!
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B5KHTQ1
Universal Link: http://mybook.to/thedeaddaughterck2

Let's start with the cover...

And a bit about the book...

She was born of dark magick. She was destined to bring order to the chaos.

Princess Kumud Maudlin of Treoles spent twenty-three years as a prisoner in her own castle until one fateful night her sister rescued her. Now she must learn how to control the wayward magick swirling in her body and exact revenge on those who have wronged her. The problem: their faces are a blur and war is brewing in all of Dramolux with Treoles at its center. The Dark Sorceress is advancing rapidly toward Treoles with a vengeance that mirrors Kumud’s.

Will Kumud be able to bring the order or will Treoles fall before it can retaliate?

Free Gift With Purchase

EVERYONE who pre-orders between June 19, 2020 and September 19, 2020 will receive:

• A Postcard
• A Letter from Aimee
• A special thank you from a special character

Just screenshot your order & PM Aimee your personal home address 

at www.facebook.com/aimeeshaye08 

*The above would be sent out at the end of the month so pre-orders gifts for June will be mailed on July 1 and so on*

To learn more about the author and to follow her social media check out the following links...

Facebook: www.facebook.com/aimeeshaye08

Website: www.aimeeshayeauthor.com

Reader Group: www.facebook.com/groups/aimeeshayefans

BookBub: www.bookbub.com/authors/aimee-shaye

Instagram: www.instagram.com/aimeeshayeauthor

Twitter: www.twitter.com/aimeeshaye

I’ve Been Reading. Have You?

The past few years I’ve been keeping a bit better track of what I’m reading and when. Primarily through the Reading Challenge on GoodReads. In previous years I’ve been truly horrible at keeping up-to-date with my records, but this year, oh, this year I’ve been marking my books as I start reading them and checking them off when I’m finished. The year started off with a bang - the books of The Atlantis Grail series by Vera Nezarian: Qualify, Compete, Win, and Survive. 

Since then, I’ve run through a few re-reads, some beloved, some simply enjoyable. For the most part though I’ve been reading new titles, both from favourite authors and new (to me) ones. 

I’ve read a lot of Nora Roberts’ backlist titles. Can I just say - I loved The MacGregors. 

I stormed through the books of the Dragon Blood series by Lindsay Buroker. I really enjoyed them, and my first foray into the steampunk genre. 

I’ve previously loved R.E. Butler’s various dragon series but decided to give Were Zoo series. To be honest, I found them highly entertaining. 

After seeing that The Cowgirl’s Secret Love (book 2, The Colemans of Heart Falls series) was scheduled to release in April, I realized I’d actually fallen behind on the Heart Falls series books. So, me being me, I started at the beginning of the Vivian Arend’s Six Pack Ranch series and read all the way through. Not only do I thoroughly enjoy the ranch romances, I’m also tickled reading about locations I’ve personally visited. 

  

Michelle M. Pillow took me diving into the depths with her Lords of the Abyss books. I haven’t read a lot of stories about mermen before. I was pleasantly surprised by the books. 

Princess and I marathoned through the Harry Potter movies, then I decided to start re-reading the books. I’m not quite marathoning through the books but I’m making my way through them all once again as the mood strikes. Currently, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is one of the books I’m working on. 

And then it was back to one of my personal favourite authors: Christine Feehan. She began her Shadow Riders series in 2016 with the book of the same title, Shadow Rider. Since then three more books have followed and the fifth book in the series, Shadow Flight released today. (May 5, 2020) I read through the first four books a couple weeks ago for the first time, and today I’m reading the new one. #ReleaseDayReading 

So what have you been reading? Have you discovered any new authors? What’s the best thing you’ve read so far in 2020? What’s the best thing you’ve read since (sorta) quarantine began? 

... coming soon - a complete list of the titles I’ve read in January, February, March and April 2020. 

A Little 'Me Time' Reading

My kids have been home for a full week now. For them, as for a great many of your children, school has been cancelled – indefinitely is the term they used to describe the duration of this experience. We’re getting rather nicely, so far, but again it’s only been a week.

That week has been full of uncertainty and concern. In many ways the reality of the situation is still sinking in for them, and me. We’ve kept busy, surprisingly so considering we’ve been pretty much home-bound, except for a couple trips to try and stock up on essentials at the grocery store. We’ve done a bunch of deep cleaning, we’ve instituted some new house activities, and Heli Dad and I have been trying to keep things as calm and as straight as we can for the kids.

Yesterday for perhaps the first time all week, I was able to pick up a book and read. First with a mug of hot tea, later with a glass of wine. I snugged down and dove into the romance and adventure in Morrigan’s Cross the first book in Nora Roberts’ The Circle trilogy. Considering how quickly I read, I’ll be done all three books of the series by sometime Sunday.

What should I read next?

What are you reading?

And more, what are you doing to give yourself some ‘me time’ if you’re in self-isolation or sheltering in place, or in quarantine?

Reading And Writing And How They Co-Exist

Multi-tasking is a thing that everyone can do. It’s a thing that most moms excel at. I myself have taught myself to become good at undertaking (and actually finishing) half a dozen or more tasks all at once. But even for me, there are simply some things I can’t do while involved in certain other pursuits.

I can’t watch TV or movies while writing. I can listen to music and write. My kids can watch TV in the same room as I’m in and I can write. But even if it’s a show I’ve watched a hundred times and know line-by-line, I can not write if it’s on.

When I’m in the thick of writing I tend not to read much. Even if I’ve got 45 minutes to kill in the car while I’m waiting for Angel Face’s dance class to be finished, I can’t get in to reading a book when a part of my mind is (as it always is) absorbed with the story I’m crafting. It’s as if my brain becomes locked on the tale I’m writing and puts up this wall of ‘nope’ anytime I try to read.

via GIPHY

I’ll fritter away hours of the day scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, but reading is practically impossible when a part of me is silently saying “you could be writing!”

The reverse is similar, if not quite the same. When I’ve got a book in my hands that is simply entrancing me, I’ll very rarely stop reading to go and write. I can, and have read as many as 4 different novels at one time – my choice of the moment dependent largely on my location and what may be going on around me. But it’s pretty damn rare that you’ll find me reading one moment and writing the next.

I mean it has happened. But not often.

via GIPHY

The past couple months I’ve been writing… a lot. (In the past 6 weeks, I’ve written roughly 80,000 words!!!) So this issue of not reading while immersed in my own writing inevitably came up. After all, while I’m committed to writing, I still have 4 kids to care for and a household to run, and work. That leaves a good number of hours during the day when I simply can not be at my computer (or on another device) writing. And sure, I do spend a portion of that time thinking about what happens next and all the things, but sometimes even my writers brain needs a break from the story. But if I’m unable to lose myself in a book?

Well I’m happy to say that after all these years of this struggle, I’ve finally found a way to “read” during periods of writing, without actually reading.

Audiobooks.

Okay, yes, this is not a new thing. It’s not a unique or even brilliant idea. But it’s changed things in my daily life dramatically. You can laugh, it’s okay. It is sort of funny.

The thing, for me, about audiobooks is that I can be vastly entertained by the story as I listen to it, but my mind doesn’t latch on to the story in quite the same way as when I’m physically reading it. In a way the audiobook is like the music or TV in the background – I enjoy it but it doesn’t fully distract me from what my mind is focused on. I can satisfy my need to lose myself in another world, without becoming a part of it.

via GIPHY

Another bonus? It takes way longer to get through a book while listening to it in audio format than it would if I was reading it myself. So I’m also not bombarding my brain with story-world upon story-world, upon story-world.

So for me, it’s a definite audiobooks for the win!

What about you? Do you listen to audio books?

What are you listening to RIGHT NOW?

The Much-Loved and Favoured

I occasionally find myself in a mood that has me turning to the steady greatness of some of my much-loved and favoured authors. For these authors I have many, many, many titles from their book lists gracing my shelves and digital libraries. Some titles I even have in multiple copies – the new release hardcovers, the well-read trades and paperbacks, and, of course, the easily transportable digital e-books. These books are housed – always – on shelves that prominently display the spines in my living room, my office space, in my kitchen and my bedroom. Despite the multitude of their books already owned, when I see a title by one of these authors which I don’t already have, I finagle some way to get it.

Always.

Well, 95% of the time.

Sometimes I have to briefly add it to my “purchase wish-list” until the next time I have the money to make the buy.

When I get in to certain moods I’ll storm through books by a specific author the way other women will dig their way through every flavour of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. And no matter how many times I’ve read or re-read a story, during these binge periods of reading I am reminded with every single book why I love the author’s work.

I’m not really sure of exactly what spurred my current headfirst dive into all things Nora Roberts. I suppose it was a combination of things that had my focus narrowing and my vision tunnelling to the exclusion of nearly all else for the past month. Primarily I guess the prod came from the whole #CopyPasteCris plagiarism debacle that is currently a BIG deal in the writing, publishing, and book worlds. I’m not going to go in to the details – if you want to learn more about it all, I recommend you check out Nora’s official blog Fall Into The Story where she has posted a series of really good and informative updates over the past month regarding the situation. Until word of the whole thing broke publicly, I’d never even heard of Cristiane Serruyo. But I’d heard of, read, and loved a good number of the titles and authors that she's purported to have plagiarised. (From my personal p.o.v., I think there is more than enough evidence to prove to even the most skeptical that the accusations are fact.)

So maybe it was anger, of a certain form, that plunged me into my current backlist re-read.

I actually managed to do some of that finagling I mentioned earlier to get myself digital copies of all The Stanislaskis: Those Wild Ukrainians series books as well as the books in The Stars of Mithra trilogy, and the books Three Fates and Public Secrets. All of which were personal previously unread Nora creations and all of which I absolutely loved. In the reading mix as well have been some of the newer NR releases, The Liar and The Obsession to name a couple.

One thing that I find so interesting is seeing the way Nora’s writing has adapted to the changing cultural, societal, and technological norms of the times. It’s intriguing to read a story that was published decades ago, for example Secret Star: Stars of Mithra #3 published in 1997, complete with it’s main characters’ reliance on his pager and fax machine, and imagine the story within today’s framework of technology. Would those technological advancements change the course the story would take in it’s telling? Or how about the reverse? Take the story in The Liar back 20 or 30 years and it’s possible that the whole truth within the dastardly tale never would have been revealed. 

I just finished (re)reading Genuine Lies and I continue to be fascinated by the glitz and glamour of Eve Benedict’s life through the decades, enchanted by the understated, but budding and building romance between Julia and Paul, and I am, as always, intrigued by the mystery and the twists as-yet-unrevealed. I’ve read the story several times before and still, every time is like the first and I’m never disappointed; and each time I re-read a story I find something new, something wonderful. 

In the past month I’ve read just about 20 Nora Roberts books – a fair number of them are even ones that I’ve never read before – and I’m still not ready to veer away from this course quite yet. Yesterday I scrolled through the list of Roberts’ titles I could get my hands on through my local library’s digital access license… Happily I now have 7 more of those personal previously unread NR stories waiting on my digital shelf to entrance me, with a couple more on hold and headed my way shortly. If I love them as much as I have all her other works, I imagine my purchase wish-list is about to grow even longer!

Nora Roberts is just one of my ‘much-loved and favoured authors.’ There are others and if you’ve followed this blog in the past, or follow my Facebook Page, chances are you’ll know who some of the others are. But what of yours?

Who are the authors who’s books you are inspired you to read, re-read, and read again? Which authors do you have extensive library space devoted to?

If you had to pick an absolute favourite, who would it be? 

*book covers were curated from Nora's official website, or from Goodreads. 

**If you'd like to discover the full list of books published by Nora Roberts, I recommend her website as an excellent place to start!