The books of October 2011

Didn't I just write one of these things?! How is it Halloween? I mean, tomorrow it's NOVEMBER! Actually, quite a bit of last month was spent working on the blog I did to archive my pictures from Italy so I could remember the trip. If you missed that, and want to see lots of old and beautiful things (and no, I don't mean me), then you should check out Pictures from Italy 2011. The first post you see is the last, so scroll down if you want to read it in order, or, just scroll and look at stuff. The pictures make me really happy.

I also made a few crafts this month. A friend at work had a birthday and I worked with another friend to figure out what he says the most. This is what he ended up with:

Totally different from being tanorexic.

I made an imaginary friend for the Iron Craft challenge. Her name is Ms. Flora Petalsworth and she is very into mischief. I'm pretty sure she's the reason all my plans to clean my room have been thwarted.

She looks so sweet and innocent...

For another Iron Craft challenge, the topic was just Halloween. That's fairly broad, so I narrowed it down in my head to something my friend would like to have for her Halloween parties. I gave it to her on Saturday.

Stitching this candy corn did not drive me batty.

I think I only bought one book for myself this month...I'm still pretty sad about the no Borders situation. No wait...I bought two...and a couple of friends have lent books to me that I swear I'll get to as soon as I can! I got Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day by Ben Loory (mainly because it has a spaceship AND a tentacle on the front cover) and The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan.  

This month I stuck mostly with library books again...and got a new, smaller stack before I came home tonight (because I need to read my friends' books). I finished The Host by Stephenie Meyer, aka The Worst Book Ever. I also read Beauty Queens by Libba Bray and books one, two, three, and five of Steve Berry's Cotton Malone series: The Templar Legacy, The Alexandria Link, The Venetian Betrayal, and The Paris Vendetta (I accidentally read book four, The Charlemagne Pursuit, while on vacation last month).

A quick sum up of The Host: it never got any better. Never. It was really a bad book, but I'd committed and refused to give up. As badly written (and still much beloved) as the Twilight books are, the sparkley vampires and faux wolves have a great story to tell. These characters? Not so much. The hosts are bodies taken to "host" new souls. I'm pretty sure most doctrines don't refer to the host/parasite relationship when discussing souls, but whatever. The main host can't get rid of the original soul inside the body, so she ends up falling in love with the girl's past and helping carve out a new future. I don't know if you see potential in that, but if you do, I'm telling you, don't bother. It went unfulfilled. It was just not a good read...and because it was so long, it felt like for-ev-er before I finished it. I was completely happy to move on to any other topic by that point.

The Cotton Malone series. I know I gushed about this last month...and some of you began reading and some see the awesome and some don't. That's cool. I think part of what I like about these books is that Berry discusses how he researched things and lived in those places to get the best out of himself for the book that he could. I think it shows. The Templar Knights have long been a fascination for me. I think many of you know how I feel about that medieval time period and knights in general. Get me started on King Arthur and I'll probably never stop typing! Anyway, this was about the lost templar treasury from when the knights were killed off by the king's (and church's) proclamation. We meet Cotton Malone, dragged into his first mystery by accident, while trying to help out his friend and former boss, Stephanie Nell. The old Danish guy, Henrik Thorvaldsen, and the woman who (sometimes) works for him, Cassiopeia Vitt (what a great name), also become involve and lay the groundwork for the next stories with their teamwork to (a) thwart danger, (b) solve the mystery, (c) kill the bad guys, and generally (d) save the day. It's really the framework for all the novels in this series, but since they're based with some true history, I am hooked. The Alexandria Link is about the library of Alexandria, supposedly lost, but apparently kept going by a very secretive group of guardians who need help from Cotton to keep their treasure safe. In this one we meet Cotton's son Gary and his ex-wife Pam (who he throws out of an airplane...which she didn't like, even though they had to jump). They get a little closure and a better relationship...oh, and save the day. In The Venetian Betrayal, we learn more about St. Mark and Alexander the Great and the links between them. The people working against them find the cure for AIDS (oddly, a bacteria that attacks and destroys the disease) and the lost tomb of Alexander the Great. The Paris Vendetta is centered on old family rivals of Napoleon and finding his lost millions. There are lots of twists and turns as always, but I was surprised (SPOILER) that one of the main characters thus far is killed off. A new one was introduced, but I don't know yet if he'll play an integral part to upcoming plots. I've got the next paperback, The Emperor's Tomb, sitting on the nightstand and I'm going to ask for The Jefferson Key (book 7) for Christmas. I know this may seem like not great, very formulaic reading, but because the adventures take place all over the world and include researched historical facts woven in with stories you learned long ago, they're just great fun to read. 

Beauty Queens is about teen beauty pageant contestants that survive a plane wreck and get completely, and utterly, screwed by the company sponsoring the pageant because it's run by a woman with aspirations that can not be stopped. She's planning dirty deals with embargoed nations for arms and oil while covertly covering up that there are surviving teen dreams on the island The Corporation owns. Her plan? Kill them off...pretty much everyone involved...to achieve her goal of becoming possibly the least informed president ever. A smile and a wave don't always solve the problem. The girls (and one near girl) become extremely self-sufficient and are able to bounce back once the evil plot is discovered. All this, and PIRATES. Seriously? This book is insane. It was kind of funny though. Not laugh out loud, but satirically funny, if that makes sense.

OK. Happy Halloween and I'll be back next month!