Not sure about others but summer has been extremely busy for me. I keep hoping it’ll slow down in the fall – last October I think I travelled for most of it and read almost 3 books a day. Now I’m lucky if I read a book a day and several days I haven’t read at all *gasp*. Trust me, it pains me too!
So that of course means my reviews have fallen off some. Sorry!
I’ve also had a rash of DNF. Usually I read the entire book no matter what but with the time crunch if the book doesn’t interest me immediately, it gets put down and forgotten.
On the DNF list:
Putting Out The Fires by Sienna Black – ugh on many levels. Bad world building, no characterization. Plot fell apart. I stopped at pg 70 out of 100.
Star Flyer by Bonnie Dee – see HERE for why I started and gave up. Even skipping to the end didn’t help.
On the meh list:
Unlikely Hero by Sean Michael – surprisingly almost no sex and the little girl is pretty cute. However no way would a 3 yr old act like that and about halfway through I was sick of her, even though she was cute. Repetitive scene after repetitive scene. PLEASE write something new or don’t waste my money recycling. kkthx
On the great list:
Maritime Men by Janey Chapel – this fabulous novella is about a pair of SEALs who discover passion during their intense training. Although there is no real happy ending, just a happy for now, this is entirely fitting due to the capricious nature of the military. Added to that are the fabulous characters, intense passion, and almost casual acceptance of their needs and desires without any major drama – this book is just full of win.
The men are masculine men with needs, desires, opinions, and intense passions but have a marked lack of drama and angst associated with their actions. They need or want sex and they have it – hot, rough, and sweaty – but they don’t cry and agonize over the fact it’s with another man. Instead they seize the time and moments they can, revel in their choices and worry about the future later. I easily recommend this novella and it’s been garnering solid reviews as well.
There are new reviews coming down the pike, I promise.
Plus tomorrow my pricing comparison continues with the always fun Torquere Press. Don’t you want to know!
three am 
Hmm– I enjoyed Unlikely Hero I think specifically because it had less sex than a usual Sean Michael title. The Janey Chapel book sounds great!
I actually liked Unlikely Hero for 75% of the book. If this had ended sooner, I’d be left with a much more positive feeling. I liked the lack of sex and the focus on the family, the girl as I said was really cute.
Unfortunately ~ pg. 140 or so, I started to feel like the book was stalling. The same family scenes which *are* cute and interesting seem to be repeated without much advancement to the plot or emotional connection. Since the villain is established early on and the characters are old lovers, the progression started to lag (IMO) at that point. If just felt dragged on slightly which decreases my overall enjoyment of the book.
There also wasn’t much tension to it – thankfully Bee had a ton of money to fix everything. But for a Sean Michael title, I liked it a lot in some places, especially the lack of sex, but ultimately felt “meh” about the total story.
The Maritime Men is a great story and rather short – 65 pages.
I stopped at pg 70 out of 100.
How is this even possible? lmao, you must have superhuman powers of restraint. Even if something is dreadful, if I’ve got that far I feel absolutely compelled to finish it.
lol well to be honest I put it down when something came up and never remembered to pick it back up. The few times I thought of it, I wasn’t motivated enough. hehe
Translation needed (g)
In the few days I’ve actually used my LJ, I’ve seen some terms I don’t understand. Since a couple of them are in your post, I’ll ask you!
DNF is ….?
meh is ….?
And I keep seeing the word “fail” attached to things in a puzzing way. Amazon-fail, … aw, darn it, now I’ve forgot what the others were. Aaargh. Anyway, there were several examples of it. Do you know? I think everybody knows but me.
Re: Translation needed (g)
Hi there!
I feel rather hip having to explain these and I’m anything but. However, I apologize for using slang and such and should have been more clear.
DNF = did not finish
Usually this is used for books and I see it around often.
MEH = slang for indifference. Something was neither great or horrible but either way, the reader (or person) is indifferent and careless about their reaction.
Most people use “fail” for various things that they consider, well failures. Such as Amazon-fail for their tag debacle and Lambda-fail because some are upset with the new rules. It’s another popular slang usage for something they strongly disagree with.
Does that help?
Re: Translation needed (g)
Well, dang, color you hipdictionaryus! Thank you. I thought the “fail” thing meant something like that but wasn’t sure. The others — clueless. Now I feel hip! Thank you.
Re: Translation needed (g)
I know, we can both be hip now! 😀
Most welcome.
Re: Hipsters all
We are, like, so hip now, man, like totally rad. Whatever that means.
Forgot to ask — are you also kassa11 or is that somebody else? kassa11 did a lovely review of The Phoenix in August, which I found accidentally. If you are’t Kassa11, I guess I can find her by searching…?
Re: Hipsters all
Yes I am the same person. 🙂 I had to change my LJ name/link slightly but same person! Sorry for the confusion.
The Phoenix review
I’m so glad I asked! Thank you so much for the review! It’s much appreciated. I hope you’ll do one of Counterpoint next year.
Re: The Phoenix review
My pleasure and I can’t wait! I’m tapping time to move faster – there are 3 or 4 books I’m *eagerly* awaiting next year.
Firstly, that cartoon is funny. I’m stealing it.
Secondly, I’ve been feeling meh about reading at the moment too. My antidote to this is to watch Veronica Mars and read yaoi. The former because it satiates my inability to take revenge on the fucktards that surround me and the latter because, well, pictures of boy sex fulfills the fetishism I apparently have because I’m a chick, blah, blah. Like that was hard to work out.
I’ve been watching a german soap – subtitled in english and friggin hilarious. There is a you tube girl that summarizes the entire hour into 5 min segments (thereabouts) dealing with the usual soap themes with marriages, affairs, teens, ambiguous gay themes, bashing, and so on. It’s so over the top I’m in love.
Plus tons of shows on now and the new Halo 3 is out…busy busy busy!
oh and fetish? like that’s not the most talked about thing after the lammies.
Yeah, the fetish thing has been hacked to death. It’s weird some people are getting upset about it. I mean, c’mon, let’s be honest, we’re pretty much – for whatever reason – voyeurs. Have the balls to admit it.
im a sick person. ive long admitted it 😀
A Soap
A friend alerted me to the fact that a US soap had as one of its many, many, many storylines a gay cop who is in the closet and lying to himself and whose parents are homophobic and religious, and his former boyfriend, though it was only a brief thing in college (mother walked in on them). So I have been following it, and have been surprised to see several male-male kisses. The cop finally came out to his parents, but now he’s out and his former boyfriend has taken up with someone new — they’re all sweet and handsome, naturally. But, given that this is the US, I’m enjoying it. As soon as they write the characters out, and they will, I’ll quit watching it, though there are a couple of other interesting characters. Unfortunately, one of them’s in a coma and the other’s in a wheelchair. There’s some witchy rich character, Dorian something, Lord, I think; the actress is so over the top and her voice so shrill I can’t watch her. Men keep telling her how beautiful she is but it beats me why. There’s a lot of high school age sex going on, too, but maybe that’s on all the soaps.
I guess I didn’t say what it was: One Life to Live on ABC
Re: A Soap
OOOoooo soaps! I remember in college I watched I think One Life to Live or Days of Our Lives or something for about 3 months. It was always playing at lunch time at the sorority. (yes I did that – briefly. The cook was great.) But since then they’ve never really interested me.
I actually don’t know the name of the German Soap I’m following and it’s only in 5 min “wrap ups” where the only scenes involving certain characters are shown. This one is about German ice skaters and the typical Tonya Harding knee bashing plot, the various affairs, marriages, kidnappings, loan sharking in soaps and there is a 17 y/o gay young man who’s dealing with coming out or staying in the closet and has the typical bad teenager attitude on top of his issues. Surprisingly they’re not all beautiful but they are all interesting to watch – even with subtitles. And the fight scenes are just great.. so obviously low budget.
Gimme back my picture. (Don’t worry, Kassa, Kris knows what I’m talking about.)
If it’s got any flesh showing.. share pls.
Neener, neener, neener.
The only skin showing is on William Shatner’s hands and face. In other words, she copped my Kirk avatar!
(My new motto is: No Pressies for Punks.)
Well kris may be a punk but … she’s generous with cookies. thats worth a pressie..
True that.
(let’s try this comment again…OMG the HTML coding! It burns! Way to make a first impression! *facepalm*)
Hi Kassa! I just saw this review, and I’m really happy to see that you enjoyed Maritime Men. Would you mind if I pulled a quote from your review to put up on the GLBT Bookshelf? If that’s okay, how would you like to be credited/linked? I’m still learning the ropes of self-aggrandizement, so I hope I haven’t put my foot in my mouth (along with my ten-thumbed approach to HTML coding…)
Hi there! I’m afraid this isn’t much of a review so much as an endorsement. (And yes FTC, I paid for my book!)
Feel free to pull a quote if you’d like. You can simply credit with the name Kassa.
I feel bad that it’s not a real review now but thank you for such a great book 🙂
Thanks, Kassa. 🙂 I read the FTC thing today with my jaw scraping the carpet. THIS is what they’re worried about? Seriously? How would one even go about “returning” an ebook? It’s flippin’ ridiculous.
*deep breath*
Thanks for forking over cold hard cash for the book, and for saying such nice things about it. You made my day.