From our bookshelves to yours this holiday season…

Now, this was in no way a romantic “he’s a monster, but a cuddly monster” sort of book. Hells to the no.  The Wolfman was at times disgusting, funny, violent, stomach churning and ultimately humanizing, sad, and even uplifting.  It is a wonderful book.  I highly recommend it.

She released a new one this year that I have yet to get, called Blackveil.  This series comes out slowly, but each installment is worth the wait.  The storyline is multilayered, high fantasy sweeping epic goodness about a world where magic is viewed with varying degrees of mistrust, disdain, and outright fear.  Unfortunately for the people of Sacoridia, it will be the last thing that stands between them and an ancient evil that they have largely forgotten and even now don’t quite believe is resurfacing. Their vigilance has waned over the years until they have mostly forgotten how to even deal with it.

Thrust into the eye of the storm is Karigan G’lahadeon, who starts out as the spoiled daughter of a wealthy merchant and becomes embroiled in a love triangle with a king and his fiancée (which is so incredibly sad because they are all such good friends, and the love is unrequited), sometimes acts as avatar to the gods, fights monsters of varying degrees human and not, and eventually becomes a force within the Green Rider Corps.  You just know that a large chunk of the fate of the world is going to rest on her shoulders.  And you’ll love every minute of the ride.

I read her books over and over, long after I had matured beyond them. And Walter Farley’s Black Stallion books followed. Now, because of some pretty serious damage to my spine, I can no longer work with horses. That devastating loss makes it too painful to read about horses any more, or write about them. Maybe one day.

[floatquote]I love to huddle up at night when everyone is asleep, reading a really scary Horror or Suspense, heart pounding at every noise in the house.[/floatquote]

Even though I’ve read them several times over, Stephen King’s early books still have the power to scare me. ‘Salem’s Lot, anyone? Ditto for Dean Koontz’s earlier works.

[floatquote]Fantasy is pretty high on my preferred reading list, too. Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series is amazing.[/floatquote]

Her broad sweeping views of aerial and ground battles that zero in tight on an individual soldier, combined with her insight into the intellect of a species we’re unable to study in real life, result in books I can’t put down. I also enjoyed Christopher Paolini’s Eragon series. Anyone notice a trend here? Yeah, okay. I’ll admit to having a thing for dragons.

I don’t even remember the whole story now, it’s been so many years since I read it, but it left a serious impression on my 7 year old self.  I checked it out from the library so many times, they eventually just gave it to me!  I remember crying every time I got to the part the cheetah gets away and runs toward freedom.

My favorites are the Timothy Zhan trilogy and the New Jedi Order series.  Timothy Zhan breathes new life and intrigue into a legacy that seems to have seen and done it all.  The New Jedi Order series is epic, literally.  The galaxy is permanently changed, major characters are killed, and we learn that the force is not as black and white as Master Yoda would have us believe.

[floatquote]As for fantasy, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card and the first two books in the Dune series are must-reads![/floatquote]

Ender’s Game is being made into a movie, starring Harrison Ford, so read it now before the brain-twisting, heart-wrenching ending is spoiled for you!  The Dune series will truly make you respect our natural resources, especially water, and the amount of waste and destruction we bring to our planet for our chosen way of life.  It’s a journey in prosperity, loss, struggle, love, and rising out of the ashes to fight for a better tomorrow, all wrapped up in a gritty fantasy sand-world with scary worm-monsters and mysterious desert dwellers outside its sparkling cities.

[floatquote]Paul Reiser’s Couplehood is a must! Read it with your partner![/floatquote]

You’ve never quite experienced couplehood until you’ve read about it in Paul Reiser’s book Couplehood.  With his usual canny ability to ferret out all the little things we do that drive each other nuts, Couplehood is not only funny, but pretty educational too, and if you read it with your significant other, you might just avoid a few arguments about who gets to stand under the shower or how to aoid spitting your toothpaste on each others’ heads in the morning.

Looks like I was the longest-winded afterall.  *grin*