Sunday Soup - October 9

In The Soup This Week... Devon Monk, Aaron Michael Ritchey, Laura Lee Guhrke, Elisabeth Staab, Julie Ann Walker, Kim Harrison.

Soup Dish:  on my mind/good links
Well, it's been kind of a long time since I've posted.  I keep starting these Soup posts, and just sort of not feeling like I have much to say. My social media feeds are full of the latest political horrors and it's difficult to keep up the chipper, book-loving voice I've established here.  One more month to go before the election circus is over.  But nonetheless, I've accumulated a few links that have nothing to do with the US presidential election.

✽Kim Harrison reveals her newest cover and some cover art wisdom in five parts: One Two Three Four Five. Liked the read, looking forward to the book! I'm behind on the last few books of the series, but I feel like I can probably read the pre-quel without catching up.

✽I miss Jennifer Crusie. I wish she'd go back to writing witty contemporary romance with amazing dialog. In the meantime, here's an interview with her.

✽I've been thinking about running a non-conference-related Five Words game -- I'd love to hear from my readers, do you like this feature? I thought at the end I'd offer a formatted PDF for free download.

✽ This is an ad for Ravenswood Leather. You'll like it anyway. You're welcome.
 


Saved and Sampled:  titles that caught my eye on social media, samples waiting on my Kindle to be, well, sampled. As you can see, I'm not doing my TBR-reduction plan any good. 


✽Faery Rift, by Jae Vogel
✽Fury, by Laurann Doehner. This was highly rec'd by a friend but I'm having trouble getting past the "evil scientists performing sadistic lab experiments" trope. These make me super-squeamish.
✽The Viscount's Mistress, by Claire DuLac. I like the premise, which implies the HEA might be as a mistress. I feel like that's a fairly realistic scenario for the Regency period and I'd be interested to see it play out.
✽Feral, by Laxmi Hariharan. Advertised for fans of Nalini Singh, so we shall see!

What I'm reading
✽You guys, I read a lit-fic book and I liked it! I'm dipping a toe into a book club at my office, and read Circling the Sun, by Paula McLain. I didn't realize until I read the afterwords that it is based on a real person, set in early 20th century Kenya. Basically it's the same cast of characters as Out of Africa (which I've never seen) with a different focus. It made me want to go read All The Hemingway. I did feel like it had some weaknesses as a novel, but they were structural things about the facts of the MC's life-- because real life isn't as tidy as a novel, go figure. Anyway, I liked it and would recommend it.

✽I'm almost done with Laura Lee Guhrke's No Mistress of Mine. It's not bad, but I'm having trouble staying engaged. For me, it has been put-down-able, but that could just be about my scattered attention span these days.

✽I finished Killdeer Winds, by Aaron Michael Ritchey and am way behind on a full review.  This is the second in his Juniper Wars serial, and I really enjoyed it. YA is not my usual wheelhouse, but it's nice to step outside your usual genre once in a while.

✽Death and Relaxation, by Devon Monk. A really fun new series kickoff set in a small coastal Oregon town, where deities of various pantheons go to check in their powers and relax like a regular Joe. Naturally, things get weird.  Really enjoyed the world-building.  Book 2 is out as well, and Amazon is calling it a "two-book series" -- so I don't know if it will go any longer than that.  Monk seems to have a bit of series ADD going on, skipping from one project to another. I like them all! I just hope these either resolve nicely or that there are more coming.

✽ At the Stars, Elisabeth Staab. I read this one a couple months ago, after meeting and hanging out with Elisabeth at RT16 for a while. A small town, NA romance, very sweet. Enjoyed it. 

✽ In Rides Trouble, Julie Ann Walker. Fast-paced, suspenseful, high-stakes MC/Spec-Ops romance. It's really good, but not for me. Basically, the more suspenseful a book is, the less I like it. But if that's your catnip, you'll like this one.


That's it for this week. Happy reading!