New real estate

I've moved and renamed my book blog. Unfortunately, I continued to have an inordinate amount of issues with Blogger. But that's ok, I have a new location and a new name that both fit me much better. Please visit me at 100 Book Ninja.

Dead in the Family = 55 down, 45 to go

Recommendation
Dead in the Family
Charlaine Harris
320 pages


I was turned onto this clever series by my friend Robin. I read the first nine books and Harris' book of short stories all within about 10 days. They were fun and addicting. So I was excited that the tenth book in the series was being released within the month of finishing the first nine.


As with the others, I thoroughly enjoyed Dead in the Family. This is the one of the best series I've read in years - it's my version of addictive chick lit. There was one bad thing about this book though - it was to quick of a read. Guess I should have taken my time, and extended my time of being immersed in the life of Sookie Stackhouse.


Just another reason to go pick up the first couple of seasons of True Blood.


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Blockade Billy = 54 down, 46 to go

Recommendation
Blockade Billy
Stephen King
144 pages

I haven't read a Stephen King novel in years, and I'm not quite sure what made me hit the download button on this one - especially since it is a story involving baseball, admittedly not a sport in which I'm particularly engaged.

The book took place in a time when the trappings of today's version of the sport were absent - big-money contracts, admittance of steroid usage, high-profile romances. Stephen King adds his signature dark spin to a period when baseball was more about the game than the drama.

Billy Blakely is called up from the farm system to serve a stint as a temporary pitcher with the New Jersey Titans. His teammates overlook his eccentricities in favor of his ability to aggressively guard the plate and hit the ball. Of course, it turns out that he's not actually Billy Blakely, but a guy who wanted to play baseball so desperately that he killed the actual Blakely family to make his dream come true.

The story is told through the eyes of the third-base coach, and on the day team management learns the truth, he shares the final game in detail, including: "By the time night fell, we knew were fucked for the season, because our first twenty-two games were almost surely going to be erased from our record books, along with any official acknowledgment of Blockade Billy Blakely."

King is known for his passionate love of baseball. That is evident in the exquisite detail in this book...even if some of it was lost on this non-baseball fan.

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Star Trek: Nero - Number 1-4 = 53 down, 47 to go

Graphic novel
Star Trek: Nero - Numbers 1-4

I grew up in a family comprised of four members who are all Star Trek fans. As long as I can remember, we've gone as a family to see the movies soon after they open. We own them all - first as VCR tapes, now as DVDs. And we've always watched them repeatedly.

When I was looking for a science fiction book so that I could start checking off those books from my list, I started with a search of Star Trek titles. During that process, I unearthed a series of four graphic novels that shed even more light on the Nero/Spock backstory, which played a pivotal role in the latest Star Trek movie franchise.

The four short illustrated novels share glimpses of Nero's catastrophic loss of his wife and home planet and how that feeds an unbelievable, crippling hatred across time and galaxies - a hatred that leads to the capture of an older Spock and how he comes to be marooned on an icy planet watching his own home world be obliterated.

For a Star Trek fan, it was an enjoyable read.

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