Peter V. Brett - The Painted Man (Book one of the Demon Cycle)

About the author

Excellent writing and great story. Needless to say I was on Amazon.com to buy the second book even before I finished reading this one. I've been searching for books by authors I haven't read before and when I saw this one I was a bit sceptical but I've definitely not been disappointed. The story is unique and well written and the characters pull you into the story and you feel a part of their lives and their world. The book tells of a land where the people fear to venture outside at night because that is when demons rise from what they call the Core to stalk, kill and devour anyone not safely behind a strong ward. Only messengers venture out away from population centres carrying messages and goods between towns and cities but even they retire behind wards at night to wait out the demons. One boy named Arlen, after needlessly losing his mother, decides not to hide anymore and decides to take the fight to the demons and becomes The Painted Man.

Gripping stuff and I can't wait to start on the second book - The Desert Spear.

5 stars *****

LibraryThing Early Reviewers/Members Giveaway: The School with Chocolate Air by Jenifer Rubloff

I received this book in the Member Giveaway and started reading it today. I couldn't make it past the first six pages as it was absolutely bad. Sorry Jenifer but this book needs some work. The story is poorly written from the start and you need to win your reader over from the first word. I expected a book written in the vein of Matilda or Madeline where a poor orphan girl goes to a girls' boarding school and wins the hearts of everyone (I don't know if that is what this book is about because I didn't get very far). I expected a whimsical yet poignant coming of age tale, etc judging by the title (we do still judge books by their covers). Whether it is that I now will never know. Sorry Jenifer, better luck next time.

The NEW!!! iPad 3 - How excited should I get??

I heard about the newly released iPad 3 or HD or whatever its called and I was thinking to myself, "How excited should I be getting for this thing?" Wasn't the iPad 2 released just a couple of months ago? Maybe I should wait until the iPad 4 comes out before I get really excited or should I wait for the iPad 5 or maybe the 6...

So many Pads or tablets are released and then re-released and then they release a better one under a different name and I just wonder whether it's all worth it? I have been toying with the idea of getting one of these things for a while now but I just can't decide whether getting it would add anything to my productivity at all. A tablet isn't a laptop in that you can't do the same stuff on there that you do on your laptop. I like the idea of watching movies on there but I can do that on my laptop too. It is bigger but I can live with that. Its basically a BIG phone and I like that because sometimes there are things that don't display quite as well on your phone and a bigger screen would be great. But I can use my laptop for that too. It's bigger and bulkier but I can live with that.

What I really, truly want is an ebook reader that I can whip out on a long flight or a quiet afternoon on the couch and immerse myself in a good book. I have quite a lot of ebooks to read now that I have joined LibraryThing Early Reviewers but without one of those ebook readers I have to resort to reading it off my laptop screen or printing it out. The former isn't that great for my eyes and the latter isn't that great for the environment since I chuck away the pages once I'm done with the book (hope there'll be no lynch-mob outside my house after that admission). So is the iPad a good ebook reader or should I get maybe a Kindle or a Gobii or an iRiver... I was going through the specs on the Apple website this morning and it seems like it could be a pretty decent reader but what about that glare. And the size... I can whip out the Kindle on a flight and get stuck into a book while the hostess or stewardess, or whatever they're called these days, drones on about the in-flight safety and the temperature at our destination but whipping out the iPad might result in the maiming of my fellow passenger. It's quite large. Could be quite messy. Mmmm...

iPad...Kindle...Gobii? I think I'll wait for the 5 or 6 and in the meantime I'll get the ebook reader I want because as a niche product it does the one thing I want it to do really well and that's good enough for me.

LibraryThing Early Reviewers/Members Giveaway: Ten Kinds of Trouble by Ian Ashe

The stories were mostly about violent crime and involved death and in some cases a fair amount of gore. It might seem as if violence is the only theme running through the stories but there is another theme. Many of the main characters were people who were dragged into the violent crimes they are portrayed as committing against their will. What I liked most was the fact that the stories were short and were easy to read. The characterisation for some of the stories was a little sketchy and in some cases the plot seemed a little contrived but there were instances of brilliance and many times I was impressed by what I was reading. My favourite story of the batch was "A Night Without Mercy". The entire story is told in the form of calls to 911 and it is a very interesting method used.

All in I would give the book a 5/10

My Favourite author of all time

Isaac Asimov (b. 2 January 1920 - d. 6 April 1992)

When I visited the library in 1994 and saw the first Foundation novel I thought it was just another interesting sci-fi novel. Little did I know then that this series would be as gripping as it turned out to be. I read nothing else for the next few years, searching for every single Foundation novel I could find and reading them all in sequence. I then moved onto the Elijah Bailey detective novels and then the short stories and even the Lucky Starr novels when I ran out of other books of his to read. He wrote with an ease and effortlessness that could be seen in his work and which I greatly admired. It is a shame that he is not around to write any more books. What set him somewhat apart from some of his contemporaries was the fact that he was a Biochemist and had a PhD. The man knew what he was talking about when he wove his stories together on distant plantes and that to me made then all the more believable. His short stories are entertaining and they have a real twist in the tail like you won't believe. At least two of his short stories ahve been made into movies (loosely adapted but they're his stories nonetheless). They are Bicentennial Man starring Robin Williams based on a short story of the same name and I, Robot starring Will Smith based on a collection of stories titled I, Robot. There was no one story titled I, Robot written by him. He was the first to coin the term robotics and is famous for his Three Laws of Robotics. The Three Laws are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

he later added a fourth, or zeroth, law for the first time in Robots and Empire which stated:


      0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.


I am planning to reread all the Foundation novels and every one of the Elijah Bailey novels as well in my 75 books challenge. It has been quite a while since I completed the series and it is about due for a revisit so watch this space.

75 Books for 2012

I am going to try to read 75 books this year. I was inspired by a group on Library Thing and decided to give it a go. I will keep adding books to the list below as I finish reading them so that I can keep a running tally. Please feel free to give me ideas of books I can read to make up my 75. I hope I make it.

1. The Temporal Void - Peter F. Hamilton
2. Hyperion - Dan Simmons - completed 22 February 2012
3. The Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons - completed 5 March 2012
4. Strategies for Writing in the Social Studies Classroom - Kathleen Kopp - currently reading