Hello My Name is Danielle and I'm a Slacker

Wow, what can I say other than it was a very busy December and has been a very busy January. Obviously I haven't been blogging and I haven't done very much reading since December.

As my first actual new years post - late I know but like I said I'm a slacker. I can't say I'm sorry to see the end of 2009. It was all around a pretty crappy year. 2010 however seems to be starting off with a bang. Our first big news of the new year?? My husbands previous employer who laid him off over a year ago finally has more work picking up and hired him back!! Yea!!! No more minute taking or penny pinching for this chicky. So on that note here is my 2009 year in review.

Total number of books read 52

Total number of pages read 20,169

Genre Breakdown

Historical Romance - 11

Sub genres - Western/American - 4

- Medieval - 2

- Regency - 4

- Victorian - 1

Romantic Suspense - 7

Mystery - 7

Historical Fiction - 5

Fantasy - 5

Paranormal Romance - 6

Contemporary Romance - 4

Romantica - 2

Suspense/Thriller - 3

Young Adult - 2

Horror - 1

General Fiction - 1

Non-Fiction - 1

Ratings

5 stars - 14

4 stars - 26

3 stars - 10

2 stars - 1

1 star - 1

The large number of high ratings has a lot to do with the fact that I rarely force myself to finish a book I'm not enjoying.

The best of the Year

My goals for 2010 - Read!

That's it no number goals, no genre goals I'm just going to read what I want when I want and see how that works for me.  The last few years I've given myself number goals and I think that causes me to always pick shorter books (even though I love looong books) and to put books that I'm not enjoying all that much aside too soon.  So this year I'm just going to read what I feel like and not pay attention to numbers all that much.

My 2010 so far.

I've only read two books

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

This book was okay.   It was a fairly long book and kept me interested but I wasn't really blown away.  I may try something else by him in the future.

Here is the blurb from Amazon


"American Gods" is Neil Gaiman's best and most ambitious novel yet, a scary, strange, and hallucinogenic road-trip story wrapped around a deep  examination of the American spirit. Gaiman tackles everything from the  onslaught of the information age to the meaning of death, but he doesn't sacrifice the razor-sharp plotting and narrative style he's been delivering since his Sandman days.
    Shadow gets out of prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of  the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm  that becomes all too real in its manifestations. For instance, Shadow's dead wife Laura keeps showing up, and not just as a ghost--the difficulty of their continuing relationship is by turns grim and darkly funny, just like the rest of the book. 
    Armed only with some coin tricks and a sense of purpose, Shadow travels through, around, and underneath the visible surface of things, digging up all the powerful myths Americans brought with them in their journeys to this land as well as the ones that were already here. Shadow's road story is the heart of the novel, and it's here that Gaiman offers up the details  that make this such a cinematic book--the distinctly American foods and  diversions, the bizarre roadside attractions, the decrepit gods reduced to  shell games and prostitution. "This is a bad land for Gods," says  Shadow.
    More than a tourist in America, but not a native, Neil Gaiman offers an  outside-in and inside-out perspective on the soul and spirituality of the  country--our obsessions with money and power, our jumbled religious  heritage and its societal outcomes, and the millennial decisions we face  about what's real and what's not. "--Therese Littleton"


Trial and Error - Paul Levine

This is the fourth book in the Solomon vs. Lord series and my second favourite of the four.  Victoria was way less hateful then she was in the last two.  My only complaint is that it was a touch too short and that there is no fifth book due out in the near future.

Blurb


When Steve Solomon is awakened from a sound sleep beside his lover and law partner, Victoria Lord, the last thing he expects is to find himself in a high-speed chase against dolphin-kidnapping ecoterrorists on Jet Skis.  But that is what you get when your nephew hangs out at water parks and speaks cetacean–a.k.a. dolphin.  By morning, a person is dead and Steve has a new client: none other than one of the animal liberators.  There’s just one loophole: Victoria is on the case too—on the opposite side.


No wonder Larry King says that this is “mystery writing at its very best” and Dave Barry says Paul Levine writes a terrific courtroom drama that’s also funny as hell!”