It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

The Its Monday! What Are You Reading meme is hosted at Book Journey.

Life…

I had an incredibly frustrating week, starting with a computer glitch that threatened my hard drive and blocked internet access across our network, which I spent three days troubleshooting. I’m still not entirely sure what caused the hard drive issue but the system seems to be stable now. I was panicked in part because I discovered by external back up drive had also been corrupted at some stage, resulting in half of my files being inaccessible. I’m still working on a solution for that but in the meantime I had to buy another external drive and create a new backup which took eight long hours. And then,  after I was confident I had solved the hard drive issues and was finally back online, a storm caused a three hour black out!

It is the first Monday of the month  so here are my challenge updates:

The Eclectic Reader Challenge 4/12

Australian Women Writer’s Challenge 25/50

Aussie Author Challenge 5/12

Around the World in 12 Books Challenge 4/12

 

What I Read Last Week

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Simmering Season by Jenn J McLeod

After Everything by Suellen Dainty

The Red-Hot Chili Cook-off by Carolyn Brown

The Australian Blue-Ribbon Cookbook by Liz Harfull

Crimson Dawn by Fleur McDonald

 

New Posts

(click the titles to read my reviews)

Review: Before I Got To Sleep by S.J Watson ★★★★1/2

Review: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell ★★★★

AWW Feature: Who Am I? by Jenn J McLeod

Review: Simmering Season by Jenn J McLeod ★★★1/2

Blog Tour & Giveaway: The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off by Carolyn Brown

Review & Giveaway: The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off by Carolyn Brown ★★★★

Stuff on Sundays: Weekend Cooking: The Australian Blue Ribbon Cookbook by Liz Harfull

What I Am Reading Today

How far will a gentle sea princess go to save the home she loves?  When the clerk at a burger joint is assaulted for trying to sell a fish burger to a hot blonde, it’s just the beginning of a clash between Land and Sea. The world is going mad, and Princess Lecanora is on a special mission to stop it. There are just a few complications… First, life on the land is a bit harder to adjust to than expected, what with the wearing of clothing and the consuming of delicious (but pointless) calories. Second, the most evil magician the world has ever seen wants her as his bride — consensually or otherwise. Finally, a completely inappropriate gun-toting mercenary who goes against every one of her pacifist principles keeps rocking her world. As the forces of darkness gather, Lecanora must come to terms with the lengths she will go to in order to save the sea home she has always known, and the land she has come to love.

 What I Plan To Read This Week

(click the covers to view at Goodreads)

 

 This mesmerising debut is part love story, part mystery, telling the captivating story of two lovers torn apart by tragedy and the secrets they kept of one devastating night. I’m the most authentic version of myself when I’m around Jack. We’ve known each other since we were kids, and our relationship was always one of mudpies and mocking. Then everything changed. Beautiful Kate, my best friend, disappeared on a moonlit beach after Jack dumped her for me. Jack was a suspect and, sure of his innocence, I lied to protect him. I know Jack didn’t kill her. Our betrayal did. Thirteen years later, I am thirty, childless and single, attempting to renovate my life rescuing a rundown worker’s cottage. All is as it should be in my safe little world – until Jack buys the vacant lot behind my house… and the feelings that we buried all those years ago – the guilt, the love and the pain – resurface. We can’t keep running away from the past – and to move forward we have to know what really happened to Kate.

Welcome to the wide world of paranormal pastimes, where striking out might strike you dead. Editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner are your announcers for this all-new story collection of the most peculiar plays ever made… Sports fans live and die by their teams’ successes and failures—though not literally. But these fourteen authors have written spirited—in more ways than one—new tales of killer competitions that would make even the most die-hard players ask to be benched.

 

A stolen baby. A murdered woman. A decades-old atrocity. Something connects them all. A month before Christmas, and Ballyterrin on the Irish border lies under a thick pall of snow. When a newborn baby goes missing from hospital, it’s all too close to home for forensic psychologist Paula Maguire, who’s wrestling with the hardest decision of her life. Then a woman is found in a stone circle with her stomach cut open and it’s clear a brutal killer is on the loose. As another child is taken and a pregnant woman goes missing, Paula is caught up in the hunt for a killer no one can trace, who will stop at nothing to get what they want.

In the not-so-distant future, the forecasted ‘death of print’ has become a reality. Bookstores, libraries, newspapers, and magazines are a thing of the past, as we spend our time glued to handheld devices called Memes that not only keep us in constant communication but have become so intuitive as to hail us taxis before we leave our offices, order takeout at the first growl of a hungry stomach, and even create and sell language itself in a marketplace called the Word Exchange. Anana Johnson works with her father, Doug, at the North American Dictionary of the English Language(NADEL), where Doug is hard at work on the final edition that will ever be printed. Doug is an intellectual who fondly remembers the days when people used e-mail to communicate-or even actually spoke to one another. One evening, Doug disappears from the NADEL offices, leaving a single written clue: ALICE. It’s a code word he and Anana devised to signal if one of them ever fell into danger…. Joined by Bart, her bookish NADEL colleague (who is secretly in love with her), Anana’s search for her father will take her into dark basement incinerator rooms, underground passages of the Mercantile Library, meetings of a secret society designed to save the written word, the boardrooms of the evil online retailing giant Synchronic, and ultimately to the hallowed halls of the Oxford English Dictionary-the spiritual home of the written word. As Anana pieces together what is going on, and Bart falls victim to the strange ‘word flu’ that is spreading worldwide, the very future of language is at stake….

Kate Fullerton, talented tea designer and now co-owner of The Tea Chest, could never have imagined that she’d be flying from Brisbane to London, risking her young family’s future, to save the business she loves from the woman who wants to shut it down. Meanwhile, Leila Morton has just lost her job; and if Elizabeth Clancy had known today was the day she would appear on the nightly news, she might at least have put on some clothes. Both need to start again. When Kate’s, Leila’s and Elizabeth’s paths unexpectedly cross, they throw themselves into realising Kate’s magical vision of London’s branch of the newest and most delectable tea shop, The Tea Chest. But every time success is within their grasp, increasing tensions damage their trust in each other. With the very real possibility that The Tea Chest will fail, Kate, Leila and Elizabeth must decide what’s important to each of them. Are they willing to walk away or can they learn to believe in themselves? An enchanting, witty novel about the unexpected situations life throws at us, and how love and friendship help us through. Written with heart and infused with the seductive scents of bergamot, Indian spices, lemon, rose and caramel, it’s a world you won’t want to leave.

While you are here…

If you live in the US or Canada enter to WIN The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off by Carolyn Brown

Vote for Book’d Out in the Best Australian Blog Awards. Click the image below and look for Book’d Out (listed alphabetically). I’d appreciate your support!

Thanks for stopping by, I’ll try to be along to visit you shortly!