Update...

Yes, it's been a while. What's been going on with me lately, you ask? Well, first, from Octobert through early December of last year, I was working at the library almost full-time, involved in a project to convert our library to RFID technology. What that means is I spent two + months sticking RFID tags in the majority of our library's collection. Fortunately I was working with someone I liked...we had some great conversations that helped lessen the boredom of what was a very repetitive task.

At the same time, I was taking two courses at school, one of which contained some extremely challenging material. Eventually, I did conquer it, but for a while, things were pretty hairy as I worked during the day and did school work at night. This term, by comparison, seems positively, carefree *g*, even though I'm taking three courses.

Speaking of school, I hope to be done by spring of next year, assuming I can take my final support course (Intro to Business in Canada) over the summer. Yep, it's a shame to have to do school over the summer, but I know that if I have a four month break, it will be that much harder to get motivated again in September AND it means I should be able to graduate next April.

We had a quiet Christmas and holiday season, which was actually quite nice after my busy term. New Year's Eve saw us planted on the couch with lots of yummy fingerfood, champagne and The Pacific - a fantastic mini-series. To lighten the mood after a few episodes, we switched to Jeeves and Wooster :)

Since then, I've returned to my normal work schedule and am concentrating on my school work again. At times I'll admit it does get to me, but with just over a year to go, I just keep telling myeslf that it's all worth it to get that diploma. 

Needless to say, my writing has taken a back seat over this period. It's frustrating, but at this point, I don't see it changing till I'm finished. I'm still reviewing for Sourcebooks (my next review is coming up soon) and that does help. Also, when ideas come to me for my stories, I make sure to note them down and have faith my characters will be waiting for me when I have the time to devote to them again.

So, that's my life right now...I'll visit blogs again during my next break in late Apr/early May...

Teresa

Currently Reading: To Defy a King by Elizabeth Chadwick

30 Day book meme...Day 01

I found this at Cate's Bookshelves and have decided that this is one way I can keep my blog updated without taking too much time away from my school work. The topics are right there for me and very specific...Cate found this meme at another blog, Christina Reads!

Feel free to join in :) And now, as they say, on with the sh--- er, meme.

Day 01 - A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)

This is a hard one for me to answer, I fully admit, as I don't always finish a whole series. After all, I still haven't gotten any further than Drums of Autumn (though I do have the other books). Still, I hated to see Sharon Kay Penman's Welsh series - Here be Dragons, Falls the Shadow and The Reckoning - end. It was masterful and I would have loved to have seen her continue the story somehow, even though the central character dies. I remember waiting on tenterhooks for each book in the series to be released, diving into it with the eagerness of a boy let loose in a Matchbox Car factory. Here be Dragons remains one of my favourite books to this day. For those of you who haven't read these books, they follow the story of the last Welsh princes of Wales - Llewellyn Fawr through to his grandson, Llewellyn the Last. There's political intrigue, war, family disputes and romance - everything any afficiando of historical fiction craves. If you haven't read them, I highly recommend finding them at your local library or bookstore!

Teresa

Comfort reads...

Sorry I've been absent again. Not only did I have to fight off a major sinus infection, but I also started school again just after Labour Day. Busy busy.

That said, we did take a couple of days last weekend in Vancouver and when we arrived home Saturday evening I was tired, but really wanted something to read. However NOTHING I could find, either from the library or from my own library, appealed. Then I remembered the boxes of children's books in the basement and knew EXACTLY what I wanted to read. A Chalet School book. Yep, you heard me - a children's book.

So off I went to the basement and dug out the box with all my Chalet School books (I own more than half the series) and chose one of my all-time favourites - Rivals of the Chalet School. Soon I was ensconsed in my recliner, happily reading away. It was exactly what I needed. A comfort read.

Do you have those? Books you can pull out that may not challenge you mentally but somehow are just right for the mood you're in, especially if you're tired? If so, please let me know :) I'd love to hear about them.

Teresa

Currently Reading: Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

The Big Read

I got this from fellow Canuck Cindy. Here's her intro - it was written so concisely, I figured I wouldn't mess with it:

Seems The Big Read, sponsored by the BBC, has estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list. How do you fare?

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (This was a tough one for me as I've read a fair amount of it, yet really not enough to bold it)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (like Cindy, I haven't actually read them ALL, but enough of them - I did a Shakespeare course at university and read at least 26 plays that year + others in high school)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (I'm pretty sure I've read this one)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

My score was a 27. And it's an interesting list. Both for what is on it and what isn't. I mean, why that particular Blyton title? One of the few I haven't read. Similarly I've read Hard Times by Dickens, yet it's not on there. And NO Canadian literature appears - grrrrr. I'd have included things like:

1. Josephine B series - Sandra Gulland
2. A Brief History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
3. The Odyssey - Homer
4. The Aeneid - Virgil
5. Beowulf
6. Dr. Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
7. River Thieves - Michael Crummey
8. Paradise Lost - Milton
9. Little House series - Laura Ingalls Wilder
10. Lives of Girls and Women - Alice Munro
11. A Jest of God- Margaret Lawrence
12. The Stone Angel - Margaret Lawrence
13. Bonheur d'occasion - Gabriel Roi
14. l'Etranger - Camus
15. Candide - Voltaire
16. The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy
17. The Old Wives Tale - Arnold Bennett
18. l'École des femmes - Molière
19. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - Rebecca Wells
20. Watermelon - Marian Keyes
21. Sailing to Sarantium- Guy Gavriel Kay
    
22. Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies - I admit, I haven't read this one yet, but it's on my TBR list along withVirginia Woolff's A Room of One's Own.

Care to do the same with my list as well?

Teresa

Reading Meme...

PLEASE NOTE - this post is a mess as I used the draft.blogger option (in which you can schedule posts) and something has gone wrong with their line break coding, which seems pretty much impossible to fix. I'm still trying, so please bear with me.

I found this at Sam's blog and thought it looked fun - perfect for a Saturday post:

Do you remember how you developed a love for reading?
Not at all - I just remember reading all the time as a kid. What are some books you read as a child?
Anything by Enid Blyton (Famous Five, Secret Seven, St. Clares, Mallory Towers etc), the Chalet School books by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, LIW's Little House books, LMM's Anne series and others (Emily etc), Caddie Woodlawn, The Witch of Blackbird Pond and oh, so much more.

What is your favourite genre?
Historical fiction of any flavour and stripe - mainstream, romance, mystery, suspense. If it's historical, I'll generally give it a try! But I also enjoy Women's Fiction of most shapes and forms, especially anything by Marian Keyes, Cathy Kelly and Catherine Alliot

Do you have a favourite novel?
It all depends on when you ask me. Anything by Elizabeth Chadwick, Sharon Kay Penman or Sandra Gulland comes to mind, but then again, I'm also a HUGE fan of Susan Howatch's masterful The Wheel of Fortune.

Where do you usually read?
In the living room, my little library, the deck - often with a cat on my lap! (though not out on the deck - too many predators out there for them to be safe if they decide to go exploring).

When do you usually read?
In the evening. If I try to read any other time of day, I get sucked in and don't accomplish much else :) Except when I'm on vacation, then the book comes out at lunch and rarely leaves me hand.

Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time?
Yep - not unusual for me at all. My husband doesn't understand that.

Do you read nonfiction in a different way or place than you read fiction?
It depends on what it is. If it's non-fiction for research, then yeah, I've very slow and deliberate and skip around in the text. But if it's for pleasure, I just read like I normally would.

Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library?
At one point I bought a lot of books, but now I borrow a ton from the library. It's so easy and the ILL librarian at the Sechelt Library is fantastic - she can get me pretty much anything!

Do you keep most of the books you buy? If not, what do you do with them?
Not any more. I used to, though. Now I give away the ones that aren't absolute keepers.

If you have children, what are some of the favourite books you have shared with them? Were they some of the same ones you read as a child?
No children, but I'm hoping to share my favourite books with my nephews and nieces. My older niece has already read Heidi and the Little House books - hopefully I'll share more with her in the coming years.

What are you reading now?
Right now, nothing. Wait, no, that's a lie - I am rereading SH's The Wheel of Fortune, but had put it aside when some other books came into the library for me. But they're all done now, so I'm back to that. Unless something else catches my fancy - possibly March by Geraldine Brooks or Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay - they're in the living room.

Do you keep a TBR (to be read) list?
More like a TBR bookshelf (or two)

What's next?
Robyn Harding's The Journal of Mortifying Moments - when it arrives at the library, which should be soon.

What books would you like to reread?
Some of my Elizabeth Chadwick collection, Susan Howatch's Penmarric and Cashelmara - oh, so many others.

Who are your favourite authors?
Elizabeth Chadwick, Tracy Chevalier, Susan Howatch, Jo Beverley, Mary Jo Putney, Sandra Gulland, Marian Keyes, Catherine Alliot,Sharon Kay Penman, Barbara Erskine, Cathy Kelly, Anya Seton, Edith Pargeter/Ellis Peters, Kathryn Smith - oh so many others I can't even call to mind right now.

Anyone else want to play along?

Teresa
Currently Reading: The Wheel of Fortune by Susan Howatch

Historical Fiction Challenge...

On my recent internet travels, I found this cool reading challenge. Now, for me, six books in six months is usually not an issue, but I still want to participate. There are books in my TBR pile, including the ones I bought this weekend (more on that below) that I have been meaning to read, but haven't quite gotten around to yet. So I'm going to make this list and stick to it:

1) Mistress of the Sun by Sandra Gulland
2) March by Geraldine Brooks
3) Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel
4) Versailles by Kathryn Davis
5) The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi by Jacqueline Park
6) Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier

Now, I'm already a huge fan of Gulland and Chevalier, having read all their earlier novels. Brooks is a more recent find - I reviewed her most recent offering - People of the Book - for the HNS. My mum has read March (she gave me my copy) and Year of Wonders, as well as PotB and highly recommends the others.

GD I've heard lots of good things about and the final two have been on my TBR shelf for several years now and I really do want to get to them. This might be just the inspiration to pick them up and read them :)

So, how 'bout you - are you up for the challenge?

As I mentioned above, I bought several books on the weekend, at the book sale in aid of the Friends of the Sechelt Library (where I volunteer). As well as Galileo's Daughter, I picked up The Time Traveller's Wife, a mystery by John Dunning, Georgette Heyer's novel about William the Conqueror, some very cool exhibition catalogues on old coins and militaria and more:



The exhibition catalogues are fantastic - they have pics of swords and medals from my period, along with detailed descriptions and some history. For those who write hf, venture into the art history area of your library and see if they carry any of these wonderful sources. You're more likely to find them at a big research library, than a smaller local branch, or, as I did, at a book sale.

Ok - on with my day, now. We had a busy weekend. Sean stacked fire wood on Saturday, while I worked on burning more brush. Lots to catch up on here in my little office.

Teresa

Currently Reading: The Wheel of Fortune by Susan Howatch
Link of the Day: Research page of Sandra Gulland's website

To read or to knit...

After dinner last night, we decided to enjoy the fire in the living room, before watching Rome. I was going to get the book I'm reading for review, but suddenly I knew I just had to knit instead. For those of you who both knit and read, do you find this? That the urge to do one over the other can sometimes be compelling? Do you understand it?

I'm working currently on a cool slouch sock for myself, knitted on two regular kneedles rather than circulars/dps (those of you on Facebook can see the sock in my Stitchbook box) and I was working on turning the heel. Having never done it before, I was a tad nervous. Maybe that compelled me to pick up needles/yarn instead of my book? The urge to finish that part?

Feedback definitely appreciated :)

Teresa

Currently Reading: Book for review

Second week of September...

That's what we're now looking at for moving in. Not so bad when one considers how often people are more than a month later moving into a new house. But still a little disappointing. However, not much we can do about it. Our complicated ceiling lines mean that the second part of the dry walling process (taping and mudding) are going to take longer than anticipated. The painter is scheduled for the 27 of August, then the cabinets and floors for the first week of September. Finishing (door frames etc) will take place the following week, so hopefully we'll be able to move in on that weekend. Fingers crossed.

Not much else new. I did manage a little writing last week, before the family came for another visit. Sean and I both ended up with a cold (Sean on his birthday, no less) - we're almost over it now. I'll try to get round to other blogs, but we're busy this week. Appliance shopping today, ceiling fan/lighting shopping tomorrow in Vancouver, my library shift on Thursday and the Fibre Arts Festival on Friday.

I finished Birth of Venus yesterday and really, really enjoyed it. My one quibble was that we didn't find out what happened to two of the characters, so I didn't really feel the story was completely over. When not reading romance, I don't need and HEA ending, but I do need a real conclusion. Other than that, it was engrossing with lots of period detail, suspense, romance and complex human emotion born from fully realized characters.

Teresa

Currently Reading: Angels by Marian Keyes

Monday on the Coast...

Things here are still busy, busy. We're meeting with the electrician this afternoon to go through the house and hope to find our windows/doors have been delivered. If they have, then we could be at the lock up stage by the end of the week. Yay! Move in is slated for late August (fingers and toes crossed) - much will depend on the drywallers (they come in after the electrical/plumbing is done), painters and then the flooring people. But, the roof is now done and the chimney is up:)

I've had to accept I won't get much writing done until things get more settled. There are lots of little things to do that all seem to take up a lot of time. But that's ok, my story is percolating :)

Though I admit to having spent a little too much time over at Facebook yesterday, time that could have been spent writing. However, I found a friend of mine from my CANEX days, someone I lost touch with in the early 2000s. She helped keep me sane in that job. And through her page, I found another of my former co-workers. They're both married with kids now, so it was cool to catch up with them.

It's going to be smoking hot here this week, hot even by my Ontario born and bred standards - up into the mid 30s. I just have to hope it cools off well at night. It certainly was cool enough on Saturday night when we went to a 7/7/7 party/bbq - but not so cool that it spoiled the fun *g*.

That's about it for now. My internet connection is still a little temperamental, but I'll keep trying to make the blog rounds :)

Right. Birth of Venus. It's good so far, reminds me a little of a YA book I reviewed a couple of years ago, The Vanishing Point by Louise Hawes (not the book of the same name by Mary Sharratt that's on my TBR list).

Teresa

Currently Reading: The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

Ye Olde Historical Novel Meme...

I found this at my friend Sarah's blog. I know I did a similar one recently, but this has some neat twists, so I'm going to do it anyway.

Straight Historical, Historical Mystery, Historical Fantasy, Historical Romance, or Time Travel?
Straight historical and historical romance are pretty much tied for first - it just depends on my mood. Then time travel. I've read very little historical fantasy (The Mists of Avalon comes to mind, but that's about it).

Historical Figures as Main Characters or Purely Fictional Characters in Historical Settings as Main Characters?
For my HF, I love having historical figures as main characters. In HR, it's not so important - they're often better as secondary characters then. In TT, I prefer fictional characters, otherwise too much history can get changed.

Hardback, Trade Paperback, or Mass Market Paperback? I'll have to second Sarah on this one - "Trade paperback, hardback second, mass market third. I like the feel of trade paperbacks, plus they're cheaper than hardbacks, and not as heavy to cart around."

Philippa Gregory or Margaret George?
Well, as I've not read Gregory, I'll have to go with George, though I've only read Henry VIII and Mary, QoS&theIsles.

Amazon or Brick and Mortar?
Definitely brick and mortar. I LOATHE Amazon and the way it undercuts indies. I'll wait weeks for an S/O from my local indie before I'll order from Amazon.

Bernard Cornwell or Sharon Penman?SKP is one of my fave all time authors - Here Be Dragons still makes me cry. That said, I've not read Cornwell yet - he's on my very large TBR pile. Still, I don't see him ever dislodging SKP.

Barnes & Noble or Borders?Um, we don't have either in Canada, so I'll have to just say Not Applicable here.

First Historical Novel You Ever Remember Reading? Gone with the Wind for an adult book. YA, it would probably be Caddie Woodlawn or The Witch of Blackbird Pond, unless you count the Little House on the Prairie series. Or Anne of Green Gables.

Alphabetize by Author, Alphabetize by Title, or Random?
I shelve by time period, then author with the most number of books.

Keep, Throw Away, or Sell?
I keep as many as I can, though every year I do give some away. Well, last year I gave away more than ever, but that was because I knew we couldn't bring them all out West with us. As it was, I filled 39 boxes!

Jean Plaidy or Norah Lofts?
Tough call, I really like them both, though if push came to shove, I'd say Plaidy as she introduced me to the world of the Plantagenets.

Read with Dust Jacket or Remove It?
If it doesn't fit properly or gets annoying, I remove it. If possible, I leave them on to protect the covers.

Stop Reading When Tired or at Chapter Breaks?
I usually try to make it to the end of a chapter, but every once in a while I give in when I'm tired.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?
Depends on my mood.

Buy or Borrow?
80/20. With new-to-me authors I will borrow first, then buy.

Posie Graeme-Evans or Pamela Kaufman?
Haven't read the former. Didn't mind Kaufman's first two. Haven't read her recent ones.

Buying Choice: Book Reviews, Recommendations, or Browsing?
A combination of all three.

Dorothy Dunnett or Anya Seton?
I'll parrot Sarah again here - "Seton, as I've read nearly all of hers. Dunnett seems to be an acquired taste I've yet to acquire." and add, I do HAVE The Lymond series (thanks to Katy) and one day will try once again to read it. Am hoping next time out might be the charm, as so many writers I know and respect LOVE these books.s

Tidy Ending or Cliffhanger?
All depends - is it obviously part of a series? Then yeah, a cliffhanger is great. Tidy endings are good most of the time, though.

Sticking Close to Known Historical Fact, or Using Historical Fact as Wallpaper?
I prefer more historically accurate novels, though if done well, wallpaper books are enjoyable too.

Morning Reading, Afternoon Reading or Nighttime Reading?
Late afternoon and evening. Wish I could figure out how to read and knit at the same time (without messing up my knitting) - THAT would be ideal :-)

Series or Standalone?
I don't really have a preferance here - a good story is a good story. Some I like seeing told over a series (like Sandra Gulland's Josephine trilogy) and others I like to see all in one book (pretty much anything by Elizabeth Chadwick following her initial series of connected books The Wild Hunt, The Running Vixen and The Leopard Unleashed).

Favorite Book of Which Nobody Else Has Heard?
The Measure of the World by Denis Guedj (Arthur Goldhammer, translator)

Tomorrow night I'll post again and tell you about what I accomplished at the library on Friday vis a vis my wip.

Thanks all for your concern for Sean - he's feeling somewhat better, but still waiting for the situation to be resolved. Not fun.

Teresa

Currently Reading: Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
Also Currently Reading: Dark Angels by Karleen Koen
Link of the Day: BBC - History

Some progress...

So yesterday, still stumped with my plot, I decided to adapt a technique a friend of mine used a few years ago to decide between which story to tell next. She gave her characters time to say why their story should be told and chose the most persuasive one. Now I don't have that problem, but I figured maybe I should have Henri and Madeleine tell me about their story - so I started with Madeleine. So far it's going ok. Hopefully it will help me focus on what's working and what isn't.

Have you ever read a book and skipped most of a chapter because the author annoyed you with one particular detail? I did this on the weekend, after picking up a women's fiction historical (kinda a saga, but not really, as it only covers 10 years) at a fund-raising sale for the local orchestra. It was going along pretty well, then the author chose a really (IMHO) stupid way to break up the heroine and her great love. The Big Misunderstanding. This annoyed the hell out of me and I ALMOST gave up on the book completely. BUT, I really wanted to see how the story developed otherwise, so I just skipped the really annoying section and continued on. And finished reading it last night. Overall it was a very compelling story, even though aspects of it did rather strain credulity - the number of coincidences were pretty high.

In the end I asked myself WHY I finished - what was it about the story that kept me going. Especially as the heroine was one of those beautiful women who doesn't know it, who everyone loves and all the men fall for, who makes good in a spectacular manner. You know what kept me reading? Her goal. She had a really, really strong goal and I wanted to see a) if she actually achieved it and b) how she went about getting to that point.

So, there we are - hook a reader with a compelling enough goal and the reader will keep going, even if other aspects of your tale aren't so good. (Please note - the book is not either of those listed below.)

What lessons have you learned from reading other people's work?

Teresa

Currently Reading: The Adventurous Bride by Miranda Jarrett
Also Currently Reading: Dark Angels by Karleen Koen
Link of the Day: Prep that Book! by Gaelen Foley
BONUS LINK OF THE DAY: Great advice from Agent Kristin Nelson

Half frozen shoulder

My shoulder is bad again. A combination of "mouse shoulder" and the wrench I gave it last summer when I fell while hiking over on Bowen. Can't spend much time at the computer or knit :-( Yesterday I did more GH reading instead. Nothing spectacular yet. Oh well.

I've noticed my blog stats (and comments) are way down. Guess I'm not visiting other blogs as much, so that's probably part of it. Oh well - at this point, I'm not going to worry about it. Way more in this world to worry about than a drop-off in blog comments *g*.

In playing at Photobucket the other day, I found I could create a slide show with some of the pics from our walk through the woods the other day. Enjoy!

Teresa

Currently Reading: One More Time by Claire Cross
Also Currently Reading: The Scot, the Witch and the Wardrobe by Annette Blair