A post to link your Spiritually Speaking Challenge reviews

Hello everyone. If you signed up for my Spiritually Speaking Challenge, this post will serve as a way of linking your reviews. Simply put your name followed by the title of the reviewed book and a direct URL that will get me to the post containing the review.

'Deadly Decisions' by Kathy Reichs

Deadly Decisions by Kathy Reichs was my first try at both forensic thriller and Reichs’ writing from which TV series ‘Bones’ arose. The thriller wounds around a ‘new millennium mafia’, the biker gangs first created in the U.S. and then branched out to Canada. Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist, who volunteers her help to the Montreal special unit created to fight the bike crime. Tempe is shocked and pushed to action after a little girl is accidentally shot to death in the rivaling biker gangs’ shootout. She swears to herself that she will get the people responsible for it behind bars. It doesn’t take long for Tempe to realize that she might have gotten more than she bargained for.

When I started reading Deadly Decisions I was really excited. I have heard a lot of good things about her novels. The reviews promised at lot of thrills and action so I really looked forward to indulging myself. However, I quickly became skeptical of the whole spin. Maybe because it’s a forensic thriller, but I did not like the dry tone the book was set in. Almost no emotions coming from any of the characters, including the main one, Tempe Brennen. Definitely too many medical and technical explanations on how the process of blood spatters or bone restructuring work, so many in fact, that whole chapters could have been taken out and the book would lose nothing of its main content. The action did pick up towards the end and there were even a couple of surprises, but it only left me wishing that the book were as interesting from the beginning. I have to say I was really disappointed with the book. I only hope that it may be due to my inexperience in forensic fiction or the fact that it was one of Ms. Reichs’ early novels. I still own one more book in the Tempe Brennan series and even though I am not quite looking forward to reading it, I am looking forward to giving it a second chance.

CHALLENGES: 2009 Ban On Spending , 2009 Suspense & Thriller Reading Challenge , 100+ Reading Challenge

Things That Make Me Happy.

I have been tagged with this meme by Smash from Great Books and Fresh Coffee.


The rules for the tag are simple.
Link to the person who has tagged you.
Write down six things that make you happy.Post the rules, tag six others and let them know you did it.
Then tell the person when your entry is complete.

Since it's things that I'm supposed to be listing I am not mentioning people (it's just another weird pet peeve of mine):
1. Books - that one's obvious, they make me soo happy that I imagine Hell to be a place with no books.
2. Summer - the hotter the better (I hate winter and cold temperatures).
3. Sun - if I can't have summer and warm days, a sunny day even in the winter time will make me happy.
4. Travel - even though I don't really do much of it, not yet at least, the prospect of going places and seeing beautiful things and worlds makes me very happy and worth looking forward to.
5. Full tank of gas - I know, it's mundane but I can breathe with relief when I know that I actually won't have to be stuck home forever.
6. Library book sales - I love it, love it, love it! Ninety percent of my personal library is built from used books purchased at the library sale. I own many bestsellers and for very little I can afford the luxury of being surrounded by books.
And now the six people whom I'm tagging:
1. Molly from my cozy book nook
2. Julie from Joyful Days
3. Cindy from Cindy's Love of Books
4. Jo-Jo from Jo-Jo loves to read!!!
5. Drey from drey's library
6. April from Cafe of Dreams
Enjoy girls!

Only the quotes today.

I sometimes read a book that becomes very dear to me. So dear that I am afraid to write a review in case I would not give it justice. Medallions by Zofia Nalkowska is one of those books. I have read it and reread it many times. It is a compilation of short, non-fiction stories in a form of documentaries. Each person and each story is a true testament to what happened in Poland during the WWII Nazi genocide. All I can say is that this book is shocking, heartbreaking and eye-opening. But because I am in so much awe of it, instead of writing a review, I am letting the book speak for itself in a form of selected quotes.

"People dealt this fate to people" p.47

"What's worse is that they [the Jewish] can't be saved...They kill them on the spot if they defend themselves. And those who don't, they transport just as surely as to their death. They set them on fire and lock them up in their homes. The mothers wrap up their children in anything soft and throw them out the window onto the pavement below. Then they jump too. Some even jump holding the youngest child." p.21

"Reality is bearable if something prevents us from knowing it completely. It draws near in fragmented events, in tattered reports. We know of the peaceful death marches of unresisting people. Of the leaps into flame, of the leaps into the abyss. But then, we are on this side of the wall." p.21

"I'll tell you: I wanted to live. I don't know why. Because I didn't have a husband or family, no one, and I wanted to live. Why? I'll tell you why: to tell everything just like I'm telling you now. To let the world know what they did." p.32

"The utilization of burned bones for manure, of fat for soap, of skin for leather goods, of hair for mattresses - these were only the by-products of the huge state-run industry that hauled in massive revenues over the course of years.

This constant dividend flowed from human suffering and human fear, from human degradation and crime, and it became the essential economic rationale for the spectacle of the camps. The ideological postulate of exterminating races and nations served this goal, became its justification." p. 46

Reference:

Medallions by Zofia Nalkowska; Northwestern University Press, pub. 2000

Books I read in January

Hello all. I haven't been writing anything recently. I know, guilty as charged. But it's been a very long week for me and I have been really busy....doing absolutely nothing. I cannot muster enough energy to even go and read the great stuff on your blogs, not to mention to write a comment here and there. The only thing that I did manage to do was reading, but that doesn't really count, since I also managed to sleep and eat and these hardly require extra energy.

Anyway, since January is over (thank you Lord!) I figured I'll start keeping record of books I read each month. Just another thing that'll help me keep on track with the reading challenges I signed up for.



1. The Kingmaking by Helen Hollick (not due in the stores until March 2009, I will be posting
my review and the author's guest blog in the last week of february. For
now, let me just say that it was a great historical novel.)


2. The Blessings by Anna Quindlen (it was okay, but not good enough to encourage me to read more of her work)


3. Chocolat by Joanne Harris ( I posted the review, a wonderful little book).


4. The Testament by David Morrell (an okay thriller, not enough for a review).


5. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (read for a book club discussion, quite good actually.
One of the better YA novels I've read).


6. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (I think everybody has heard about this one, it was a
good YA book, very intelligent and emotive, something we need more of
for our young readers).


7. The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber (I reviewed this one a couple of weeks
back. I liked it very much, especially the writing style of Mr. Gruber).


8. Mr. X by Peter Straub (the only horror so far this year).


9. Conan Doyle's Wallet by Patrick McNamara (paranormal non-fiction that gave me a few
sleepless nights, I might add).


10. Andorra by Peter Cameron (I don't know what to say about this one, the writing was really
good, very evocative and the ending was quite surprising).

I also listened to audiobooks.

1. One For The Money by Janet Evanovich (quite funny, it did cause me to giggle here and there).

2. High Profile by Robert B. Parker (I think this one exemplifies why some books should not be recorded).

3. The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster (a very weird book, I didn't quite know what to make out of it but I also couldn't stop listening to it either. It was dark, tragic but somehow alluring).

I think I got pretty lucky with the selection. All the books were either really good or at least good enough to read through to the end. The only thing I will say is that there was no book with a Wow! factor there, where 'Wow!' translates into: 'OMG, the book was absolutely fantastic, I think I'm gonna read it again'.
February will be primarily an ARC month, I have quite a pile growing. I hope I won't have to write negative reviews. So far they all look quite interesting.