R. Rose's Reading Diary

Finally finished the book club book for the month, Birthright by Nora Roberts. I honestly had a blast with this one. You get a nice little bit who dunnit, a couple of well developed romances, and plenty of soapy twists and turns. This was at a period when Nora Roberts was really coming into her own, and you could feel her getting a better grasp of her pacing. The story follows several characters connected to a controversial archeological dig in a small New England town. While the back of the book would make you think that the dig was the central focus, the true focus is very different. I kind of don't want to spoil it here, as. I liked not really knowing the full plot as I went into it. Made the reveals more fun.  It isn't perfect, with some lag towards the end where things should be ramping up. I had a similar problem with Sanctuary , which was a slightly earlier book. When we are supposed to be getting into the swing of things things would screech to a halt for a misplaced lo...

 The thing I didn't want to have happen of course happened. I hit a reading slump. Something in my brain just clicked off and said, nope. Don't know what it is, or why, but it hit and it hit hard. Hence me not posting a lot on my reading diary.  I am slowly making my way through my office book club book, Birthright  by Nora Roberts. I can tell you that one is good just for that fact that not even my slump has kept me from enjoying it! It was 100% not the book I thought it was going to be, but I am enjoying the heck out of the book it is turning in to. This book feels like it came out when Nora Roberts was really hitting her stride. I think it came out either right before or after Midnight Bayou. I adore that book (and the TV movie), and feel like she was finding a good balance in her writing style there. Especially compared to something like Sanctuary , which was a fun thriller, but lacked the balance between the love scenes and moving the plot along. Birthright  is ...

  Gyo  is not Ito's best work, but it is one of his most interesting. While most of his stories are surreal and dread filled, Gyo is a full on creature feature. It hits differently than a lot of his stuff, while still keeping with his wonderful, creepy visuals.  The plot is straight out of a SyFy original movie, with robotic legged fish coming from the ocean and invading the land. You have a whole bevy of killer sea creatures on robotic legs, a virus that has some very nasty side effects, and even a mad scientist. This one is like Ito is playing out a love for B-movies that you don't see in some of his better loved works like Uzumaki. The closest I can think of in comparison is Remina  maybe? Gyo kind of got buried when it first got released. Uzumaki  had made such a splash, but when Gyo  hit, it was so different that I remember critics not being as warm to it. It didn't get bad reviews by any means, but it for sure was considered lesser than. I guess it is...

I am a big horror nut, and that includes the books I read. So, when Paperbacks from Hell came out, I of course started snapping up any old school paperbacks I could find. If it was sold on wire rack in a grocery store, I wanted it. One of the authors I had a really hard time finding books for was Ruby Jean Jensen.  She was a prolific horror paperback writer, starting out doing gothic romance, she shifted to horror and ended up doing most of her work for Zebra in the 1980's and 1990's. Her book covers were typical Zebra, with creepy dolls, kids and more skeletons than you can shake a stick at. The books themselves weren't groundbreaking, but she sold well enough to create her own little cult audience. By the time I was even aware of her existence most of her books were long since out of print, with Zebra's horror line shutting down in 1996. With the publication of Paperbacks from Hell  her books, and the books of many other similar authors, went from being easy used book...

I had picked up the first volume of this series almost a year ago when I was back home visiting family. I got volume 2 pretty quickly after that, and then I sat on reading the last volume for way too long. I think I have a problem with finishing series. Like, my brain just doesn't want them to be over. So, I pushed back whatever is going on in in my skull, and I finally got around to finishing this little three volume comedy series. I don't know why it took me so long to pick up volume 3, but I am so glad I did.  The basic premise of My Dad's the Queen of All VTubers?! is that a high school student finds out that his dad is secretly a super popular "female" VTuber. One that he himself had been obsessed with. Once that cat is out of the bag hijinks ensue as everyone is pulled into the wild world of being a VTuber.  The series is mostly a series of comical sketches with very little over all narrative moving from chapter to chapter. I think the sitcom approach works ...