The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost (Review!)

Just finished The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J Maarten Troost.

I admit that it was an interesting, light-hearted read. Something that would be appropriate for a horrifically long plane ride or lounging on a beach.

It did take me a while to get into this book though. The author has a tendency towards really long and involved sentences. As I do not like to reread sentences to understand what they mean, and was forced to do so in this book, I was a little bit annoyed.

Also, the humor was not as evident in the beginning as it was in the end. Or maybe I was just more used to reading it and could focus on the humor by the time I hit page 150?

If you have read reviews for this book, I think that most of them are blown out of proportion. It is not as good as they say it is. Which is also one of the reasons that I had a hard time in the beginning - unmet high expectations.

But if you want something that is light-hearted and manages to walk the line between ridiculous and unbelievable, it's definitely the right book for that.

And, as a disclosure, the natives of this island are neither cannibals (though the dogs are), nor are their sex lives discussed at any great length.

About the review for Blameless by Gail Carriger: I think I'm going to need to reread the book before I offer opinions. Look for it sometime in the future!

Blameless by Gail Carriger

Just finished up the third book in the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger, entitled Blameless.

Review will be up soon!

The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Childbirth by Henci Goer (Review!)

This was an interesting read. The whole premise (and the bias) is that routine medical interventions during childbirth are generally unnecessary. It looks at most of these procedures individually (such as epidurals, inducing labor, cesarean sections, episiotomies) and tries to explain why they are unnecessary as routine procedures.

There were two things that I loved about this book. One was that it was absolutely packed with information. In addition to the conclusions that the author had drawn, she includes a bibliography and her thoughts on the main research papers she used to come to those conclusions.

The other is that the Ms. Goer is absolutely upfront about having a bias. It is mentioned in the introduction. What impresses me that even through the bias, you can tell that she is struggling to be balanced about the presentation. There are minimal judgements to those that do require these procedures.

It has definitely opened my eyes to the prevalent opinion of most obstetricians. Since I live overseas on a military base, I have very limited options and most of the people I run into are very conservative in their mindsets. It helps to know which questions I need to ask my doctors to see if they are the right fit for me.

The only downside is that it was written in 1999. Now, I understand that once a body of researchers continue to reach the same conclusions, there will very rarely be results that differ from those conclusions (Ms. Goer even mentions this at one point). Unfortunately, that doesn't account for are new policies, procedures and medications.

I think it's a fantastic jumping off point, but now I do need to do research into what's being done differently now. Hopefully the information isn't too hard to find!

The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer

Just finished reading The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer. Thoughts about it will be up shortly.

This is the motherhood part of this blog. I'm currently about 8 weeks into my very first pregnancy. I have a tendency to read up extensively on things before they happen, so this won't be the only book I read in regard to pregnancy/childbirth/parenting.

As there gets to be actual children in my life, I wanted the option of having a place to express my opinion about the different parenting techniques I run into and some of the questions I know I'll grapple with.

For now, I'll continue to read the books and hope that the morning sickness goes away soon.

Writing Difficult Characters

I've been working on a writing project off and on for about 6 months. I love it because the whole purpose of this piece of writing is to be as ridiculous as possible while still maintaining a margin of believability. Since it's a romance, this is much easier to do.

The reason that this has been an off and on project instead of just on is for one reason alone. My difficult character. Her name is Tina and she has the amazing ability to stop conversations dead with her inanity. This wouldn't normally be so difficult, but I'm in the beginning of my first rough draft. My writing style is such that my character's personalities and quirks are rather nebulous until I get to the end of the first draft (or sometimes even later). Because I don't have an entirely clear picture of my main characters, it's really hard to guess how they might react to Tina's ridiculous statements, thus stopping my writing dead. It takes multiple days, sometimes weeks, to come up with an answer to the question "How would my character react to this?". And since Tina is actually a fairly important character in the beginning, I can't just kill her off (though I do this often enough in my imagination).

Anyone else have this issue?? How do you deal with it?

Accidentally Dead by Dakota Cassidy (Review!)

Ever watch one of those awful romantic comedies where you truly want to believe the lead actor and actress are made for each other, but their complete lack of chemistry just makes it absolutely impossible??

This book was that awful romantic comedy in book form.

As much as a deny it, I'm a romantic at heart. I root for the couple to fall in love and work it out every time, BUT you have to give me something to believe.

The Main Character of Accidentally Dead spent about 3/4 of the book hating on her love interest (even though she of course lusted for him) and has serious trust issues, but somehow manages to overcome both in the last bit of the book to agree to be mated for all eternity with this guy.

There was little to no build up. Just one night she says she's in a weird mood (though it isn't completely obvious from the writing style), and the love interest isn't as grating to her. This leads to a realization that he isn't as bad as she thought he was. Which leads to eternal love days later?

Add in the misspelling of Metallica (written as Mettalica) - which, as a diehard Metallica fan since I was thirteen, hurt - and the improper use of "couldn't care less" (written as "could care less"), I had a really hard time with this book. I now understand why one of the tips for would be authors is to edit the crap out of your manuscript. Those two editing mishaps were so grating, it was almost enough to make me put down the book.

My advice? Don't read it. About half the porn in the world is more believable than this.

Accidentally Dead by Dakota Cassidy

Just finished up the book Accidentally Dead by Dakota Cassidy. I'll put up my thoughts on it once I've got them all gathered up.

Writing

The writing portion of this will become MUCH clearer as we get closer to November.

In case you were not aware, November is National Novel Writing Month. This is an event I've participated in for the last two years. I can proudly say that I've "won" each time!

I'm not sure that I'll ever be published. I don't even know yet if I want to be published. I'm just going to keep writing. As long as I enjoy what I'm doing, that's enough for me.

Reading

I (very) recently joined up with the lovelies over at Fill in the Gap. I'm currently working on my list of 100 books, but it shall be up soon.

As I read the books on the list, I'll post here what I've read and any thoughts or feelings on the books.

It will be interesting to see how many of the books are mind numbingly boring, how many send me into a political furor, how many become permanent additions to my collection and how many I will actually be better for having read.