The New Vampire Diaries

I'm only at page 100 of the new book, whatever it's called and it has been extremely difficult to read.
Stefan sounds more like Edward Cullen and I'm trying not to throw up.
The story in the beginning is ridiculous and oozing with overdone sentimentality and feels more like Stephenie Meyer than LJ Smith, you have no idea how much it hurts me to say that.
None of the old pull to Damon exists, granted he's not quite himself, but he doesn't sound like good old Damon either. 
And it's all gotten just a bit too...racey for me. That's why I like teen fiction. It's all the angst and suspense and drama without the sex. And no, there isn't sex, but it's symbolic and I don't appreciate it and if it was my twelve year-old wanting to read it, I would say no. Or I would at least rip out the page with the worst of it.
And yes, I do listen to the Outlander series, it's the one exception where I will tolerate such things, but that's dealing with adults and it isn't written for teens.
And it's really just ridiculous.
The entire opening of the story has been ridiculous and it's inconsistent with the voice of the other books. It seems dumbed down and overly explanatory and just plain silly.
And there are elements of it that are so like the Twilight saga that I checked the copyright date and then the copyright date of Breaking Dawn.
But there seems to be hope.
Maybe.
Now at page 100, it's starting to sound like the old LJ Smith, the one that deserves the title New York Times Bestselling Author. The one that deserves to have her story put onscreen (even if it should be the big screen and not the little one). I just hope it keeps getting better, because if LJ Smith continues to read like Stephenie Meyer, I'm not wasting my time reading the next one. It's one thing for Stephenie Meyer to sound like Stephenie Meyer but it's just wrong for LJ Smith to sound like her and to be so utterly silly.
If Stefan calls Elena, lovely love, one more time, I might wretch.
Romance is NOT sentimentality

Vampire Diaries: The Fury

OMG.
As a rule, crying during teen romance novels is unacceptable behavior.
It almost happened though, almost but not quite.
Maybe it's because I got up so early. We'll blame it on that.

Thus far, The Fury is my favorite of the Vampire Diaries, which really should have all been one book...but what Stephenie Meyer can get away with today might not have flown so hot nearly twenty years ago (wow, let's not put it in those terms again!). The Fury is filled with awakenings and realizations and I was nervous for Elena and the gang, scared for them at times and then suddenly....my tiredness nearly allowed me to cry.
LJ Smith accomplishes what Meyer never did for me...she made me nervous. Yes, I've read the books time and again but every time that concern wells back up. I know these characters, they're old friends of mine and I want things to go well for them....but sometimes things just don't. And that is something else. LJ Smith is willing to allow her characters to go down paths that might be less than favorable. She is willing to shock and to let go.
It still makes me angry that these books were made into a television series (atrocious as it is).
They're making Outlander into a movie and The Vampire Diaries into a series. How backward is that?

At the end of the They Fury I ran back to my room, to my favorite shelf filled with old-school reads (which, I realized to my horror...I am missing a TON of my Christopher Pike books. Where did they go? Where is Chain Letter? And the Final Friends, hmmm? Ich weiss nicht.) and snatched Dark Reunion. Unfortunately, mommyhood duties called and it was time to feed the children. They are in bed now and I'm done talking to you, so now FINALLY I can get back to the gang.

Death of A Witch

The pages of Breaking Dawn barely had time to settle back into their spine before I picked up MC Beaton's Death of a Witch. While Beaton is also no Diana Gabaldon, she is MC Beaton which is far preferable to being Stephenie Meyer. Beaton creates vivid Scottish landscapes in the desperate places of my mind, places that long for travel and the harsh yet beautiful scenery of Scotland. Sometimes I wonder if I read her novels for the story or the scenery...it may be a toss up. Beyond that, I love her characters dearly as though I have known them all these years since I picked up my first Hamish MacBeth mystery.
They are simple reads, easily started and finished in a long, lazy day, but so entertaining. Beaton's work is the very definition of British cozy, making you want to curl up in a good, worn in chair with a blanket by a whispering fire with a cup of cocoa. I had put down her book at one point, when the sun finally shone through the dismal clouds of a windy Saturday morning and headed out to the garden. There wasn't much activity there but still the overwintered parsnips and onions and salsify give me a thrill of anticipatory excitement every time I spy their weed-like leaves hugging the cold, wet March soil. A few of the salsify had been sacrificed to discovery, I having not realized that some had made it through the winter and were beginning their growth anew.

As I sat on the chilled timbers of the bed, listening to the birds calling one another and claiming their territories the thoughts in my mind faded from the desire to go in and put on another layer, to the bonnie mountains and heathery moors of a Scotland I have never personally seen. My eyes scanned across our own land, with it's sharp hills and rocky creek beds, all crowded by tall skinny trees alive with chickadees and cardinals and a dozen other varieties of birds. In that moment I was overwhelmed with a love for our land. Our land. My family's land. And I began to wonder again about memories being passed down through genetics. Had my ancestors in Scotland had land of their own, land they loved? Had that love been passed down to me somehow, so that I crave going back? So that I would ignore my pride and my own selfish desires to preserve our family land here, the land where I had spent my years as a teenager and my children had spent most of their lives? During my time at Truman State I had been miserable, but when we came back to my parents', it was as though every atom in me settled back into the land and my soul whispered, "I have come home."
Perhaps that is why I love Beaton's Hamish MacBeth series so much, she takes me to Scotland with her. She brings to vivid color and even temperature, the nature of the Scottish landscape and it's people. I want to go back again and again. This is also what Gabaldon does, even more so, in her Outlander series and I never want to leave it.
Death of a Witch was good and engrossing and with some sadness I parted with dear old friends at the end, comforted in knowing that the shelf still holds another day of companionship not yet opened.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Maybe it was a bad night to pop it in.
I had been up since 4:30 am and spent nine hours driving, broken by three hours of camera set up and interview. All of which I found more enjoyable than the first ten minutes of The Time Traveler's Wife. It was like the decision which drove me to watch, instead of read, Twilight. It seemed like it would be less of a waste of time. The opening sequence, however, was so long and uninteresting that I knew if the rest of the movie was going to be like that, we would not be friends. And Eric Bana showed up and the dialogue started and I knew we wouldn't be friends. So I turned it off. Maybe I will let it play in the background and it can seep in around my boring movie spidey senses and we can work through our differences.
Maybe the book would be better.
I just can't abide poorly written dialogue, grates my nerves.
My real curiosity was to see if it was anything like Outlander, since it deals with a husband and wife and time travel.
I don't know.
Today will be given to the reading of Breaking Dawn, setting aside Rules of Vengeance again to read something with a wee bit more life in it.

Lord John Grey

Darn the luck.
I had been raptly listening to Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon only to finish the first part and find the second (from the library) on reserve. No longer able to bear the hour long drive without an audiobook, I went in search of Outlander. Also gone. Not wanting to dive into the next stories (when it comes to Gabaldon's Outlander series, I prefer to read first and listen later, silly perhaps, but there it is), I picked up Lord John Grey.
To begin, it is brilliantly performed by Jeff Woodman.
At first I didn't remember the character clearly, years have passed since I first read Outlander. So it was a bit of a shock when I realized he was gay. In all honesty I have never read a book wherein the main character was a homosexual man. Or woman for that matter. I called my mother and asked her to remind me of who the character had been to Jamie Fraser.
Ah yes. Him.
Not too certain that I would be interested in the romantic aspect of these stories (sorry, but I do prefer man-woman romances, being a heterosexual myself) I was about to give up on listening to an audiobook that day, but decided to look at it more clinically.
The stories, in and of themselves, though filled seamlessly with the results of heavy historical research (Diana Gabaldon is a master at this), were nothing amazing. Several times I found my attention had drifted and had to back up and find where my mind had meandered. It felt, at times, as though I were just listening to a heavily involved character background (except it was written after the fact). It took until the middle of the third book for me to decide that, despite the sometimes sluggish story lines, I really like Lord John. Were we to meet, he would be a good friend of mine.
Has the Lord John series been worth my time? Yes. Even if I had read them I would say yes. A mediocre work of Diana Gabaldon would be a masterpiece for anyone else. If that makes sense to you. Diana Gabaldon has unparalleled talent, her so-so works are what others would consider to be their masterpieces. And though I long to be done with the last disc and move on to something more thrilling, I will miss Lord John and hope to hear from him again.

Goodbye Lolita, hello Dragonfly

As it turns out, Reading Lolita in Tehran...not such a fun audiobook. I need pages for that one. Just couldn't get into it in the audio format. So this morning I stopped at the library and picked up one of my favorite novels, which ironically, has been narrated by Davina Porter. Happily, her performance is much better in this one, though I doubt even a shoddy narration could inflict harm on Diana Gabaldon's Dragonfly in Amber, or any of her novels for that matter. It had been five years since I last read Dragonfly yet it came rushing back over me like a sweet, forgotten dream. Gabaldon knows how to write, it's exquisite. It took five minutes and a chapter change before I could convince myself to get out of my parked car. I would sit there all day and listen. The only irritating part is that I know what happens and I want to get to that first thrilling part and it's killing me.

Perhaps, for the sake of my sanity it would be best if I gave up all fiction (both writing and reading) until the semester's end. The struggle between my love for reading and my need to pass statistics is colossal. It seems silly, true, but oh, Diana Gabaldon has mad skills.