The Adventures of a Constant Reader

In September I received a notification in my email from the Book of the Month Club that said I could get Stephen King and Owen King’s new Book Sleeping Beauties for free if I resigned up for the monthly subscription.  I had been planning to pick up this book anyway so I figured, why not?  Their usual box is $14.99 per month.  I got a “credit” for one book and had to pay the $9.99 they typically charge for an additional book for the second book.  So for $9.99 (shipping is free!) I got Sleeping Beauties and Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker.     When you first sign up for the Book of the Month Club ( https://www.bookofthemonth.com/enroll ) they’ll ask you some questions about the types of books you like, and how many books you read per month so they can get a feel for what to recommend for you.  You’ll fill in all your billing information and it’ll give you a few books to pick from for your first box.  You can either pick just one book, or add additional books to your

     I'm back!  I've been MIA for a little while because I was preparing for my daughter to arrive.  She was born last Saturday!  We're in good health and now that we're starting to get a routine down I can work on my blog again.      I was really excited when one of the book club members requested that we read The Wars of the Roses:  The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones.  Not only am I an avid attendee of both the Renaissance fairs in my area, but I've always been interested in the history behind the British throne.  I recently found out through ancestry.com that one of my ancestors, William Duke of Hastings, was pretty heavily involved in the events that occurred under the rule of King Edward V so I was interested to see what this book would have to say about him.      I was initially worried that this book would be dry, since it's a history book, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Jones has written this book in a way that ma

                                  First, I want to apologize for skipping last week.   Things have been kind of crazy getting ready for Olivia to arrive.   We’re getting down to the wire, they’ll be inducing me in about three weeks!   I can’t believe how fast time is going right now!                 Anyway, what you’re really here for is a new book review.   This week I’m going to be reviewing the collection of short horror stories I finished up last week, Ghostly .   The book was edited by Audrey Niffenegger and contains 16 short ghost stories written by various authors.   There are a couple of stories that you see quite often in collections like these.   I feel like “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe, and “The Beckoning Fair One” by Oliver Onions have been pretty widely read.   Most of the collection were by authors I haven’t heard of or stories by known authors that I haven’t read.   Since I read a lot, horror especially, when I pick up collections like this I typically

I finished The Death Cure over the weekend.   Overall, I’m happy to be finished with this series.   I know it was a popular series, but I just couldn’t find much to recommend about it.   The Death Cure does have more action than the previous two books in the series, but I just can’t get past the fact that they probably could have achieved the desired outcome in a much shorter time frame, with less torturing of children, if they’d have just used imaging machines to scan the brain patterns of the immunes and compared them to patterns in the brains of the infected.   Since I couldn’t get on board with the premise, I couldn’t get on board with the series.                   I also didn’t feel very connected to the main character.   Not only does he spend most of his time in the last two books either sleeping or passing out (it seemed like every chapter in The Scorch Trials ended with him passing out, I’m not even exaggerating), his personality is a little bland.   He’s made out to be