There's nothing quite like a Monday in the world of insurance after a long holiday weekend. I think it's because everyone has an extra day to stew over their problems, and extra time to practice their snarky phone speeches. Whew. It's nearly 11:00 a.m. and I've
finally answered all my voicemails and taken care of the morning stuff that I usually finish by 9:45. Now I have time for the
really important stuff, like blogging!
Hubby wanted to make this past holiday weekend a "movie weekend", and I let him choose our entertainment for Thursday-Saturday. Y'all already know we saw
WANTED Thursday night and I found it horrifyingly loud and bloody (though hubby thought it was "awesome"), and that my moviegoing experience was enhanced by a nest of noisy baby rats in the wall directly behind me. You can read my rant
here if you'd like.
My husband actually picked a total of four bad movies this weekend, but at least the other three were rentals. Let's see...hubby rented
STRAYS, a terrible movie from very early in Vin Diesel's career.
Awful. He also picked
CLOVERFIELD, which would have been pretty cool if not for the motion sickness-inducing home video format. Hubby's third and final pick was
10,000BC before I grounded him from selecting any more of our movies for the weekend. It was LOL stupid. My husband has
shockingly terrible really odd taste in movies, so the fact that even he was making fun of 10,000BC really says something.
But then it was my turn to pick out rentals. My husband has been teasing me about all the gay movies I've been watching lately, and he's been telling me that I've been "unfair to the ladies". That's such BS. He just wants to watch chicks make out! Whatever. Ever the lovely and agreeable wife, I decided to rent Season 1/Disc 1 of
THE L WORD. Wow, it's a really good show! I've already put the rest of Season 1 on my Blockbuster Online queue.
My other movie choice was
Miyazaki's SPIRITED AWAY, a very cute Oscar-winning anime movie from Japan. SPIRITED AWAY is really strange (probably makes more sense if you're familiar with Japanese lore and culture), but very, very good. I highly recommend it for cartoon fans, especially if you like anime. It is all in English, voiced by fairly well-known actors and actresses, so you don't have to worry about subtitles. It's one I'd like to have in my collection.
Now, on to books.
Last Thursday on my eXtasy Books shopping spree, I bought a book by D. J. Manly entitled
SO MUCH MORE THAN NAKED. In this story, a man named Darcy needs a date for his younger brother Martin's wedding. Darcy (who has never dated but swears he's straight) doesn't want to bother with finding a date, so Martin decides to browse the personal ads to find a date for Darcy. Martin sees an ad for a woman that seems very nice, so he replies and sets up a date for Darcy. When Darcy shows up for the date with the mysterious woman, he realizes that his date is not with a woman at all, but with a Dom named Ryan that is looking for his perfect submissive. There are quite a few plot holes in this book, the BDSM theme was pretty ridiculous and far-fetched, and the overall story is rather cheesy and unrealistic, but it obviously wasn't
too cheesy (or maybe I was just in a generous mood) because I read all 160 pages in two short sittings. At the very least, it was entertaining, and the characters were decent. The love scenes were nice, too. I'll give this one
3.75 stars.
I read a nice little yaoi (m/m) manga entitled
THE LILY AND THE ROSE by Dany&Dany. The story begins with two young men getting caught in a compromising situation together at school. They part ways, and one (Christophe) becomes a priest while the other (Alain) spends his life wanting to avenge his mother's death. Later, Alain is hired by an evil Cardinal to try to tempt Christophe into an affair. The two men reunite, and things get crazy from there. The story is really confusing, but the artwork is nice. However, on some pages it is obvious that hand drawings have been mixed with computer graphics, and the two forms don't mesh well at all. I give the manga
3.5 stars, mostly because the drawings of Alain and Christophe were gorgeous. It was good, but not a keeper, and I'm glad I bought it at a discount.
I started another yaoi manga last night called
BOND(Z) by Toko Kawai that is pretty cute so far. I read the first of four stories in that one, and I enjoyed it. I hear the other three stories are even better, so I look forward to finishing those. I'm keeping the book on the coffee table, and I plan to read a little bit here and there. I'll probably post a more thorough review when I finish the whole book. It's fairly explicit (the drawings show genitalia), though not as explicit as others I've seen. It's more graphic than the light boylove/shounen-ai mangas, but less graphic than hard yaoi, if that makes sense. The artwork is nice, and while the men do look pretty young (as in all yaoi manga), they at least don't look like children.
Oh, and I finally got back to reading
GUILTY PLEASURES, the first Anita Blake novel by Laurell K. Hamilton. I started it a couple of weeks ago but stopped just a few pages in because I got distracted by another book (
WICKED GENTLEMEN by Ginn Hale, which is wonderful). I read nearly half of GUILTY PLEASURES last night and I really like it. I don't see myself glomming the entire series right away, but I probably will read the next couple of books in the not too distant future. Anita is more obnoxious than I usually like a heroine to be, and LKH's choppy style took some getting used to, but I really do like the book overall. The men in the book more than make up for Anita's snarkiness.
Be sure to check out the
review that
Katie(babs) wrote on SAM'S CREED by Sarah McCarty. The review is great, but the really fun part is the obscene e-mail discussion that comes after it. Best post
ever. I think it deserves one of
Lisabea's infamous NosePicker awards. Speaking of Katie(babs) and Lisabea, they and a few other bloggers have started a
blog where they will discuss their upcoming trip to this year's RWA conference. Go check it out.
I also just found this really
fun post on gay comics at Sarah's blog. Not just manga, but actual
GAY COMICS. Is that awesome or what? I'm such a nerd...I clicked on every single link in the post and now I have at least eight windows up on my computer right now. Sarah's a super cool manlovin' Kiwi chick and her blog is teh bomb (and always filled with yummy manpics), so go visit her and tell her I said howdy.
And how could I forget Jessewave's
Adrien English Marathon? If you're a Fanyon or just a fan of gay mysteries, go check it out.
It is now 1:40 and I'm finally wrapping this up. I hate it when work interferes with blogging! Well, kids, that's all I've got for now. Have a wonderful week!
Why is it a sin to kill a mockingbird? I hate mockingbirds. The man that made the mockingbird the state bird of Texas was a sick bastard. We have a whole family of them in our neighborhood, and they sing constantly. They've picked up cat sounds, car alarm sounds, songs of other birds, yippy dog sounds, and of course their own irritating songs. One male bird lives in the tree outside our bedroom window, and the stupid little fucker insists on breaking into song every night promptly at 1 a.m. 1 a.m.! Every night I'm more and more tempted to put an end to it with the .410 under my bed. But then there's the whole problem of neighbors and noise and city gun laws. *sigh*
I found a new e-book publisher yesterday! The Wild Rose Press. Well, they're probably not new, but they're new to me. I bought two short stories (one M/F and one M/F/M) and one super-short (M/F) from them. The super-short story was COWBOY by Delilah Devlin. Verrry hot, and only $1.50. That one is available from their Wilder Roses category, under which they publish their erotic romances. The two short stories were DOUBLE DEUTSCH by Shayla Kersten and BURN BABY BURN by Lynne Logan. I'll let y'all know how I like those. I'm very excited to have found a new place to shop! I don't see any M/M there, but they do carry some popular M/F authors. And be sure to check out the Books & Shopping tab on my left sidebar. I added a bunch of e-book publishers this week. I haven't had time to try them all, so let me know which ones have good stuff (not that I need more books or anything).Sara Hawthorne returns to her picturesque hometown of Moonfall, where the antique stores and craft shops are run by the nuns of St. Gertrude's Home for Girls. Twelve years before, a woman died a horrible death at the Home. Now, in Sara's old room, distant voices and the tormented cries of children shatter the night. That's just the beginning, however, for Sara is about to uncover the hellish secret of St. Gertrude's.
