Thursday, January 28, 2010 24 comments By: Suzanne

The Friday 56: The Fires of Heaven




Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

I'm terrible about posting much of anything lately because I've been caught up in the fun of a new romance. weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
But I won't forget my F56. Hopefully I'll find some free time soon to post about all the wonderful books I've been reading and listening to!
This week's selection comes from The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan. Yes, these books are all sitting on my desk right now, that's why I keep posting from them.

Min sagged in amazement, letting herself lurch with the cart's slow motion. "You intend to run away, then come back in a few years and hand yourself over to Bryne?"

Welcome to all the new people who've been playing lately! I'm so happy to have you!
Thursday, January 21, 2010 23 comments By: Suzanne

The Friday 56: The Shadow Rising




Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Well, I haven't been posting much lately because I am still making my way through The Wheel of Time. I am on book 4, The Shadow Rising so that's where this week's selection comes from.

This is Perrin speaking to Faile.

She raised her chin and shifted her shoulders, but she did not say anything. He went on. "I think I am part of Rand's destiny, somehow."
Saturday, January 16, 2010 10 comments By: Suzanne

De-Lurking the blogs!



I saw a funny post over at It's All About Books describing how Thursday was De-Lurking day. I love this because I am a notorious lurker, not that any of you would know. That's the point right? You come, you read, you leave without a trace! I am trying to make more of an effort to leave comments when I read other people's blogs, but sometimes I simply have nothing to say (can you believe it?). If you are like me, it's time to come out of the lurking closet. Leave a comment and have fun answering some of these questions:

Who's your favorite author?
Who's your favorite singer? I had to include this one because I love any chance I get to describe my undying love for Elvis Costello. 
If you could go ANYWHERE in the universe, real or not, where would go?
Do you have animals? Tell me about them! And take a moment to watch my babies at the top of the screen!

Friday, January 15, 2010 8 comments By: Suzanne

The Being Honest Award

I received the Honest Scrap Award the other day from Aye.Me? over at Reversing the Monotony. Thanks! This is one of those awards that requires you do actually do something, so thanks for giving me homework! hehehe


The rules say I have to tell 10 honest things about myself
1. I have to be in the mood for chocolate (like my period). It takes me a week (or more) to make it through a large chocolate bar but when I am in the mood I will go out of my way to find it RIGHT NOW!

2. I love weird cheese, like camembert and brie and speadable goat's cheese. It's the only reason this vegetarian has not gone vegan.

3. I would like a job where all I have to do all day is read books I want to read.

4. I am STILL a major Buffy fan(atic). I have all 7 seasons and still watch them on a regular basis.

5. I love to cook and am always looking for fun, new recipes

6. I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was in high school yet somehow ended up a music therapist. Weird.

7. When I was in college my favorite artist was Dali, then I discovered Magritte!

8. I have an undying love for Elvis Costello yet I have never had the chance to see him in concert. I'm hoping this is the year!

9. Halloween is my favorite day of the year. I start decorating for it in September (and have to make myself wait so I don't do it in August).

10. I try to be a good girl and read classic fiction but I begin to feel irritable if it's been too long since I read a fantasy novel.

Ok, passing this on to 10 bloggers. I wanted to something a little different and give some exposure to bloggers I have found outside the book blogging sphere. I think we book bloggers get stuck in a rut and forget there are other types of blogs out there that are worth reading. They are wonderful and some do not get the attention they deserve so head on over and read them!

Bluesman of the Mind
Charlie Pratt
Eclectic Whatnot
Kymlee: A Life Story
Lagunatic
The Copy Canopy
The She Chronicles
Walking in the Mountains
Time For A Change
A Veggie Venture

Thursday, January 14, 2010 21 comments By: Suzanne

The Friday 56: The Unknown God



Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Right now I'm kind of liking this version of the F56 logo best, but that might change! It's on the page 56 and (though you can't tell) from my Shakespeare book AND it just looks cool! hehehe (if I do say so myself).

So this week's selection comes from The Unknown God, a short story in the February 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy.

"How can I?" Aworo asked, bitter. "Some things can't be undone."
Saturday, January 9, 2010 2 comments By: Suzanne

The Endless Search

Ever have one of those authors that you simply never give up on? I have an author that I discovered many years ago and fell in love with. Unfortunately she has given up on my favorite series of hers but I never give up on her. I started reading The Ruins of Ambrai by Melanie Rawn when the second book The Mageborn Traitor was released. I had to look on Wikipedia to remember when exactly that was. March 1, 1997. Almost 13 years ago now. The funny thing is, now that I look that date up it's no wonder I remember the book so well. I seriously don't think I picked up the first book on the very day the second was released because I remember that day all too well. But I know it was close to this time and I know now why I continue to obsess about this series.
March 1, 1997 is the day that Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where I was living in at the time for college, was completely destroyed by an F4 tornado. It also happens to be my birthday; I was turning 20. At the time I was dating someone that I thought I was going to marry. Thank goodness for both of us it never happened, but we were very happy at that time. We had gone to visit my mom and my best friend from high school for the day (they only lived an hour away), to have dinner with them and celebrate my birthday. We stopped at a pawn shop about 15 minutes away from our destination so he could look at amps or guitars or some such. (I didn't play guitar then, though I wanted to learn). While there we learned from the guy working that a tornado was headed right for us. He had the news on and we watched the weather. We decided to stay there for a little while just in case. I stepped just outside the door and was shocked by the change in the weather. Just a few minutes before the sun had been shining. Not brightly but it had been there. Now the sky was a greenish-grey and the wind was blowing something fierce. Just as I called to my boyfriend to come see, I saw insulation flying through the air.
"I think maybe we should go back inside," I said.
"Ummm, yeah, good idea," he muttered.
So we rode the little tornado out, it wasn't much there and we thought we had a cute story to tell friends later.
When we went to dinner, the restaurant had the news on. It was one of those places like Chili's or Applebees or somesuch that always has the tvs on over the bar playing some game or news. On the all the channels was the news of the terrible tornados that whipped across Arkansas, Texas, and Louisanna. So many tornados that day all over the region that I doubt they ever knew exactly how many. I was shocked.

"I guess we weren't the only ones to see a tornado today!" I joked. But my mood quickly turned sour when I realized what they were showing. The pictures of devastation were just way too familiar.

"It's Arkadelphia," I breathlessly said to everyone at the table. "And that's the pharmacy that Kelli works at." It was leveled. There was truly nothing left of the building and I could not remember if Kelli (my roommate) was working that day. I tried immediately to call her, yet she didn't answer. I didn't know it at the time, but there were just not enough phone lines left in Arkadelphia to handle to normal amount of calls it gets, much less the massive amounts of people calling for help or people calling to see if loved ones were all right. I was simply frantic. I listened though when everyone said there was nothing I could do. I stayed, had dinner, and we left right after to go home and assess what we had left to go back to.

I will say right away, we were all very lucky. According to old reports (cause I couldn't remember this part) only 5 people died. It was shocking. You should have seen the devastation. The entire downtown was destroyed. I'm not exaggerating. There was was no building left standing downtown. This is where Kelli's work was. Kelli was not at work that day. She was not one of the few who died. In fact, she just had a baby two months ago. Everyone say congrats to Kelli!

Unfortunately for the town, most of the damage was done in the parts that were solely town. What I mean by this is, there are two universities in Arkadelphia. I highly doubt if they were not there that the town would survive. However, the most destruction was done in places that had nothing to do with either college. That turned out to be lucky for me and my friends though, in more ways than one. Our apartment and all the dorms being used were untouched. The universities had very little damage. As I recall the most damage was actually done to a dorm that was not used anymore. Just as the semester was ending, Kelli and I wanted to find a place off campus to live. Our campus apartment had some serious flaws and we needed a cheaper place to live.
An interesting side note. The pipes in that apartment popped constantly. It was loud so that you couldn't help but notice and be bothered by it. Unless you lived there. I remember going to the apartment with Kelli before I moved in and asking her what that noise was. She said, "What noise?" And cocked her head to listen. "Oh yeah, that's the pipes." She was serious. She had gotten so used to it that she didn't hear it anymore. I had almost the exact same conversation with a friend just a few months later, only I was the one saying "What noise?"

We found a couple new trailers for rent right where some houses had been destroyed and torn down. Another plus for us. I hate to list all the good things we got out of this tragedy, but they are there. My boyfriend and his friends rented the other trailer and we were suddenly party central. I'm sure the neighbor were overjoyed with us for the year we lived there but they had their moments too. We moved in during finals. I was deperately trying to study while listening to the constant pounding of hammers all around me as the town tried to recover. I tried to find some pictures, I figured there would be several but I guess the internet just was not as popular then as it is now so I couldn't find too many. Here's a good one to illustrate what I'm talking about.

It took me some digging but I found this one too:


So now, after all these years, is it any wonder that I still remember Melanie Rawn's books so well? The other day on Walking in the Mountains, JhanaJian brought up the subject of awareness. Mainly the post discussed how the two opposing forces of war and mediation can both bring us to a heightened sense of awareness. I believe this tornado did that for me at the time. I have read several of Melanie Rawn's other books, yet I remain spellbound (pun intended) by this incomplete series. I so aware of myself and my surroundings at this time of my life that I can sometimes remember whole conversations. I have a hard time some days remembering conversations from yesterday.

Many promises have been made that this series will be completed one day, yet Rawn continues to put it off, writing about other places and other characters. It is very possible The Captal's Tower (the third book) will never be written. But I never give up hope. Every so often I go on a search to see if there is any information about it. Everytime I find out about another story she did for a collection or a new book in different series she is writing. I am happy she got passed what ever difficulty she had. I'm not sure what it is but she has alluded to it in the notes of other books. This makes me not so anxious, knowing she has had some writer's block or personal problems or something that keeps her away from this series. But I loved this series and continue to hope that one day she will find her way back to it. And I never give up the search.

Thursday, January 7, 2010 24 comments By: Suzanne

The Friday 56: The Lady Elizabeth



Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

In case you missed it last week, I have a whole bunch of new logos for you to choose from for the F56. Use the old one if you like or one of the new ones! I look forward to seeing what everyone chooses!

Also, don't forget about my Short Story Challenge.

My F56 this week comes from The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir. This was an impulse buy and I have no idea when I'll get around to reading it since I'm still working on reading through the Wheel of Time series again. Only on Book Three. This is the REAL challenge for myself this year!

Not sure what's happening here but I can guess based on the fact that at the top of the page it says Elizabeth is 6 years old here.

"There are so many ladies at court!" Elizabeth had marveled at their rich gowns, their bejeweled hoods, their air of sophistication.

Saturday, January 2, 2010 0 comments By: Suzanne

The Great Hunt - A re-read


First of all, let me say that I love the new posting editor. I'm not sure how long Blogger has had this but I just found it a couple days ago when I was revamping my blog. I saw the option and thought, "what's this?" And the next time I had to upload a million photos I was so happy! This is so much easier! The one drawback is I can't find a spellcheck button. Sometimes it highlights misspelled words and sometimes not. I've read back through some posts and realized there was a terrible misspelling, and not something that would be mistaken for another word. (I'm a horrible typist, good thing I can spell!)

Once again I have been pleasantly surprised by Robert Jordan's series. I'm not sure exactly when I started to get disgusted by the turn it was taking but it certainly was not with this book. The Great Hunt is, in my opinion, even superior to The Eye of the World. It's not possible to have it without the first book, of course, but all the tedious explaing what things are and the explaing the prophecies and learning about people takes away from The Eye. Although it's a great book, there is a lot of downtime. Almost, no downtime in The Great Hunt. I love how the characters are trying to find the Horn of Valere so it will be ready for Illian's Great Hunt for the Horn, yet the story itself is the actual Great Hunt. And the moment in Falme when all the parties come together is brilliant. It could have easily felt contrived, bringing all the important characters to a far off place, but it didn't. It felt right. That can only be done through good storytelling. Jordan is the ultimate Gleeman.
Friday, January 1, 2010 2 comments By: Suzanne

F56 Optional Logos

Well I was so excited about trying new logos that I didn't waste any time. (And I'm BORED, is school back on yet???) Here are your optional logos for the F56. Use any or all of them. I haven't decided which is my favorite yet, so I'll probably interchange them for awhile until I settle on a fave.



Here's the classic F56 logo












The "Page 56" logo










The Fisheye logo









Fantasy Lovers 56










Contemporary Fiction 56










And Classic Fiction 56








Have fun!

The Friday 56: Four Past




Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
*Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Can you believe I almost FORGOT it was Friday. I got up, let the dogs outside, made coffee, was up for a little while and then it hit me IT'S FRIDAY. It's weird how you can lose track of the days when you don't have a schedule. The vacation has been nice but I am starting to get BORED. I will actually be glad to go back to work on Monday, even if it is the same old job and not the new one (still keeping fingers crossed!).

Today's selection comes from The Lanogoliers, a short story in Stephen King's Four Past Midnight, since I had it out yesterday to talk about. It never got put away.

"We'll have to capture him as soon as we land," Albert said, scraping one hand feverishly up the side of his face. "You, me, Mr. Gaffney, and that Brittish guy. He looks tough."


I'm thinking of changing the logo for this meme. In your comments today, please let me know if you like it or want to keep the old one.








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