So Many Books... And a Movie

It's been over a month since there's been a post. Oh dear. I have read several books in the last month, but I have been very very busy and haven't posted about any of them. Shame on me. Of course I was reading across the board. It will be evident by just how varied my reading is by the books I've read this month. There was a paperback I was looking forward to being released at the beginning of last month which I read pretty quickly. I didn't have a choice, I promised my friend and fellow blogger the book the next time I saw her. Otherwise, I have been reading on my Kindle. I never thought I would enjoy digital books, but I do even though there is something about paper books that can never be replaced. Plus they don't require batteries. I'm only going to talk about two of the books I read this past month.

Nalini Singh has the Guild Hunter series that I love and it was the paperback I was waiting for. Archangels, vampires, and hunters oh my. Archangel's Enigma is the latest novel in the series where Naasir is the hero. Naasir is a vampire, but he's also something more, something not human. He's on a mission to find his mate and he finds her alright, a scholar angel with secrets. There is mystery, humor, and action. I love how each novel builds onto the next in this world with one all encompassing plot line. Being inside of Naasir's mind was fun. He doesn't have the same thought processes as other characters. He has a very childlike attitude, only he's hundreds of years old and in the service of an archangel. The description was amazing. I don't want to spoil any of the books I read for other readers so I won't go into any of the details. With this being book eight, I would suggest reading books 1-7 along with the book of novellas, unless you are one of the few that can get away with reading books out of order.

After I finished this book, I already had another one lined up. I entered a Facebook giveaway for a new favorite author, Jade West, and won her latest novel Dirty Bad Strangers. It's a dark erotic novel that is defiantly 18+. I loved her first two novels and there are a few points in all the books where I have cringed. It's all good, because that just means the writing sucked me in and engaged me. This novel was about a woman named Gemma who enjoys sex with strangers and she happens to work as a sex chatline operator. It's there she meets a caller named Jason and he is her ultimate fantasy. She does the one thing she isn't supposed to and gives Jason her phone number and it turns into dirty bad stranger sex. Like the title says, its dirty and bad. Not only does Gemma have sex with Jason, she's blindfolded and knows nothing about him other than his first name. There are plenty of sex games between these two and friends of Jason. One of my favorite things about this book is that Gemma meets Cara, a character in the previous books.

Of course this weekend was also the release of The Martian on the big screen. After having read the book, I was looking forward to this movie. The trailers looked good, and Matt Damon seemed to be Mark Watney. Since I read the book, I understood the jokes. This is a drama and not a comedy, but being on a deserted planet without communication to anyone means, one has to keep themselves sane somehow. Comedy only makes sense. I was disappointed in how certain things were explained, but as we all know, movies don't follow books exactly. Other than certain scenes not making their way into the movie, I was happy with the movie. I would suggest watching it and I would say reading the novel makes the experience even better.

On a wacky sidenote, I have noticed that trailers are showing clips or having audio that never makes it into the movie. It's becoming something like a game for me now. I try to place the scenes and in some cases the audio as I watch the movie. Sometimes I'm disappointed in not seeing or hearing what was in the trailer because I want to know where is would have been. Anyone else have thoughts about movies trailers?

Out of this World

In one of the latest movies I went to see the theaters, there was a trailer for The Martian starring Matt Damon. The trailer was really well done. Matt Damon's character was stuck on the planet Mars after his crew left him because they thought he was dead. He also has to figure out a way to contact Earth to get rescued all while trying not to die. It went onto the list of select movies I'm willing to go see in the theaters.

Fast forward a few weeks and my husband tells me that this movie is based on a book (something I didn't notice from the trailer). That got my attention. While I'm an avid reader, he is very selective and even he wanted to read it. So on the recommendation of my husband's friend, we venture to the local bookstore (which can be a hit or miss experience, but I was hopeful) and there was The Martian  by Andy Weir. It even had Matt Damon on the cover. Jackpot. So clutching the book like the treasure it is, I got it.

As soon as we were seated in the car I read the first few lines, but alas I get car sick when reading and those few lines were awesome and sucked me in. If less than a hundred words can do that, then this book was going down. I look at the page count and for this edition it was 369. That's a good little number, but it's not like I haven't inhaled longer works. Granted the last thing I was expecting was to be challenged. And that was what the question, "You think you can read that book by tomorrow?" I scoffed and looked at my hubby as if I didn't hear him correctly. I mean I eat, um read, yup read, books up. so my response was, "Of course." I really wanted to roll my eyes. okay maybe I did. I don't recall.

Now, I wanted to get home and read right away, but I had some domestic things to do. Cleaning and cooking. So after I made the dishes go from dirty to clean with my magic wand, aka the Dishwasher, I pulled the whole chicken from the fridge, gave it a little bath, buttered it up and dressed it in spices before throwing it into the oven to bake for hours. Hours mind you. That would give me plenty of time to sit down with Matt, errr, Mark Watney. But alas Facebook stole me away for a bit. Then, I was able to settle down onto my comfy couch to be brought to Mars.

This finally came to pass around 9pm-ish. I wasn't watching the clock all that closely. I mean sure I had work the next day, but I was determined.

I happen to really like the planet Mars. It's my favorite out of all the nine, wait someone downgraded Pluto, so I guess we have 8 planets in the solar system, and then they added little ones didn't they? I was taught that there were 9 planets and by god I'm going to continue to believe that. I mean I know the planet isn't flat, But we named Pluto and Pluto shouldn't be thrown into the doghouse. He's a good little planet all the way out there. This is my blog and I say there are nine planets damn it.

Rant over. As I was saying, Mars is my favorite planet and it all started when I was a wee little girl. I spent my time in science museums for fun and there was this traveling exhibit called "Mission to Mars." My parents brought me to it and I was allowed to fly "the spaceship" and land it on Mars so that we could do experiments. Now I seven or eight at the time. It was fantastic and I really thought we went to Mars, so sad to learn we didn't. but come on it was the reason that astronaut became the thing I wanted to be when I grew up.

Mars, wonderful little red planet that will kill you. So back to the book that I finished at 3:50 am that same day. Well, if you want to be technical, it was the following day, but I hadn't gone to sleep, so it was still the same day in my little world. I had the lovely visual of Matt Damon as Mark throughout the entire book, thank you movie marker people. It was funny and entertaining. Andy wrote a wonderful character and he placed you on Mars.

There were so many little jokes and things that happened that I wouldn't be able to list them all and I wouldn't want to spoil this novel or in some cases the movie. How true to the written word will be seen later in the movie theater with popcorn and Coke. Mark's personality was what kept me so entertained. Here's a man stranded on Mars and he's writing a log about how he plans to survive and how he plans on finding a way to contact Earth.

Most of the novel is written like this. It's as if Mark is talking to you. I loved how he redesigned things throughout the novel. He was a nerd alright. One that made mistakes as well. He was flawed. Yay, a flawed character on Mars. Sorry, I like flaws, they make characters realistic. The novel switches POVs (point of view). We get the first person narrative on from Mark, but we also have third person POV, The 3rd POV is done in a couple of different ways. Each POV brings something different to the novel bringing the reader onto an unforgettable journey. I read it quickly, while cooking lunch for the next day.

Here's the book blurb from Amazon.com:

Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first.

But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?