Laura's blog

Things are getting down to the wire with classes and my senior project, so I'll be turtling into my anti-social shell until after my thesis defenses. I have two. One for my major, and one for my Honors qualification. The performance of my project goes up on April 5th, and the defense will be sometime after that. Err, I should probably schedule that. Soon. Unfortunately, my schedule is full of things like that that I should have done yesterday. Until I do all of them and get this thing over with, no more blogging for me!  I might still publish the odd review on Examiner just to keep my active status -- and I have a big backlog of reviews to get to, anyway -- but more likely I'll hold all that off until April. Also, I am still beta-reading for two people right now, but I will not have your stuff back to you until mid-April at the earliest. I'm really sorry about that. I'll still be checking email, so you can send me questions related to your MS and I will respond. H...

I'm currently reading in anticipation of April, and it looks like there's going to be another love triangle. Several more love triangles. Their reactions, if they'd known then what puberty had in store. (Image credit) Sigh. I do like love triangles -- sometimes. Everything in moderation. I've read plenty of books that don't have a love triangle, too. But Eternity had a love triangle, even though the main character tries to pretend it doesn't exist. The Lord of Opium also ended up having one, albeit a very unusual one. I'm also really hesitant to read Throne of Glass  because I know there's a love triangle in that as well, and it plays a central part in the story. Even Fire and Hemlock had a sort-of love triangle. More like a love Twister. That one was weird. The love triangles I see most often are:   Girl torn between obvious right choice and bad boy. The girl usually has some kind of savior complex that makes her fall for the bad boy...

Whew! Thank you to everyone who recommended some books for me to read and review this coming April. I still have a couple of spaces to fill, and my list has changed a little bit. I've started, but...this is quite the list. I'll get as far as I can. If nothing else, this has forced me to read a lot more than I normally would be reading right now. Here are some mini-reviews and thoughts, in case I don't have time later. Have finished: Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones: Fairy Tale Retelling/urban fantasy This one was good, but...weird. In a surreal way. It took me a while to figure out what the ending meant. Also, the undercurrent of pedophilia was icky. Tom is set up as a father figure for Polly from the beginning, but then she has a crush on him, and he turns into a love interest after she's 19. And he says "at least I can ask you now," implying that he's had feelings for this underage girl for years. It wouldn't be so bad except that Tom...