TV-series recommendation - Being Human

I love me some supernatural series but I usually have to watch them alone as my hubby isn't all that interested. He has watched some Supernatural episodes with me and he thinks the show is ok, but then I discovered a BBC series called Being Human. My experience with tv-series from BBC is very good so it was no doubt in my mind, I had to try this. To my luck both I and hubby loved the first episode.

Being Human is such a great combination of action, drama and humor(I really love it that it is humorous without being a comedy). It's well worth checking out, both the first and the second season is available on DVD and a third season is in the making. Have a wonderful Saturday and do check out the trailer below.

This weeks additions on my wish-list

AKA Friday Finds.

What great books did you hear about / discover this past week? Share with us your FRIDAY FINDS!

This weekly meme is hosted by mizb17 at Should be reading. Follow the link and join in on the fun or take a look at all the wonderful books that others have discovered this week.

If you're interested in any of the books I just wanted to let you know that if you click the titles it takes you to Goodreads. That way you can easily add to your own wish-list ;)

Now let's start out with books that have not yet been released:

I don't read much contemporary fiction but in this weeks Waiting on Wednesday meme Step Su spotlighted a YA novel titled Ten Miles Past Normal written by Frances O'Roark Dowell which immediately caught my interest. 

Lori over at Pure Imagination chose Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan as her WoW this week and I tought it sounded like a cute story.

Christina over at Confessions of a Book Addict chose The False Princess by Eilis O'Neal has her WoW this week. A girl who has lived her entire life as a false princesses(without knowing it) get's thrown out of the castle when the real princesses can come home. What is the false princesses supposed to do with her life now?

Almost last on the list over coming books I have Where She Went by Gayle Forman. This is the sequel to a YA novel, which I loved, called If I Stay (if you haven't read it then you really should give it a try)so this one is really a given on my list, I cannot wait for a chance to read it.

Rebecca over at Rebecca's Book Blog spotlighted a YA novel, first in a series, set in the US in the 1920's called Vixen(Flappers #1) by Jillian Larkin. Somehow "The Roaring Twenties" have always appealed to me.

Books that's available:

Vivienne over at Serendipity wrote a wonderful review of The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. I have seen this book around but I've never really been sure if I would want to read it or not. Now I'm leaning towards yes, it sounds very good.

Yesterday the lovely Adel over at Persnickety Snark wrote a BBAW post about forgotten treasures in which she mentioned a book by Mark Zusak. Zusak might be best known for The Book Thief but  he has written other books as well(I'm sorry to say I haven't read a single one yet). Adel wanted to share her love of Zusak's novel called I Am The Messenger and she persuaded me that this must really be a forgotten treasure.

Kirsten over at Bookworming in the  21st century also did an excellent BBAW post about forgotten treasures that had me adding two new books on my wish-list; Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer, pirates(yay!), and Dangerous angels by Francesca Lia Block.                                      

I also added the first book in the Quantum Gravity series, Keeping it Real by Justina Robson, after reading about the series on a fellow Norwegian bloggers blog, Lesekaninen. I mean who can resist a series that has demons, fairies and other supernatural beings along with robots in it?!

Book review: In For a Penny by Rose Lerner

Now why haven't any one ever told me that historical romance novels can be good? I tend to judge a book by the cover and quite often a romance novel has a cover with a lady in a lovely dress(barly hanging on her body) and a half naked man, that just doesn't appeal to me. Luckily for me In For a Penny didn't have that kind of cover or else I might have missed out on an excellent debut novel.


A summary of sorts:
Nev is the oldest child of Lord Bedlow, he has never know how to live without money and spends his time having fun; drinking and gambling, with his friends and mistress. One day Nev's world is turned upside down, his father has been murdered in a duell and has left his family in great debt. Nev has to figure out how to best provide for his sister and his mother, it is out of the question to marry his young sister off to some old, rich man. Nev can only find one solution to his problem, he has to marry a heiress to save his family from bankruptcy.

My thoughts:
I haven't read many historical regency romances in my life(read: none), I haven't really though romance novels was my kind of thing, but I read some excellent reviews of this book and I decided to buy it.

I wasn't sure if I would like the main character Nev while I was reading the first pages in In for a Penny, but I ended up falling in love with both him and his wife Penelope.

Nev was such a wonderful and honest hero, he didn't hide his reasons for proposing to Penelope so there was never any doubt for the reason behind the proposal. I'm sure this book could have had a lot more drama if author Rose Lerner hadn't created such an main character. Some characters tend to annoy me if the spin themselves into an intricate web of lies and I'm annoyed to the point where I'm tearing my hair out wondering why the heck the person just didn't tell the truth.

Poor Penelope was such a kind and insecure girl who her entire life had tried to behave like something she wasn't(a lady). Penelope's parents were born poor but her father worked his way up and became a very rich merchant. Being rich didn't necessarily meant being respected, people who were born into a life of wealth looked down at the self-made-man and his family, even if they were rich they were trash.

I only have one minor issue with the story and that was a little secret that as far as I can remember never was reveled to one of the parts involved. It just annoyed me a tiny bit but just a tiny tiny bit.

Rose Lerner has good knowledge about the period of time she is writing about, 1819, and I learned plenty of new things; like the Blood or bread riot in 1816 and the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819.

I will most definitely be on the look out for Rose Lerner's next novel(by the look of it it is to be expected in January 2011) because In for a Penny was a great debut novel.

The cover:
Not a huge fan of the cover, I would have liked it if the picture was on the entire cover or I think it would have been great if the old building Nev's grandfather built was on the front cover. The cover wouldn't have intrigued me enough to buy the book so I'm glad I read two fab reviews(see links further down the page) that made me want to pick it up.

My rating of this book:
5 stars out of 5.


Want to know more?
Visit Rose Lerner's homepage
Follow Rose on Twitter
 
Full disclosure: Purchased

I purchased this book after reading two lovely reviews; one written by Ana over at The Book Smugglers and the second one was written by Mandi over at Smexy Books.

Banish - Waiting on Wednesday

   

Banish by Gretchen McNeil. Release date: winter 2012. Published by Balzer + Bray.

I discovered Banish by debut author Gretchen McNeil quite by accident yesterday. Twitter suggested for me to follow Gretchen so naturally I had to check out her profile and her writing that's how I discovered Banish. I thought it sounded good and decided that it was well worthy of being spotlighted in a Waiting on Wednesday post.


Banish synopsis(borrowed from Goodreads):

Fifteen-year-old Bridget Liu just wants to be left alone: by her overprotective mom, by the hunky son of the police officer who got her father killed, and by the eerie voices which she can suddenly and inexplicably hear. Turns out the voices are demons - the Biblical kind, not the Buffy kind - and Bridget possesses the rare ability to banish them.

San Francisco's senior exorcist and his newly assigned partner from the Vatican enlist Bridget's help with increasingly bizarre and dangerous cases of demonic possession. But when one of Bridget's oldest friends turns up dead in a ritualistic sacrifice that mirrors her father's murder, Bridget realizes she can't trust anyone. An interview with her father's murderer reveals a link between Bridget and the Emim: a race of part-demons intent on raising their forefathers to the earth in human form. Now Bridget must unlock the secret to the Emim's plan before someone else close to her winds up dead, or worse - the human vessel for a Demon King.

Want to know more about the author or the book?
Follow Gretchen McNeil's blog
Follow Gretchen on Twitter



"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. This event spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. Please visit Jill's blog to find out what other book bloggers are waiting for.

1984 - Teaser Tuesday

The program of the Two Minutes Hate varied from day to day, but there was none in which Goldstein was not the principal figure. He was the primal traitor, the earliest defiler of the Party's purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching. Somewhere or other he was still alive and hatching his conspiracies: perhaps somewhere beyond the sea, under the protection of his foreign paymasters, perhaps even - so it was occasionally rumored - in some hiding-place in Oceania itself.

This weeks teasers is brought to you from 1984 by George Orwell, page 12.

Somehow so far 1984 reminds me a lot of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy(which I haven't finished yet, I can't bare to read more about AK's pregnancy while I'm pregnant myself), even though Tolstoy describes a side of reality and Orwell's 1984 is a dystopian novel.

MizB of Should Be Reading host this meme called Teaser Tuesday . Anyone can play along! Just do the following:  

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
  
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  
• Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The Fiddler's Gun - the global tour

 It is time for The Fiddler's Gun to start on it's global tour, here are the tours participants along with the links to the participants book blogs:

1. Heather - USA just finished the book, sending it to Katy.
2. Katy - USA
3. June - USA
4. Teddyree - AUS
5. Marielle - NOR

The Search for Wondla - Waiting on Wednesday

The Search for Wondla by Tony Diterlizzi . Release date September 21st 2010. Published by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing(check out this page for a sneak peak).

Many of you might know Tony Diterlizzi as one of the co-authors behind The Spiderwick Chronicles(the other author is Holly Black), this time he has written a book suitable for children of almost all ages(age 10 and up). I'm not sure if this book fits under the label graphic novel but the book consists of two-color illustrations throughout.

I first discovered The Search for Wondla over at Misty's book blog The Book Rat, you really should head one over there and check out her vlog teaser from the first few pages in this book.


If you want to know more about the author, Tony Diterlizzi, you could:

Visit his blog
Visit his homepage
Follow the fan page on Facebook



You can pre-order The Search for Wondla from(I'm not an affiliate):
Amazon
The Book Depository

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. This event spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. Please visit Jill's blog to find out what other book bloggers are waiting for.