kalyko's blog

     A couple of weeks ago I headed to the doctor's office because I realized that my depression was acting up again... not that it happened suddenly mind.  It's been a gradual progression ~ as usual ~ going back, I think, if not months, then maybe a year or so?

     Even though I knew that I had read 99 harlequin titles I just wasn't thinking... and that happens to me a fair bit.  Going through things  unconciously until, after the fact, I realize that I've passed a milestone. 

     Yesterday, I got in the mail an ebookwise... I now have, from a friend, a brand-new electronic book reader.  And, by golly, it works!  I downloaded a couple of ebooks and, while the one that I read was a shorty, it was so nice to be able to read whereever I wanted to.  No more sitting behind the computer for hours upon hours just to read a book.  Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm.

     April was... okay.  I hit a bit of a slump in the middle of the month, but I found a couple of books to tide me over.  I only read 27 books this month... not up to my usual one a day, but then I've noticed a change before now too.  All I can say is that I did manage to fulfill most of my self-challenge for this month; that is, to read books in series that I had in my TBR.  Not bad, not bad at all... and I did manage to work through a good part of said TBR... there was a book sale last weekend ~ which my dh talked me into going to... I was trying to stay away from getting more books!! ~ but I found a number of books that I've been looking for for quite awhile and the prices were excellent, so all's good! 
     Following are the books ~ and series ~ that I read during this month.  My harlequin stats stink, but overall for the year they're very good: 
                                 93 har imprints ~ 41 other

     I've had the first two books of this series ~ Open Secret and Lost Cause in my TBR for awhile.  I got them because, at some time during last year's challenge, I read a book by Janice Kay Johnson and absolutely LOVED it; getting these books in a trade was a no-brainer. 
Very recently I got the third, and last, in the series ~ Kids by Christmas ~ in one of my eHarlequin orders.  The reason that I got it was because it was by Janice Kay Johnson; I had no idea that it was the third and final book in the series.  Boy, you shoulda seen me dancing around when I noticed that!Uh... never mind... better that you not be exposed to something so messy .

     My daughter Teresa took this picture about at about 2:00 or 3:00 pm... this afternoon.  It is still snowing; not much right now, but it's not stopped once yet since starting Friday evening.
     Man, this weather is AWFUL... and then there are the weather warnings that are still in effect.   Sheesh!

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     Here the books that I have yet to review; hopefully this'll be enough to spur me to action tomorrow... before I get caught up reading something else!  

119.  Shayla Kersten; The Cost of Eternity & The Remediu; Ellora's Cave ebooks; 2007
120.  Shayla Kersten; Gaps in Your Soul / Hidden Force / Past Lies; EC 07-08
121.  Rhyannon Byrd; Last Wolf Hunting; SN  #38; April 2008
122.  Julie Miller; Accidental Bodyguard; Harlequin Special Release; 2003
123.  Shiloh Walker; No Longer Mine; Triskelion Publishing; 2006 (epub Jan05)

     Page 31... that's where my heart started to break.  I'm totally floored ~ not the crying part 'cause I can get extremely emotionally involved ~ but what's happening... Okay, I know that this isn't the end ~ d'uh... it's only chapter three ~ but still....

Whew... I just had to get that out ~ otherwise I'da exploded. 

     I just realized how brilliant Lorie is!  Of course, it goes to show just how slow I am. 
I mean, the theme for this month's challenge is "It's Raining Men"... and the old saw about "April showers bring May flowers"... I just got it! 

     So, when I first got the email I thought... uh, I can't do this challenge!  This actually goes back to the "I've gotta think?  About what I'm reading?" when I first joined the 2007 10,000 Book Challenge.  I found that it's definitely not as hard as I had thought it would be... and I really did enjoy the opportunity to really think about the books I read.
   For this month I was planning to do a self-set challenge based on something that Sadhbh said either the end of February or sometime in March about reading books in series.  Well, that one really appealed to me, 'cause I have a LOT of books on my TBR shelves that are part of series.  And then I started thinking that, actually, this month's It's Raining Men challenge would actually fit quite well with my own challenge, so that's what I'm doing.

     I cannot believe that we are here, April 1st... and a quarter of the year is gone ~ thanks for the reminder Lorie  ~ and I'm sitting here wondering "What the heck??"
     Once again I'm behind on my reviews ~ I have three for March yet to do.  I actually managed to read 40 books this month...  YIPPEE!  And I did quite well with the challenge as well. 
   Of the 40 book reviews (actually 49 individual titles) that I did this month, 30 were from various harlequin imprints and 10 were 'other.'  Among those 40 reviews there were three entries that were comprised of 11 different ebooks. but only six different authors ~ Megan Hart wrote 6 of the ebooks. Of the 10 ebooks that I read, four of them were written by authors who were new to me.  So I guess I'll go with the NTM stats for March:

• authors ~ 32 (of 39 separate authors)
• imprints ~   4 (of 19 read this month)