Oh How Pinteresting: The Best of My "Vampires" Pinterest Board

After reading Lover At Last and Dead Ever After, I'm ready for Season 6 of True Blood and very much in a vampire mood. Please enjoy the best of my pin board "Vampires."

#BookReview: 'Dead Ever After' by Charlaine Harris (spoilers)

Thank you, Charlaine Harris, for the years of enjoyment your Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire Mysteries has given me. I absolutely adore this series, a wild 13-part paranormal ride. Dead Until Dark was one of the books that first drew me into the paranormal romance genre, even though it isn't strictly speaking a romance series.

I got this book at the library. 

I've always wanted it to be that, though. I wanted a continuous romantic arc from the first book through the last, with Bill and Sookie rediscovering and rekindling their love for one another. I imagined that ending the series without Bill and Sookie being together would be like ending the Twilight Saga with Bella running off with Mike.

(I've never liked book-Eric.)

However, Harris had a different story arc in mind, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I truly enjoyed reading how it played out. At the moment when Sam and Sookie discovered their mutual attraction, I was rooting for them. I was satisfied with the ending, despite any preconceived notions I had before I started reading.

It was a pleasure to read about consummate ladies' man Jason Stackhouse finally settling down and getting married. It was deeply satisfying that some long-term villains finally got their comeuppance. The book doesn't break any new thematic ground for this series, and in this case that was a comfort, since Harris was wrapping the series up. As usual, there's a murder, and Sookie's life is in almost-constant danger. As usual, she gets horribly injured.

As usual, she does the thing that makes her annoying as a narrator: gets jealous of and/or slut-shames any other female character who crosses her radar. To my everlasting shame, I didn't take much notice of this until I read ACrackedMoon's "Meet Charlaine Harris: Racist, Misogynist, Talentless." I don't agree with everything in that post, and I certainly wouldn't call Harris "talentless," but once Sookie's slut-shaming tendencies have been seen, they can't be unseen.

Sookie isn't a perfect character, and she remains a magnet for paranormal troubles of all kinds (and often a damsel in distress), but after 13 books and now knowing her full story, I'm glad I stuck with Sookie. I don't ask for perfection. I ask for a good story, well told. Charlaine Harris delivered.

I'm really going to miss this series. I'd like to know if Sookie and Sam ever get married, or if they decide to just be friends with benefits. I'd like to know if Bill ever finds someone, and if Eric really spends the next 200 years with Freyda. I'm sure Pam has many fascinating adventures as the new sheriff of Area 5 - and we never really got to see Karin in action.

Fortunately, we still have at least one more season of True Blood to look forward to. I won't lie - I'm hoping for a lot of exploration of the budding Pam-Tara romance.

New Essays From Peg Tittle: 'No End to Shit That Pisses Me Off'

War rape, profit, baby androids, tax exemptions for churches, make-up, having kids, assisted suicide, abortion, grades inflation, littering, business ethics…

Canadian popular philosopher Peg Tittle is back with a fourth volume in her thought-provoking series of rhetorical questions and answers. Volume three, Still More Shit That Pisses Me Off, tackled pregnant men, paying stay-at-home moms, advertising, income tax deductions, people skills, boy books, speech codes, porn, god, testicular battery and tranquilizer guns, the Academy Awards, intelligent design and evolution.

You may have read Tittle's essay "What's Wrong With Mr. and Ms.?" here at Pagan Spirits. In it, she addressed the issues associated with using gendered language as part of a person's formal address of title, which is essentially part of person's name. This essay appears in Tittle's original book Shit That Pisses Me Off. You can also read about her second book here. 

"Philosophy with an attitude. Because the unexamined life is dangerous."

Available for $1.99 in various e-formats:

smashwords

Amazon (US)

Amazon (UK)

kobo

ibook

She has written Critical Thinking: An Appeal to Reason (Routledge, 2011), What If…Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy (Longman, 2005), ShouldParents be Licensed? Debating the Issues (Prometheus, 2004), Ethical Issues in Business: Inquiries, Cases, and Readings (Broadview, 2000). She also contributed the Ethics unit to the high school philosophy text, Philosophy: Questions and Theories (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2003). Her papers have appeared in Free Inquiry, Sexuality & Culture: an interdisciplinary journal, The International Journal of Applied Philosophy, and Philosophy in a Contemporary World and have been anthologized in At Issue: Is Parenthood a Right or a Privilege? and Current Controversies: Child Abuse.

She was a columnist for The Philosopher Magazine’s online philosophy café for eight years and for Philosophy Now for two years. Her columns have also been published and posted in and at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies website, Transhumanity.net, Humanist in Canada , Links, Academic Exchange Quarterly, Inroads, The Nugget, Canadian HR Reporter, Elenchus, Teaching and Learning Literature, University Affairs, South Australian Humanist Post, Forum, and The Humanist.

She has served on the ethics committee of the North Bay General Hospital and has had a number of positions in the education, social services, and recreation fields. She has also worked in maintenance and as a disc jockey.

From TeachPhilosophy's 10 Definitions of Critical Thinking: “Judicious reasoning about what to believe and, therefore, what to do (Peg Tittle).”

#BookReview: 'The Difference a Day Makes' by Barbara Longley (contemporary romance)

Difference a Day Makes, The by Barbara Longley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Paranormal romances will probably always be my favorite, but when I need a break from vampires and witches, I like a nice contemporary romance. I really enjoyed Far from Perfect, the first book in the "Love From the Heartland" series because it was simply a sweet romance (with some heat) between two very, very stubborn people. I enjoyed the hero of that novel, Noah, the wounded veteran.

This second novel follows Noah's sister, Paige, who's bummed out after losing her first job. She shows up in Perfect, Indiana, at the same time as one of Noah's "rehabilitation projects," the emotionally fragile veteran Ryan Malloy. It's hard to say which is the more stubborn couple: Noah and Ceejay from the first book or Paige and Ryan.

Paige has a dream she wants to follow - taking over the family business - and it takes her a long, long time to figure out how Ryan could fit into her life plan. (But this is a romance novel, so you know they'll find a way. It's no fun if we don't get our happily-ever-after.)

I hate to say it (because my to-read list is already so long), but I think Barbara Longley has added herself to my "auto-buy this author's latest" list. She writes sexy, believable heroes and relatable heroines, and I enjoy the Midwest U.S.A. setting.

Barbara Longley knows she has my number, too. She sent me a friend request on GoodReads, along with a note saying that when she wraps up the Love From the Midwest trilogy with A Change of Heart, set to be published in October 2013, her next series will be paranormal. She calls it a time travel/historical trilogy with faeries! She, too, likes to switch back and forth between paranormal and contemporary romance. All the more reason to appreciate her.

View all my reviews at GoodReads

Currently reading:

Master by Colette Gale

Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris

I'm a Year Older and So Are These Gorgeous Bitches (Oh How Pinteresting)

Last year for my birthday I wrote "I'm 35 and So Are These Hotties Born in 1977." I'm a year older, and - well, the people who were born in 1977 were still born in 1977.

But they're still some quite lovely humans, so please enjoy them.

Shakira:



Orlando Bloom:



My personal favorite Rachel Dawes, Ms. Maggie Gyllenhaal:



Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges:



Michael Fassbender:



Kal Penn:



Jonathan Rhys Meyers:




Wow, guys - you all look so good for our age!

(I lifted this birthday post idea from Alexandra O'Hurley. Her awesome erotic romance author website is Oh Alex! Go check her out - she's fun.)

Verily, I Am Dhead: Review of 'Lover At Last' by J.R.Ward (Spoilers)

I have gone unto the Fade. Verily, I am dhead from feels after finishing Lover At Last by J.R. Ward, the 11th volume in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series, last night.

This book promised to finally bring together Qhuay, which is to say the mighty warrior Qhuinn (with the piercings, spiky black hair and mismatched eyes) and the friend who's in love with him, Blaylock (a blue-eyed redhead). To say their relationship is complicated would be a gross understatement. In the past:

-Blay came out as gay to Qhuinn and their best friend John Matthew. Blay made it clear he had feelings for Qhuinn, and Qhuinn made it equally clear he only wanted to be friends.

-Qhuinn had a lot of anonymous sex with a lot of women and men - everyone except Blay, basically. Blay was deeply offended that Qhuinn would partner with pretty much anyone who wasn't Blay. It was generally assumed Qhuinn was a promiscuous bisexual.

-Blay started a serious relationship with Qhuinn's lawyer cousin, Saxton. Qhuinn resented Saxton and, ironically enough, tried to slut-shame him.

-The unmated Chosen vampire Layla went into her fertile period, and she and Qhuinn decided to use this opportunity to have the child they both desired, even though they are not in a relationship. Layla became pregnant.

In Lover At Last, there are many angsty moments in which Layla fears she's miscarrying her baby. Thankfully, this tragedy seems to have been prevented by the warrior female Payne - who is, after all, the birth daughter of the Scribe Virgin herself. In future books, for my own mental health, I'm going to need Layla and Qhuinn's daughter to be born perfectly safe and healthy - with her dad's mismatched eyes, of course - and for Layla to live happily ever after with Xcor. I know that seems impossible - he's trying to take over the throne from Wrath. She'd have to betray the Black Dagger Brotherhood to join the Band of Bastards. But J.R. Ward will make it work somehow. She's good like that.

It was Blay who encouraged Payne to try to help Layla, and in a moment of gratitude, Layla spills the beans, telling Blay, "I can see why he's in love with you." Blay actually had no idea that Qhuinn felt about him the way Blay used to feel about Qhuinn, before the Saxton complication.

Saxton, in the meantime, has broken up with Blay, although they remain friends. Yet for some reason, for most of the book, Blaylock allows Qhuinn to believe he's still together with Saxton. When Qhuinn smells another guy on Saxton, he thinks Sax is cheating on Blay, and he literally tries to strangle his cousin to death in a moment of sheer protective outrage. Blay does not take this as a romantic gesture; he's extremely angry with Qhuinn. This only pushes them further apart.



Yet Qhuinn and Blay still manage to come together physically. Their complicated emotions boil over and they finally have sex (right around page 200). It happens a second time when Qhuinn is really, really worried about Layla losing the baby. The third time, Qhuinn gets very insistent that he's not gay. But maybe he is? Ward leaves it unclear whether Qhuinn has genuine attraction to males and females, or whether his pursuit of various women was overcompensation for his attraction to men. It's a moot point, really: by the end of the book, he and Blay are completely committed. Bonded.

The epilogue of the book is Qhuinn's mating proposal to Blay (with the full blessing of Blay's aristocratic, but very cool, parents). This means they'll be mated - the vampire equivalent of married - just like the other couples in the series. The book literally ends with, "...and lived happily ever after."

Yes.

And, about fucking time.

They'll still have to get each other's names tattooed in the Old Language on their backs. A hellren (husband) always has his mate's name on his back.



Yet there are many loose ends to be addressed in the next book, including:

-Will hanging around with pregnant Layla cause Queen Beth to go into her fertility period? If Beth and King Wrath have offspring, will their 1/4 human young be eligible for the throne some day?

-Will a relationship develop between Trez and the Chosen female Selena? (I'm hoping so.)

There's also a subplot involving Assail, the Old World vampire drug dealer who took over the Caldwell drug trade from Rehvenge when Rev ran off with Ehlena for their happily-ever-after. I can't say I have any emotional investment in the story of Assail and his human would-be killer, Sola. Sola is in great danger, however, and what becomes of her is a loose end.

Now we impatiently await the next book, which Ward has said will be titled The King.

I got Lover at Last from the library. When I take it back, I'll be picking up Dead Ever After. I read the spoiler for the ending (not sorry), and unlike J.R. Ward, Charlaine Harris is going to rip out my heart and shred it in millions of tiny pieces. Can't wait.

The Weekly Faves Link-Up: Song Crush, Book Crush, TV Crush

Song I Can't Stop Listening To:

(Yes, still. I don't get a new favorite song that often.)

Book I'm Loving:

...Lover At Last by J.R. Ward. I'm 200 pages in and having so many feels over Qhuinn (he of the heterochromia iridum - one blue eye, one green eye) and Blaylock.

TV I Can't Stop Watching:

Person of Interest season finale is tonight, and I am so scared. Last year it was an entire summer of, "What is Root going to do to Finch?" Now Finch is reluctantly taking help from Root, but I fear it's going to be an entire summer of, "What is HR going to do to Joss Carter?"

Last week's episode made it look like they were setting her up like they set up Mike Szymanski - and Szymanski got murdered. If anything happens to Carter...I cannot even.