Post B-Day Post

Wow, I'm sitting in my office and there's this guy doing yardwork at the house across the street with a dog that looks just like ours. For a minute there I got worried!

Anywho. As I said, yesterday was my 28th. Thanks for all the birthday wishes you guys! I cheated on the diet and am worrying what the fallout will be this weekend. We'll just have to see. I did decide to go with Mexican for dinner and even had a margarita (after I swore I wouldn't).

Ah well, them's the breaks. I did have fun though.

So I think I'm in a bit of a slump. I can't decide what to read. I've picked up and dropped a couple of books this week that really aren't hitting the spot, which is not to say that they're bad, they just aren't appealing to me at the moment. I went to the bookstore yesterday and nothing was really jumping out at me there either. What's wrong with me? It's so frustrating.

I got a gift certificate, so I can order a couple of titles, and I have this nagging feeling that I should spend it, spend it, spend it. Am I the only person who does that? Part of me knows I should wait because there are some fabulous things coming out that I know I'm going to want. But there are some things out now that I really want as well. I think I'm just really hesitant to bring more books into the house before we move next week. After that, I can start packing 'em into the new house!

I did buy Hank Phillippi Ryan's Prime Time over the weekend. I haven't cracked it open just yet, though, because I have a stack of TBRs that I've been tackling (real effective adding to it while I'm working it down, I know). It's the first in a series with the second, Face Time, due out at the end of July and Air Time, book three, due out at the end of August. Here's the product description from Amazon on that one:

In the cutthroat world of television journalism, seasoned reporter Charlotte McNally knows that she'd better pull out all the stops or kiss her job goodbye. But it's her life that might be on the line when she learns that an innocent-looking e-mail offer resulted in murder, mayhem and a multimillion-dollar fraud ring.

All too soon her investigation leads her straight to Josh Gelston, who is a little too helpful and a lot too handsome. Charlie might have a nose for news, but men are a whole other matter. Now she has to decide whether she can trust Josh…before she ends up as the next lead story.

A couple that have come out recently that are on my to buy list are Andrew Grant's Even. This guy is Lee Child's brother. Seriously! How can you go wrong with that? PW gave it a starred review:

Jason Bourne fans will welcome Grant's thrill-packed debut, which introduces Lt. Cdr. David Trevellyan, of Royal Navy Intelligence. Near the end of a mission in New York City, Trevellyan's chance discovery late one night of a bum in an alley with six neatly arranged bullet holes in his chest makes the secret operative the NYPD's prime suspect in the man's murder. After the FBI takes over the case, Trevellyan learns the victim was an undercover agent for the bureau, the sixth to die in a series of killings. Disavowed by his British bosses, Trevellyan realizes he has to fend for himself in what is clearly some sort of frameup. A villainess with a taste for genital mutilation lends a James Bondian touch, but Grant, bestseller Lee Child's younger brother, never strikes a false note in a plot that could have gone over-the-top in lesser hands. Effortlessly filling in bits of his protagonist's backstory during breathing spaces between action scenes, Grant closes on a nicely dark note.

The other is Fragment by Warren Fahy, which got a fabulous review in PW as well:

Starred Review. Fahy's imaginative debut puts a fresh spin on the survival-of-prehistoric-beasts theme popularized by Jurassic Park. When members of the cable reality show SeaLife, aboard a ship in the South Pacific, respond to a distress beacon from Henders Island, several of the show's scientists wind up slaughtered by bizarre animals on the remote island. In response, the U.S. government blockades Henders Island to contain the serious biothreat its unique fauna could pose to humanity. The ship's botanist, Nell Duckworth, joins the investigative team, which quickly finds that arthropods on the island have evolved into sophisticated and ferocious life forms. Particularly memorable and frightening are the creatures Nell dubs spigers, which have eight legs and are twice the size of a Bengal tiger. Exciting debates on topics like the role of sexual reproduction in the development of life on Earth provide a sound scientific background.

And then some of my favorites have new titles coming out in September. Watch for the new Jeff Lindsay book, Dexter By Design, and the third book in John Twelve Hawks's trilogy The Golden City, both due out 9/8.

So, plenty to choose from, I just need this funk to clear up. Scrub my brain.