4:120 Iron Man: Extremis by Warren Ellis

Someone has stolen the Extremis technology from one of Tony Stark's friends and now all h*** is breaking loss as a seriously enhanced superhuman with no training but a deep-seated grudge against the government is on the loose.  Iron Man goes toe and to toe against him and is crushed, almost to death.  What's a super hero to do except take the last dose of Extremis in the hopes of gaining the upper hand.

An interesting look into some of Tony Stark's background and also a lot of his motives.  Not always the pompous ass we see but much more human and ready to help a friend.  The artwork was good, the story line engaging, and in all very well done.

Page count: 184p/576p ytd/144,996p lifetime

3:120 Marvel Cival War: Iron Man by Gage, Knauf, & Bendis

Probably the most powerfully written of all the Civil War spin-offs.  There is a lot of Iron Man and Captain America talking, remembering, and trying to figure out how to stop the war without either side actually giving in.  There is also bits of Tony's dealing with trying to wage the war.  The last story, "The Confession", is easily the most powerful of the whole thing.  It is Tony sitting by himself telling how he knew what was coming, what he did to try and prevent it, and his feelings on how it ended.  It's heartbreaking.

The story line here was absolutely incredible and the artwork matched beautifully.  Dark, gritty where necessary, but still aethestically gorgeous.  A definite must read for any Marvel fan.

Page count: 112p/392p ytd/144,812p lifetime (since 2009)

A New Goal

I was talking to a friend of mine today and she was saying how I should make a bucket list item of reading 1 million pages in my lifetime.  I have records for pages read dating back to 2009 and I was at 144,420 through the end of last year so what the heck, I'm going for it.  Let's see how long it takes to read 1 million pages.

2:120 Marvel Civil War: X-Men by David Hine

Another one taking place at about the same time and answering the question of where were the X-Men while Iron Man and Captain America and their sides were duking it out.  Easy, for those of us who don't actually follow these on a regular basis, they were trapped at Xavier's Institute like Indians on a reservation.  There were Sentinels standing guard and no one was allowed to enter or leave without permission of the government (SHIELD I think).  A few mutants came along and blasted a hole in the wall to allow members of 198 to escape but now they are being hunted down.  Cyclops, Iceman, Archangel, and Beast are trying to get to them first and diffuse the situation but someone is manipulating things and he doesn't want them calmed down at all.

Another good story where you see more of what's going on in the background with all the problems surrounding the Civil War and how things are being manipulated by outside forces.  Artwork was sooo much better than the Wolverine stuff which made it a much more enjoyable read.

Page count: 112p/280p ytd

1:120 Marvel Civil War: Wolverine by Marc Guggenheim

Takes place during the the main civil war comics as Wolverine hunts down Nitro, the mutant that blew up the school and killed the kids in Stamford.  Nothing is quite what it seems tho as when he finally finds Nitro, there are others there as well looking for justice and Nitro claims it wasn't all his doing.  Wolverine actually delves deeper to find the money behind the mutant problems since when it doubt see who is making a profit.

Yeah, starting the year off with a bunch of comics as I get caught up with the boys in my house.  This one I really wish was a novel and not a comic.  Story line was good but the artistic style was AWFUL.  I had a hard time reading it because it was just ugly so I just plowed through so I could stop looking at it.  One of my biggest problems with comics is if it isn't pretty, I won't be back no matter how good the story is.

Page count: 168p/168p ytd

New Releases I'm Looking Forward To: 1st Quarter 2013

Ok, I'm going to try doing this at least once per quarter so I can let whoever reads this blog know what sounds good to me.  Let me state tho, this is really based on authors or series that I'm already reading since those are the things I follow.  I'm not paid to write this blog nor do I have any affiliations with any publishers so I don't receive free books or advance notice of things except what I glean off facebook from people who do have those contacts.  Maybe someday.

So here's what I'm looking forward to in the first quarter of 2013:

First book is Ever After by Kim Harrison.  The 11th book in the Hollows series, Rachel is being sucked back into the Ever After to fix the problems with the ley lines that she has created.  Big demons gunning for her, Trent getting involved, I'm sure Al will be as well.  Can't wait!
Release date: Jan 22


Second book of the year is Haunted Moon by Yasmine Galenorn.

I absolutely LOVE this series and Camille's stories are always fabulous!  This is the 13th book in the Sisters of the Otherworld series and each one has been better than the last.  Seriously, if you are into UF/PNR and haven't checked her stuff out yet, run to the bookstore and get reading!

Release date: Jan 29

Frost Burned by Patricia Briggs finally sees us return to the world of Mercy Thompson after almost two years away.  I can't wait to see how Mercy and Adam are settling down together and what will be coming in to wreck havoc on them this time.  Knowing their relationship, I'm sure it will be anything but ordinary.
Release date: March 5

Can I squee when I saw Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire is coming out this quarter as well?!  Seriously, she and Yasmine Galenorn are probably my top two favorite authors right now and getting books from both of them in just over a months time is like Christmas!  This is the sequel to last year's debut, Discount Armageddon and will again be following Verity Price which can only mean more of the awesome mice and ballroom dancing shenanigans...or at least a girl can only hope.
Release date: March 5

Deadly Sting by Jennifer Estep will see the 8th installment of the Elemental Assassin series.  I wasn't too thrilled with the end of the last book and while it was understandable, I really really loved Gin and Owen together and was sad when he walked away from it.  I hope we see some movement in their relationship, even if it's just strengthening their friendship in this one.  Yes, I'm sure there will be plenty of bloodletting and ass-kicking since Gin is so good at that but I'm hoping for a bit of Owen and a lot less repetitive introspection which is my only real complaint with the series.
Release date: March 26

And lastly, Kitty Rocks the House by Carrie Vaughn.  Kitty has returned to Denver from the conference in London trying to figure out how to gather more allies for the fight that will be coming with Roman while he continues his Long Game.  Apparently it's going to be busy with a new werewolf in town challenging her, Cormac off hunting things, and Rick being tempted by another vampire.
Release date: March 26

So what are you looking forward to in the coming months?  Anything I should be on the lookout for?

2012 Recap and 2013 Goals

So I have to say that at the beginning of the year I didn't know if I'd make my reading goals with trying to keep the house together while selling and then trying to move.  I thought maybe with the vacation I'd get lots of reading done with that and that would help.  Yeah, not so much.  Really, it was having to keep the house clean and then staying out of it that helped the most.  It was easy to see the drop-off in the month we moved.  4 books finished that month.  I know I had to rush the last few new authors at the end of December and used comics to get me to the 40 new author goal but trying the A-Z series challenge really did a number on trying to get new authors in since instead of just reading the first book in a new series, I would generally try to finish the series.  By November, I'd given up on that and was just getting the first book in and moving on.  It was a neat experiment tho as was the A-Z author and A-Z title challenges.  I'm not doing them again this year because I want to focus on the one thing that I didn't do this year which was end the year with less books on my to-read pile than I start with .  I failed miserably on that one this time around and the challenges were the biggest reason as I added a lot of books as a result of those.

So to recap, my goals for this year were 110 books, 40 new authors, and 35,000 pages read as well as the A-Z challenges previously mentioned.  I surpassed my books and pages read and just barely met my new authors goal but meet it I did.

I always get a kick out of looking back at the books and new authors I read over the year.  Again, there were some phenomenal new authors: Deborah Harkness, Anne Bishop, Lillith Saintcrow, Jennifer Estep, Roger Zelazny, Gail Carriger, Erin Morgenstern, Mercedes Lackey, Faith Hunter, Amy Sprenger, Faith Hunter, Steig Larsson, and Markus Zusak.  There were a few books that really missed the mark with me this year, primarily some of the zombie books my oldest wanted me to read but there were another 20 or so that were just meh but that's ok.  I read more books that I really enjoyed than ones I didn't so it's a good year.

So my goals for 2013 are 120 books, 40 new authors (this one always seems to be a stretch and comes down to the wire so not upping it), and 40,000 pages.  Pretty tall order but since financially things are tight, this will hopefully mean less time out of the house doing stuff and more time in the house reading.  A girl can dream anyway.  Also again trying for the goal of reducing my to-read pile this year.  At this time a year ago, according to Goodreads I had 1,171 books to read and Shelfari said 1,164 (again, not sure where the discrepency is from).  Now I'm looking at 1,285 on Goodreads and 1,290 on Shelfari (this actually makes more sense since there are a few ebook freebies I've gotten that Goodreads doesn't have in it's database yet).  As you can see, even with reading 129 books last year, I still piled more than 100 on my to-read list.  Um, whoops.  LOL  So no weird challenges this year as I try to get that number down a bit.  There will be a lot of books continuing to come in between freebies, latest in series I'm reading, book club reads (both Matthew's and the one I just joined), and gifts but hey, it's worth a shot.