Nimavenl - Nicole's Random Ramblings

I love it when a plan comes together... Err... No, wait... I mean... I love it when someone else likes books / authors I like! Six authors mentioned on this list of Paranormal Staff Picks. And five of those six write books (and series and short stories and...) I really, really really (really, REALLY really) enjoy! Five authors I love and one I've never read. Guess I know whose books I'll be looking up today! * Doing a Happy Dance while heading over to Goodreads... * Check out Paranormal Staff Picks from Hope Ellis - Penguin USA Blog Posted by Anne Bishop's Courtyard on Friday, 12 June 2015

Fair Game by Patricia Briggs My rating: 5 of 5 stars A fun and interesting read that I enjoyed a lot. Possibly one of the best books set in this universe. View all my reviews

I love language and especially love reading books and stories that play with language or show the author's love for language. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is one such story. I'd known the story of Alice in Wonderland for years before actually sitting down to read the book as an adult. What struck me was not only how much I enjoyed the fun and craziness of Alice's adventures, but how much I enjoyed the author's way with words. The simple yet exquisite beauty of the words on the page as they come together into a whimsical whole is simply amazing to me. Source: Quote HD.com I also love tales set in magical or fantastical worlds like the amazing Anne Bishop's Black Jewels books or J. R. R. Tolkien's extremely intricate world of Middle Earth . Alternate realities are very interesting to explore as well, worlds that are similar to yet different from our own. I like how they often provide great insights into our own world and our own thinking, despite so...

Reading "River Marked", the sixth book in the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, I came across ley lines. There were several scenes set at the Stonhenge replica by Maryhill in Washington State, which got me thinking about the original Stonehenge, and books I'd read set in the British Isles by authors like Marion Zimmer Bradley, Diana Gabaldon and Manda Scott. Living in Europe now, I could actually take a mini-break and go visit some of the places described in the books I've read. Places like Tintagel, Stonehenge, and for instance locations from Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. I'm trying to come up with a list of places that I'd really really really like to go to. So far, the list is still a *very* long one and mostly still in the "what if" stage, but still...! Just knowing I can hop on a train or an airplane and see these places, or other amazing places like Berlin and Rome and Paris... It's a pretty wonderful feeling! I've g...

One really cool and unexpected "side effect" of reading Patricia Briggs ' Mercy Thompson books is learning lots of new and interesting things. One of the things I'm learning about is Washington State. I'm currently reading the sixth book in the series, River Marked, and wanted to get a better idea of the area Mercy and Adam went to. Now sure I could take the "short-cut" way of learning more and get my information from the Forum on the website , however doing a Google search tends to come up with lots of interesting info as well. I knew the Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer were set somewhere in the US. I'd looked Forks up on a map once, just to get a general idea of what it looked like. What I didn't know was where it was in relation to other places. Such as Canada, state lines, and such. Reading Mercy Thompson meant doing more research into Washington State, and this book, being set mostly away from the Tri-Cities, meant checking out more ma...

I've been reading the first few books in the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs these past few days. Some of the things talked about like vampires, werewolves and fae I have a pretty good understanding of through folk tales, fiction books, movies and TV series. Other things, I'm learning lots about! Some of the things I'm learning about are now also things I've Googled. What does a coyote look like exactly, or a VW Rabbit, and oh yeah - how about a map of the area the stories are set in?! As I'm looking these things up, I figured why not store the links / photos / descriptions in one easy place. And where better to store something than here, my very own blog! Coyote  First, of course there's Mercy. She's a walker. Something I've never heard of before. Patricia Briggs' website links to a forum (which I just discovered about 10 minutes ago... Oh Bliss !!!) that has a page with lots of info on walkers . Basically - she can shapeshift/...