Out of My Comfort Zone Reads

When looking back over the books I read, there are some that stand out for different reasons than just being a highly enjoyable read. Those books are the ones that took me out of my comfort zone. They did not make any of my top 10 lists. But they would have perhaps made my list of most though provoking-out of comfort zone books I read.

To say that I didn't like them would be wrong. To say that I loved them would not fit either. These are books that challenged my thinking, they made me upset. Mostly because they made me think about topics that I wasn't ready to take on. To tell you the truth they are topics that I never wanted to think about.

I would have lived a long happy life without having to know or think about the things in these books. But the fact that ideas and acts like these are out there does not mean that turning a blind eye to the topics is the correct thing to do.

When it comes to reading. This is a solo act. You can choose what you want to read and how to interpret it. If you pick up a novel and don't feel comfortable about talking about it, at least you got to know more about yourself and learned from it. If you read books like the following often to learn, grow and discuss openly. I applaud you.

 Forbidden  by Tabitha Suzuma 
She is pretty and talented - sweet sixteen and never been kissed. He is seventeen; gorgeous and on the brink of a bright future. And now they have fallen in love. But... they are brother and sister.

Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending

Shine by Lauren Myracle

When her best guy friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, sixteen-year-old Cat sets out to discover who in her small town did it. Richly atmospheric, this daring mystery mines the secrets of a tightly knit Southern community and examines the strength of will it takes to go against everyone you know in the name of justice.

Against a backdrop of poverty, clannishness, drugs, and intolerance, Myracle has crafted a harrowing coming-of-age tale couched in a deeply intelligent mystery. Smart, fearless, and compassionate, this is an unforgettable work from a beloved author

Bumped (Bumped #1)by Megan McCafferty

When a virus makes everyone over the age of eighteen infertile, would-be parents pay teen girls to conceive and give birth to their children, making teens the most prized members of society. Girls sport fake baby bumps and the school cafeteria stocks folic-acid-infused food.

Sixteen-year-old identical twins Melody and Harmony were separated at birth and have never met until the day Harmony shows up on Melody's doorstep. Up to now, the twins have followed completely opposite paths. Melody has scored an enviable conception contract with a couple called the Jaydens. While they are searching for the perfect partner for Melody to bump with, she is fighting her attraction to her best friend, Zen, who is way too short for the job.

Harmony has spent her whole life in Goodside, a religious community, preparing to be a wife and mother. She believes her calling is to convince Melody that pregging for profit is a sin. But Harmony has secrets of her own that she is running from.

When Melody is finally matched with the world-famous, genetically flawless Jondoe, both girls' lives are changed forever. A case of mistaken identity takes them on a journey neither could have ever imagined, one that makes Melody and Harmony realize they have so much more than just DNA in common.

From New York Times bestselling author Megan McCafferty comes a strikingly original look at friendship, love, and sisterhood--in a future that is eerily believable

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Frank - no ordinary sixteen-year-old - lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly.

To Watch Out For

Perusing upcoming releases I came across this title! Added to my To-Read List!

Don't Read This Book: 13 Forbidden Tales from the Mad City

Monica Valentinelli and George Cotronis

Diamond Book Distributors

Evil Hat Productions, LLC

Pub Date   Mar 19 2013

More Title Details

• ISBN9781613170120
• Price15.00
• CurrencyUSD
• EditionPaperback

Description

Down a lonely alleyway, under a starless sky, lies a city that never was, yet is: the Mad City, where nightmares walk the streets, and a good night’s sleep can get  you killed. Here, then, is a book from that place.

Within these recovered pages are the tales of the Awake, insomniacs who’ve walked those perilous streets, bringing a bit of  the power of dream with them to fight back the night — always at a terrible cost.

For many, it will not end well. For a few, they might just become heroes — or at least find their way back home.

For you, a choice. Turn away. Don’t read this book. And maybe you’ll continue to rest easy. Or open the cover and enter a world unlike any you’ve ever dared to imagine!

Don't Read This Book introduces 13 forbidden tales from the Mad City and the world of the Don't Rest Your Head RPG.

JACK BE NIMBLE: THE CRYSTAL FALCON JACK BE NIMBLE: THE CRYSTAL FALCON by Ben English

    Circling ever closer to a truth concealed behind layers of conspiracy, assassination, and horrific acts of global terrorism, Jack Flynn and his team of clandestine covert operatives are on the run, barely ahead of the forces of a vast global enterprise engineered to bring about anarchy and the destruction of the free west.

   In Cuba, fueled by an ancient vengeance, a ruthless crime lord sets in motion a plan to assassinate the leader of the worlds newest democracy. Jack strikes at the heart of this plot only to find himself face-to-face with the woman he thought lost to him forever. Together, Jack and Mercedes are on a collision course with a terrifying criminal mastermind whose strategies are already in motion and far, far ahead of schedule.

   The Crystal Falcon is the third book in the Jack Be Nimble thriller series.

The Jack Be Nimble series follow the story of celebrity actor Jack, who just so happens to also help solve international crimes. Along with the Lois Lane-like Mercedes, who is not only pretty, but insanely intuitive. The reader does not only get personal relationships between the characters. But world wide travels, detailed and researched plot lines and a rather ingenious villains.

The third book in the series spends a lot of time in Cuba. It was gripping from the very first page in which we are exploring a vacated island in which the tenants moved out very recently, and very fast. Food still rotting in the fridge and possessions strewn around in each of the houses. But what about the insanely detailed clean up job of removing all technology, wiring and electronics. But with there is still one paper, jammed in the back of one of the desks that has some clues. Fingerprints.

It's really hard to put down these books, they are action packed with just a great amount of research and detail put into them that it's bound to keep your eyes glued to the pages.

While the previous books took us from Paris, London, San Francisco, this book does a lot of focusing on Cuba. It is somewhere I haven't read much about and I enjoyed the writing that makes you feel like you are actually there. There is so much detail and visuals in the writing it's really hard not to lose yourself.

If you enjoy international thrill writers like Dan Brown, I recommend you give this series a try. You'll pretty much be hooked after book one. You Welcome.




This post will appear on my other blog as well cubicleblindness.com September 15 2012.

Fun news from my favorite Author!

Press Release – June 2012
Award-winning Aussie Creators Go Psychic
Hoodlum Entertainment and author, Marianne Delacourt, team up to bring sass and murder our TV screens.
Step aside The Mentalist and Lie to Me, there’s a new psychic in town and she’s home-grown. Meet Tara Sharp, an unemployed, twenty-something with a gift for reading auras and body language. Add a dose of dangerous clients and a bunch of oddball friends and you have the ingredients for a first rate comic mystery television series.
Bestselling, award-winning author Marianne Delacourt and award-winning multiplatform production company Hoodlum, today announced the option of Delacourt’s Tara Sharp series published by Allen and Unwin.
The books follow the exploits of Tara Sharp as she negotiates the seedier side of Australian suburbia in her role as a maverick psychic.
“Hoodlum is producing some of the world’s best multiplatform entertainment. They’ve well and truly stamped their presence on the international scene and it’s brilliant to see an Australian company leading the way,” says Delacourt.
Hoodlum is an Emmy® Award-winning multiplatform production company that specialises in producing high quality entertainment content engaging fans in television, film, online, mobile and emerging media platforms for worldwide distribution. In 2009 Hoodlum won a Primetime Emmy® for their work on LOST and an International Emmy® for their work on Primeval in 2010. The company has won two BATFA Awards, a Global Media Award and the Broadcast Digital Channel Award.
Marianne Delacourt won the Davitt award in 2010 for the first Tara Sharp novel entitled Sharp Shooter. Delacourt is well known to readers as her alter ego, science fiction writer, Marianne de Pierres. As Marianne de Pierres she’s been published internationally, translated into a dozen languages and won an Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction novel.

Jack Be Nimble: Tyro (Book 2) By Ben English

The adventure that began in fire and terror in the night sky over London has brought Jack Flynn and his friends together again, to strike a blow against the forces of a brilliant, sadistic technologist bent on unspeakable destruction. Yet a single blow by itself has not turned the tide of this secret war, and Jack must divide his team to realize any chance of defeating the hidden army arrayed against them.

Mercedes Adams evades the assassins sent against her only to be visited by a more dangerous, intimate threat from her past. As her path brings her closer and closer to Jack—on a mad dash from Paris to San Francisco to Los Angeles to Havana, Cuba—Mercedes discovers the hope of survival and salvation in the lessons learned years ago in the freshness of youth, lessons learned by an eager boy, a maverick, an earnest novice…a Tyro.
What I love about this series and why I will continue to keep reading them, is the characters. I enjoy the interaction between all of the characters, if they are the bad guys or the good guys. They all are incredibly well-rounded in which I mean the reader gets to know and learn about each of the characters as if they were carrying the story alone. But they don't, these books are told from different perspectives.
Also we get to travel around the world, from Paris to San Francisco and Cuba. I enjoy that we get a little bit of historical background into the cities , it's as if the settings are a character of their own.
You'll get a little bit of everything that the first book introduced as well, some international political conflicts, spys with fast and fancy toys, advanced technology and the heart of the story, great characters.
This author will appeal to fans of James Patterson and Dan Brown. 

Jack Be Nimble: Gargoyle Book One by Ben English

The boy came to her out of water, unexpected. He was smart and strong and goofy, as boys are meant to be, but peculiar - he remembered everything.
In the span of a single summer, she made him fearless.
Now, even as Mercedes Adams is at the height of her career, forbidding changes loom over the world. That night, in the hushed calm of a spring evening, two plain-faced killers watch her home, waiting to make their approach.
A few hundred miles away, a brilliant technologist returns to his childhood town in order to begin a descent into darkness . . . in London, a military game theorist finds himself pursuing kidnappers . . . outside Prague, a hacker and a thief stumble upon plans for a weapon unique to the world . . . an FBI agent faces an unpredictable fugitive in Chicago, while in Germany, a sniper-turned-schoolteacher finds reasons to take up his ancient calling . . . and a sitting United States Senator finds his life and his work invaded to terrifying conclusion. In Paris, a widowed man begins to recognize the hints and patterns of a greater puzzle that will bring them together . . . or kill them all.
Mercedes Adams is about to find herself at the center of a vast, tightening knot of mystery, intrigue, and globe-spanning terror borne of her family's legacy. Rising to her aid is a small group of specially-trained men and women. And at their center?
A man who remembers everything

I was emailed by the author asking for a review in exchange for a free copy of the book. As I mostly review young adult books I centered on the part of the email that indicated that it was "firmly PG13" and would appeal to both adults and young adults.
After only a few chapters in I really could not see an appeal for young adults and thought that it was more of a PG 16 if I were to put an age range on it. But that really has no affect on the fact that I really enjoyed the story. There is an appeal to those young adults that like reading about more adult things like work, family life and advances in technology and science. But on with my thoughts on the actual story. Sorry about the intro.
Characters: My favorite character was Mercedes. As a woman myself I found her more appealing and interesting to me. I found that during some of Jack's parts that I became distracted and my thoughts wandered as I read. Alonzo was very interesting for me as well and almost as interesting as Mercedes. You would think that the most appeal of the book would be Jack as he is the crime-solver and a very popular actor. The contribution of several characters to the story I found was very beneficial for me. If this story were just told from one perspective I feel that it would not have turned out as well as it did.
Story: I thought the story was great, I did not think that it slacked at all as I have read in other reviews. For me I liked the whole idea presented right in the beginning of the novel of being able to inject a person with something and have microscopic technology inside your blood stream to have a higher connection to your feelings and body. I know that I am not going to make sense to people who have not read the story because I am not a writer and cannot express it as well as it's written in the book.
Overall the book had just as much appeal to me as the Dan Brown books I have read. International settings with scientific technology and a mystery to solve. Very interesting combinations of characters and it's a pretty lengthy novel as well. For the $2.99 kindle price it's well worth the money and I would encourage you to give it a try. It's the first in a series so if you like it there's more to come.
Book reviews like this make me wish I were better at expressing things. Sometimes as a reviewer I am at a loss for the right words to help explain such a detailed and well researched story. 
I highly encourage you to read the first 30 pages here 
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3935689.Ben_English

The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M Auel

Description from : Goodreads.com
In 1980, Jean Auel began her Earth's Children series with her novel The Clan of the Cave Bear. Now, more than 30 years and 45 million copies later, she brings this six-volume Ice Age epic to a reassuring conclusion with The Land of Painted Caves. In this evocative, carefully researched fiction, Cro-Magnon shaman Ayla and her heroic mate Jondalar struggle with environmental upheavals, and threats from wild animals and hostile hunters. Transcending difficulties, this loving, loyal couple find peace and respite in unexpected places and move resolutely towards a more secure future. (P.S. There is good reason why this novel is so eagerly anticipated: The Land of Painted Cave is the first Earth's Children installment in nine years.)

I did not know that there was even going to be another book after so many years. But when I did hear the news I let my expectations rise for what I really wanted to see happen in this book. All of my expectations were met, but I felt drained after reading this book. There was so much repetition throughout the book that unfortunately I became very bored with their story and it took me a couple of months to get through reading the story, which has never happened with me and this series. 
The book was divided into sections, it was nice to see Jonayla as an infant and in the 2nd half of the book as a child. The acceptance of Ayla into the 9th cave is as expected after leaving off in Shelters of Stone. More so in the first half of the book than the last half when she pushes the people to develop more intelligent ideas regarding family life and the Great Mother. How people should be interacting with each other and the beginning signs of what a society has become today.
My main disappointment in the last book was the constant repetition of things we have already discovered in the other books. As a book that is so far into the series, the constant badgering of the past events was painful for me to read. It was not only that the people retold the story to each other to introduce the new people to Ayla, but you would find the same stories repeated over and over throughout the book several times. I think I can count 4 times about Ayla teaching the people of other camps the hand signals and the concept behind them. As a reader of the whole series I felt that really one reminder of why it is significant here in the last book was more than sufficient. There were several other concepts that were done the same way. Ayla would explain to the 1st something, then she would explain it to somebody else and have Ayala again back up the story with another example and on and on. 
So as the final book in the series all of my questions and desires were met. I just wish it would have been done in a shorter more precise way. I did not find it necessary to re-hash the whole series into one book. If you have not read this series and decided to just pick up this book, you would get all of the main points in the previous books given to you without having to have read them at all. It was a little long winded and I personally found all the additional reminders overwhelming and exhausting.
But of course I would not recommend that. Earth's Children has always been on the top of my list of favorites and I still highly recommend this series today.  And I am still giving this one 4 stars because it's a beautiful series and end to a fantastic series.