Tag: Re-read Challenge

My 2010 Reading Challenges

Posted January 15, 2010 by Tracy in Discussions | 9 Comments

Last year was my first year to attempt a reading challenge. Wait, that’s not true. I started the TBR challenge 2 years ago but started it late and ended it early. Oops. 🙂 So last year was the first year that I had entered into reading challenges (Nath’s Re-read and KMont’s Year of the Category challenges) and actually completed them! Yay! throws confetti

KMont’s challenge was a lot of fun and got me to read books that I may not have read otherwise. Category romances aren’t the ones I pick up on a regular basis – not sure why. I have some on my shelves, but they tend to sit there.

Nath’s challenge was a little bit more difficult for me in choosing which books I wanted to re-read. I didn’t want to re-read books that I had in the past year…and I think I accomplished that (I’ll have to check). Some of the books that I started got put back down. Like Lover Revealed by JR Ward. I didn’t care for it the first time for several reasons (#1 Marissa) and thought I’d give it another chance. Nope, couldn’t do it. After the first chapter I had to put that puppy down. But for the most part I enjoyed re-reading the books I chose and it was a fun challenge.

This year I wanted to try my hand at something different. I’ve joined two challenges again this year (didn’t want to overtax my poor little brain) and I’m excited about them. The first one is the DIK Reading Challenge sponsored by the DIK blog. I get to choose any book that the ladies have taken to the island with them and then do a review for it. The second is the M/M Reading Challenge sponsored by Anasthezea at I Heart Paperbacks. I already read m/m books but the challenge for me is to review them, which I’ve done only infrequently in the past. Here’s more information on both:

We here at DIK love our DIK books. What better way to spend our evenings than to curl up by a warm beach fire and read? Oh, wait, you have a point…please let me revise. ahem What better way to spend an evening than to curl up by a warm beach fire, snuggled up to the heroes in your hut and read? Better? I thought so too.

Knowing this we’ve decided to hold the 2010 DIK Book Reading Challenge. The Challenge? Each month you will pick one of the 188 books that the DIK Ladies have brought to the island, read it, review it on your blog and then show us the link. It’s simple and we think it will be a ton of fun!

Do you have to be a DIK lady to do the challenge? Nope. If you are a DIK lady are you required to do the challenge? Nope.

Rules:
1. Pick one book from the DIK book list to read and review.

2. Book reviews can be posted any day during the last week of each month.

3. Link back to the blog when you do a DIK Book Reading Challenge (we’ll do a sticky post). If you don’t link to us we won’t know that you’ve posted a review! 🙂

4. Please clearly state in the title of your post that the review you are posting is for the DIK Book Reading Challenge.

At the end of the year the participants that have posted reviews for all 12 months will be put in one big pot and we will draw a name to win a $50 gift certificate from Amazon/Borders/Barnes and Noble/Books A Million (really it’s your choice which place you want the certificate from as long as we can purchase it from our computer!)

That’s it! Simple right? Yeah that’s what we thought so sign up and let’s get this started… speaking of starting it will begin on January 1st! Now excuse us while we go figure out which books to pick wink

I’ve only chosen my first book for this challenge as I bought it and intended to read it a long time ago and never did. It’s The Secret Pearl by Mary Balogh (on Jenre’s list)

TIMELINE: January 1st to December 31st 2010
RULES: Read five(5) or more m/m romances in 2010 There are 5 reading levels to choose from:
– Read 5 M/M Romances
– Read 10 M/M Romances
– Read 15 M/M Romances
– Read 20 M/M Romances
– Read 20+ M/M Romances DETAILS: This challenge is for those who enjoy reading gay romances (also known as m/m or male/male romances) or those who are interested in starting. If you aren’t familiar with this genre, it consists of novels and stories where the main focus is the romantic relationship between the male protagonists. • You must be 18 years old or older to join. • You don’t have to select your books ahead of time. Even if you do, you can change your books as you go. Your books can crossover with other challenges. • You don’t need a blog to participate. You can comment on this post if you’d like to share a book list or reading pool. • Please create a post on your blog where you’ll be keeping track of your challenge reads and link back to this post so others can join in on the fun. If you use a “Current Challenges” page, or something similar, you can link back from that page instead of creating an individual post. • You can use the large banner I’m using at the top of this post or you can use the smaller buttons I’ve provided below. Just copy the code provided. There’s no need to save the smaller buttons to your own server. (I have another large banner you can use here, if you’d like.) • You can join at anytime between now and the latter part of 2010. Just give yourself enough time to read your chosen amount of books. • Books chosen can be any length, sub-genre, or format. eBooks, paperbacks, young adult books, audio books, and re-reads are all okay. • Once the challenge starts, I’ll create a page for everyone to post their reviews. Reviews are encouraged, but are entirely optional. PRIZES: Everyone who signs up for the challenge between now and January 31st will be eligible to win $15 in eBook Bucks from All Romance Ebooks!I’m going for 20+ and so far I’ve already read and reviewed 2 books for this challenge – yippee!
1. His Convenient Husband by JL Langley
2. Chasing Smoke by KA Mitchell

9 Comments

Tagged: DIK Blog, DIK Reading Challenge, I Heart Paperbacks, Re-read Challenge, YOTC Challenge

Review: Hidden Riches by Nora Roberts.

Posted April 30, 2009 by Rowena in Reviews | 13 Comments

Hero: Jed Skimmerhorn
Heroine: Dora Conroy
Grade: 4.5 out of 5

When Dora Conroy, a Philadelphia antiques dealer, purchases a curious selection of auction items – objects she judges to be humorous novelties, she unknowingly becomes the deadly focus of an international smuggler. When robberies and death surround her merchandise, Dora seeks help from her intriguing upstairs tenant, former cop Jed Skimmerhorn. They discover a shadowy path leading across the continent to the smuggler, a man who will stop at nothing to recover his hidden riches. Like the treasures he craves, Dora and Jed find they are susceptible to his crushing grasp.

I read Hidden Riches a long time ago and I remember really liking the book so I decided to read this book for this month’s Re-read Challenge hosted by Nath.

It’s been so long since I’ve read this book that it was almost like I was reading it for the first time because so many things happened in this book that I had totally forgotten about.

This book is about Dora Conroy and Jed Skimmerhorn. Dora owns an antique shop and lives in one of the two apartments upstairs. Jed Skimmerhorn just moved into the other apartment. Dora thinks that her parents had ulterior motives for moving Jed into that vacant apartment but what can she do? Nothing much so she just goes on about her own business, driving from one antique show to another, purchasing antiques for her shop and unknowingly purchases some antiques that bad people are looking for. She becomes trapped in this dark world where she’s scared to be alone and she’s definitely glad to have an ex cop, a very sexy cop living across the hall from her.

As Dora gets sucked deeper and deeper into this smuggler’s world, Jed is there to stand guard and keep her safe. They both find themselves fighting to stay alive as they battle the attraction that keeps simmering just below the surface between them.

I enjoyed watching these two romp their way toward their happy ending. A lot of people aren’t big Nora Roberts fans but I certainly am. I don’t think she’s written a story that I haven’t liked in one way or another and I admire the work she does. She writes complex storylines that are easy to read and fall into. Her characters are always so real and that was the case with Dora and Jed. They seemed to jump right off the pages and I could totally picture myself being friends with the both of them. They’re not these uber rich characters but they’re normal everyday people that I could see myself interacting with.

I liked all of the mystery and steamy romance and just everything about this book. NR took characters that are in fields (well Dora’s) of work that I know nothing about and am really not all that interested in and she made me interested. Antiques is not my thing and if I hadn’t read any NR books before, I wouldn’t have tried this book out at all. I would have skimmed right over it but I’m so glad that I picked this one up and gave it a shot because I liked it.

While Dora is buying these hot antiques, Jed Skimmerhorn has his own set of issues that he’s dealing with and man oh man is he sexy. He’s that quiet, mysterious neighbor that you can hear lifting weights in his living room and picture yourself licking whipped cream off his abs. He’s that kind of smexy and the way that he got all protective of Dora is just flat out yummy. He made this story all the more enjoyable for me. Loved him.

Dora was a great heroine as well, she was one of those heroines that is smart but knows that she can’t save the world and is totally fine with stepping back and letting her man take care of the bad guys but she’s not totally dependent on her man so that was a plus with me. She was a great mixture of all of the good things you want a heroine to be and she made reading this story a lot of fun.

Dora’s parents were a riot and such an enjoyable part of the story and I really just enjoyed this whole story. This is one of those NR books that I always want to reread every chance that I get and I’m so glad that I picked this book up for this month’s re-read challenge. You can never go wrong with this story and I certainly didn’t. If you haven’t checked this book out yet, you should. It’s an oldie but goodie in my opinion. So seriously, get this book read it and love it with me.

This book is available from Penguin. You can buy it here.