Teaser Tuesday - This Lullaby

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
Grab your current read
Open to a random page
Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

Even before I quit I'd hated the stink of smoking, but with Lissa I always let things slide more than I should have.  I think everyone has at least one friend like that.

p.23 e-book This Lullaby Sarah Dessen

Weekly Round-Up 5/3

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week and anything of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I should be getting two book tour books in soon, Shadow of the Sun (Kreitzer) and Everlasting (Frazier) so I'll be reading those when I get them.  In the meantime, I'm reading The Clue in the Crumbling Wall (Keene) and This Lullaby (Dessen).  I'm listening to Lord Sunday (Nix, read by Allen Corduner).

Since last week I've read The Secret in the Old Attic (Keene), Beautiful Malice (James), The Demon's Lexicon (Brennan), Anything but Typical (Baskin), Alive and Well in Prague, New York (Grab), and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum).  I finally finished Wicked (Maguire) and The Year of the Flood (Atwood) on audio.

Other reviews posted:
The Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion  (Keene)
The Quest of the Missing Map (Keene)
The Clue in the Jewel Box (Keene)

Books I won:

The More You Ignore Me - Jo Brand
June 1, 2010 US publication
won from Library Thing's Early Reviewers

A hilarious, poignant and darkly comic novel in the tradition of the Adrian Mole novels, full of dysfunctional family life, celebrity obsession, and coming of age in the 80s.

Alice’s family, tucked in a cottage in deepest Herefordshire, England, is a bit weird. Her mother, Gina, is obsessed with the weatherman on the local news and when Gina climbs naked onto the roof with Alice’s pet guinea pig in her arms, she is whisked off to the local psychiatric hospital. Keith, Alice’s father, tries to keep calm, but his patience is severely tested by his in-laws whose disturbed behaviour terrifies the community. Can mother and daughter ever be reconciled? Or is the stage set for more heartbreak than Alice can imagine?


From the Library is my weekly listing of what I checked out from the library recently.
I checked out one audio and then I went crazy and checked out some e-books too.  I don't know how much time I will have to read them, but I figure I can get them again to take on vacation and then I can just bring my Nook and not 5 books.

Sleuthing Sundays - Nancy Drew 18, 19, 20

Now I'm back in my groove.  Three books for review this time.  Awesome.
I'm going to do a recap post every other month, I think, instead of every month.  Maybe every three months I'm not sure.

Also Wednesday was Nancy's 80th Birthday!  Happy Birthday to you!  Here's to 80 years more of your adventures!

Oh and poor Ned.  Never gonna get anything out of Nancy.  Funny how Nancy refers to him as her favorite date, but I'm pretty sure Nancy is Ned's only date.

He was glad of an excuse to walk in the moonlight with Nancy.  As they followed the road that wound in and out along the river, Ned felt only the romance of the evening.
But Nancy's thoughts kept reverting to the mystery.  The Clue in the Jewel Box p. 144

Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories #18)

George said, "Bess, you know as well as I do that the thrust of a hundred-thousand-pound rocket couldn't force Nancy to give up this case." p.49

Nancy is asked by her father to investigate who is responsible for a shipment of explosive oranges that were delivered to the NASA space center complex.  It seems it is being blamed on a client of Mr. Drew's, but he is innocent.  Now Nancy and her friends travel to Florida to find some answers.
In the midst of her investigation, Nancy also discovers a mysterious moss-covered mansion with strange sounds coming from it and dangerous animals abound.  What is going on there and are the two mysteries connected?  It's up to the young sleuth to save the day for NASA.
This has to be one of the most convoluted mysteries yet.  I know the original story made more sense, but I guess in rewrites, it was decided to include something more current (the space program) so the ending was a little odd.  The villain was like a caricature of a villain even more so than any other Nancy Drew so far.

"Bess, you're the heroine of the occasion!"  George told her cousin.  She grinned.  "And you know I don't say that often." p. 158/159

The Demon's Lexicon (Demons #1)

Nick and his brother, Alan, have always been on the run with their strange, mad mother from the magicians who want something she has stolen from them.  But when Alan is marked by a demon for death, Nick will do anything to save him from the demons.  Even if it means putting up with the two teen-aged siblings that are tagging along with a similar problem.

Thursday night had been ruined, his house had been invaded, but he could be calm about this.  All he had to do was kill.  p.32

This was one of those books that I had been meaning to read for a while and never got around to it.  Finally joining the YA Book Bloggers Debut Book Battle spurned me on.  It's on of the two books I have read for judging.

I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked it.  I remarked on Twitter the other day that it felt a little "Supernatural vs. Bartimaeus" and I can still agree with that.  I think this is partially due to it being about two brothers and demons.  But some of the humor had a little Bartimeaus about it.  For example,

"It's mist.  Does mist generally strike in this house?  Is is attack mist?" p.31

which I thought so funny.  There are a lot of little moments like this in The Demon's Lexicon.  There really wasn't any lagging except what I got from Nick and it moved along at a nice pace.  I found the twist to be intriguing though not unexpected.  I look forward to the next book, The Demon's Covenant.


Read for YA Book Bloggers Debut Book Battle
Hogwarts: History of Magic
YA
Library