Sunday Weekly Update June 5th

During this past week, I posted the last of my challenge reviews and a few book-related posts. Now, the real challenge begins -- maintaining the discipline of reading, reviewing, and posting. Don't get me wrong, I still want this experience to be fun. That's what I learned this past month, it is still fun to share.

Monday, May 30th
Photo: Pink Hydrangea Bush

• This pink hydrangea bush is right outside of my brother Alex's place. It was blooming and bursting with color and breathtaking beauty. The bees agreed!

Book Recommendations: Military Content

• May 30th was Memorial Day, and I celebrated the day by posting a favorite list of books, with military content, heroes and/or heroines, read and reviewed throughout that past few years.
• Unfortunately, my favorite SF/Romance series, Dock-Five by Linnea Sinclair, was missing from my recommendation. BUT, I realized that I did review the last book of the series, Rebels and Lovers (Dock Five #4), as well as her fabulous stand-alone book Games of Command. I edited and added both books to my initial list. Now, I'm happy! 

Tuesday, May 31st
Review: Only Beloved (Survivor's Club #7) by Mary Balogh

• This is the last book of Mary Balogh's Survivor's Club historical romance series. I missed two books in this series that I will go back and read now, but I found at least two books I seriously loved! 
• Only Beloved capped off the series quite nicely, with a giving man and a joyful woman willing to reach out to each other to achieve happiness in their lives. Romantic and beautiful. 

Wednesday, June 1st
30 Day Blog Challenge: Done!

• A wrap-up post for the 30 Day Blog Challenge, with a huge thanks to Ames who began it all! 
• Here, a big thanks to every one of you who added your support. Believe me, that made the past month of daily posting worth it! 

Thursday, June 2nd
Highlighting: Homo Superiors by L.A. Fields

• A new June release by Lethe Press, Homo Superiors by L.A. Fields, grabbed my attention as soon as I read the summary! It's a modern day retelling of the 1920's real-life case of Leopold and Loeb. Check out their picture (Leopold on the left, Loeb on the right). 

Friday, June 3rd

• Reading Day 
• Caught up with a few short stories in Tom Cardamone's anthology, Night Sweats.
• Began reading Sleepless in Manhattan by Sarah Morgan.

Saturday, June 4th

• Family Day: Attended my niece's 1st Communion! Afterwards, there was a big friends and family party to celebrate. It was a joyful day, and a fun, late, exhausting evening! Loved it! 

Highlighting: Homo Superiors by L.A. Fields

Two college seniors: Noah, frail like the hollow-boned birds he enjoys watching, caged by his intellect, and by his sense that the only boy as smart as himself is his best friend; Ray who has spent years aping leading men so that his every gesture is suave, but who has become bored with petty cheats and tricks, and now, during summer break in Chicago, needs something momentous to occupy himself.

Noah’s text says, I’ve found some candidates for murder. Ray chuckles and knows that Noah sent the message to cheer him. Both boys realize they stand apart from others their age. One lacks social graces, the other has perfected being charming. Both are too willing to embark on a true challenge of their superiority but neither realizes what such a crime will do because no matter how they see themselves, how they need one another, they still possess the same emotions of H. sapiens.

A modern day retelling of the Leopold and Loeb story from the author of Lambda Award Finalist My Dear Watson.

Publisher: Lethe Press
Publication Date: June 1, 2016
$15.00 Paperback; Electronic edition available
176 Pages, 6 x 9

30 Day Blog Challenge: Done!!

It's June 1st and I completed the 30 Day Blog Challenge. Ames idea for this challenge was to blog for 30 consecutive days during the month of May with the goal of getting herself back into the habit of blogging again. I needed some incentive to get back to blogging and decided to join her for the same reason. And what do you know? I was successful in completing the challenge. Yay!!!

Okay… I did miss a few days here and there, either due to migraines, the old-fried-brain syndrome from working late, and once because I was away from home and my scheduled blog post didn't post… but, I made up for them by double posting [grin]. I joined the challenge late, so with today's post it's 30!! It counts!

Seriously though, it's amazing how tough it was at the beginning to get going again, and how it all began to flow as the days went along.

Here is the breakdown of my posts:

Book Reviews/Mini-Reviews/Overview/Poetry Reviews: 11
Book Related Posts: 10
Weekly Updates: 3
Photos & Video: 3
Holidays: 3

Now that I know it's all about making the time, and I'm back in the groove, it will be easier to get back to my regular scheduled program.

Thank you Ames! This was a fantabulous idea!

Review: Only Beloved by Mary Balogh

Only Beloved is one of Mary Balogh's quiet romances.

In this last book of the Survivor's Club series, 48 year-old widower George Crabbe, The Duke of Stanbrook, decides he is ready to find a companion, a friend, a wife, a lover of his own. The only woman who comes to his mind is Dora Debbins, a 39 year-old spinster and music teacher he met over a year ago. George visits Dora at her little cottage and to her utter amazement, he proposes. She accepts.

During the rest of the novel, we discover the characters. There is Dora's capacity for hope and joy, her vitality and willingness to accept the opportunity to be happy with a man she respects, admires, finds attractive, and slowly comes to love. George will do anything to make Dora happy -- to keep this woman he fully admires at his side. He's almost perfect, but not quite. George gives, and has given so much of himself to others, but has never learned how to accept support from friends. So sad, so hardheaded, so darn huggable!

Most of Only Beloved is focused on relationship growth and characterization. The details about the marriage, how George and Dora get from companionship and attraction to love, are all fabulous. This couple develops a mature relationship with few, if any, misunderstandings. I love that about them. And, although this is not the most sizzling, sexual of couples, there is intimacy, love, and passion between them. Of course there are a couple of personal conflicts thrown in for good measure.

Dora's main problem is her estrangement with the mother who abandoned the family when she was a teenager, creating a scandal and robbing her of a future. Balogh does not rush the resolution to Dora's conflict, as it takes almost the whole book to conclude satisfactorily. George's conflicts, on the other hand, are more complicated. Having read the other books from the Survivor's Club series, we know that George's son was killed during the Napoleonic War, and that his first wife committed suicide afterward, but here we find out that there is more to both incidents. George has never revealed his secrets to anyone. A nemesis is revealed, and it all concludes in high drama.

There are two epilogues: one for the book and one for the series. I don't usually mind epilogues at all, however this time around, the epilogue to the series seem to be a bit much! So many children… I couldn't make out whose child belonged to which couple even when Balogh used the last names! Regardless, it was a sweet ending for them all.

Only Beloved was a lovely ending to this series. A quiet, joyful, happy, romantic ending. Recommended.

Book Recommendations: Military Content

It's Memorial Day, and I've been thinking about my preference for books with military content. I've reviewed enough military-based books within different categories to create a list of recommendations for readers who enjoy them the way I do.

SCIENCE FICTION:

SF Military Space Opera

• Old Man's War by John Scalzi
• Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie

  Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
  Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
  Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

• The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold 
• Paradox Series by Rachel Bach

  Fortune's Pawn #1
  Honor's Knight #2
  Heaven's Queen #3

Military Science Fiction / Romance

• Games of Command by Linnea Sinclair *
• Rebels and Lovers (Dock Five Series #4) by Linnea Sinclair *
• The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald

LGBT:

• Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War by Jeff Mann
• Captain Harding Trilogy by Elliott Mackle

  Captain Harding's Six Day War #1
  Welcome Home Captain Harding #2
  Captain Harding and His Men by #3

• Wingmen by Ensan Case

ROMANCE

• Always to Remember by Lorraine Heath
• Seduced by Molly O'Keefe
• Roselynde & Alinor (The Roselynde Chronicles #1& 2 ) by Roberta Gellis (Historical Fiction/Romance) 

NON-FICTION:

• War by Sebastian Junger

Although there are more books I could recommend, this short list includes some of my favorite (note, the majority fall under the military sci-fi category). My list feels incomplete, however, without including a Linnea Sinclair book under the SF Romance category, but unfortunately, I read my favorite books by this author before I began blogging. Bummer!

How about you? Do you have any good military-based, or books with military heroes or heroines, to recommend? How about a few other historicals, and at least one or two in the contemporary romance category?

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*Edited to Add: Linnea Sinclair books with links to reviews under SF/Romance. I did review a couple!!