Yes, I did read one book just for myself this month

With all those books to review, finding time to read just for me can be a challenge. Luckily there's a goodreads group for just such reading-challenged reviewers. We've committed to reading one book for ourselves every month and so far I'm just keeping up, usually starting and finishing my me-book just as the month end--though I'm still not sure how March can be ending already.

This month I chose Peter Joseph Swanson's By the Light of the Carnival--I'd read excerpts on gather and I really enjoy his writing, so I knew it would be good. And it is. His best yet I think, bringing 1970s small-town America to life with farm and fair, faith and hypocrisy, and more than a touch of Ray Bradbury style horror to hold it together. Enjoy it with a 5-star dark intense coffee.

Moon Mist Valley casts a similar spell over the reader with thought-provoking and evocative images and poems, available from Lulu and very well worth a look. Enjoy a 4-star elegant complex cup of coffee while losing yourself in these words and images, easily the best poetry book I've read in quite a while.

Fezariu's Epiphany, by David M. Brown, brings you down to a nicely imagined different earth of Elenchera, where people as human as ourselves overcome problems not so different from our own in a world that's beautifully different and well-imagined. The author has created a fascinating universe and promises more stories--but not sequels (see yesterday's guest post)--set among its peoples. Fezariu, after finding his parents are not who he thought they were, runs away to be a soldier, then finds the army's not what he thought it was either. Enjoy a 4-star complex coffee with this complex and detailed epic.

Meanwhile, back in 1950s America and France, Monique Domovitche's Scorpio Rising tells the story of two wounded young people seeking a different way out from their broken backgrounds. The writing reminds me of Jeffrey Archer or Barbara Taylor Bradford, easy reading, fascinating characters, ever-increasing trials and a well-defined plot. Enjoy with a 3-star well-balanced full-flavored coffee.

And finally, returning to fantasy, I've read one more young adult novel this week, Alyssa Rose Ivy's Perilous Light, second in her Afterglow trilogy. Choosing between physical attraction and love's not easy at the best of times, but throw in magic, politics and war, plus the temptation to use fake IDs and go partying... It's easy reading, best enjoyed with a 2-star easy drinking cup of coffee.

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