I didn't care for it, but then again I don't really like SciFi anyway. Aliens aren't my thing. The characters are interesting, though...and the writing style is closer to Breaking Dawn than the first three Twilights, so if you liked that one you might like The Host.

I don't like SciFi at all. But I should probably step outside my box and try it. I was I happy I did with Harry Potter and The Twilight series.

I've been reading all the urban vampire-fantasy stuff lately. I really liked You Suck by Christopher Moore and right now I'm reading Gil's All Fright Diner by A Lee Martinez, which is very funny. Anyone else have suggestions along these lines? I've also been sampling Sookie Stakhouse, Anita Blake, Dresdon Files, etc. but I'm looking more for stand-alones, rather than series.

I just finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The two most interesting things about it were a) it was on the NON-FICTION best-seller list (???), and b) it had some really funny, tongue-in-cheek book club discussion questions at the end. Other than that, it was really pretty stupid.

Stupid? With all that ultraviolent zombie mayhem? That's unpossible! I heard a rumor that originally, there were no zombies in the book at all, but the editor suggested adding them to increase sales..... (DEL knows what I'm talking about)

Finally got my hands on Twilight & read it Wednesday & yesterday, started New Moon last night.

Re: Books on tape. A number of years ago, I took along Paul Riser's book on couples and ended up reading it out loud. We laughed and did a lot of 'oh yeah, remember when we did that's'. He still likes it when I read outloud to him. But he couldn't believe the when I read the beginning of Evanovich's Fifteen when Lulu explained why she was late to work. That's all he'll hear from that book tho 'cause I'm not willing to share Ranger with him.

I looked these up as they sound interesting. There are numbered series books and then in-between the numbers books. Are those essential to the series??? I thought about looking on Ebay for a good deal.

Pull up a chair, DEL. Urban fastasy is my favored genre, and I read a LOT. Most of the best stuff seems to run in series, though. My favorites are (author/title):
1. For action: Kim Harrison/Rachel Morgan, Laurell K Hamilton/Anita Blake, Lilith Saintcrow/Dante Valentine and Jill Kismet (two separate short series), Jim Butcher/Harry Dresden, Jeanniene Frost/Night Huntress, Patricia Briggs/Mercy Thompson, Marjorie M. Liu/Hunter Kiss.
2. Light reading, silliness: anything by Katie MacAlister, anything by MaryJanice Davidson.
3. Paranormal romance with some plot: JR Ward/Black Dagger Brotherhood, Sherrilyn Kenyon/Dark Hunter, Charlaine Harris/Sookie Stackhouse.
4. Paranormal romance with very little plot to speak of: Lynsay Sands/Argeneau Vampires.

There are more, but I'm not coming up with names off the top of my head. I don't have a lot of stand alones, and the main one I like you've already named (Christopher Moore).

ETA: all of the series I listed above make very little sense if you read them out of order. I actually had to bribe a friend into giving Kim Harrison a second try after she'd picked up the #3 Rachel Morgan and tried to read it as a stand-alone.

I don't know if you'd call the in-betweens "essential"....but they are very good and are the only place one of my absolute favorite characters appears.

Finished "15" this morning. I think it needed Sally. (Can't you just see Sally in the hot dog suit at the end??)

Oh, definitely!

I bought a set on eBay for a pretty reasonable price.

Thanks for the info, Becca! I will keep this list with me.

Anytime. And not to sound smug, but if you want to know about any certain paranormal/urban fantasy authors just ask. Either I've probably read them or one of my friends has (we're a pair of bookworms with several-thousand-page-per-month fiction habits) and I'm always happy to pass info along.

She's not kidding...she's a wealth of knowledge when it comes to books!

I haven't read 15 yet...I'm waiting on the library (my OCD side wont let me buy a hardback when the rest of the series is in paperback). PLEASE hide any spoilers or clearly mark them so I can avoid them.

I need a healthy dose of Ranger...I'm so excited I cant wait.

I read 15 yesterday. I liked it...lots of Ranger!

I finished "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" over the weekend. The story picks up after about 200 pages or so and gets pretty interesting as it goes on. The set-up and backstory that occupy the first 1/3 of the book are almost painfully slow, but once the plots (yes, that's a plural) take shape it gets much better.

Truffle - I'd say it's worth reading. I don't know if I'll read the others or not simply because I'm not crazy about the writing style, but the story was actually pretty good. I'd place his style somewhere between John Grisham and Dan Brown, but closer to the Grisham end of the spectrum. I compare him to Brown only because his plot twists were much more complicated than Grisham's simple "whodunnit" style, and - like Brown - all the connections are not made until the very end.

Now I'm killing time with a couple of short story re-reads until the new Lilith Saintcrow and Jeanienne Frost books come out tomorrow.

Just finished "another life" by andrew vacchs...now re-reading LA Requiem by Robert Crais. These are 2 of my favorite authors...

I'm almost finished with "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. It's really shed some light on the food industry and the necessity to become more locavor. On a side note, I made mozz cheese from a gallon of milk (recipe in the book).

Blameless in Abaddon by James Morrow

The Beckham Experiment: How the World's Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America by Grant Wahl

Parnell Hall's "Puzzle Lady" mysteries.

RR Becca have you read any Christine Feehan's books? The Dark Series is great.

I have not. I picked one up a while back and realized that it was way late into the series so I put it down and just haven't gotten around to finding the first ones. I refuse to read a series out of order. I'm about to start replacing all my hardbacks (with a few special exceptions) with paperbacks. I'm out of shelf space!