Congratulations, you have been chosen to act as Death.  It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.  It is your duty to retrieve soul vessels from the dead and dying and see them on to their next body. If you fail, Darkness will cover the world and Chaos will reign.

Welcome to Charlie Asher's new job, but life is never as easy as it sounds.  For Charlie Asher, Beta Male, nothing can go right after the birth of his daughter.  Despite his best efforts to collect souls before the sewer harpies can get their claws into them, running his secondhand clothing store, and raising his daughter, Darkness is apparently coming.

Some days you just need to read a book that makes you ugly laugh, the king of laughter people stare at your for.  Christopher Moore , at least for me, writes those kinds of books and A Dirty Job didn't disappoint.  Several times I had people either looking up at my patio as cracked up, or stared as they walked by where I eat lunch. Not that I spared them much of a glance.  I was more concerned about what was going to happen next.

There wasn't much need for world building in A Dirty Job because it is set in San Francisco, but Christopher Moore did a wonderful job of transporting me there.  It wasn't with great detail that entire city was explained, but Moore picks certain things that stuck with me: like the random bits of animals pieces sold in Chinetown and the fact the best ally for combating sewer harpies is in the Financial District.  The entire books he describes the neighborhoods Charlie (our main character and resident Death Merchant) goes to collect his souls, but these descriptions are short as not to bog down the story with too much detail.  Which seeing as it's set into the now and not some distant future or made world, was great.  I do sort of know what San Francisco looks like.

As for the characters that were brought into the book throughout the story I honestly loved each one.  Charlie Asher is easy to root for because he doesn't try to be a hero that he isn't.  He's trying to raise his daughter, run his father's shop, and not bring about the end of days.  There are a lot of characters that came in and go throughout the entire story.  Some for brief moments, some pop in and out.  Alvin and Mohammed are probably the two most adorable hellhounds I've seen, only trumped toward the end when you meet the zombie squirrel people. One of my favorite things is the Emperor of San Francisco has a camo (he's a real dude).  I was super excited to see Christopher Moore included him into the cast of characters.

The story itself was super fun and true to the style I've come to know and love from Christopher Moore.  Which means its not suitable for kids in any shape or form.  It is most definitely for mature audiences only.  I felt like the pacing of the book was great and the timeline jumps years as it progresses, but I didn't get lost with the jump.  Moore uses Sophie's (Charlie's daughter) age to show the passage of time. I liked that the book spanned years, not months, and gave our main character a chance to get the hang of being a Death Merchant.  Time for the Darkness and Chaos to start to rise.  Not just BOOM here's the end of the world, sorry you're the new guy.

Now, all of the being said there were a few parts, maybe just things, I wasn't overly fond of.  The first is more of a personal preference thing for me, Charlie's sister Jane, I wasn't really fond of her throughout any part of the story.  In fact, outside of babysitting I'm not really sure what point she served.  I don't know, I personally didn't like her.  She felt like a nag who was more concerned about getting her brother laid than wondering why to very large black dogs that literally eat anything are standing guard over her niece.  But, hey, that's just me.  The other thing was at times I got the Morigans confused as to which one was who and did what terrible thing.  But! I did enjoy them as the bad guys.  That had some of the best lines in the book.  I just kept confusing them and was never sure who was who.

In the end was this my favorite Christopher Moore book?  No, Lamb is still my number one, but A Dirty Job definitely came close.  

Is Charlie Asher my favorite MC?  Nope, because no one will ever hold my heart like Pocket.

Will I read another book by Christopher Moore?  Um, it's sitting right next to my elbow and as soon as I'm done editing this review me and my pop-tarts are going to bust into it.

A Dirty Job was a great book and is one of my top 5 favorites from Christopher Moore.  It is the first of two books in the Grim Reaper Series.  I'm pretty sure there is only going to be two, but I could be wrong.  The book was hilarious from start to finish, and it was fun watching Charlie Asher, Beta Male, grow a backbone and almost become and Alpha Male.  Almost.  So if you need something funny, with adult sized humor, pick it up, or any of Christopher Moore's books. You won't regret it!

"A demon is not an items to be tossed aside like an old shirt.  When you have battled with yours, side by side, maybe you'll understand."

Novice is the first book in the Summoner series by Taran Matharu, and I've been wanting to read it since I stumbled across it on Goodreads.  Not only did the synopsis catch my eye, but the story behind how Novice become published was pretty awesome.  The story was written during National Novel Writing Month and then became a Wattpad sensation, and it's not hard to see why.  Hands down the most adorable book I've read this year.  There is honestly no other way for me to describe this book, but to call it adorable.

Without a doubt Novice falls in the Young Adult genre, but that shouldn't turn you away from reading it.  Taran Matharu created a wonderful fantasy world and lovable, and despicable, characters.   Fletcher is a great main character that you just can't help but to root for throughout the whole book, and Ignitions is about the cutest demon to every exist.

Now before picking up this book I did skim through a few reviews, just to see why people didn't enjoy about the Novice.  At the end of the book none of what bothered other people really bothered me.  Yeah, there is a lot of modern terminology throughout the book, but it's targeted for a younger crowd.  So the use of the Twenty-First Century language honestly didn't seem out of place. The target age for this story could relate language Matharu used. Does the book have a similarities to Lord of the Rings?  Kind of.  One of our main characters is a dwarf and another is an elf, but I felt that's sort of where the similarities really ended.  

The pacing of the book was good.  I never once really hit a part of the book where I started to get bored or wondered why this section was there.  However, a part of me felt like the last couple of chapters were a bit rushed.  Like Matharu was so excited to get us to the tournament that he just sort of skipped  the last month of our main characters training.  Even if we'd just had a chapter to glimpse at the their struggle to be the best I wouldn't be complaining, but I just felt like he gave us one moment of the struggle to train for this huge moment.  Then the moment was there.

My other complaint is the ending.  Was it terrible?  Nope.  Did I like it? Nope.  Why?  Because I have to wait until May of 2016 to find out what happened!  That being said I do like that the book ended on a cliffhanger, and one that had sort of been looming over Fletcher through the entire book but sort fell to the back burner.  Other things were happening around Fletcher and his friends, and his whole reason for ending up at Vocans Academy was forgotten.  It felt sort of right for the book to end where the it started.  It felt like we came full circle from page one.

All and all it was a wonderful book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I loved a great number of the characters and the world that Taran Matharu created in Novice.  It isn't hard to see why this book became so popular on Wattpad and was picked up to be published.  It is hands down adorable and a must read.  I cannot wait for the second book in the series to be published.  The first chance I get I'm pre-ordering it, and it is definitely a must read for 2016.

So as I added the books that I gathered for this haul, I realized none of my covers match what BookLikes has in their system.  Well, one does actually, The Book of Air and Shadows cover is the same.  The other's, not so much.  Still, these are the titles I collected while book shopping with Mim, also known as my Grandma.

We only did one book trip because this visit was all about my brother.  It was, after all, his birthday.  Lucky for us we had a rainy afternoon the day the flew into town, so our hike had to be postponed a few hours.  Which meant time for Mim and I to nerd out in the bookstore while my brother sat in a chair and gave us funny looks.  My love of books comes from my Grandma and we can talk about them for hours even though we read completely different types of books.

I'm pretty excited about all these books and I'm hoping I'll manage to get to all of them this year, but let's be honest, my TBR pile is an entire bookshelf of books.  Only one of them will for sure happen this year and that is Winter Queen by Boris Akunin, it is a BINGO book.  So it needs to happen, in fact I think it might make me BINGO once I finish it.

As for the book I'm most excited about, definitely the Norse mythology book.  Norse mythology is something I'm not overly familiar with outside of what I know through the TV show Vikings and the Thor comics.  So I'm pretty happy to have that to be new fixture on my bookcase.  I'm also pretty thrilled for the King Arthur book by John Steinbeck.  The covers I've seen for this book have been pretty bland, so I've never picked it up.  Which is not the case about my cover.  In fact the cover caught my eye before I realized it was by Steinbeck.

This haul was another small one, but lets me honest I only need small hauls right now, and this post as gotten much longer than I intended today.  So, ta-da, my book haul with my Mim.

One for sorrow,

Two for joy,

Three for a girl,

Four for a boy,

Five for silver,

Six for gold,

Seven for a secret,

Never to be told.

Seven for a Secret is the second book in the Timothy Wilde Series by Lyndsay Faye.  Six months has passed since the events of Gods of Gotham.  It followed the same pattern as the first book in the series: same point of view, another horrific crime, and a bunch of sass from Valentine.  The characters were consistent into this book as well.  I still hate Silkie Marsh with the fire of a thousand burning suns. The brothers seemed to have mended some fences since last we saw them.  In fact one of my favorite bits about this book was the relationship between Timothy and Valentine.  Their snipping and sarcasm toward one another was enjoyable, but it was easy to see the two cared for each other.  And, Mercy Underhill wasn't present during this story, which to be fair is a personal preference.  She is a well written character, like all of Faye's characters, I just find her whiny and annoying.

However, there is a reason for not being able to give this book a whole 4 stars.  The closer I got to the ending, the more I realized I was pulling away from reading.  It wasn't just because this story was coming to a close and I wasn't ready, there is in fact another book.  I sort of felt like the story started to drag along.  Like Timothy hadn't learned anything from his first case and was making all the same mistakes all over again.  Which was fine when he was a brand new Copper Star, but it's been six months.  Maybe I'm being a bit judgmental about it.

Then we get to the climax of the story.  Timothy has figured it out and he's running against the clock to stop it.  Only when he gets there it's all over, the thing has happened and he's left with the aftermath.  Why?  Because of reasons due to political things that I still don't really understand.  They blame him of harassing someone, but I feel like I missed the chapter where he actually harassed this character.  The upside to the political upset, we get to Valentine in all of his Dead Rabbit glory.  Which was awesome!  I still would have liked a bit more during the climax of the story, though.  To be fair to the author this issue might be more my personal preference.

As for the every end of the book, I was reeled back in.  Just like in the first book, Timothy manages to get one over on everyone who deserves it: the party, Silkie, and even on Mercy.  I do adore Timothy Wilde as a main character and was glad he stopped pining and found a lady friend.  He deserves a bit of happy.

Seven for a Secret was beautifully written of course.  Lyndsay Faye did a huge amount of research into the time period and it shows throughout the book.  It was hard to not see the streets that the characters were roaming, to feel the atmosphere around them as they tried to solve the crime.  She has a way of making characters tug your heartstrings until you fall in love with them, or writes them in such a way you cannot wait until they die.  Both books have made me very glad not have lived back then for some petty reasons, like plumbing and heating.  Among bigger issues that sadly still seem to be an issue today.

In the end I did like the second book in the Timothy Wilde series, but I don't think I'm going to jump into Fatal Flame, the third book.  For two reasons, it is the last book in the series and I just didn't enjoy this one as much as Gods of Gotham.  So I'm little apprehensive to jump in again.  I do recommend this series for anyone looking for a fun Historical Fiction book, or for anyone who enjoyed Gangs of New York.

Everyone has their own book challenges that they participate in every year while they read, and the awesome thing about it is each one is a little different.  For me every January I set myself minimum reading goal for the new year.  Which is usually 5 more books than I read the year previous.  My hope is at the very least to read that many books before the next January, but ultimately to go over.  So far each year I've managed to just barely scrape in my goal.

Last year was a little different.  My roommate, also an avid reader, and I stumbled across Book BINGO which is put out every year by Random House Canada.  We thought it would be a fun way to motivate ourselves to not only read more, but to branch out and read different things. So ever the Girl Scouts we are, we set some ground rules.

1. It has to be a book you haven't read before.

2. Each BINGO gets a small prize of the readers choosing. (Totally got her to clean my car once.)

3. The book can be in any format: audio, ebook, or physical.

4. Whoever manages to Blackout first is the winner and the losers buys dinner.

Needless to say neither of us won last year, but she has quite the collection of my Little Ponies now.  So when 2015 dawned and we were ringing in the New Year with Netflix, takeaway, and our brand new kitten, we decided to play again.  Only this year we were going to make our own squares.

Each of us added our own squares as we went.  Which is why I have to read a Classic Romance and she had to pick of up a Graphic Novel.  Some of them we recycled from the year before because we enjoyed them.  Others are just for fun, like a book with a Green Cover.  One thing we wanted to do was Recommend a book to each other that we felt the other should read.  This year she chose Station Eleven for me and I chose Tommyknockers for her.  She said she wanted to read more Stephen King so I went with my personal favorite of all his books, the one that scared me the most.

So now it's almost July and according to Goodreads I'm four books behind on my goal, but I'm not worried.  Winter is coming and out here it's best to be inside with a good book.  As for BINGO, well, I'm currently on the winning side, but I know at any given time she'll come up from behind and take the lead.

I'm so close to finally getting a BINGO, but I'm having a hard time finding a book I either haven't already read, or really want to read, that was published in 1988.  Either way it's nice to be ahead while I can be.  It truly sucks that she can speed read some days

So here it is my 2015 Reading Challenge.  On New Year's Eve this year both of us will sit down and work on a new one for 2016.  I think I might make her read something Victorian in nature.