I just started this book last night and so far it’s pretty cool. It’s the first in a new series from Seanan McGuire, who has previously done the October Daye series and the Newsflesh trilogy (but under the Mira Grant name). McGuire writes awesome female protagonists and her new character Verity Price seems kick-ass; she’s a professional ballroom dancer/cryptozoologist (read: monster hunter).

Here’s the description from Amazon:

Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night… The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity-and humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she’d rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. Sounds pretty simple, right? It would be, if it weren’t for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family’s old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels, and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed. To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone’s spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city…

It’s available on Amazon.com for only $7.99.

Geek + Geek = Awesomeness. I love John Scalzi‘s books, and was already looking forward to his next book, Redshirts (gee, I wonder what that would be about?). I also love Jonathan Coulton‘s songs. Put those two together and what do you get? The new theme song for Redshirts:

This is such a great idea, if you don’t have a lot of space: store your books in the rafters.

I’d love to do something like this in my living room. The only problem would be: I’d be too short to reach those books!

Via Apartment Therapy

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I went pretty much gadgetless for most of the past week, giving myself a much needed offline break. I will be trying to post more in this new year, but I don’t think it will ever be as much as I formerly used to write.

This year I wanted to start off the year with some 2011 retrospectives. I never got around to reviewing each of the books I read the past year, but I thought the least I could do was make a list of everything I read. This year I managed 39 books, which on average means I read 0.75 book per week (or 1 book per 1.3 weeks). Not too bad, if I say so myself. Let’s see if I can aim for more than 40 next year!

Highlights for me this year were The Hunger Games trilogy (well, actually only the first book, the rest I found a bit disappointing), Seanan McGuire’s October Daye series (Rosemary and Rue is the first one, if you’re interested) and George R. R. Martin’s A Dance of Dragons. So what books did you read this year? What were your favourites?

Read In 2011

Melinda Seckington’s favorite books »

I really don’t like the rest of the decor, but these bookshelves between the roof arches (or whatever you’re suppose to call them) are so pretty:

Via double takes

Hot and Steamy is such an awesome name for a steampunk romance anthology! I haven’t read much steampunk yet (but I want to) and this looks like the perfect place to start.

There are 16 stories in total, but I can’t find descriptions online for any of them. Here are the titles though:

Chance Corrigan and the Queen of Hearts – Michael A. Stackpole
Absinthe-Minded Archaeologist – Vicki Johnson-Steger
The Problem of Trystan – Maurice Broaddus
Clockworks – Jody Lynn Nye
In the Belly of the Behemoth – Matt Forbeck
Automata Futura – Stephen D. Sullivan
Love Comes to Abyssal City – Tobias S. Buckell
For the Love of Byron – Mickey Zucker Reichert
For Queen and Country – Elizabeth A. Vaughan
Grasping at Shadows – C. J. Henderson
Go Forward with Courage – Dean Leggett
Her Faith is Fixt – Robert E. Vardeman.
Kinetic Dreams – C. A. Verstraete
For the Love of Copper – Marc Tassin
Cassandra’s Kiss – Mary Louise Eklund
Dashed Hopes – Donald J. Bingle

Hot and Steamy is available on Amazon.co.uk for £4.90.

Ooh, now this a cool way to show off your favourite books:

This would look great in my living room! Bonus: my cats wouldn’t be able to clamber all over it (I hope).

You can get it from this etsy store for $89.

Halloween is almost here! Which always makes me want to watch Nightmare Before Christmas (even though it’s more of a Christmas movie). I love Night Before Christmas and I love most things book related. So mix them together and chances are I’ll like the result:

Cute, right? It wouldn’t work in my house though, most of my bookcases are completely full, so I don’t need book ends. I’m actually at the point where I’m tempted to get another bookcase, cause I’m running out of space!

The Nightmare Before Christmas book ends are $49.99 from ThinkGeek.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post, I’m so happy that I finally finished my master’s! And I’ll be returning to blogging much more regularly now. So to celebrate all that, I thought I’d do a little giveaway!

I’ve got a copy of The Hunger Games for one lucky reader. I picked up this book when I heard it was being turned into a movie, and I devoured it in one go. It really was one of those books I just couldn’t put down. It’s set in a sort of post-apocalyptic world, where each year the Hunger Games are held: a broadcasted fight-to-the-death between 20 kids from 10 districts. Think Battle Royale meets Big Brother.

To enter this competition, all you need to do is leave a comment behind answering “which posts would you like to see more of on MissGeeky?” I’d love to hear what posts you like best and you’d like me to focus on in the upcoming weeks. Feel free to also suggest stuff I might not have written about before, as long as it’s geeky!

You’ll also get a second entry if you’re following me on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway with the hashtag #missgeeky. The competition ends on October 5th 15:00 after which I’ll randomly draw a winner.

I’ve always been more of a fantasy/romance reader, but ever since reading Feed (you can still enter the giveaway I’m holding) I’ve got a craving for near-distant non-apocalyptic but-set-in-the-future stories. Daybreak Zero looks interesting and has a very intriguing description:

A year has passed since the catastrophic event known as “Daybreak” began.

9 months since Daybreak killed seven billion people
8 months since Daybreak vaporized Washington
6 months since rival governments emerged in Athens, GA and Olympia, WA
4 months since the two governments of what was formerly the United States went to the brink of war
3 months since war was (barely) avoided
2 months since Athens and Olympia agreed to work together
1 month since they discovered that Daybreak isn’t over…

Simple, but it makes me really want to read it!

It’s out in hard cover next month, but I think I should wait till it comes out in paperback (can’t find out when that is, though). I wish I could have a library full of hard cover books, but I’m already running out of space as it is!