Books, bugs, birthdays - Today's post is brought to you by the letter B

Just a few random notes before I run out for a day of errand running, hopefully puncuated by pizza and Beer.

Books -
Read The Perfect Weapon by Amy J Fetzer a few days ago. I picked this one for my May TBR book over a Brianna's Mommy. Had to let this one perc for a few days while I decided if I liked it lots, or just liked it. The problem was that I loved, loved, loved The Naked Truth. Fast paced, great hero and heroine, really well done dialogue. Once I picked it up I could not put it down. And the blurb for TPW made it sound just as great, so I rushed out ('k, if two weeks later is rushing) and got it to read. And it wasn't as good. My biggest complaint? There were frequent scene breaks, almost every two pages. Quite a few times there would be two scene breaks on the same page. I just could not get into the book, since every time I was sinking into a scene I was yanked out and put in someone elses head, or thrown out of that scene altogether and put in another one. The book itself was good besides this one flaw; but it made it impossible for me to just roll with it. I kept shaking my head asking myself "why... why???" Note to self - scenes need to be more than 300 words average length.
Breakdown :
Title: The Perfect Weapon
Author: Amy J Fetzer
Year published: 2006
Why did you get this book? I loved The Naked Truth
Do you like the cover? Yep
Did you enjoy the book? Yep
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? Not new, will look for her books again
Are you keeping it or passing it on? I'd loan it to one or two friends, but it's a keeper
Anything else? I hope her next book doesn't have quite as many scene changes

Read Urban Shaman, by CE Murphy. This book has been really talked up on a lot of blogs and authors forums lately, so I expected to love it. Maybe I expected it too much - I liked it, but not it was not love for me. I guess part of it was my expectations. I thought it would be a romance. Everyone I heard raving on this book is a romance writer. This book has no romance. There is a hint of romantic intrest - with her boss - and this looks to be the first book of a series, so maybe we'll get romance in the next one. But... it's her boss. They're cops. That's just a big ick to me. Partners, ok, but I don't like the boss / subordinate romance potential. And then, it was in first person. I'm really not a fan of first person; a few authors do it well enough I don't notice. This one was close, except for the first 70 pages or so. They needed to be about 20 pages long. There was so much first person I'm Having A Terrible Horrible No Good Day there, I almost gave up. Luckily the action finally did kick in, and then I couldn't put the book down.

Neither of these were bad books. They're just examples of what makes a book not work for me. Other people have read and loved both these books, so take my comments as just that - mine.

Bugs - my mosquito magnet is still not working. I ordered the power cord, and a replacement octonaol pack, at the same time. The octonal came in 2 days; it does me no good with no power cord. My back yard is a swarming mass of blood sucking fiends until the cord gets here.

Birthdays - Montgomery's 12th is coming up at the end of the month. It just hit me a few days ago that this will be his last "childhood" birthday. Next year he'll be in his teens. I want to do something special, but he's already To Cool For Mom most of the time. I'm a bit stuck on ideas here. He doesn't want to have friends over, doesn't want to go to Orlando, doesn't want to do much of anything. Except get presents (money, video games and more video games) and have cake. In that order.

Any suggestions? I'm open to just about anything!