"E is for Evidence" and "F is for Fugitive" by Sue Grafton.
I thought these two were both a little better than "D". Maybe this is jut because in both I figured out who-done-it long before the end and was reading to see if I was right. They were also just less depressing. In "E", Kinsey is framed for insurance fraud and needs to find out who did it and why. In "F", she is hired to find the killer in a 17 year old murder case, while the convicted man is a fugitive from the law.
My favorite part of these books so far is Kinsey's relationship with her landlord. They have such a great, stable relationship throughout all of the craziness of Kinsey's life and cases. I also really like Kinsey's character. She is delightfully flawed and both enough like me and enough different from me to be a fun read.
"All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes" by Maya Angelou, the fifth of her biographies.
This one was rather sad. Most of it takes place in Ghana, where her son is going to college and she takes a job at a university. She went to Africa because she was so tired of living in a racist America where every action was judged based on the color of skin. At first she is thrilled to be in a country where almost everyone is black, but then she realizes that as an African American she is not fully accepted in Africa. Angelou struggles with this feeling of being a foreigner on a continent she feels is home and also struggles with the history of slavery. In the end, she decides to return to America. Not because it is home, but because she is needed there in the fight against racism and she doesn't feel needed in Africa. It is a pretty heavy (emotionally) book. Like the others, recommended.
A friend had given me this book because she knew I liked Ralph Moody. In it, he chronicles in depth the first ride(rs) of the Pony Express and then finishes with a couple of chapters about the longest, most dangerous, etc. rides over the 1.5 years the Pony Express was running. It was rather interesting, but didn't have the same comfortable qualities of the autobiographies.
Not recommended unless you have an interest in the Pony Express.
"Powers" the third and last book of the Annals of the Western Shore series by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Working every day at the marina has given me more reading time than I might normally have. Afterall, it is either read or do schoolwork...
Anyway, this book has even less of the characters in the first two books than the second book. Orrec, Gry and Memmer all show up in the last chapter. Makes it rather strange as a trilogy. Instead, this book follows the life of a slave boy from when he is quite young to when he is about 20 years old. It is quite sad and depressing in several parts, but what would you expect in a book about slavery?
What I really like about this book is that it traces his change in heart and mind from blindly and loyally accepting the master-slave system, to realizing how it hurts the male slaves, and finally recognizing how the female slaves are at an even bigger disadvantage because they are expected to be subservient to the masters and the male slaves in all ways. It takes a while for him to see and understand this, and as a reader we get to follow this process from beginning to the end. I think Le Guin really handles it well. Additionally, the way she writes is almost poetic. It is beautifully written, as are the first two books. Much better written than a lot of scifi books. I can see why she is so well-known within the genre.
I recommend this series even if you aren't a fan of scifi. As mentioned above, it is beautifully written and deals with difficult issues that aren't so far removed from real life.
"A Song Flung Up to Heaven" by Maya Angelou, the 6th and final autobiography.
This autobiography takes the reader up to Angelou's mid-30s. I'm rather disappointed that she hasn't written a follow-up since. From what I've read online, her life continues to be quite interesting.
In the beginning of this book she is leaving Ghana to work for Malcolm X, but goes to San Francisco first to visit her mother and brother. While she is in SF, X is assassinated. She falls into a deep depression at the news and follows her brother to Hawaii to recover. The book follows her time in Hawaii, back to San Francisco, to Los Angeles and ends with her returning to New York to work for Martin Luther King Jr. You can imagine what happens next. About two days before she begins working with MLK, he is assassinated. The book begins and ends with an assassination. Cheery, eh?
Still recommended. All of the autobiographies are very good, though they get shorter the further along they are and leave you wanting more.
Since "Dead Reckoning" didn't show up yesterday as I hoped, I took the next alphabet novel with me to read while I waited for my car to be fixed (rear wheel bearing). I was pretty close to the end after the 1.5 hours my car took, so I just finished it off last night before bed.
It seems that 'D' was a bit of an outlier in being depressing. This book was interesting and more fun than some of the earlier books. She is investigating a case of a missing woman while also attempting to avoid a hitman who has accepted a contract on her life. She hires another P.I., trained to bodyguard, to protect her so we also get a new character, who I thought was great, if a little under-developed. There were a number of laugh out loud moments and an interesting mystery surrounding the missing woman. What I didn't like? In who-done-its, I prefer that I, as a reader, get a chance to figure out the mystery. In this case, the murderer doesn't show up until the very end and there is no way I could have guessed it before it was revealed because I didn't find out this person even existed until the reveal. This feels like cheating to me.
"Dead Reckoning" by Charlaine Harris, "H is for Homicide" by Sue Grafton, and "Confessions of a Part-Time Call Girl" by Barbara Ignoto.
Okay, let me start with "Confessions" since I didn't actually finish it. I got a box of books through freecycle a while ago, including several feminist books and this one. One of the feminist books was about a girl who escaped from sex trafficking and it had an intro by Gloria Steinem (prominent feminist) talking about sex trafficking, etc. Very academic. Then there was this book, which is labeled as the "Book Club Edition". I assumed it was a book on the perils of being a call-girl. Not exactly. After reading the first two chapters and flipping through the rest of the book, I figured out it was pretty much pure pornography and stopped reading it (much worse than Fanny Hill- VERY graphic). My question, what book club is this designed for? I don't think this one.
"Homicide" was a nice change for this series. Instead of being the usual investigation for Kinsey, she ends up going undercover in a gang doing insurance fraud. Pretty much all new characters and situations. I liked it, but I am ready to return to the usual. This was a little too out of character.
And finally, the much awaited "Dead Reckoning". I finished it on Thursday morning and am missing the series again already. I hate that it is so long between books, but I realize we can't expect even our favorite authors to crank out books more than one per year. For anyone who doesn't follow this series, this is the latest installment in the Sookie Stackhouse series. The original premise was that the Japanese developed a synthetic blood, so vampires could come out of the coffin (so to speak) and reveal themselves to the world at large. Sookie Stackhouse, a young telepathic woman in a small town in Louisianna, becomes involved in the world of vampires, werewolves and fairies after this revelation occurs. This is the 12th book, but instead of getting old, it still seems fresh (at least to me). It goes further into the fairy world while also revisiting the vampire and two-natured (were-animal) world, with Sookie caught right in the middle. I'm waiting a little bit on A's comments, but I will say that I really like how Sam and Sookie's relationship develops throughout this book, but I am kind-of annoyed with the developments between Eric and Sookie. Claude and Dermot are interesting characters to add into the main mix. Claude cracks me up and I am suspicious about Dermot. Finally in this book we see the Sandra Pelt issue come to a close. That particular storyline seems to have been beaten to death, on the other hand, things like that sometimes play out a long time in real life too. To end, what's up with Bill? Will we see a resurgence in his relationship with Sookie in future books?
"Proven Guilty" by Jim Butcher, Dresden series,and "I is for Innocent" by Sue Grafton, alphabet series.
Both good series, both good books. In "Proven Guilty", the wizard/vampire war continues and there is something going on in Fairyland. To top it off, the daughter of a friend of Harry's comes to him for help and it turns out (surprise?) that she is part of the Fairyland happenings. I actually saw how it would end about 100 pages from the end, but it was still good.
Meanwhile, I thought I knew how "Innocent" would end but I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Right at the end Grafton mixes it all up and proves me wrong. Whereas I don't so much like it when people show me up, I do like it when books do.
This is a short book that came off the list "500 Great Books by Women". The books on this list are international, with many selections from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, etc. The problem is that many of the books fall on the depressing side, realistically portraying the tragic lives of women in these regions, or in some cases, our own country.
This one was written by a Metis woman who grew up in Alberta, Canada during the early part of the 20th century and is the true story of her life. First Nations were starting to get some recognition of past injustices and some restitution at this time, but the Metis (half French, half Cree) were still discriminated against by the government and society and not yet formally recognized as an imperiled minority. The beginning of the book was almost academic, explaining the origins of the group and how her family ended up in a Metis enclave in Alberta. About 50 pages in it becomes much more personal to her and her family's lives. It isn't a happy book, because as a Metis woman she has it even worse than a Metis man. On the other hand, in several places of the book she highlights the people who have been kind to her or her family or helped her in some way. For example, after her abusive husband abandons her and her two children, she is kicked out of their apartment and destitute. She finds a Chinese restaurant which is hiring a waitress, only to be told that they just filled the position. She sits down and begins crying because she doesn't know what to do so the Chinese family takes her and her children into their home and only ask her to help with the restaurant in payment for food, lodging, and help caring for her children. Unfortunately, about 2 months later her husband comes back for her and she (stupidly, in my opinion) leaves with him and her life goes back to misery. From the age of 15 (when she gets married) to the age of about 25, (when the book ends) she is married, separated, becomes an alcoholic and a drug addict, has 3 children by 3 different men, is a prostitute (none of the children are from the prostitution, they are from her actual relationships), is abandoned in Mexico at one point... It is a rocky, rocky road. Finally she seems to get it together and becomes engaged in Metis politics, negotiating official status in Canada at the end. Throughout she talks about how her life is no different from other Metis, and shows how the system works against them.
For Angie, I recommend it. For E, not so much. I don't know whether to recommend it to T, J, or B, but I am going to say probably not.
"Killing Color" by Charlotte Watson Sherman, and "Selected Poems" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Killing Color is a brief collection of short stories about African American life in the United States. They ride the line between real life and the magical, with night spirits, people walking on water, etc. I'm often not as big of a fan of short stories because they feel incomplete, but these felt right as short stories. Additionally, the writing was well-done and almost lyrical. Recommended.
"Selected Poems" is another one of A's recommendations during Nat'l Poetry Month. I had bought it after last year's Poetry Month and finally got around to reading it. This is a great mix of poems from humerous to serious, sonnets to two line quips. A little something for everyone! Great recommendation, A.
"White Night" by Jim Butcher, from the Dresden series.
This book was okay, but won't be one of my favorites from this series. There was a a lot of violence (in fact, I skimmed over some of the fighting scenes) and stressing by Dresden. I did like the way the Lasciel situation resolved itself in the end and also that Justine returns in this book. Otherwise, eh.
"J is for Judgment" by Sue Grafton, "The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal" by Lillian Jackson-Braun, and "Sister Betty, God's Calling You Again" by G'orge Walker.
"Sister Betty" was a strange book. In some ways it was pretty funny, especially the names. The Church name was Ain't Nobody Else Right But Us--All Others Goin' to Hell Church, and names of characters range from Sister Connie Fuse to Brother Tis Mythang and Bishop Was Nevercalled. However, the plot line left something to be desired. A lot of it was about Church members bickering over one thing or another. For example, one chapter dealt entirely with a fight between Sister Betty and Sister Ima Hellraiser because they wore the same hat to a Church event. While there were some very funny moments, the bickering got monotonous. Not recommended.
The "Cat Who" series is always fun. It follows a reporter/ex-cop named Qwilleran and his two siamese cats (Koko and Yum-yum). The cats help Q solve mysteries. In this book, who murdered the high school principal? These are fun books, but not as well written as some other detective stories I've read. The best parts are the sections with the cats (which I find both amusing and true to life) rather than with the mystery itself.
Speaking of other mystery series... "J" was a frustrating book. In this mystery, the head of a ponzi scheme faked his own death and Kinsey is sent out to prove he is alive. The frustrating part is that at the end it still isn't clear who is the mastermind of the whole plot. I hate it when books aren't resolved! Not one of my favorites of this series.
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire.
This is the same author who wrote Wicked and several other books that tell the other side of classic fairy tales. My mom saw the television version of this book and really liked it so she got the book. I'm not really sure how much she liked the book.
In some ways I really like his work but I also find it disturbing and not necessarily pleasurable to read. What I like is how he really puts a different twist on the classics. In this case, we are told the story of Cinderella from the perspective of the ugly stepsisters. Rather than having one perfect character (Cinderella) and several evil characters (step-family), everyone has some good and evil in them. It is not the step-mother's or sisters' faults, nor is Cinderella blameless. Instead, it is a big mix-up of characters doing the best they can with what they have. With a hint of magic and fairy tale mixed in, of course.
What is disturbing is the rest of the book. The glimpses of the dark side that Maguire includes. People at their worst, devils and demons, ugliness and pain. I think there is more of that than of beauty to these books and for that reason they aren't a lot of fun to read. Not recommended.
This book might have been okay if it had been less gooey. It is about a cancer survivor who opens a yarn shop in Seattle. She has three very different women sign up for her knitting class- an older socialite, a mid-30s professional, and a 20-something punk. They all have problems that they are dealing with and hope to solve somehow through learning to knit. The chapters rotate through the 4 women over the duration of a year as they sort out their problems. It isn't a bad plot, really, and I actually liked how the chapters cycled between the women. HOWEVER, was it ever gooey and sweetsy! Religion, loving children more than life itself, falling back in love with cheating husbands, etc... Everything worked out just right and the last four chapters were basically the women thanking God and everyone else for how wonderful their lives were. I'm an optimist and a happy person and it made ME nauseous. I think I'll skip the sequel. Not recommended.
I'm posting here because M already gave a good summary of this book and the series above. I agree that this book feels fresh; I think Harris is doing better giving her characters growth than Evanovich is. I was happy to see Sookie break the blood bond with Eric, get mad at Amelia, and stop trusting Claude. Although I didn't like Alcide in this book, I can appreciate that his character is turning into a pompous ass. I also really liked the Sam/Sookie storyline in this book. Glad to see her getting a solid friend out of her crazy life!
I like Bill, but I'm not on "team Bill" -- I'm totally "team Eric." Harris is really emphasizing that Eric has been a vamp for so long that he's lost almost all of his natural humanity, whereas Bill is more in touch with human-based emotions, because he is a younger vamp. I can see Sookie struggling with this even more in the next book.
Things I really enjoyed: Pam, when the elf and Dermot brought the heads to Sookie. Pam, overall. Sookie realizing the really scary thing was being able to sleep after all the horror. She is definitely growing a thicker skin. Bob saying "Those kittens weren't mine." Reminded me of Puss in Boots from Shrek 2.
Things I'm curious about: ERIC&SOOKIE, SOOKIE&ERIC, ERIC&SOOKIE, SOOKIE&ERIC If Mr. Cataliades is also a telepath, why didn't Sookie already know? She "knew" about Hunter and that other guy who saved her from the church basement when she first met them. How do faeries make cluviel dors? Will Sookie ever make a wish on it? How do you make a wish on it? Will we ever see Quinn the weretiger again? I LOVED HIM!
Things that annoy me: Reading 3 times how Bubba became a vampire. Reading 287,234 times how much Dermot looks like Jason. Bloody messy fighting and death. I like this series because it usually isn't gory. This book had more descriptive violence than the others, IMO.
I kind of hope the next book focuses more on the vamp world, with the faerie world as side story, not the other way around.
Yep, I agree with pretty much everything A says about "Dead Reckoning". I would add that I am interested to see what new titles she finds with "Dead" in the title. She's got to run out soon...
"North and South" by Elizabeth Gaskell.
This was a book I read because I really liked the BBC miniseries- film before book this time. It was a little slow going at first, but once it got moving it was very good. Ultimately, it is a love story in the model of the Bronte sisters, but it is set against the conflict between the agricultural South and industrialized North in England in the 1800s and the conflict between worker and owner. It was well-written with several amusing conversations and even some quotes from Arabian nights! Maybe me feel smart that I recognized the quotes. I would recommend it to people who like the writing of the Brontes and Austen.
Well, shoot. I wasn't going to go to Walmart today, but now I might have to. This will also disrupt my Harry Potter, pre-movie release, reading/watching marathon schedule. How did I miss this? :-) Thanks for cluing me in!
This book was loaned to me while on vacation by a friend who also enjoys scifi/fantasy novels. It is a werewolf-human love story, but is done a bit differently than the traditional werewolf stories. In this, it is a disease caught through the bite of an infected individual that causes humans to become wolves during the winter months. It is brought on by the cold, rather like hibernation, except that as the werewolves age eventually they remain a wolf rather than reverting to their human form. Sam, one of the werewolves, falls in love with a human girl (who was bitten but never became a werewolf). She feels a connection to him as a wolf because he saved her once as a child but she doesn't know that he turns back into a man during the summer. I won't give anything else away. It was a really sweet story with less violence and sex that you might imagine as it is written for young adults. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone. Looking forward to checking out the next book in the series.
I'm rereading Sizzling Sixteen in anticipation of Smokin' Seventeen. And of course, slogging through Arabian Nights still. :-)
This is the sequel to Shiver and I think there is a third book to release soon. I didn't like this book as well as the first. There were more characters, lots of teenage angst, and a WTF ending. Oh well. With that said, I was up late last night finishing because I couldn't put it down.
This is a love story about a woman in Italy. I liked all the Italian and dicussion of places I've been. However, as I've noted before, Evans' writing is inconsistent. Some places are very good, while others are very stilted and artificial. Oh well, it was a pleasant, short read.
The Runaway Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini, the 4th (?) in the Elm Creek Quilt series.
This was the best of the series so far in my opinion. The plot was interesting and the characters seemed less artificial. Sylvia finds the memoirs of one of her ancestors from just prior to the Civil War. It tells about her ancestors' role in the Underground Railroad and raises some questions about her heritage. I liked the excerpts from the memoir better than the writing of the current events.
The Quilter's Legacy and The Master Quilter by Jennifer Chiaverini, and On the Edge of Nowhere by Jim Huntington.
To start with the Elm Creek books, I didn't care as much for either of these two. In the Quilter's Legacy, Chiaverini goes back and forth between Sylvia and her mother based on quilts. I found it really frustrating to keep track of what was happening to who, especially as time periods jumped. In addition, the side story of Andrew's children being spoiled brats was also frustrating. I did like the way that Chiaverini wrote the Master Quilter because she rotated through the Elm Creek Quilters to show each person's life during a specific time period and brought it all together at the end. I just didn't care for the plot lines as much in this one.
Edge of Nowhere was loaned to me by a friend from Alaska as a quick, fun read. It does go very quickly. It is written like the Moody books we all liked. Jim Huntington tells anecdotes from his life in Alaska from the early 1900s until about 1950. Some of the stories are truly amazing, ranging from fights with brown bears, to dog sled racing, to living in the bush. Recommended, though beware that some of the scenes are graphic (the fight with the brown bear, for example).
This is a mostly-true account of the author's time in Turkey in the 1960s. Tumpane worked with the Air Force on several bases in Turkey during the 60s and this is a collection of his memories of visiting historical sites, the people, Turkish nightlife, et cetera. It was an interesting book. My favorite part was a conversation between an Air Force captain who couldn't pronounce "r" and a guy who had no teeth and couldn't pronounce "s". Hilarious. Lots of historical facts about Turkey and descriptions of sites.
I'm not going to give a recommendation on this one. I enjoyed it, but it probably isn't a widely read book by the general population.
This was my break from thinking for the weekend and was pure recreation. It is a romantic thriller set in the Middle East (primarily Lebanon and Syria) in the 1960s. A British woman is on holiday in Lebanon and decides to visit her aunt, who years before bought a palace in a small town in Lebanon and has been living a wild, carefree life as an Arab man, raising hounds (thus the title). The woman goes to visit her and gets caught up in a drug cartel which is using her aunt's palace as a staging area for opiates. The whole book takes place over less than a week of time as she tries to escape. It was interesting and worked perfectly well to give my brain a break, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for anything other than a quick, fun read. Now back to my more serious stack of books...
Not recommended. First, it was depressing and had an unresolved ending. Secondly, it was rather like Moby Dick in that the title character, while driving the whole plot, did not show up until the latter half of the book and then in one brief appearance basically ruined everything.
Plot- disenchanted civil servant working in Indian Welfare in British Columbia in the 1970s struggles to help Indians while disagreeing with the official policy. Helen Morgan is an Indian girl who is taken from her home and put in a private school in Victoria with disastrous results.
I really enjoyed this book. It was kindof wacky in a Stephanie Plum sort-of way. A tough-as-nails old lady, messed-up family dynamics, and a money mystery. Lots of fun.
M is for Malice, N is for Noose, and O is for Outlaw by Sue Grafton.
Also, Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Piven (I think that is the author's name, I don't have the book right her to doublecheck.)
I really liked all three of the alphabet series books. I liked the characters in M, the plot for N, and the reference back to her first marriage in O. I've been wondering about Kinsey's past throughout and am glad to get a chance to find out a little bit about it. I still find laugh-out-loud moments and find it difficult to put the books down, which is the indication of a good series. Plus, I like that she doesn't have to have a romantic involvement in every book. Sometimes she gets involved with someone, in other books it is purely the case. One of the issues that I have with the Plum series (as much as I love it) is that the romantic entanglements keep get drawn out in each book without any conclusion or really much change.
Dive from Clausen's Pier I started out liking, then liked it less and took a break, came back and liked it again until the end. It has been an unstable relationship. I wouldn't recommend this book just because it seems inconsistent. While some parts really resonate with the human experience, others seem artificial (and whiny). The ending was more realistic and thus less satisfying. Oh, in case you wondered, it is about a girl engaged to a young man but who is considering breaking the engagement. Then he jumps from a pier and breaks his neck and becomes a quadrapalegic (sp?). She is faced with the question of whether she still leaves him (and looks like a REAL loser) and stays with him even though she no longer loves him. She waffles back and forth for most of the book. In the end, she neither leaves him nor stays with him. Completely unsatisfying (at that point in the book any clear decision would have been welcome) but probably relatively realistic.
Well, I read the whole thing. Even though I was tempted at several points to just put it down and leave it. Ugh. It is about an Englishman who goes to West Germany to help build a tunner into East Germany to tap telephone lines and spy on the East Germans. He gets caught up with a West German woman and together they make a bunch of bad decisions. It was dull, unless it was disgusting or frustrating. Not recommended.
P is for Peril and Q if for Quarry by Sue Grafton.
P is not one of the better books of this series, but Q gets back on track. In Q, Kinsey is working a cold case with two retired detectives. This mixes it up quite a bit and brings a fresh twist to the series. It was also interesting to find out at the end that this novel was based on a real unsolved homicide case in Santa Theresa. Grafton spoke with detectives, read the files, and basically reconstructed the case. However, in real life this did not lead to the solution that occurred in the novel and the real Jane Doe remains unidentified and her killer on the loose.
This book one a Nobel Prize for literature but I only give it a lukewarm recommendation. It follows two black girls growing up around the time of WWII. They are best friends and then one leaves when the other gets married and comes back 10 years later. It is written in rather a fragmented manner. In fact, about 20 pages in the beginning follows one of the minor characters of the town, never mentioning the two girls. I did generally like the plot and the ending, but couldn't feel very connected to the characters.
I was excited about this book because it is a historical romance set in China during the time of the Dragon Empress that we already talked about. Unfortunately, it was not very good. Each chapter bounced between several first person narratives of different characters and then the book bounced between China 1899-1900 and England 1959-1960. Confusing. It was also a bit dry. Not recommended.
On a high note, Ken got me Explosive Eighteen by Evanovitch for Christmas. I completely forgot that it released in November! He's watching out for me...
I didn't care for this book as much as the others in the series. It follows a woman who steals identities of nurses and then rips off old people as a "caretaker". Instead of just following Kinsey through the investigation, it flipped back and forth between Kinsey and the thief. Eh. Hopefully U will be back in the swing.
I did also read R and S of the Grafton series but I see I never posted about them. By now I've forgotten what I would have written, other than that I enjoyed them both. :-)
I know no-one else, except Tracy, likes the Twilight books, but I thought you might like this description of what the books would be like if written by a different author (it starts with Melville). http://io9.com/5872490/if-famous-writers-had-written-twilight
J- I understand that reaction to the ending of Shiver. :-)
U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton.
This was another great Grafton book, better than the prior two books. It includes a cold case, shaky memories, and more about Kinsey's family. It was a bit longer, but well worth the read.
This book won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best science fiction novel of the year. I'm a little less enthusiastic. I can see why it won these awards, because it is a fascinating concept and works as a treatise on gender relations in our world. However, I found it very difficult to get into and then was disappointed in the ending.
The basic plot is that a human from Earth (but part of an interplanetary organization) goes to the planet of Winter as an Envoy to invite them to join the interplanetary union. Winter is a cold, snowy place (who knew?), but what is most different is that the occupants are humanoid but are sexless for most of their month. They are sexless for 26 days of the Winter month and then spend 4 days in Kemmer (which is called "heat" in cats). During Kemmer they take on the physical attributes of either male or female and have sex. If the female conceives then she remains female until the end of breastfeeding. The man, or a female who does not conceive, goes back to being sexless. Any person can become either male or female during kemmer and therefore anyone can give birth and have children. Because of the sexlessness of most of the humans when not in Kemmer and this equality of giving birth, it is a genderless society and everyone is equal (at least as far as gender, there are still economic and ethnic inequalities).
The envoy begins the mission in one country on winter and he, and the prime minister, are exiled and have to go to the other country on the planet.
The book alternates between the two accounts (Envoy and prime minister) and randomly has myths of the planet interspersed in their own chapters. They have only a small connection to the story. It feels very fragmented until the last 100 pages when the accounts come together.
The really interesting parts are when the planet occupants try to explain their system to the envoy and then later when the envoy tries to explain the Earth sexes and inequalities based on sex.
A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert, and Incubus by Ann Ansberg.
I was looking forward to both of these books and was a disappointed in both.
Short History is a novel about three generations of women who each grew up in the midst of a wave of the women's movement. The first during the suffrage movement in U.K., the second in the 2nd wave in the U.S., and the 3rd/4th in the third wave in the US. Unfortunately, they are all named, in some way, after the 1st and the chapter switch back and forth between the 4 women so it is very difficult to keep clear who is whom and what is going on with them. I liked the writing style, which is abrupt and almost random in the things it points out, but that combined with the switching back and forth make it a very disjointed story. I think it is a great plot but would have been more accessible had it been told a bit differently.
Incubus was sent to me with a book I had bookmooched (I hadn't requested it). It looked interesting from the cover: A story about a town in Main in the 1970s that has strange happenings, most notably a nocturnal presence preying on the sexuality of the female townspeople. It is written more like Dracula than current vampire/otherworld fantasy novels. It is written in the first person by the wife of the town priest, who is documenting the happenings to the town and trying to figure out the causes. For that reason, it is written less fantastically than most modern fantasy novels. I really like the way it is written, but I just couldn't get into it.
As movies made from books, neither of these kept completely true to the novel, but both represented the overal feel of the novel quite well. I wouldn't necessarily have chosen the cast of One for the Money, but they did a good job representing each character and the overall lunacy of the book. It was a fun movie, like these are fun books. Disappointments? Ranger, and how little Lula was included in the film, especially since I thought the actress did a marvelous job with the character.
Help was cast very well, I thought. They did an excellent job portraying the characters and the time. This is one of my favorite movies from books so far.
I am so torn about seeing One for the Money! I hate to replace my characters with actors, but, I am curious to see how they will squish the books together, as it's really not feasible to make 17 or 18 movies with the same cast. Lula had a pretty minor role in the first book, and didn't come on full force until #3.
The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out by Rosemary Sullivan, and
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chinua Achebe
The Red Shoes was a fascinating and well-written biography of Margaret Atwood. It placed her, as an author and poet, and her work in the context of wider developments in Canada and the world. At the same time, it was very engaging. It shows Margaret Atwood as a very different person than you might expect from her work: lighthearted, self-confident, generous, and ambitious. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in Atwood, Canada, the 1960s and 1970s or feminism.
A funny story about Thing Around Your Neck. I had checked this book out from WMU over the summer and finished the first chapter, then I got this job and ended up returning it before I moved. I got it through ILL and skimmed the first chapter to remind myself what is was about, then read the second and third chapters- which had nothing to do with the first chapter. WTH? I looked at the back cover and realized it was a book of short stories. OH...
Anyway, many of the stories, as you might guess, leave the reader hanging without a real conclusion. All in all, not my favorite collection of short stories, though there were some good ones in it. All of them deal with Nigerians living in the US or returning to Nigeria after living in the US. One, about a writer's retreat, is amusing in that it refers to Achebe as a writer in rather disparaging ways. :-) Not recommended.
A- I understand how you are torn, but I find that after a series that long, I still see the characters in my head, even after watching the movie. Of course, then the people in the movie feel a bit like imposters...
What a "charming" book. :-) It tells the tale of three generations of women, all through the narration of the youngest. It begins with the early life of the grandmother, who is certainly the main character, even if she is not the narrator! I loved all the characters, but especially the grandmother. It tells of the narrator's own mother and then picks up with her life. It is fun, touching, and overall a great book. Recommended.
In general, I liked this book. It was about a quilt used to give directions to slaves on the underground railroad. My biggest complaints is that it was predictable and too much like Pride and Prejudice. Of course, I like Pride and Prejudice, so that may be why I liked this book as well. :-)
This is on a number of best books lists and I disagree with all of them. What a stupid book. It follows James Dixon, an inept, untenured college professor who makes the stupidest mistakes and then uses ridiculous explanations to get himself out of the mess. This keeps layering up to the point where he loses his job. And he should lose his job, in my opinion. But then, he is rewarded with a better paying job with the uncle of the girl he loves, or at least thinks he loves. In this case I was annoyed by the happy ending because he didn't deserve it! What a waste of time. Not recommended.
I am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak (author of Book Thief).
After reading Book Thief with our club, I put I am the Messenger on my "to-read" list. While not quite as good as Book Thief, I highly recommend this book. It is the same writing style, which I love. It is also a great story (though the ending is a little 'eh'). It's about this 18 year old cab driver who has no ambition or prospects. He ends up catching a thief in the act and gains some notoriety. Shortly thereafter he begins receiving aces (playing cards) in the mail, with addresses or clues to addresses on them. What should he do? What does he do?
The characters are believable, the plot is interesting (if less believable), and the writing is great. I suggest you read this book.
As a side note, he has also written two other books for young adults: Fighting Ruben Wlfe and Getting the Girl.
This is a ridiculous 26 page play about Ophelia engaging R and G to convince Hamlet to do a dreadful play for the king (which, incidentally, is written by the king) so that he is killed and she doesn't have to marry him.
What is even worse than the play is this reprinting of it. Through much of it the dialogue does not match up with the speaker. Instead, they have the names written and then the dialogue and the reader has to guess who says what. What a terrible translation and printing of a ridiculous play!
I just couldn't get into this book. It is about competing ferry boats in Oregon and the people running the boats, back in the late 1800s. It is an older book, but then I like a lot of older books. Unfortunately it had too many characters, too much detail, and too little to interest me.
Barb got me started on these books when she gave me a copy of Irish Lace. They are not spectacular writing, but they are a lot of fun to read, especially the irish conversations!
In this third book, the young Irish-American Dermott is soon to be married to the Irish Nuala (who is a little fey). In addition to the work up to their marriage, they are also solving a mystery of an Irish mobster during the prohibition era and dealing with charges against Dermott of fraud.
"Ill Wind" the first book (and the last I'll read) of the Weather Warden series by Rachel Caine.
This series was recommended to me by a friend who also reads fantasy/science fiction. It is about people who are born able to manipulate the weather and so they band together as Weather Wardens to control the elements. For example, when a really big storm is approaching they will diffuse it. The main character is a young warden with massive amounts of power and not much self-restraint.
Honestly, I just couldn't get into it and it was a bit of a struggle to finish the book. There are very long chapters will very short sections, very little character development, and I just couldn't get the main character. She is supposed to be powerful and wise and at the same time immature and sex-crazed. Uh-huh. Oh well, at least that is one less series for me to get involved in.
Incantations and Other Stories by Anjana Appachana.
This is a collection of short stories about India. I really enjoyed the stories told from a woman's point of view. They mostly talked about family and marriage and being a girl/woman in a very traditional society. There were two from a man's viewpoint- the same man and both set in the workplace. These were really annoying. He is a lazy employee who feels entitled to get raises even when he shows up late and never works.
I would recommend all the stories but those two. But a warning- they are not happy stories. Now I need to go finish Middlesex.
Last night I watched the 1995 version of "The Scarlet letter" with Demi Moore. At the beginning it stated that it was "freely adapted" from the book and were they ever free with the adaptation. It was similar to the book but there were MANY differences. There was a whole part of the movie on a war with the Indians that I don't remember at all from the book. It is good that I hadn't just read the book or I'd probably be even less thrilled with the movie. Of course, Dimmsdale was not as weak or obnoxious in the film, which was a plus. I couldn't stand his character in the book.
Small Favor by Jim Butcher, from the Dresden series.
After Middlesex, I wanted something with action. One of my critiques of the Dresden series is that is so action-packed that it is actually tiring to read sometimes. This time, it was perfect for what I wanted. In this book, Dresden pulls together most of his friends (the white knights, vampire brother, police detective, other wizards, etc.) in order to save the master criminal Marcome who has been abducted by the Black Denarians (fallen angels). Except, he doesn't understand the full scope of the Denarians' plans until too late. Or is it too late?
Action packed as usual, but with a little more focus on character and relationships than the last book. Overall a fun read and a nice break from the more plot-driven books that I have been reading lately.
This is a young adult's book about the Revolutionary War. It was a Newbery Honor book and looked interesting. Overall, though, I wasn't that impressed. It's about a 13 year-old boy whose brother enlists to fight on the side of the Rebels, while his father is a Tory. He is caught between the two and trying to figure out which side is right. I found it to be rather depressing and written pretty simplistically, even for a YA book. What I did like is that at the end the author breaks down what in the book was based on fact and what was fiction. I found that to be the most interesting part of the whole book.
Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris, the 12th book in the Sookie Stackhouse Series.
A- You won't want to read this post until after you've read Deadlocked. I'm bound to give it away.
First, Alice in Wonderland. Huh. I'd seen several versions of the movie and thought the directors took some artistic license. They did. The book is much more... odd. It is pointless and rambling and completely out in left field. I thought I might have liked it more. I do think it would be fun to read to a child, as you could do so much with the voices and poems and silliness. However, as an adult, not recommended.
I got Deadlocked this morning in the mail and finished it this afternoon. I did a few other things in between reading it, very few. So much comes together and changes in this book, with some real surprises and some not-so-surprises. I have mixed feelings about this book. I like that Harris tied up some loose ends (fairies) and brought the Sookie-Eric to a head (though not a clear conclusion). However, it seemed so uncomfortable through most of the book and the ending felt unended. I think she was trying to leave us wanting more, and I do. However, it also reaffirms my feelings that she should wrap the series up.
A Perfect Blood by Kim Harrison, the latest release the Hollows series.
In this book, a group of humans that hate supernaturals is trying to turn witches into demons so that they can use their blood to activate demon curses and ultimately wipe out all witches, pixies, fairies, vamps, and weres with one large curse. Rachel, Ivy, and Jenks work with Trent, the FIB and IS to find out who is to blame.
I thought this book was better than the prior two. Rachel has been getting pretty whiny and while she still whines some in this book, she starts taking responsibility for her actions and whining less. I also liked that this one goes back to a crime/mystery plot that the team is solving. Finally, I also liked the shift in interactions between Trent and Rachel.
This is the first book to a vampire series for young adults. I had read an article about alternatives to the Twilight series with stronger female characters and this series had been at the top of the list. It is like a combination of Twilight, Hunger Games, and Gossip Girls. I don't know if that is a good thing or bad?
Anyway, it is about a young woman attending a prestigious prep school in NYC. Her father is dead, her mother in a coma since she was born, and her grandmother is an intimidating matriarch who care for her. Her only friend is a boy at the school and more recently a new boy. Otherwise, she is a misfit and tormented by the popular kids. However, soon strange things begin happening to he kids as they get near the age of 16 and finally they attend a secret meeting where they find out the truth about themselves and their families. You guessed it- vampires.
I did like this book. The female protagonist, Schuyler, is strong and intelligent (though, of course, also gorgeous). I liked the back history they give of the vampires coming over on the Mayflower and establishing themselves as pillars of society in the New World. The writing is better than Twilight, too.
What I don't like: the fashion obsession (do I really care what brand names they are wearing?), and the one-dimensionality of some of the secondary characters (especially the mean, popular girl). Basically, I don't like the Gossip Girl part. :-)
I would recommend this book to a young adult into sci-fi/fantasy and plan on continuing the series.
This is another strong-female alternative to Twilight for young adults. It is, in some ways, very similar to Hunger Games, but not as good in my opinion. It is set in the future, when humans have basically killed themselves off through a devastating war. Those that were left moved into cities and started operating on 16 year old kids to make them pretty and stupid. The kids were then told that it was because war happened when someone was prettier than someone else, so this made everyone pretty. Until everyone had the operation, they were ugly. Tally, the main character, wants to become one of the Pretties, but her friend Shay doesn't want the operation. Shay runs away to join a rebel group hiding outside of the city and leaves directions for Tally to follow. I won't give it away, except to say that Tally ends up following her for completely different reasons.
While the plot is similar to Hunger Games (after big war, city controls population through manipulation until rebels rise up), the writing isn't as good and I just had a hard time connecting to Tally. She is so focused on being pretty for the first half of the book and then the second half all of a sudden she isn't obsessed with being pretty anymore. It seems to fast and easy. On the other hand, there is a lot less killing and violence in these books.
This is also a trilogy and while I will read the other two, I don't really recommend it.
I thought this was a great idea, but wasn't as impressed with the way it was done. Four fantasy writers got together and rewrote Austen's works into novellas from a fantasy perspective- vampires, witches, and reincarnation.
The first took Persuasion and rewrote it as though the characters had been reincarnated lifetime after lifetime and somehow kept apart in each lifetime. Again, a great idea, but I didn't like the way it was written. Too romance novelly.
The second took Northanger Abbey and made the male character a vampire hunter that the female protagonists thinks is a vampire. The writing was okay, but the main character was a twit. I was rooting for her to be killed by the vampire because I found her so annoying (that didn't happen).
The third was the best of the bunch. In Blood and Prejudice it made Mr. Darcy into a vampire. I thought thi idea was the worst, but the story stayed much closer to the original and the characters were more like Austen's characters. It actually worked really well.
The last made Emma a witch running a matchmaker service for supernaturals. It was a lot of fun, actually.
All in all, a fun read, but not nearly as good as what I had hoped for. I was kind-of looking for Lizzy in Sookieverse, I think. Not recommended.
In this book, Tally's fight against Special Circumstances continues, though, as you might guess, she is a Pretty in this book, rather than an Ugly. She is a strong character, but what irks me about these books is that she always finds a male to help her do whatever she is doing. Two men now have fallen in love with her and helped her out, should I expect a third in the last book?
It also got just a little weird toward the end, bringing in a whole new aspect of the world that I think could have been left out.
Masquerade by Melissa de la Cruz, the 2nd in the Blue Bloods series;
V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton, the latest in the alphabet series;
A 1000-Mile Walk on the Beach by Loreen Niewenhuis (non-fiction).
Masquerade continues Sky's search for the Silver Bloods and her grandfather. She is still torn between her best friend, Oliver, and the popular Jack. Honestly, I thought it was a bit predictable and not as good as the first book.
V was another good Grafton book, though she tells the story from the viewpoint of at least 4 different characters when I would prefer that she stick with Kinsey's character. In this book, Kinsey is investigating the death of a shoplifter, with some organized crime twists. This also seemed a bit predictable, but had the great storytelling of the other books.
Niewenhuis's book is the true story of her walk around Lake Michigan. She does it in several separate segments over the length of a year. In addition to the story of her walk, she also gives background on places she sees and environmental problems with the Great Lakes. While it was good, it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.
For the most part, I really like Alcott's writing, though at times it can be moralistic. However, this slim book of flower and fairy stories had too much moral and was sickeningly sweet. Almost every story had a sweet, loving fairy and a mean, cruel fairy. The good fairy was loved by all; the bad fairy had no friends except the good fairy. The bad fairy was shown the error of its ways and reformed to become a happy, sweet, good fairy. Gag me. This will be going on its way to some other person.
She writes romance thrillers, I guess you would call them. Most of her books seem to focus on terrorist plots and the military. For example, this one was about a Navy Seal who was sent home to recover from a head injury. When he gets home, he thinks he sees an international terrorist in his home town, which is about to celebrate their battalion in WWII. Meanwhile, his great-uncle and great-uncle's friend are to be recognized at the celebration for their actions during WWI, in Vichy France. The plot follows the two storylines: Vichy France during WWII and present-day. The love interest is the girl-next-door, granddaughter of his great-uncle's friend- a beautiful doctor who has always had a crush on the wild boy next door.
I applaud Brockman for introducing a real plot into a romance novel, but it is still essentially a romance novel with romance-novel writing. Not recommended.
The Hormone Diet is a health book, but I wanted to comment on it anyway. :-) Mom asked me to read a couple of health books with her so that she had someone to talk about them with. This book deals with balancing hormones for optimum health, including cortisol, which is really important for mom right now. It functions as a diet, because most people lose weigth when following the guidelines to balance hormones. Anyway, as it wasn't all that different from how I eat anyway, I am giving it a shot and am on the second week of a 6 week plan. I wouldn't say it is a miracle cure, but it does seem pretty effective. I've lost weight, inches off my waist, and have been sleeping better and feeling pretty perky. What I really liked about her perscriptions is: 1. They aren't very difficult to follow (for example, you don't have to cut out all carbs or drink lemonade and nothing else), 2. She is practical. She makes a point to say that if you eat something you aren't supposed to or don't do the exercise you are supposed to that you shouldn't get stressed out. Just give yourself a pat on the back for trying and get back on the wagon. 3. She explains all the medical reasons for everything she tells you to do. I like knowing why I am told to do something.
I'd actually recommend this book to someone trying to lose weight or just interested in balancing their hormones for better health.
I also really liked The Tenth Circle. I know that My Sisters Keeper gets a lot more attention (and I did like that book when Tracy chose it), but I think this is a better book. It is about a 14 year old girl who is raped by her ex-boyfriend at a party. It follows her family through from before the rape to a final resolution of the situation. I thought the relationships and characters were written well, that she did a nice job showing the realities of dealing with rape in the criminal justice system, and I liked that she interspersed the father's graphic novel throughout the book to highlight his response to what was going on. In addition, it is all structured around Dante's Inferno and levels of hell, which is pretty neat. A- you might want to consider checking this book out, you might like it better than Sister's Keeper. Recommended.
I'm not sure what I think of this book. There was no new guy to help Tally, at least, but the guys from the first two books were still present. Her friend Shay was just as nasty and critical as the second book, with an unusual and unresolved ending to her anger. One shot and she's suddenly sweet and no longer angry at Tally? A bit unbelievable. I did like that Tally essentially stayed the same, other than growing emotionally and taking responsibility for her actions and I actually understand the ending. I won't say I disliked it, since I did finish it in two sittings when I should have been doing other stuff, but I was a bit disappointed and wouldn't recommend it.
Both of these are great books. Wicked Appetite is typical Evanovich. Somewhat inept, good-hearted, Lizzy bakes cupcakes for a living. Then a mysterious dark man comes into the bakery and brands her hand before walking out. Then Diesel (the same Diesel from between-the-numbers Plum books) shows up to protect her. It was hillarious in a very Stephanie Plum way, including Carl, the monkey, and frequent vehicle changes. I don't want to ruin the part, but there was one part where I laughed for about 5 minutes and had all my animals looking at me like I went nuts. A- you'll like this book.
Winn-Dixie is a very short read because it is for children, but has really great writing that captures a young girl really well. It is a sweet story and definitely recommended for children and adults.
Not recommended. I didn't even finish this book because it just got sillier and sillier. The idea was interesting. It was based on Greek mythology and dream-gods that participated in humans' dreams. One particular dream god fell in love with a human woman and made a deal with Hades to become human for two weeks to be worth her. She happened to be a scientist looking for Atlantis. Good idea- bad implementation. The conversations felt forced, the plot kept getting sillier and it read too much like a romance novel.
This is basically a rip-off of Twilight, though written better. It combines elements of the Twilight series, Sookie Stackhouse series, and a few other YA books I've read.
Basically, after an accident a 16 year old becomes telepathic and psychic (she also sees her little sister's ghost). A sexy, mysterious boy shows up at her school, whose thoughts she cannot read. He can read her mind, is super fast, and drinks a red drink. Hmm. They have tense relationship moments and she spends a lot of time trying to convince herself she doesn't love him while he turns hot and cold (because he wants to love her but doesn't want to put her in danger. Hmm.)
The book itself was written better than Twilight and had some interesting events, but it just felt too much like the same-old, same-old. It is a series I won't be continuing.
The Headmaster Ritual by Taylor Antrim, The Rose and the Beast by Francesca Lia Block, and Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.
The Headmaster Ritual was a big disappointment. It is about a new instructor at a private school who is tasked with teaching Model United Nations even though he has no experience with MUN. This plot really resonated with me after this last year. Unfortunately, I found the book to be dull and pointless. It was a struggle to finish. Not recommended.
Me Talk Pretty has actually already been "reviewed" by A with a luke-warm recommendation as I recall. This was sent to me as a bonus book from a fellow bookmoocher. Two chapters I was rolling in my chair with laughter (one about Easter and the other about crossword puzzles) but some of the others I did not find amusing at all. It was kind of hit or miss with the essays. I give this a lukewarm recommendation.
The Rose and the Beast is Block's reinterpretation of classic fairy tales. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. She reinterprets them very moderly, with drugs, child abuse, rape, etc. While one or two were a little extreme for my taste, in general this really seemed to work and to highlight some of the problems with the relationships in classic fairy tales. I recommend this book but warn that it is nothing you probably want to read to children.
Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning, the first in the Fever series (no brain fever, I checked), and
Tyranny of Oil by A. Juhasz.
Tyranny of oil isn't really a novel, it is an expose of Big Oil that I read for my dissertation research. BUT, it was really interesting, so I recommend it. The author is a journalist that investigates Big Oil and how the oil companies manipulate gas prices (and countries) for maximum profits. Fascinating and disturbing.
Darkfever was a pleasant surprise. I've read so many disappointing fantasy novels lately that I expected this to be another loser. Then, in the first two chapters she referenced both Harry Potter and Janet Evanovich. That was a good indication. It is written more like the Sookie Stackhouse series: young, female protagonist finds herself immersed in a world she didn't know existed (fairies in this case) and tries to muddle her way through, with a good dose of laughing at herself. My biggest critique is that it is too much "romance novel" and not enough "plot". Of course, I believe she is writing in the genre of romantic fantasy so maybe that is what it is supposed to be.
I've had this book for a long time and been anxious to read it, but it is almost 900 pages long so I've kept putting it off until I have a chunk of time (rightly thinking it might be pretty absorbing). I took it on vacation with me and finished it the day we returned.
I wasn't disappointed. This book is the feminist retelling of the myth of King Arthur and Camelot. It focuses on Morgaine (Morgan la fey) primarily, but it also covers other women's viewpoints as well. In addition to telling the story from a woman's viewpoint, it also focuses on the clash between Christianity and the worship of the Goddess. Neither religion comes out unscathed in the end and Bradley never comes down solidly on one side or the other, although she does slightly lean more towards the worship as the Goddess.
My one main critique is that after 850 pages of in depth storytelling, the end happens very quickly and is rather anticlimactic. It isn't a happy ending as such, but everyone who know the myth of King Arthur's court knows it isn't a happy ending.
This is a spin-off from Vampire Academy that follows the alchemist and a few other characters from the Vampire Academy world after that series ended. I wonder if the author didn't want to let go of some of her favorite characters? They were some of my favorite characters, which is why I bothered to read a spinoff series.
What I like is that it makes reference to what happened in the last two V.A. books, but you didn't have to have read them to still enjoy this book. It has its own plot and story. What I don't like is that Sydney, the main character in this book and minor character in V.A., starts acting more like the main character in V.A. than like her character in V.A. Do you follow? I know Mead can write other characters because she has another adult series with a very different character.
A- I just realized that I have a whole category of "Melissa's books 2012". I don't even get listed under "literary commentary" anymore? :-)
Into the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
I got this book through freecycle and have been holding onto it for a while. I finally started it two weeks ago. I wasn't too interested at first and so listed it on bookmooch.com. It was on 144 wishlists and was mooched in 5 minutes. I think that is the fastest mooch of any book I've ever listed. So, then I'm stuck trying to quick finish reading this 700 page book.
And then it got good, so I'm kind-of feeling bad that I let it get mooched. Then I realize that this is Book 1 in a trilogy so now I also have to read the next two books. Except the 3rd book isn't even out yet! Sheesh, if I had known all this!
Anyway, the book is about Kvothe, an explorer, arcanist (magician), and musician. He is telling the story of how he became famous to a travelling storyteller. His story is really interesting, but the "present day" parts of the book not as much so. It is really well written and I was astonished to find out it is a first novel for this author. Very impressive.
I'd actually recommend this book to anyone. I know I made it sound very typically fantasy, which may have limited appeal, but it is really about human experience. It is well-written and has a great subtle humor in unexpected places.
Now to read book 2 and wait for the third book to come out.
M - I added a tag because J was having a hard time finding your post in the oodles and oodles of "literary commentary" that we've done. You can get to it both ways, but the new tag might be a smidge faster.
I don't know what number from the series this book is, but it is in the teens, I think. In this one, Morgan comes to Harry to help him prove his innocence to the White Council and, of course, Harry helps him. It had some great parts, including Harry's comments on boats and people obsessed with boats, but I didn't like the ending.
On another note, I was reading a journal article and came across the word "perspicaciously" and had to look it up. Apparentlyl it means "to be clear in statement or expression, easily understood." It made me think of J's love of words. :-)
Wise Man Fears by Patrick Rothfuss (book 2), and Forever After by Catherine Anderson.
Forever After was given to me by B, with the comments that it was a good plot but had some steamy parts. I would qualify that a bit by saying that it had a good plot but was written like a romance novel. The plot: a young woman is in hiding with her young daughter from a rich and influential father-in-law who wants to take her daughter away from her after the death of her abusive husband. She moves next door to a Sheriff in a small town. His dog (ex-police dog) becomes obsessed with the little girl and ends up bringing them together. As B pointed out, it does well in describing the dogs behavior and someone who is recovering from abuse. What irked me is the seemingly endless descriptions of the Sheriff's masculinity or how petite and feminine the woman was. How they felt such feelings for each other, etc., etc. I used to read romance novels in the past and now I find that type of writing irks me to know end. I had the same issue with the Twilight series. So, I don't know. I guess I give it a lukewarm recommendation. I did like the dogs and the plot. I just had an issue with the writing style of the author.
Wise Mans Fears was just as good as the first, but a full 1,000 pages long. It followed Kvothe from university to fighting bandits to training with paid assassins, to wooing a woman for a Lord, and eventual return back to university. Again, the plot sounds corny and fantasy-y, but Rothfuss made it work. This book had even more humor (a class titled "How Not to be a Stupid Jackass" which I think should be taught at more universities), and new, interesting characters. Recommended and I can't wait for the final installment, which should come out about 2014... :-)
Fletch, by Gregory McDonald, Stupid White Men, by Michael Moore, You Suck, by Christopher Moore.
Not recommended. This applies to all three books. I didn't even finish You Suck or Stupid White Men. I did finish Fletch, for what it is worth.
Fletch is a suspense/thriller/murder mystery about a journalist working a drug case who gets asked to kill a prominent citizen by the citizen to be killed. I won't ruin it, because if anyone reads it the plot is the only good thing about it. The character is obnoxious and sexist, and the writing annoying.
You Suck is supposed to be a humorous parody of all the fantasy vampire novels out on the market. It wasn't very funny and it certainly wasn't very good fantasy.
Stupid White Men sounded like something I would like, but it turns out it is just Michael Moore's rant about the United States. I found it annoying and pointless.
What a run of books. I'm turning to books from series that I know I like for the next few.
Golden Lily (Bloodlines Book 2), by Richelle Mead.
I just love this author for guilty pleasures. These are basically teen vampire novels, but bring more plot and character development than the Twilight Series. In this book, Sydney, an alchemist is dealing with hiding a vampire princess in a prep school and trying not to get too involved with the vampires. However, there are vampire hunters trying to kill her charges so she has that on her plate as well. Funny, dramatic, well-written.
This book goes quite a different direction. The last book in the Dresden series left on a bit of a cliff-hanger. This book went a different direction from the rest of the series and was almost unsatisfying. Not bad, but certainly not the best. I don't want to say anymore as it would give it away for anyone who might want to read it in the future.
Shadow Heir by Richelle Mead. 4th book in the Storm Born series.
Not one of her best. Eugenie is dealing with having children and undoing a blight in the Otherworld. It was fun to read, but not as good as the others.
Quite honestly, I bought this book for its cover. It has a dramatic cover that caught my fancy. If the book had been as good as the cover, I probably would have kept it. Instead, it is now listed on bookmooch.
The biggest issue is that I just did not find the plot believable. Supposedly, a mortal woman and a fallen angel fall in love, but the angel's punishment (for falling? it never says) is that when they kiss, she dies. BUT she is reincarnated and every 17 years they meet, fall in love, and then she dies again. Except, this time it is different, she doesn't die when they kiss. I might have gone with this, but then the reader finds out that as long as this scenario keeps happening, the world continues to exist as it is, but if it ends and she dies (for good, not for another reincarnation) then there will be hell on earth. If she survives to live out a life with the fallen angel then ...? We aren't really told what will happen. So, in a nutshell, the life of this one girl will determine whether all humanity is plunged into hell or not. Nope, not buying it.
Additionally, the writing isn't spectacular. It is neither wonderful writing, nor absorbing plot, nor engaging characters. The series apparently continues (did I mention the end leaves you hanging?), but I won't be continuing with it. Not recommended.
I really liked this movie, so I thought I would read the book. I was not disappointed.
While the movie and book are quite a bit different from each other (when are they not?), they are both excellent. The book follows the lives of two sisters who are orphaned and go to live with their four aunts. The aunts are witches and quite eccentric. The girls try to grow up to leave normal lives but both are unsuccessful in very different ways (later we find out there is a curse on the family). The moral of the story is that while love and normality may be fickle, family lasts forever. The girls (as adult women) and the aunts come back together at the end to solve a problem. It is fanciful and engaging. A lovely book altogether. Recommended.
Bloodfever, by Karen Marie Moning, 2nd book in the fever series,
and Memnoch the Devil by Ann Rice, 5th in her vampire series.
I'll start with Memnoch: 200+ pages in I called it quits because I just wasn't that in to it. I liked the series to start, but the books just keep getting denser and denser. Usually when I get a couple of hundred pages in I am involved, but not this time.
Bloodfever was as much fun as the first book. In this one, she is still trying to catch her sister's killer, while also researching sidhe-seers to find out what she can and cannot do. I just love that she uses other words for cuss words. For example, "I'll kick your frogging petunia." They show up at the randomest times and just tickle me pink. :-)
A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver, Cold Days by Jim Butcher (Dresden), and Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by Charlaine Harris.
First of all, A Thousand Mornings is a very short book of poetry by Mary Oliver and definitely worth reading. A, you should check this out.
Cold Days was a typical Dresden novel, though some interesting and new developments occurred at the end that should lead to a few more books in the series. Just when you think an author has run out of ideas...
Wolfsbane and Mistletoe was a book of short stories about werewolves and Christmas. What I found hillarious is how Santa Claus kept getting made into an evil entity. In one, Santa Claus hunted innocent lycanthropes and killed them. In another, he really punished bad children. In yet another, Santa Claus is a vampire who collects vials of blood of the children to feed on them later. It sounds terrible, but it was funny. Not all were great, but there were some good stories. You probably have to be a certain type of person to enjoy this book. :-)
The last three books in the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning: Faefever, Dreamfever, and Shadowfever.
These went quickly because I was hooked! MacKayla keeps finding out new things about herself and her frenemies, ending in one final smackdown. The last book was a bit whiny at the start, but then got back to what I like about the series: interesting plot, lots of twists and turns with some fun mixed in!
Shadowplay by Clare Asquith and and she was by Alison Gaylin.
Shadowplay was non-fiction but made an interesting argument. Asquith claims that Shakespeare's plays were actually subversive writings criticizing the Protestant oppression of Catholics during Shakespeare's life. She says that the wording and plots were actually coded so that Catholics understood but Shakespeare could not be charged with treason. For example, plots in which a loyal lover follows a fickle lover throughout (Midsummer's Nights Eve, for example) actually represent England turning away from its true religion (Catholicism) for a fickle affair with Protestantism. Examples of coded words include red meaning Catholic and black meaning Protestant (based on the color of the robes). Characters said to be dressed in red are seen as representing Catholicism while those dressed in black represent Protestantism. Similarly, characters described as "black" (the "black" prince in Much Ado About Nothing, who works to make everyone unhappy) represent Protestants. I didn't actually finish the whole book, because she uses example after example to prove her point and eventually it gets a bit overdone, but it was interesting and makes me really think about Shakespeare's writing. Recommended for those who like Shakespeare.
"and she was" is a suspense novel/murder mystery. The main character, Brenna, is a private investigator who has a medical disorder where she remembers EVERYTHING she has ever seen, heard, felt, smelled, tasted, etc. It makes her a good PI, but makes life difficult because she can't forget things she wants to forget. She is investigating the death of a woman, which is linked to the disappearance of a little girl years before. The two cases are linked and so everything she learns about one leads to new understandings of the other. For the most part, I really liked this book. It did jump around between characters a bit, which I didn't like. Also, Brenna randomly gets sucked into memories (as part of the disorder) that may or may not have to do with the case. These are a bit of a distraction. In the author's note she says that she wanted to write a book about someone with this disorder because they often have a hard time living in the present because they are often sucked into the past, so I understand she was doing it to show the life of someone with the disorder. The sequel (I wonder if this will be like Grafton's ABC series?) is due out later this year. Lightly recommended.
This was a really interesting book. It is a modern-day takeoff on the sleeping beauty fairy tale. In this case, the book opens with a young woman laying in bed as if asleep, though telling her story in a household that is silenced, waiting for her to wake. At night, when everyone is asleep, she writes her story in a book. About her life, what happened at her 18th birthday to put her in this state, etc. In general I liked it, though the ending was still a little too fairy-taleish. I won't say how so that I don't ruin it.
This is a collection of stories about growing up in a Japanese-American household following WWII. The stories are quite short, but interesting. One details her father's trip back to his old neighborhood in Hiroshima. His mother died in the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, while he served in the U.S. military. His sister died years later from radiation-caused illness. Another describes her brief love affair with a flamboyant Japanese boy. Yet another talks about her mother's experience in an internment camp. They sound terribly depressing, but really aren't that bad because they are written in such an off-hand manner.
Succubus Revealed and Indigo Spell by Richelle Mead and Wyoming Pioneer Woman: Pauline Krueger Bayer by Margaret Canfield Bayer.
Pioneer Woman was an interesting and also frustrating book. It is written by a relative of Pauline Bayer after she passed away and talks about her life. The writing isn't spectacular, as you might imagine, but the stories are interesting. What was frustrating was how worthless Albert Bayer (Pauline's husband) was. He couldn't do anything right and yet felt he had complete control over all family decisions. Meanwhile Pauline has EIGHT children, takes care of the whole family and basically supports the family when her husband's ridiculous schemes fail and he loses all their money. And yet, she never gets annoyed enough with him to kick him to the curb, but instead supports him as well as their children. Recommended if you are into historical non-fiction on pioneer women and don't mind lazy, worthless husbands. :-)
The other two books are the newest books in series by Mead. Succubus revealed is the last book in the Georgina Kincaid series. It concludes much the way I expected, which is a good thing. The other is the third book in the Alchemist spin-off of Vampire Academy. Not as good as the first two, really. A lot of teenage angst and love pangs with rather a weak plot. However, there is a twist at the end that looks like the next book might be better. I really like Mead's writing because she takes supernatural characters and make them seem quite normal. Plus, her heroines are strong, flawed women without any superpowers (any more so than anyone else, anyway) who still manage to do good things with their lives.
This book was a pleasant surprise. It had been on a list of Great Books by Women, but it hadn't looked very interesting. It follows the life of a girl from an Italian family in a small town in Pennsylvania in the 1920s-1960s. The reader follows her from a girl just starting high school in a neighboring town to her death in her late 60s. She struggles through various hardships and relationships. It doesn't sound riveting, but it is well-written and an engaging story. The female lead is a strong, yet flawed, character in an interesting time period.
The No-Spin Zone by Bill O'Reilly, Let the Right One In by John Lindquist, and Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquival.
Cliff-notes version: I disliked the O'Reilly and Lindquist books so much that I didn't finish them, and I really enjoyed Esquival's book.
Unabridged version: The O'Reilly book is supposedly a book of interviews that he did on his television show "No-Spin Zone". However, very little of it is actually interviews. Instead, it is his diatribes about why the interviewees are wrong and he is right. It got really annoying fast. I read three chapters and called it quits.
Lindquists book is supposedly a modern retelling of a vampire story. The first few chapters are about a 10 year old boy fantasizing about gory homicides and a man planning on how to kill and chop up. Gory, disturbing, and not fun to read. So, I called it quits on that book too. I can live without knowing if it gets better.
Finally, a book recommended by A a long time ago. Honestly, I thought I had already read this book, but was mistaken. Like Water for Chocolate was just the right mix of fantasy, reality, and recipes. What fun. Thanks for recommending it, A!
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, and Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich.
Both of these were quick, fun reads. Wicked Business continues the saga of Lizzy and Diesel searching for magical stones to prevent evil people from getting them. However, craziness ensues, with much hillarity.
Stargirl is about an unusual girl who transfers into a school. The protagonist, a teenage boy, falls in love with her, but then she falls into disfavor with the kids of the school. It is really about being different in high school.
100 comments:
"E is for Evidence" and "F is for Fugitive" by Sue Grafton.
I thought these two were both a little better than "D". Maybe this is jut because in both I figured out who-done-it long before the end and was reading to see if I was right. They were also just less depressing. In "E", Kinsey is framed for insurance fraud and needs to find out who did it and why. In "F", she is hired to find the killer in a 17 year old murder case, while the convicted man is a fugitive from the law.
My favorite part of these books so far is Kinsey's relationship with her landlord. They have such a great, stable relationship throughout all of the craziness of Kinsey's life and cases. I also really like Kinsey's character. She is delightfully flawed and both enough like me and enough different from me to be a fun read.
"All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes" by Maya Angelou, the fifth of her biographies.
This one was rather sad. Most of it takes place in Ghana, where her son is going to college and she takes a job at a university. She went to Africa because she was so tired of living in a racist America where every action was judged based on the color of skin. At first she is thrilled to be in a country where almost everyone is black, but then she realizes that as an African American she is not fully accepted in Africa. Angelou struggles with this feeling of being a foreigner on a continent she feels is home and also struggles with the history of slavery. In the end, she decides to return to America. Not because it is home, but because she is needed there in the fight against racism and she doesn't feel needed in Africa. It is a pretty heavy (emotionally) book. Like the others, recommended.
"The Pony Express Riders" by Ralph Moody.
A friend had given me this book because she knew I liked Ralph Moody. In it, he chronicles in depth the first ride(rs) of the Pony Express and then finishes with a couple of chapters about the longest, most dangerous, etc. rides over the 1.5 years the Pony Express was running. It was rather interesting, but didn't have the same comfortable qualities of the autobiographies.
Not recommended unless you have an interest in the Pony Express.
"Powers" the third and last book of the Annals of the Western Shore series by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Working every day at the marina has given me more reading time than I might normally have. Afterall, it is either read or do schoolwork...
Anyway, this book has even less of the characters in the first two books than the second book. Orrec, Gry and Memmer all show up in the last chapter. Makes it rather strange as a trilogy. Instead, this book follows the life of a slave boy from when he is quite young to when he is about 20 years old. It is quite sad and depressing in several parts, but what would you expect in a book about slavery?
What I really like about this book is that it traces his change in heart and mind from blindly and loyally accepting the master-slave system, to realizing how it hurts the male slaves, and finally recognizing how the female slaves are at an even bigger disadvantage because they are expected to be subservient to the masters and the male slaves in all ways. It takes a while for him to see and understand this, and as a reader we get to follow this process from beginning to the end. I think Le Guin really handles it well. Additionally, the way she writes is almost poetic. It is beautifully written, as are the first two books. Much better written than a lot of scifi books. I can see why she is so well-known within the genre.
I recommend this series even if you aren't a fan of scifi. As mentioned above, it is beautifully written and deals with difficult issues that aren't so far removed from real life.
"A Song Flung Up to Heaven" by Maya Angelou, the 6th and final autobiography.
This autobiography takes the reader up to Angelou's mid-30s. I'm rather disappointed that she hasn't written a follow-up since. From what I've read online, her life continues to be quite interesting.
In the beginning of this book she is leaving Ghana to work for Malcolm X, but goes to San Francisco first to visit her mother and brother. While she is in SF, X is assassinated. She falls into a deep depression at the news and follows her brother to Hawaii to recover. The book follows her time in Hawaii, back to San Francisco, to Los Angeles and ends with her returning to New York to work for Martin Luther King Jr. You can imagine what happens next. About two days before she begins working with MLK, he is assassinated. The book begins and ends with an assassination. Cheery, eh?
Still recommended. All of the autobiographies are very good, though they get shorter the further along they are and leave you wanting more.
"G is for Gumshoe" by Sue Grafton.
Since "Dead Reckoning" didn't show up yesterday as I hoped, I took the next alphabet novel with me to read while I waited for my car to be fixed (rear wheel bearing). I was pretty close to the end after the 1.5 hours my car took, so I just finished it off last night before bed.
It seems that 'D' was a bit of an outlier in being depressing. This book was interesting and more fun than some of the earlier books. She is investigating a case of a missing woman while also attempting to avoid a hitman who has accepted a contract on her life. She hires another P.I., trained to bodyguard, to protect her so we also get a new character, who I thought was great, if a little under-developed. There were a number of laugh out loud moments and an interesting mystery surrounding the missing woman. What I didn't like? In who-done-its, I prefer that I, as a reader, get a chance to figure out the mystery. In this case, the murderer doesn't show up until the very end and there is no way I could have guessed it before it was revealed because I didn't find out this person even existed until the reveal. This feels like cheating to me.
"Dead Reckoning" by Charlaine Harris,
"H is for Homicide" by Sue Grafton, and
"Confessions of a Part-Time Call Girl" by Barbara Ignoto.
Okay, let me start with "Confessions" since I didn't actually finish it. I got a box of books through freecycle a while ago, including several feminist books and this one. One of the feminist books was about a girl who escaped from sex trafficking and it had an intro by Gloria Steinem (prominent feminist) talking about sex trafficking, etc. Very academic. Then there was this book, which is labeled as the "Book Club Edition". I assumed it was a book on the perils of being a call-girl. Not exactly. After reading the first two chapters and flipping through the rest of the book, I figured out it was pretty much pure pornography and stopped reading it (much worse than Fanny Hill- VERY graphic). My question, what book club is this designed for? I don't think this one.
"Homicide" was a nice change for this series. Instead of being the usual investigation for Kinsey, she ends up going undercover in a gang doing insurance fraud. Pretty much all new characters and situations. I liked it, but I am ready to return to the usual. This was a little too out of character.
And finally, the much awaited "Dead Reckoning". I finished it on Thursday morning and am missing the series again already. I hate that it is so long between books, but I realize we can't expect even our favorite authors to crank out books more than one per year. For anyone who doesn't follow this series, this is the latest installment in the Sookie Stackhouse series. The original premise was that the Japanese developed a synthetic blood, so vampires could come out of the coffin (so to speak) and reveal themselves to the world at large. Sookie Stackhouse, a young telepathic woman in a small town in Louisianna, becomes involved in the world of vampires, werewolves and fairies after this revelation occurs. This is the 12th book, but instead of getting old, it still seems fresh (at least to me). It goes further into the fairy world while also revisiting the vampire and two-natured (were-animal) world, with Sookie caught right in the middle. I'm waiting a little bit on A's comments, but I will say that I really like how Sam and Sookie's relationship develops throughout this book, but I am kind-of annoyed with the developments between Eric and Sookie. Claude and Dermot are interesting characters to add into the main mix. Claude cracks me up and I am suspicious about Dermot. Finally in this book we see the Sandra Pelt issue come to a close. That particular storyline seems to have been beaten to death, on the other hand, things like that sometimes play out a long time in real life too. To end, what's up with Bill? Will we see a resurgence in his relationship with Sookie in future books?
"Proven Guilty" by Jim Butcher, Dresden series,and
"I is for Innocent" by Sue Grafton, alphabet series.
Both good series, both good books. In "Proven Guilty", the wizard/vampire war continues and there is something going on in Fairyland. To top it off, the daughter of a friend of Harry's comes to him for help and it turns out (surprise?) that she is part of the Fairyland happenings. I actually saw how it would end about 100 pages from the end, but it was still good.
Meanwhile, I thought I knew how "Innocent" would end but I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Right at the end Grafton mixes it all up and proves me wrong. Whereas I don't so much like it when people show me up, I do like it when books do.
"Halfbreed" by Maria Campbell.
This is a short book that came off the list "500 Great Books by Women". The books on this list are international, with many selections from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, etc. The problem is that many of the books fall on the depressing side, realistically portraying the tragic lives of women in these regions, or in some cases, our own country.
This one was written by a Metis woman who grew up in Alberta, Canada during the early part of the 20th century and is the true story of her life. First Nations were starting to get some recognition of past injustices and some restitution at this time, but the Metis (half French, half Cree) were still discriminated against by the government and society and not yet formally recognized as an imperiled minority. The beginning of the book was almost academic, explaining the origins of the group and how her family ended up in a Metis enclave in Alberta. About 50 pages in it becomes much more personal to her and her family's lives. It isn't a happy book, because as a Metis woman she has it even worse than a Metis man. On the other hand, in several places of the book she highlights the people who have been kind to her or her family or helped her in some way. For example, after her abusive husband abandons her and her two children, she is kicked out of their apartment and destitute. She finds a Chinese restaurant which is hiring a waitress, only to be told that they just filled the position. She sits down and begins crying because she doesn't know what to do so the Chinese family takes her and her children into their home and only ask her to help with the restaurant in payment for food, lodging, and help caring for her children. Unfortunately, about 2 months later her husband comes back for her and she (stupidly, in my opinion) leaves with him and her life goes back to misery. From the age of 15 (when she gets married) to the age of about 25, (when the book ends) she is married, separated, becomes an alcoholic and a drug addict, has 3 children by 3 different men, is a prostitute (none of the children are from the prostitution, they are from her actual relationships), is abandoned in Mexico at one point... It is a rocky, rocky road. Finally she seems to get it together and becomes engaged in Metis politics, negotiating official status in Canada at the end. Throughout she talks about how her life is no different from other Metis, and shows how the system works against them.
For Angie, I recommend it. For E, not so much. I don't know whether to recommend it to T, J, or B, but I am going to say probably not.
"Killing Color" by Charlotte Watson Sherman, and
"Selected Poems" by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Killing Color is a brief collection of short stories about African American life in the United States. They ride the line between real life and the magical, with night spirits, people walking on water, etc. I'm often not as big of a fan of short stories because they feel incomplete, but these felt right as short stories. Additionally, the writing was well-done and almost lyrical. Recommended.
"Selected Poems" is another one of A's recommendations during Nat'l Poetry Month. I had bought it after last year's Poetry Month and finally got around to reading it. This is a great mix of poems from humerous to serious, sonnets to two line quips. A little something for everyone! Great recommendation, A.
"White Night" by Jim Butcher, from the Dresden series.
This book was okay, but won't be one of my favorites from this series. There was a a lot of violence (in fact, I skimmed over some of the fighting scenes) and stressing by Dresden. I did like the way the Lasciel situation resolved itself in the end and also that Justine returns in this book. Otherwise, eh.
"J is for Judgment" by Sue Grafton,
"The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal" by Lillian Jackson-Braun, and
"Sister Betty, God's Calling You Again" by G'orge Walker.
"Sister Betty" was a strange book. In some ways it was pretty funny, especially the names. The Church name was Ain't Nobody Else Right But Us--All Others Goin' to Hell Church, and names of characters range from Sister Connie Fuse to Brother Tis Mythang and Bishop Was Nevercalled. However, the plot line left something to be desired. A lot of it was about Church members bickering over one thing or another. For example, one chapter dealt entirely with a fight between Sister Betty and Sister Ima Hellraiser because they wore the same hat to a Church event. While there were some very funny moments, the bickering got monotonous. Not recommended.
The "Cat Who" series is always fun. It follows a reporter/ex-cop named Qwilleran and his two siamese cats (Koko and Yum-yum). The cats help Q solve mysteries. In this book, who murdered the high school principal? These are fun books, but not as well written as some other detective stories I've read. The best parts are the sections with the cats (which I find both amusing and true to life) rather than with the mystery itself.
Speaking of other mystery series... "J" was a frustrating book. In this mystery, the head of a ponzi scheme faked his own death and Kinsey is sent out to prove he is alive. The frustrating part is that at the end it still isn't clear who is the mastermind of the whole plot. I hate it when books aren't resolved! Not one of my favorites of this series.
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire.
This is the same author who wrote Wicked and several other books that tell the other side of classic fairy tales. My mom saw the television version of this book and really liked it so she got the book. I'm not really sure how much she liked the book.
In some ways I really like his work but I also find it disturbing and not necessarily pleasurable to read. What I like is how he really puts a different twist on the classics. In this case, we are told the story of Cinderella from the perspective of the ugly stepsisters. Rather than having one perfect character (Cinderella) and several evil characters (step-family), everyone has some good and evil in them. It is not the step-mother's or sisters' faults, nor is Cinderella blameless. Instead, it is a big mix-up of characters doing the best they can with what they have. With a hint of magic and fairy tale mixed in, of course.
What is disturbing is the rest of the book. The glimpses of the dark side that Maguire includes. People at their worst, devils and demons, ugliness and pain. I think there is more of that than of beauty to these books and for that reason they aren't a lot of fun to read. Not recommended.
The Shop on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber.
This book might have been okay if it had been less gooey. It is about a cancer survivor who opens a yarn shop in Seattle. She has three very different women sign up for her knitting class- an older socialite, a mid-30s professional, and a 20-something punk. They all have problems that they are dealing with and hope to solve somehow through learning to knit. The chapters rotate through the 4 women over the duration of a year as they sort out their problems. It isn't a bad plot, really, and I actually liked how the chapters cycled between the women. HOWEVER, was it ever gooey and sweetsy! Religion, loving children more than life itself, falling back in love with cheating husbands, etc... Everything worked out just right and the last four chapters were basically the women thanking God and everyone else for how wonderful their lives were. I'm an optimist and a happy person and it made ME nauseous. I think I'll skip the sequel.
Not recommended.
Dead Reckoning by Charlaine Harris
I'm posting here because M already gave a good summary of this book and the series above. I agree that this book feels fresh; I think Harris is doing better giving her characters growth than Evanovich is. I was happy to see Sookie break the blood bond with Eric, get mad at Amelia, and stop trusting Claude. Although I didn't like Alcide in this book, I can appreciate that his character is turning into a pompous ass. I also really liked the Sam/Sookie storyline in this book. Glad to see her getting a solid friend out of her crazy life!
I like Bill, but I'm not on "team Bill" -- I'm totally "team Eric." Harris is really emphasizing that Eric has been a vamp for so long that he's lost almost all of his natural humanity, whereas Bill is more in touch with human-based emotions, because he is a younger vamp. I can see Sookie struggling with this even more in the next book.
Things I really enjoyed:
Pam, when the elf and Dermot brought the heads to Sookie.
Pam, overall.
Sookie realizing the really scary thing was being able to sleep after all the horror. She is definitely growing a thicker skin.
Bob saying "Those kittens weren't mine." Reminded me of Puss in Boots from Shrek 2.
Things I'm curious about:
ERIC&SOOKIE, SOOKIE&ERIC, ERIC&SOOKIE, SOOKIE&ERIC
If Mr. Cataliades is also a telepath, why didn't Sookie already know? She "knew" about Hunter and that other guy who saved her from the church basement when she first met them.
How do faeries make cluviel dors?
Will Sookie ever make a wish on it? How do you make a wish on it?
Will we ever see Quinn the weretiger again? I LOVED HIM!
Things that annoy me:
Reading 3 times how Bubba became a vampire.
Reading 287,234 times how much Dermot looks like Jason.
Bloody messy fighting and death. I like this series because it usually isn't gory. This book had more descriptive violence than the others, IMO.
I kind of hope the next book focuses more on the vamp world, with the faerie world as side story, not the other way around.
Yep, I agree with pretty much everything A says about "Dead Reckoning". I would add that I am interested to see what new titles she finds with "Dead" in the title. She's got to run out soon...
"North and South" by Elizabeth Gaskell.
This was a book I read because I really liked the BBC miniseries- film before book this time. It was a little slow going at first, but once it got moving it was very good. Ultimately, it is a love story in the model of the Bronte sisters, but it is set against the conflict between the agricultural South and industrialized North in England in the 1800s and the conflict between worker and owner. It was well-written with several amusing conversations and even some quotes from Arabian nights! Maybe me feel smart that I recognized the quotes. I would recommend it to people who like the writing of the Brontes and Austen.
M, Smokin' Seventeen is on sale today! I'm going to buzz by Walmart at lunch - hope they have it.
Also, Explosive Eighteen will be released November 22. Could the series finally be coming to an end? 2 books in 1 year makes me wonder...
http://www.evanovich.com/news/archive
Well, shoot. I wasn't going to go to Walmart today, but now I might have to. This will also disrupt my Harry Potter, pre-movie release, reading/watching marathon schedule. How did I miss this? :-) Thanks for cluing me in!
"Shiver" by Maggie Stiefvater.
This book was loaned to me while on vacation by a friend who also enjoys scifi/fantasy novels. It is a werewolf-human love story, but is done a bit differently than the traditional werewolf stories. In this, it is a disease caught through the bite of an infected individual that causes humans to become wolves during the winter months. It is brought on by the cold, rather like hibernation, except that as the werewolves age eventually they remain a wolf rather than reverting to their human form. Sam, one of the werewolves, falls in love with a human girl (who was bitten but never became a werewolf). She feels a connection to him as a wolf because he saved her once as a child but she doesn't know that he turns back into a man during the summer. I won't give anything else away. It was a really sweet story with less violence and sex that you might imagine as it is written for young adults. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone. Looking forward to checking out the next book in the series.
I'm rereading Sizzling Sixteen in anticipation of Smokin' Seventeen. And of course, slogging through Arabian Nights still. :-)
"Linger" by Maggie Stiefvater.
This is the sequel to Shiver and I think there is a third book to release soon. I didn't like this book as well as the first. There were more characters, lots of teenage angst, and a WTF ending. Oh well. With that said, I was up late last night finishing because I couldn't put it down.
"The Last Promise" by Nicholas Evans.
This is a love story about a woman in Italy. I liked all the Italian and dicussion of places I've been. However, as I've noted before, Evans' writing is inconsistent. Some places are very good, while others are very stilted and artificial. Oh well, it was a pleasant, short read.
Strangest of All, by Frank Edward.
A collection of strange, but (questionably) true, stories ranging from sea monsters to premonitions to ghosts. It was... strange.
The Runaway Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini, the 4th (?) in the Elm Creek Quilt series.
This was the best of the series so far in my opinion. The plot was interesting and the characters seemed less artificial. Sylvia finds the memoirs of one of her ancestors from just prior to the Civil War. It tells about her ancestors' role in the Underground Railroad and raises some questions about her heritage. I liked the excerpts from the memoir better than the writing of the current events.
The Quilter's Legacy and The Master Quilter by Jennifer Chiaverini, and
On the Edge of Nowhere by Jim Huntington.
To start with the Elm Creek books, I didn't care as much for either of these two. In the Quilter's Legacy, Chiaverini goes back and forth between Sylvia and her mother based on quilts. I found it really frustrating to keep track of what was happening to who, especially as time periods jumped. In addition, the side story of Andrew's children being spoiled brats was also frustrating. I did like the way that Chiaverini wrote the Master Quilter because she rotated through the Elm Creek Quilters to show each person's life during a specific time period and brought it all together at the end. I just didn't care for the plot lines as much in this one.
Edge of Nowhere was loaned to me by a friend from Alaska as a quick, fun read. It does go very quickly. It is written like the Moody books we all liked. Jim Huntington tells anecdotes from his life in Alaska from the early 1900s until about 1950. Some of the stories are truly amazing, ranging from fights with brown bears, to dog sled racing, to living in the bush. Recommended, though beware that some of the scenes are graphic (the fight with the brown bear, for example).
"Scotch and Holy Water" by John D. Tumpane.
This is a mostly-true account of the author's time in Turkey in the 1960s. Tumpane worked with the Air Force on several bases in Turkey during the 60s and this is a collection of his memories of visiting historical sites, the people, Turkish nightlife, et cetera. It was an interesting book. My favorite part was a conversation between an Air Force captain who couldn't pronounce "r" and a guy who had no teeth and couldn't pronounce "s". Hilarious. Lots of historical facts about Turkey and descriptions of sites.
I'm not going to give a recommendation on this one. I enjoyed it, but it probably isn't a widely read book by the general population.
The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart.
This was my break from thinking for the weekend and was pure recreation. It is a romantic thriller set in the Middle East (primarily Lebanon and Syria) in the 1960s. A British woman is on holiday in Lebanon and decides to visit her aunt, who years before bought a palace in a small town in Lebanon and has been living a wild, carefree life as an Arab man, raising hounds (thus the title). The woman goes to visit her and gets caught up in a drug cartel which is using her aunt's palace as a staging area for opiates. The whole book takes place over less than a week of time as she tries to escape. It was interesting and worked perfectly well to give my brain a break, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for anything other than a quick, fun read. Now back to my more serious stack of books...
File on Helen Morgan, by John Gibson.
Not recommended. First, it was depressing and had an unresolved ending. Secondly, it was rather like Moby Dick in that the title character, while driving the whole plot, did not show up until the latter half of the book and then in one brief appearance basically ruined everything.
Plot- disenchanted civil servant working in Indian Welfare in British Columbia in the 1970s struggles to help Indians while disagreeing with the official policy. Helen Morgan is an Indian girl who is taken from her home and put in a private school in Victoria with disastrous results.
Again, not recommended.
"L is for Lawless" by Sue Grafton.
I really enjoyed this book. It was kindof wacky in a Stephanie Plum sort-of way. A tough-as-nails old lady, messed-up family dynamics, and a money mystery. Lots of fun.
M is for Malice, N is for Noose, and O is for Outlaw by Sue Grafton.
Also, Dive from Clausen's Pier by Ann Piven (I think that is the author's name, I don't have the book right her to doublecheck.)
I really liked all three of the alphabet series books. I liked the characters in M, the plot for N, and the reference back to her first marriage in O. I've been wondering about Kinsey's past throughout and am glad to get a chance to find out a little bit about it. I still find laugh-out-loud moments and find it difficult to put the books down, which is the indication of a good series. Plus, I like that she doesn't have to have a romantic involvement in every book. Sometimes she gets involved with someone, in other books it is purely the case. One of the issues that I have with the Plum series (as much as I love it) is that the romantic entanglements keep get drawn out in each book without any conclusion or really much change.
Dive from Clausen's Pier I started out liking, then liked it less and took a break, came back and liked it again until the end. It has been an unstable relationship. I wouldn't recommend this book just because it seems inconsistent. While some parts really resonate with the human experience, others seem artificial (and whiny). The ending was more realistic and thus less satisfying. Oh, in case you wondered, it is about a girl engaged to a young man but who is considering breaking the engagement. Then he jumps from a pier and breaks his neck and becomes a quadrapalegic (sp?). She is faced with the question of whether she still leaves him (and looks like a REAL loser) and stays with him even though she no longer loves him. She waffles back and forth for most of the book. In the end, she neither leaves him nor stays with him. Completely unsatisfying (at that point in the book any clear decision would have been welcome) but probably relatively realistic.
"The Innocent" by Ian McEwan.
Well, I read the whole thing. Even though I was tempted at several points to just put it down and leave it. Ugh. It is about an Englishman who goes to West Germany to help build a tunner into East Germany to tap telephone lines and spy on the East Germans. He gets caught up with a West German woman and together they make a bunch of bad decisions. It was dull, unless it was disgusting or frustrating. Not recommended.
P is for Peril and Q if for Quarry by Sue Grafton.
P is not one of the better books of this series, but Q gets back on track. In Q, Kinsey is working a cold case with two retired detectives. This mixes it up quite a bit and brings a fresh twist to the series. It was also interesting to find out at the end that this novel was based on a real unsolved homicide case in Santa Theresa. Grafton spoke with detectives, read the files, and basically reconstructed the case. However, in real life this did not lead to the solution that occurred in the novel and the real Jane Doe remains unidentified and her killer on the loose.
Sula by Toni Morrison.
This book one a Nobel Prize for literature but I only give it a lukewarm recommendation. It follows two black girls growing up around the time of WWII. They are best friends and then one leaves when the other gets married and comes back 10 years later. It is written in rather a fragmented manner. In fact, about 20 pages in the beginning follows one of the minor characters of the town, never mentioning the two girls. I did generally like the plot and the ending, but couldn't feel very connected to the characters.
The Time of the Dragon by Dorothy Eden.
I was excited about this book because it is a historical romance set in China during the time of the Dragon Empress that we already talked about. Unfortunately, it was not very good. Each chapter bounced between several first person narratives of different characters and then the book bounced between China 1899-1900 and England 1959-1960. Confusing. It was also a bit dry.
Not recommended.
On a high note, Ken got me Explosive Eighteen by Evanovitch for Christmas. I completely forgot that it released in November! He's watching out for me...
Glad you got 18! I haven't bought it yet, but I did get a B&N gift card that's dying to be spent...
T is for Trespass by Sue Grafton.
I didn't care for this book as much as the others in the series. It follows a woman who steals identities of nurses and then rips off old people as a "caretaker". Instead of just following Kinsey through the investigation, it flipped back and forth between Kinsey and the thief. Eh. Hopefully U will be back in the swing.
I did also read R and S of the Grafton series but I see I never posted about them. By now I've forgotten what I would have written, other than that I enjoyed them both. :-)
I know no-one else, except Tracy, likes the Twilight books, but I thought you might like this description of what the books would be like if written by a different author (it starts with Melville). http://io9.com/5872490/if-famous-writers-had-written-twilight
M, I also read Shiver, on a recommendation of a student. It was ok but the ending - ARGHHHH!! Meningitis! It was at this point, I said never mind.
J- I understand that reaction to the ending of Shiver. :-)
U is for Undertow by Sue Grafton.
This was another great Grafton book, better than the prior two books. It includes a cold case, shaky memories, and more about Kinsey's family. It was a bit longer, but well worth the read.
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin.
This book won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best science fiction novel of the year. I'm a little less enthusiastic. I can see why it won these awards, because it is a fascinating concept and works as a treatise on gender relations in our world. However, I found it very difficult to get into and then was disappointed in the ending.
The basic plot is that a human from Earth (but part of an interplanetary organization) goes to the planet of Winter as an Envoy to invite them to join the interplanetary union. Winter is a cold, snowy place (who knew?), but what is most different is that the occupants are humanoid but are sexless for most of their month. They are sexless for 26 days of the Winter month and then spend 4 days in Kemmer (which is called "heat" in cats). During Kemmer they take on the physical attributes of either male or female and have sex. If the female conceives then she remains female until the end of breastfeeding. The man, or a female who does not conceive, goes back to being sexless. Any person can become either male or female during kemmer and therefore anyone can give birth and have children. Because of the sexlessness of most of the humans when not in Kemmer and this equality of giving birth, it is a genderless society and everyone is equal (at least as far as gender, there are still economic and ethnic inequalities).
The envoy begins the mission in one country on winter and he, and the prime minister, are exiled and have to go to the other country on the planet.
The book alternates between the two accounts (Envoy and prime minister) and randomly has myths of the planet interspersed in their own chapters. They have only a small connection to the story. It feels very fragmented until the last 100 pages when the accounts come together.
The really interesting parts are when the planet occupants try to explain their system to the envoy and then later when the envoy tries to explain the Earth sexes and inequalities based on sex.
Somewhat recommended.
The Wave by J.G. Sandom.
Ugh. I didn't even finish it. It is violent, rambling, jumps back and forth between characters and is not written very well.
Not recommended.
A Short History of Women by Kate Walbert, and
Incubus by Ann Ansberg.
I was looking forward to both of these books and was a disappointed in both.
Short History is a novel about three generations of women who each grew up in the midst of a wave of the women's movement. The first during the suffrage movement in U.K., the second in the 2nd wave in the U.S., and the 3rd/4th in the third wave in the US. Unfortunately, they are all named, in some way, after the 1st and the chapter switch back and forth between the 4 women so it is very difficult to keep clear who is whom and what is going on with them. I liked the writing style, which is abrupt and almost random in the things it points out, but that combined with the switching back and forth make it a very disjointed story. I think it is a great plot but would have been more accessible had it been told a bit differently.
Incubus was sent to me with a book I had bookmooched (I hadn't requested it). It looked interesting from the cover: A story about a town in Main in the 1970s that has strange happenings, most notably a nocturnal presence preying on the sexuality of the female townspeople. It is written more like Dracula than current vampire/otherworld fantasy novels. It is written in the first person by the wife of the town priest, who is documenting the happenings to the town and trying to figure out the causes. For that reason, it is written less fantastically than most modern fantasy novels. I really like the way it is written, but I just couldn't get into it.
Neither recommended.
Movie reviews:
One for the Money and
The Help
As movies made from books, neither of these kept completely true to the novel, but both represented the overal feel of the novel quite well. I wouldn't necessarily have chosen the cast of One for the Money, but they did a good job representing each character and the overall lunacy of the book. It was a fun movie, like these are fun books. Disappointments? Ranger, and how little Lula was included in the film, especially since I thought the actress did a marvelous job with the character.
Help was cast very well, I thought. They did an excellent job portraying the characters and the time. This is one of my favorite movies from books so far.
I am so torn about seeing One for the Money! I hate to replace my characters with actors, but, I am curious to see how they will squish the books together, as it's really not feasible to make 17 or 18 movies with the same cast. Lula had a pretty minor role in the first book, and didn't come on full force until #3.
The Red Shoes: Margaret Atwood Starting Out by Rosemary Sullivan, and
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chinua Achebe
The Red Shoes was a fascinating and well-written biography of Margaret Atwood. It placed her, as an author and poet, and her work in the context of wider developments in Canada and the world. At the same time, it was very engaging. It shows Margaret Atwood as a very different person than you might expect from her work: lighthearted, self-confident, generous, and ambitious. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in Atwood, Canada, the 1960s and 1970s or feminism.
A funny story about Thing Around Your Neck. I had checked this book out from WMU over the summer and finished the first chapter, then I got this job and ended up returning it before I moved. I got it through ILL and skimmed the first chapter to remind myself what is was about, then read the second and third chapters- which had nothing to do with the first chapter. WTH? I looked at the back cover and realized it was a book of short stories. OH...
Anyway, many of the stories, as you might guess, leave the reader hanging without a real conclusion. All in all, not my favorite collection of short stories, though there were some good ones in it. All of them deal with Nigerians living in the US or returning to Nigeria after living in the US. One, about a writer's retreat, is amusing in that it refers to Achebe as a writer in rather disparaging ways. :-)
Not recommended.
A- I understand how you are torn, but I find that after a series that long, I still see the characters in my head, even after watching the movie. Of course, then the people in the movie feel a bit like imposters...
Charms for the Easy Life by Kaye Gibbons.
What a "charming" book. :-) It tells the tale of three generations of women, all through the narration of the youngest. It begins with the early life of the grandmother, who is certainly the main character, even if she is not the narrator! I loved all the characters, but especially the grandmother. It tells of the narrator's own mother and then picks up with her life. It is fun, touching, and overall a great book. Recommended.
The Sugar Camp Quilt, by Jennifer Chiaverrini.
In general, I liked this book. It was about a quilt used to give directions to slaves on the underground railroad. My biggest complaints is that it was predictable and too much like Pride and Prejudice. Of course, I like Pride and Prejudice, so that may be why I liked this book as well. :-)
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.
This is on a number of best books lists and I disagree with all of them. What a stupid book. It follows James Dixon, an inept, untenured college professor who makes the stupidest mistakes and then uses ridiculous explanations to get himself out of the mess. This keeps layering up to the point where he loses his job. And he should lose his job, in my opinion. But then, he is rewarded with a better paying job with the uncle of the girl he loves, or at least thinks he loves. In this case I was annoyed by the happy ending because he didn't deserve it! What a waste of time. Not recommended.
I am the Messenger by Marcus Zusak (author of Book Thief).
After reading Book Thief with our club, I put I am the Messenger on my "to-read" list. While not quite as good as Book Thief, I highly recommend this book. It is the same writing style, which I love. It is also a great story (though the ending is a little 'eh'). It's about this 18 year old cab driver who has no ambition or prospects. He ends up catching a thief in the act and gains some notoriety. Shortly thereafter he begins receiving aces (playing cards) in the mail, with addresses or clues to addresses on them. What should he do? What does he do?
The characters are believable, the plot is interesting (if less believable), and the writing is great. I suggest you read this book.
As a side note, he has also written two other books for young adults: Fighting Ruben Wlfe and Getting the Girl.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by W. S. Gilbert.
This is a ridiculous 26 page play about Ophelia engaging R and G to convince Hamlet to do a dreadful play for the king (which, incidentally, is written by the king) so that he is killed and she doesn't have to marry him.
What is even worse than the play is this reprinting of it. Through much of it the dialogue does not match up with the speaker. Instead, they have the names written and then the dialogue and the reader has to guess who says what. What a terrible translation and printing of a ridiculous play!
Not recommended.
Long Storm by Ernest Haycox.
I just couldn't get into this book. It is about competing ferry boats in Oregon and the people running the boats, back in the late 1800s. It is an older book, but then I like a lot of older books. Unfortunately it had too many characters, too much detail, and too little to interest me.
Not recommended.
Irish Whiskey by Andrew Greeley.
Barb got me started on these books when she gave me a copy of Irish Lace. They are not spectacular writing, but they are a lot of fun to read, especially the irish conversations!
In this third book, the young Irish-American Dermott is soon to be married to the Irish Nuala (who is a little fey). In addition to the work up to their marriage, they are also solving a mystery of an Irish mobster during the prohibition era and dealing with charges against Dermott of fraud.
"Ill Wind" the first book (and the last I'll read) of the Weather Warden series by Rachel Caine.
This series was recommended to me by a friend who also reads fantasy/science fiction. It is about people who are born able to manipulate the weather and so they band together as Weather Wardens to control the elements. For example, when a really big storm is approaching they will diffuse it. The main character is a young warden with massive amounts of power and not much self-restraint.
Honestly, I just couldn't get into it and it was a bit of a struggle to finish the book. There are very long chapters will very short sections, very little character development, and I just couldn't get the main character. She is supposed to be powerful and wise and at the same time immature and sex-crazed. Uh-huh. Oh well, at least that is one less series for me to get involved in.
Not recommended.
Incantations and Other Stories by Anjana Appachana.
This is a collection of short stories about India. I really enjoyed the stories told from a woman's point of view. They mostly talked about family and marriage and being a girl/woman in a very traditional society. There were two from a man's viewpoint- the same man and both set in the workplace. These were really annoying. He is a lazy employee who feels entitled to get raises even when he shows up late and never works.
I would recommend all the stories but those two. But a warning- they are not happy stories. Now I need to go finish Middlesex.
M, Have you read the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin? It's been recommended to me by several people recently.
A- Haven't read it. If you do and like it, let me know.
Last night I watched the 1995 version of "The Scarlet letter" with Demi Moore. At the beginning it stated that it was "freely adapted" from the book and were they ever free with the adaptation. It was similar to the book but there were MANY differences. There was a whole part of the movie on a war with the Indians that I don't remember at all from the book. It is good that I hadn't just read the book or I'd probably be even less thrilled with the movie. Of course, Dimmsdale was not as weak or obnoxious in the film, which was a plus. I couldn't stand his character in the book.
Small Favor by Jim Butcher, from the Dresden series.
After Middlesex, I wanted something with action. One of my critiques of the Dresden series is that is so action-packed that it is actually tiring to read sometimes. This time, it was perfect for what I wanted. In this book, Dresden pulls together most of his friends (the white knights, vampire brother, police detective, other wizards, etc.) in order to save the master criminal Marcome who has been abducted by the Black Denarians (fallen angels). Except, he doesn't understand the full scope of the Denarians' plans until too late. Or is it too late?
Action packed as usual, but with a little more focus on character and relationships than the last book. Overall a fun read and a nice break from the more plot-driven books that I have been reading lately.
My Brother Sam is Dead by Collier and Collier.
This is a young adult's book about the Revolutionary War. It was a Newbery Honor book and looked interesting. Overall, though, I wasn't that impressed. It's about a 13 year-old boy whose brother enlists to fight on the side of the Rebels, while his father is a Tory. He is caught between the two and trying to figure out which side is right. I found it to be rather depressing and written pretty simplistically, even for a YA book. What I did like is that at the end the author breaks down what in the book was based on fact and what was fiction. I found that to be the most interesting part of the whole book.
Not recommended.
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol and
Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris, the 12th book in the Sookie Stackhouse Series.
A- You won't want to read this post until after you've read Deadlocked. I'm bound to give it away.
First, Alice in Wonderland. Huh. I'd seen several versions of the movie and thought the directors took some artistic license. They did. The book is much more... odd. It is pointless and rambling and completely out in left field. I thought I might have liked it more. I do think it would be fun to read to a child, as you could do so much with the voices and poems and silliness. However, as an adult, not recommended.
I got Deadlocked this morning in the mail and finished it this afternoon. I did a few other things in between reading it, very few. So much comes together and changes in this book, with some real surprises and some not-so-surprises. I have mixed feelings about this book. I like that Harris tied up some loose ends (fairies) and brought the Sookie-Eric to a head (though not a clear conclusion). However, it seemed so uncomfortable through most of the book and the ending felt unended. I think she was trying to leave us wanting more, and I do. However, it also reaffirms my feelings that she should wrap the series up.
I'll be interested to see what A thinks.
A Perfect Blood by Kim Harrison, the latest release the Hollows series.
In this book, a group of humans that hate supernaturals is trying to turn witches into demons so that they can use their blood to activate demon curses and ultimately wipe out all witches, pixies, fairies, vamps, and weres with one large curse. Rachel, Ivy, and Jenks work with Trent, the FIB and IS to find out who is to blame.
I thought this book was better than the prior two. Rachel has been getting pretty whiny and while she still whines some in this book, she starts taking responsibility for her actions and whining less. I also liked that this one goes back to a crime/mystery plot that the team is solving. Finally, I also liked the shift in interactions between Trent and Rachel.
Blue Bloods by Melissa De La Cruz.
This is the first book to a vampire series for young adults. I had read an article about alternatives to the Twilight series with stronger female characters and this series had been at the top of the list. It is like a combination of Twilight, Hunger Games, and Gossip Girls. I don't know if that is a good thing or bad?
Anyway, it is about a young woman attending a prestigious prep school in NYC. Her father is dead, her mother in a coma since she was born, and her grandmother is an intimidating matriarch who care for her. Her only friend is a boy at the school and more recently a new boy. Otherwise, she is a misfit and tormented by the popular kids. However, soon strange things begin happening to he kids as they get near the age of 16 and finally they attend a secret meeting where they find out the truth about themselves and their families. You guessed it- vampires.
I did like this book. The female protagonist, Schuyler, is strong and intelligent (though, of course, also gorgeous). I liked the back history they give of the vampires coming over on the Mayflower and establishing themselves as pillars of society in the New World. The writing is better than Twilight, too.
What I don't like: the fashion obsession (do I really care what brand names they are wearing?), and the one-dimensionality of some of the secondary characters (especially the mean, popular girl). Basically, I don't like the Gossip Girl part. :-)
I would recommend this book to a young adult into sci-fi/fantasy and plan on continuing the series.
Uglies by Scott Westerfield.
This is another strong-female alternative to Twilight for young adults. It is, in some ways, very similar to Hunger Games, but not as good in my opinion. It is set in the future, when humans have basically killed themselves off through a devastating war. Those that were left moved into cities and started operating on 16 year old kids to make them pretty and stupid. The kids were then told that it was because war happened when someone was prettier than someone else, so this made everyone pretty. Until everyone had the operation, they were ugly. Tally, the main character, wants to become one of the Pretties, but her friend Shay doesn't want the operation. Shay runs away to join a rebel group hiding outside of the city and leaves directions for Tally to follow. I won't give it away, except to say that Tally ends up following her for completely different reasons.
While the plot is similar to Hunger Games (after big war, city controls population through manipulation until rebels rise up), the writing isn't as good and I just had a hard time connecting to Tally. She is so focused on being pretty for the first half of the book and then the second half all of a sudden she isn't obsessed with being pretty anymore. It seems to fast and easy. On the other hand, there is a lot less killing and violence in these books.
This is also a trilogy and while I will read the other two, I don't really recommend it.
Bespelling Jane Austen, edited by Mary Balogh.
I thought this was a great idea, but wasn't as impressed with the way it was done. Four fantasy writers got together and rewrote Austen's works into novellas from a fantasy perspective- vampires, witches, and reincarnation.
The first took Persuasion and rewrote it as though the characters had been reincarnated lifetime after lifetime and somehow kept apart in each lifetime. Again, a great idea, but I didn't like the way it was written. Too romance novelly.
The second took Northanger Abbey and made the male character a vampire hunter that the female protagonists thinks is a vampire. The writing was okay, but the main character was a twit. I was rooting for her to be killed by the vampire because I found her so annoying (that didn't happen).
The third was the best of the bunch. In Blood and Prejudice it made Mr. Darcy into a vampire. I thought thi idea was the worst, but the story stayed much closer to the original and the characters were more like Austen's characters. It actually worked really well.
The last made Emma a witch running a matchmaker service for supernaturals. It was a lot of fun, actually.
All in all, a fun read, but not nearly as good as what I had hoped for. I was kind-of looking for Lizzy in Sookieverse, I think. Not recommended.
Pretties by Scott Westerfield.
In this book, Tally's fight against Special Circumstances continues, though, as you might guess, she is a Pretty in this book, rather than an Ugly. She is a strong character, but what irks me about these books is that she always finds a male to help her do whatever she is doing. Two men now have fallen in love with her and helped her out, should I expect a third in the last book?
It also got just a little weird toward the end, bringing in a whole new aspect of the world that I think could have been left out.
Masquerade by Melissa de la Cruz, the 2nd in the Blue Bloods series;
V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton, the latest in the alphabet series;
A 1000-Mile Walk on the Beach by Loreen Niewenhuis (non-fiction).
Masquerade continues Sky's search for the Silver Bloods and her grandfather. She is still torn between her best friend, Oliver, and the popular Jack. Honestly, I thought it was a bit predictable and not as good as the first book.
V was another good Grafton book, though she tells the story from the viewpoint of at least 4 different characters when I would prefer that she stick with Kinsey's character. In this book, Kinsey is investigating the death of a shoplifter, with some organized crime twists. This also seemed a bit predictable, but had the great storytelling of the other books.
Niewenhuis's book is the true story of her walk around Lake Michigan. She does it in several separate segments over the length of a year. In addition to the story of her walk, she also gives background on places she sees and environmental problems with the Great Lakes. While it was good, it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.
V recommended, others not so much.
Flower Fables by Louisa May Alcott.
For the most part, I really like Alcott's writing, though at times it can be moralistic. However, this slim book of flower and fairy stories had too much moral and was sickeningly sweet. Almost every story had a sweet, loving fairy and a mean, cruel fairy. The good fairy was loved by all; the bad fairy had no friends except the good fairy. The bad fairy was shown the error of its ways and reformed to become a happy, sweet, good fairy. Gag me. This will be going on its way to some other person.
Unsung Hero by Suzanne Brockman.
She writes romance thrillers, I guess you would call them. Most of her books seem to focus on terrorist plots and the military. For example, this one was about a Navy Seal who was sent home to recover from a head injury. When he gets home, he thinks he sees an international terrorist in his home town, which is about to celebrate their battalion in WWII. Meanwhile, his great-uncle and great-uncle's friend are to be recognized at the celebration for their actions during WWI, in Vichy France. The plot follows the two storylines: Vichy France during WWII and present-day. The love interest is the girl-next-door, granddaughter of his great-uncle's friend- a beautiful doctor who has always had a crush on the wild boy next door.
I applaud Brockman for introducing a real plot into a romance novel, but it is still essentially a romance novel with romance-novel writing. Not recommended.
The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult, and
The Hormone Diet by Natasha Turner, ND
The Hormone Diet is a health book, but I wanted to comment on it anyway. :-) Mom asked me to read a couple of health books with her so that she had someone to talk about them with. This book deals with balancing hormones for optimum health, including cortisol, which is really important for mom right now. It functions as a diet, because most people lose weigth when following the guidelines to balance hormones. Anyway, as it wasn't all that different from how I eat anyway, I am giving it a shot and am on the second week of a 6 week plan. I wouldn't say it is a miracle cure, but it does seem pretty effective. I've lost weight, inches off my waist, and have been sleeping better and feeling pretty perky. What I really liked about her perscriptions is: 1. They aren't very difficult to follow (for example, you don't have to cut out all carbs or drink lemonade and nothing else), 2. She is practical. She makes a point to say that if you eat something you aren't supposed to or don't do the exercise you are supposed to that you shouldn't get stressed out. Just give yourself a pat on the back for trying and get back on the wagon. 3. She explains all the medical reasons for everything she tells you to do. I like knowing why I am told to do something.
I'd actually recommend this book to someone trying to lose weight or just interested in balancing their hormones for better health.
I also really liked The Tenth Circle. I know that My Sisters Keeper gets a lot more attention (and I did like that book when Tracy chose it), but I think this is a better book. It is about a 14 year old girl who is raped by her ex-boyfriend at a party. It follows her family through from before the rape to a final resolution of the situation. I thought the relationships and characters were written well, that she did a nice job showing the realities of dealing with rape in the criminal justice system, and I liked that she interspersed the father's graphic novel throughout the book to highlight his response to what was going on. In addition, it is all structured around Dante's Inferno and levels of hell, which is pretty neat. A- you might want to consider checking this book out, you might like it better than Sister's Keeper. Recommended.
Specials by Scott Westerfeld.
I'm not sure what I think of this book. There was no new guy to help Tally, at least, but the guys from the first two books were still present. Her friend Shay was just as nasty and critical as the second book, with an unusual and unresolved ending to her anger. One shot and she's suddenly sweet and no longer angry at Tally? A bit unbelievable. I did like that Tally essentially stayed the same, other than growing emotionally and taking responsibility for her actions and I actually understand the ending. I won't say I disliked it, since I did finish it in two sittings when I should have been doing other stuff, but I was a bit disappointed and wouldn't recommend it.
Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich, and
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate Camillo.
Both of these are great books. Wicked Appetite is typical Evanovich. Somewhat inept, good-hearted, Lizzy bakes cupcakes for a living. Then a mysterious dark man comes into the bakery and brands her hand before walking out. Then Diesel (the same Diesel from between-the-numbers Plum books) shows up to protect her. It was hillarious in a very Stephanie Plum way, including Carl, the monkey, and frequent vehicle changes. I don't want to ruin the part, but there was one part where I laughed for about 5 minutes and had all my animals looking at me like I went nuts. A- you'll like this book.
Winn-Dixie is a very short read because it is for children, but has really great writing that captures a young girl really well. It is a sweet story and definitely recommended for children and adults.
The Dream-Hunter by Sherrilyn Kenyon.
Not recommended. I didn't even finish this book because it just got sillier and sillier. The idea was interesting. It was based on Greek mythology and dream-gods that participated in humans' dreams. One particular dream god fell in love with a human woman and made a deal with Hades to become human for two weeks to be worth her. She happened to be a scientist looking for Atlantis. Good idea- bad implementation. The conversations felt forced, the plot kept getting sillier and it read too much like a romance novel.
Revelations by Melissa de la Cruz.
Not recommended. It was angsty, short, and had an inconclusive ending. Will continue the series, but original high hopes are fleeing.
Evermore by Alyson Noel.
This is basically a rip-off of Twilight, though written better. It combines elements of the Twilight series, Sookie Stackhouse series, and a few other YA books I've read.
Basically, after an accident a 16 year old becomes telepathic and psychic (she also sees her little sister's ghost). A sexy, mysterious boy shows up at her school, whose thoughts she cannot read. He can read her mind, is super fast, and drinks a red drink. Hmm. They have tense relationship moments and she spends a lot of time trying to convince herself she doesn't love him while he turns hot and cold (because he wants to love her but doesn't want to put her in danger. Hmm.)
The book itself was written better than Twilight and had some interesting events, but it just felt too much like the same-old, same-old. It is a series I won't be continuing.
The Headmaster Ritual by Taylor Antrim,
The Rose and the Beast by Francesca Lia Block, and
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris.
The Headmaster Ritual was a big disappointment. It is about a new instructor at a private school who is tasked with teaching Model United Nations even though he has no experience with MUN. This plot really resonated with me after this last year. Unfortunately, I found the book to be dull and pointless. It was a struggle to finish. Not recommended.
Me Talk Pretty has actually already been "reviewed" by A with a luke-warm recommendation as I recall. This was sent to me as a bonus book from a fellow bookmoocher. Two chapters I was rolling in my chair with laughter (one about Easter and the other about crossword puzzles) but some of the others I did not find amusing at all. It was kind of hit or miss with the essays. I give this a lukewarm recommendation.
The Rose and the Beast is Block's reinterpretation of classic fairy tales. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. She reinterprets them very moderly, with drugs, child abuse, rape, etc. While one or two were a little extreme for my taste, in general this really seemed to work and to highlight some of the problems with the relationships in classic fairy tales. I recommend this book but warn that it is nothing you probably want to read to children.
Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning, the first in the Fever series (no brain fever, I checked), and
Tyranny of Oil by A. Juhasz.
Tyranny of oil isn't really a novel, it is an expose of Big Oil that I read for my dissertation research. BUT, it was really interesting, so I recommend it. The author is a journalist that investigates Big Oil and how the oil companies manipulate gas prices (and countries) for maximum profits. Fascinating and disturbing.
Darkfever was a pleasant surprise. I've read so many disappointing fantasy novels lately that I expected this to be another loser. Then, in the first two chapters she referenced both Harry Potter and Janet Evanovich. That was a good indication. It is written more like the Sookie Stackhouse series: young, female protagonist finds herself immersed in a world she didn't know existed (fairies in this case) and tries to muddle her way through, with a good dose of laughing at herself. My biggest critique is that it is too much "romance novel" and not enough "plot". Of course, I believe she is writing in the genre of romantic fantasy so maybe that is what it is supposed to be.
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
I've had this book for a long time and been anxious to read it, but it is almost 900 pages long so I've kept putting it off until I have a chunk of time (rightly thinking it might be pretty absorbing). I took it on vacation with me and finished it the day we returned.
I wasn't disappointed. This book is the feminist retelling of the myth of King Arthur and Camelot. It focuses on Morgaine (Morgan la fey) primarily, but it also covers other women's viewpoints as well. In addition to telling the story from a woman's viewpoint, it also focuses on the clash between Christianity and the worship of the Goddess. Neither religion comes out unscathed in the end and Bradley never comes down solidly on one side or the other, although she does slightly lean more towards the worship as the Goddess.
My one main critique is that after 850 pages of in depth storytelling, the end happens very quickly and is rather anticlimactic. It isn't a happy ending as such, but everyone who know the myth of King Arthur's court knows it isn't a happy ending.
Highly recommended.
Bloodlines by Richelle Meade.
This is a spin-off from Vampire Academy that follows the alchemist and a few other characters from the Vampire Academy world after that series ended. I wonder if the author didn't want to let go of some of her favorite characters? They were some of my favorite characters, which is why I bothered to read a spinoff series.
What I like is that it makes reference to what happened in the last two V.A. books, but you didn't have to have read them to still enjoy this book. It has its own plot and story. What I don't like is that Sydney, the main character in this book and minor character in V.A., starts acting more like the main character in V.A. than like her character in V.A. Do you follow? I know Mead can write other characters because she has another adult series with a very different character.
I enjoyed it, but don't recommend it.
A- I just realized that I have a whole category of "Melissa's books 2012". I don't even get listed under "literary commentary" anymore? :-)
Into the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.
I got this book through freecycle and have been holding onto it for a while. I finally started it two weeks ago. I wasn't too interested at first and so listed it on bookmooch.com. It was on 144 wishlists and was mooched in 5 minutes. I think that is the fastest mooch of any book I've ever listed. So, then I'm stuck trying to quick finish reading this 700 page book.
And then it got good, so I'm kind-of feeling bad that I let it get mooched. Then I realize that this is Book 1 in a trilogy so now I also have to read the next two books. Except the 3rd book isn't even out yet! Sheesh, if I had known all this!
Anyway, the book is about Kvothe, an explorer, arcanist (magician), and musician. He is telling the story of how he became famous to a travelling storyteller. His story is really interesting, but the "present day" parts of the book not as much so. It is really well written and I was astonished to find out it is a first novel for this author. Very impressive.
I'd actually recommend this book to anyone. I know I made it sound very typically fantasy, which may have limited appeal, but it is really about human experience. It is well-written and has a great subtle humor in unexpected places.
Now to read book 2 and wait for the third book to come out.
M - I added a tag because J was having a hard time finding your post in the oodles and oodles of "literary commentary" that we've done. You can get to it both ways, but the new tag might be a smidge faster.
Turn Coat, by Jim Butcher, a Dresden Files novel.
I don't know what number from the series this book is, but it is in the teens, I think. In this one, Morgan comes to Harry to help him prove his innocence to the White Council and, of course, Harry helps him. It had some great parts, including Harry's comments on boats and people obsessed with boats, but I didn't like the ending.
On another note, I was reading a journal article and came across the word "perspicaciously" and had to look it up. Apparentlyl it means "to be clear in statement or expression, easily understood." It made me think of J's love of words. :-)
Wise Man Fears by Patrick Rothfuss (book 2), and
Forever After by Catherine Anderson.
Forever After was given to me by B, with the comments that it was a good plot but had some steamy parts. I would qualify that a bit by saying that it had a good plot but was written like a romance novel. The plot: a young woman is in hiding with her young daughter from a rich and influential father-in-law who wants to take her daughter away from her after the death of her abusive husband. She moves next door to a Sheriff in a small town. His dog (ex-police dog) becomes obsessed with the little girl and ends up bringing them together. As B pointed out, it does well in describing the dogs behavior and someone who is recovering from abuse. What irked me is the seemingly endless descriptions of the Sheriff's masculinity or how petite and feminine the woman was. How they felt such feelings for each other, etc., etc. I used to read romance novels in the past and now I find that type of writing irks me to know end. I had the same issue with the Twilight series. So, I don't know. I guess I give it a lukewarm recommendation. I did like the dogs and the plot. I just had an issue with the writing style of the author.
Wise Mans Fears was just as good as the first, but a full 1,000 pages long. It followed Kvothe from university to fighting bandits to training with paid assassins, to wooing a woman for a Lord, and eventual return back to university. Again, the plot sounds corny and fantasy-y, but Rothfuss made it work. This book had even more humor (a class titled "How Not to be a Stupid Jackass" which I think should be taught at more universities), and new, interesting characters. Recommended and I can't wait for the final installment, which should come out about 2014... :-)
Fletch, by Gregory McDonald,
Stupid White Men, by Michael Moore,
You Suck, by Christopher Moore.
Not recommended. This applies to all three books. I didn't even finish You Suck or Stupid White Men. I did finish Fletch, for what it is worth.
Fletch is a suspense/thriller/murder mystery about a journalist working a drug case who gets asked to kill a prominent citizen by the citizen to be killed. I won't ruin it, because if anyone reads it the plot is the only good thing about it. The character is obnoxious and sexist, and the writing annoying.
You Suck is supposed to be a humorous parody of all the fantasy vampire novels out on the market. It wasn't very funny and it certainly wasn't very good fantasy.
Stupid White Men sounded like something I would like, but it turns out it is just Michael Moore's rant about the United States. I found it annoying and pointless.
What a run of books. I'm turning to books from series that I know I like for the next few.
Golden Lily (Bloodlines Book 2), by Richelle Mead.
I just love this author for guilty pleasures. These are basically teen vampire novels, but bring more plot and character development than the Twilight Series. In this book, Sydney, an alchemist is dealing with hiding a vampire princess in a prep school and trying not to get too involved with the vampires. However, there are vampire hunters trying to kill her charges so she has that on her plate as well. Funny, dramatic, well-written.
Ghost Story by Jim Butcher.
This book goes quite a different direction. The last book in the Dresden series left on a bit of a cliff-hanger. This book went a different direction from the rest of the series and was almost unsatisfying. Not bad, but certainly not the best. I don't want to say anymore as it would give it away for anyone who might want to read it in the future.
Shadow Heir by Richelle Mead. 4th book in the Storm Born series.
Not one of her best. Eugenie is dealing with having children and undoing a blight in the Otherworld. It was fun to read, but not as good as the others.
Fallen, by Lauren Kate.
Quite honestly, I bought this book for its cover. It has a dramatic cover that caught my fancy. If the book had been as good as the cover, I probably would have kept it. Instead, it is now listed on bookmooch.
The biggest issue is that I just did not find the plot believable. Supposedly, a mortal woman and a fallen angel fall in love, but the angel's punishment (for falling? it never says) is that when they kiss, she dies. BUT she is reincarnated and every 17 years they meet, fall in love, and then she dies again. Except, this time it is different, she doesn't die when they kiss. I might have gone with this, but then the reader finds out that as long as this scenario keeps happening, the world continues to exist as it is, but if it ends and she dies (for good, not for another reincarnation) then there will be hell on earth. If she survives to live out a life with the fallen angel then ...? We aren't really told what will happen. So, in a nutshell, the life of this one girl will determine whether all humanity is plunged into hell or not. Nope, not buying it.
Additionally, the writing isn't spectacular. It is neither wonderful writing, nor absorbing plot, nor engaging characters. The series apparently continues (did I mention the end leaves you hanging?), but I won't be continuing with it. Not recommended.
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman.
I really liked this movie, so I thought I would read the book. I was not disappointed.
While the movie and book are quite a bit different from each other (when are they not?), they are both excellent. The book follows the lives of two sisters who are orphaned and go to live with their four aunts. The aunts are witches and quite eccentric. The girls try to grow up to leave normal lives but both are unsuccessful in very different ways (later we find out there is a curse on the family). The moral of the story is that while love and normality may be fickle, family lasts forever. The girls (as adult women) and the aunts come back together at the end to solve a problem. It is fanciful and engaging. A lovely book altogether. Recommended.
'grow up to LEAD normal lives'
Bloodfever, by Karen Marie Moning, 2nd book in the fever series,
and Memnoch the Devil by Ann Rice, 5th in her vampire series.
I'll start with Memnoch: 200+ pages in I called it quits because I just wasn't that in to it. I liked the series to start, but the books just keep getting denser and denser. Usually when I get a couple of hundred pages in I am involved, but not this time.
Bloodfever was as much fun as the first book. In this one, she is still trying to catch her sister's killer, while also researching sidhe-seers to find out what she can and cannot do. I just love that she uses other words for cuss words. For example, "I'll kick your frogging petunia." They show up at the randomest times and just tickle me pink. :-)
A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver,
Cold Days by Jim Butcher (Dresden),
and Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, edited by Charlaine Harris.
First of all, A Thousand Mornings is a very short book of poetry by Mary Oliver and definitely worth reading. A, you should check this out.
Cold Days was a typical Dresden novel, though some interesting and new developments occurred at the end that should lead to a few more books in the series. Just when you think an author has run out of ideas...
Wolfsbane and Mistletoe was a book of short stories about werewolves and Christmas. What I found hillarious is how Santa Claus kept getting made into an evil entity. In one, Santa Claus hunted innocent lycanthropes and killed them. In another, he really punished bad children. In yet another, Santa Claus is a vampire who collects vials of blood of the children to feed on them later. It sounds terrible, but it was funny. Not all were great, but there were some good stories. You probably have to be a certain type of person to enjoy this book. :-)
The last three books in the Fever series by Karen Marie Moning: Faefever, Dreamfever, and Shadowfever.
These went quickly because I was hooked! MacKayla keeps finding out new things about herself and her frenemies, ending in one final smackdown. The last book was a bit whiny at the start, but then got back to what I like about the series: interesting plot, lots of twists and turns with some fun mixed in!
Shadowplay by Clare Asquith and
and she was by Alison Gaylin.
Shadowplay was non-fiction but made an interesting argument. Asquith claims that Shakespeare's plays were actually subversive writings criticizing the Protestant oppression of Catholics during Shakespeare's life. She says that the wording and plots were actually coded so that Catholics understood but Shakespeare could not be charged with treason. For example, plots in which a loyal lover follows a fickle lover throughout (Midsummer's Nights Eve, for example) actually represent England turning away from its true religion (Catholicism) for a fickle affair with Protestantism. Examples of coded words include red meaning Catholic and black meaning Protestant (based on the color of the robes). Characters said to be dressed in red are seen as representing Catholicism while those dressed in black represent Protestantism. Similarly, characters described as "black" (the "black" prince in Much Ado About Nothing, who works to make everyone unhappy) represent Protestants. I didn't actually finish the whole book, because she uses example after example to prove her point and eventually it gets a bit overdone, but it was interesting and makes me really think about Shakespeare's writing. Recommended for those who like Shakespeare.
"and she was" is a suspense novel/murder mystery. The main character, Brenna, is a private investigator who has a medical disorder where she remembers EVERYTHING she has ever seen, heard, felt, smelled, tasted, etc. It makes her a good PI, but makes life difficult because she can't forget things she wants to forget. She is investigating the death of a woman, which is linked to the disappearance of a little girl years before. The two cases are linked and so everything she learns about one leads to new understandings of the other. For the most part, I really liked this book. It did jump around between characters a bit, which I didn't like. Also, Brenna randomly gets sucked into memories (as part of the disorder) that may or may not have to do with the case. These are a bit of a distraction. In the author's note she says that she wanted to write a book about someone with this disorder because they often have a hard time living in the present because they are often sucked into the past, so I understand she was doing it to show the life of someone with the disorder. The sequel (I wonder if this will be like Grafton's ABC series?) is due out later this year. Lightly recommended.
Watching the Roses by Adele Geras.
This was a really interesting book. It is a modern-day takeoff on the sleeping beauty fairy tale. In this case, the book opens with a young woman laying in bed as if asleep, though telling her story in a household that is silenced, waiting for her to wake. At night, when everyone is asleep, she writes her story in a book. About her life, what happened at her 18th birthday to put her in this state, etc. In general I liked it, though the ending was still a little too fairy-taleish. I won't say how so that I don't ruin it.
Um, yeah. Lightly recommended.
The Loom by R.A. Sasaki.
This is a collection of stories about growing up in a Japanese-American household following WWII. The stories are quite short, but interesting. One details her father's trip back to his old neighborhood in Hiroshima. His mother died in the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, while he served in the U.S. military. His sister died years later from radiation-caused illness. Another describes her brief love affair with a flamboyant Japanese boy. Yet another talks about her mother's experience in an internment camp. They sound terribly depressing, but really aren't that bad because they are written in such an off-hand manner.
Recommended.
Succubus Revealed and Indigo Spell by Richelle Mead and
Wyoming Pioneer Woman: Pauline Krueger Bayer by Margaret Canfield Bayer.
Pioneer Woman was an interesting and also frustrating book. It is written by a relative of Pauline Bayer after she passed away and talks about her life. The writing isn't spectacular, as you might imagine, but the stories are interesting. What was frustrating was how worthless Albert Bayer (Pauline's husband) was. He couldn't do anything right and yet felt he had complete control over all family decisions. Meanwhile Pauline has EIGHT children, takes care of the whole family and basically supports the family when her husband's ridiculous schemes fail and he loses all their money. And yet, she never gets annoyed enough with him to kick him to the curb, but instead supports him as well as their children. Recommended if you are into historical non-fiction on pioneer women and don't mind lazy, worthless husbands. :-)
The other two books are the newest books in series by Mead. Succubus revealed is the last book in the Georgina Kincaid series. It concludes much the way I expected, which is a good thing. The other is the third book in the Alchemist spin-off of Vampire Academy. Not as good as the first two, really. A lot of teenage angst and love pangs with rather a weak plot. However, there is a twist at the end that looks like the next book might be better. I really like Mead's writing because she takes supernatural characters and make them seem quite normal. Plus, her heroines are strong, flawed women without any superpowers (any more so than anyone else, anyway) who still manage to do good things with their lives.
Queen of the Big Time by Adriana Trigiani.
This book was a pleasant surprise. It had been on a list of Great Books by Women, but it hadn't looked very interesting. It follows the life of a girl from an Italian family in a small town in Pennsylvania in the 1920s-1960s. The reader follows her from a girl just starting high school in a neighboring town to her death in her late 60s. She struggles through various hardships and relationships. It doesn't sound riveting, but it is well-written and an engaging story. The female lead is a strong, yet flawed, character in an interesting time period.
Recommended.
The No-Spin Zone by Bill O'Reilly,
Let the Right One In by John Lindquist, and
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquival.
Cliff-notes version: I disliked the O'Reilly and Lindquist books so much that I didn't finish them, and I really enjoyed Esquival's book.
Unabridged version: The O'Reilly book is supposedly a book of interviews that he did on his television show "No-Spin Zone". However, very little of it is actually interviews. Instead, it is his diatribes about why the interviewees are wrong and he is right. It got really annoying fast. I read three chapters and called it quits.
Lindquists book is supposedly a modern retelling of a vampire story. The first few chapters are about a 10 year old boy fantasizing about gory homicides and a man planning on how to kill and chop up. Gory, disturbing, and not fun to read. So, I called it quits on that book too. I can live without knowing if it gets better.
Finally, a book recommended by A a long time ago. Honestly, I thought I had already read this book, but was mistaken. Like Water for Chocolate was just the right mix of fantasy, reality, and recipes. What fun. Thanks for recommending it, A!
Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli, and
Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich.
Both of these were quick, fun reads. Wicked Business continues the saga of Lizzy and Diesel searching for magical stones to prevent evil people from getting them. However, craziness ensues, with much hillarity.
Stargirl is about an unusual girl who transfers into a school. The protagonist, a teenage boy, falls in love with her, but then she falls into disfavor with the kids of the school. It is really about being different in high school.
Both recommended.
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