596 replies to this topic

[Mara=^.^=]

Just read "godless" by Pete Hautman, a book about an agnostic-going-on-atheist teenage boy who invents his own farcical religion, only to have it grow and morph into something much larger and more problematic than he'd ever anticipated. It was an excellent read, with some of the most convincing 1st person narration I've read in a while. Definitely recommended to my fellow blasphemers!

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Katia11]

Read the Goose Girl, that was really good! The romance was believable and the villains were very villainy...?

 

 

Read Never Let Me Go, and I think I actually liked the movie a bit better. The book was sort of written in strange tangents... she'd start off her story then go on bunny trails. I think if I read it again I might enjoy it more.

[SweeneyxxTodd]

I finished How to Twist a Dragon's Tale on Sunday. It was pretty good, but not as good as the first four HTTYD books. I think so far, my favorites are books 1 and 3. (third is called How to Speak Dragonese)

[Katia11]

Read Fangirl. It was pretty darn cute.  

[Chompyzilla]

I finished How to Twist a Dragon's Tale on Sunday. It was pretty good, but not as good as the first four HTTYD books. I think so far, my favorites are books 1 and 3. (third is called How to Speak Dragonese)

Number three in that series is definitely my favourite. Have you finished he rest of the series.

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Number three in that series is definitely my favourite. Have you finished he rest of the series.

 

Nope. Just read through five so far.

[Chompyzilla]

Nope. Just read through five so far.

There are 10 or 11 books right now and that last couple books have been tying together useless information from prievios books and it was epic.

[SweeneyxxTodd]

I just finished reading Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake. I really, really, really enjoyed it.

 

Basic premise: Cas Lowell kills ghosts. He gets a tip about a powerful murderous ghost in Thunder Bay, Ontario who the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood. He moves up there with his mom, gets settled in school, and tries to seek out the ghost so he can kill her and move on to other ghosts who are out there hurting people. And for the past ten years, Cas has been getting himself ready to kill the ghost who murdered his father when he was seven.

 

But Anna isn't just any ghost. She's killed seventy people since she was murdered in 1958, and she's the strongest being he's ever met. And somehow he manages to fall in love with her. He then proceeds to try to kill her anyway, because she's still murdering people and she tore somebody in half right in front of his eyes (and I mean literally tore him in half. Guts all over the floor, only one side still had a spine, etc.).

 

And somehow, this managed to be a very funny book. Funny in that dry, sarcastic kind of way. Because Cas is both desensitized to his life as a ghost slayer, and completely aware of how bizarre a profession it is. He makes fun of himself on a regular basis. And there's plenty of well-placed action, with blood broken bones and ghost's faces melting off. I told Adeline about it and she said it sounded just like the sort of weird book I would really enjoy. I hope you guys like it as much as I did.

 

And now I have to get the next book from the library because OF COURSE there's a sequel set up right at the end. But that's okay, because I totally love these characters and want to read more about them. But I should finish the other book I got from Fletcher Free at the beginning of the month first.

[SweeneyxxTodd]

Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson.

 

The only thing I have to say about the ending? I was right. I was so freaking right.

[SweeneyxxTodd]

I finished The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson last night. It was pretty good. I enjoyed it a lot. There were moments when I was afraid it would take the typical dystopian YA direction, but then the author turned around and did interesting things instead of letting us get too comfortable.

 

It was really refreshing, because I've noticed that lately, YA doesn't seem to be as willing to take narrative risks as adult fiction, which is disappointing because I love YA. And this is making me even more determined to take risks with my own YA writing.

[Mara=^.^=]

Just read Keys to the City: Tales of a New York City Locksmith by Joel Kostman.

[Mara=^.^=]

Just finished The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi (he also wrote Ship Breaker, which I read last year). The book is not a direct sequel because it doesn't continue Ship Breaker's storyline, but it DOES take place in the same dystopian future, and it also shares a character in common with the first book (the half-man, "Tool", who serves as a link between the two stories).

 

The Drowned Cities is bloodier and more tragic than its predecessor, since it primarily focuses on child soldiers. It has super compelling characters, though, and you really feel for them as they struggle to survive in a system riddled with corruption, sadism, and insanity. The pacing was a little strange toward the end, and I wish the characters would've been given more time to process the emotional fallout from what happened, but overall I think I liked this book even better than Ship Breaker, if only because we got more insight into Tool, who is AWESOME. I mean, a hybrid dog-faced killing machine who somehow repeatedly manages to help out various children during his wanderings? MORE PLEASE.

 

I can't wait to see more of him in the third book, if there is one. And Mary, if you haven't already, you should read The Drowned Cities! I seem to remember you liking Ship Breaker.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[SweeneyxxTodd]

I've got it on my Nook, but I stopped reading it a while back. I didn't like it as much as Ship Breaker. It didn't grip me the same way at the beginning. I'll give it another go sometime soon, though, because I really like Tool and the world of Ship Breaker.

 

I recently finished Flight, vol. 2. It's the second in a series of comic anthologies centering around the theme of flight, and edited by Kazu Kibuishi, who also started compiling the Explorer anthology series, of which I've read the first and plan on getting the second soon (it came out on the 15th). I didn't like the second as much as the first, though there were still a lot of stories in there I really enjoyed. It was a bit looser on following the theme, though. There were a lot of stories in there that I couldn't find any representation of flight in, but were still good anyway.

[Mara=^.^=]

I was home alone today, so I read Dragon Slippers and Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, two unrelated books by Jessica Day George. They were fun, easy reads, intended for a younger audience than I'm used to (middle schoolish, I'd say). I think my favorite part was the acknowledgements page in Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow, which began: "This book was made possible by the letter 'ø'. Also the letter 'æ'."

 

I had myself a good chuckle at that.

 

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Katia11]

I loved Dragon Slippers. My favorite was actually Dragon Flight though.  I really want to read Snow and Moon, Ice and Snow too. Was it any good?  :-) 

[SweeneyxxTodd]

The only Jessica Day George book I've read is Princess of the Midnight Ball. I really liked it, but then I tend to be a bit of a sucker for fairy-tale retellings, especially for the Twelve Dancing Princesses.

[Mara=^.^=]

I loved Dragon Slippers. My favorite was actually Dragon Flight though.  I really want to read Snow and Moon, Ice and Snow too. Was it any good?  :-) 

I didn't even know there was a sequel Guess my library doesn't have it.

 

Snow and Moon, Ice and Snow was quite good - the writing quality overall was better, and it had much more of an old timey fairy tale air to it - my main complaint was *slight spoiler* that the prince in the story felt more like a "reward" for the main character than I was expecting (this sort of 'trophy spouse' problem is much more common in stories starring a male hero, who is rewarded at the end of the quest with the hand of the beautiful princess). It was kinda like, "here, you defeated evil, have a hot prince!" I think the main problem was that we didn't get enough dialogue between the main character and the prince (we were told that they had many conversations, but we didn't really SEE many), so we didn't really see their relationship build into love; his back story was also left a mystery for the most part, so we weren't given much insight into his personality or interests outside his enchantment. That said, he wasn't unpleasant or anything. There are a few other things I wish would've been better explained toward the end, but I can't really go into them without spoiling the whole book, so...

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Mara=^.^=]

Forced myself to finish Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry, a post-apocalyptic tale of the zombie persuasion. I had mixed feelings about the story as a whole; the author did a bang-up job with character development, but some of the main premises and themes just didn't hold water as far as I was concerned. Like, we were supposed to feel sympathy for the zombies and buy into the idea that it was worth risking your life to give them a "respectful" death. Why should we care? This isn't Warm Bodies, where the zombies have thoughts and feelings and rich inner lives. They're just flesh-hungry corpses wandering the earth, looking for their next meal. The audience was supposed to feel nauseated when the bad guys chopped up zoms for fun, but um...HELLO, this is the zombie genre, that is NOT enough to shock us.

 

I also had a hard time buying the idea that in this vastly depopulated world, bounty hunters had set up a hunger-games-esque theme park where they took kidnapped children to fight to the death against hordes of the undead. Like...why? Where is the market for that? Who is paying the big bucks to watch, if it's this big secret that only a couple dozen people know about? What's the point, when there's clearly so much risk involved?

 

On the plus side, the main character's older brother was a katana wielding babe, so there is that.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Mara=^.^=]

So. I just got done Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys, and let me tell you, it was definitely one of the most compelling "true to life" stories I've read in a while (I normally prefer books with more fantastical elements, or survival stories with daily life-and-death stakes). The book, which is set in 1950s New Orleans, stars a girl named Josie Moraine who just happens to be the daughter of a notoriously despicable local prostitute. Josie desperately wants to get out of the Big Easy and make a better life for herself, but her dream of attending an out-of-state college hits a snag when she becomes entangled in a murder investigation.

 

The characters in this story just flew off the page, and the dialogue was fan-friggin-tastic. Impressively, the book managed to pull off a couple of plot elements that normally bug me - for instance, I didn't hate the semi love triangle the story had going for awhile (turns out one of the guys was gay, though, so...problem solved, haha). Josie's predilection for lies and secrets generally made sense, too, given what she was dealing with, and the stuff she concealed never really came back to bite her in the ass. The only thing stopping me from giving it a full 10/10 is that the prose sorely lacked setting descriptions. I mean, the story was set in the French quarter of New Orleans, a place famed for its color and music and sights and smells, and we got zero descriptions of any of it. Oh well.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =

[Mara=^.^=]

Finished Dragonfly by Julia Golding - very enjoyable. It started off a little slow, but got super fun and exciting as it went on, so no complaints. It reminded me a little of Graceling in terms of setting and tone (especially since the antagonists of both books were evil kings), but Dragonfly was a bit more lighthearted. There was a ton of witty banter, much to my delight, and a few of the one-liners had me in stitches. At one point the main male character freakin' spears a guy in the neck, and he lets loose a joke that was set up literally hundreds of pages before...I was SO not expecting it. I was like, OMG Ramil, marry me, you're hilarious. The book ends on a similar (albeit sexier) one-liner, and my inner wisecrack connoisseur was doing a happy dance. I love stories full of adventure and fighting and rapid-fire repartee. You can never have too much snark, as far as I'm concerned.

 

~*Mara*~ = ^.^ =