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Jan
Jan
A summary of the books I’ve read this year (most recent on top). Click on Titles to go to Amazon and order.
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3.5 stars | Kitty Goes to War (Kitty Norville, Book 8 ) Still good. |
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4 stars | Kitty’s House of Horrors (Kitty Norville, Book 7) It is a real surprise to me that even after 7 books, this series still holds up. |
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3.5 stars | Kitty Raises Hell (Kitty Norville, Book 6) |
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3.5 stars | Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand (Kitty Norville, Book 5) |
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3.5 stars | Kitty and the Silver Bullet (Kitty Norville, Book 4) More fun. |
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3.5 stars | Kitty Takes a Holiday (Kitty Norville, Book 3) Book Three. |
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2.5 stars | The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar A plodding, fictionalized account of the last days of Tsar Nickolai and his family. |
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3 stars | Kitty Goes to Washington (Kitty Norville, Book 2) The second book in the Kitty Norville Series. Werewolf jellybeanage. |
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3 stars | Kitty and the Midnight Hour (Kitty Norville, Book 1) More fun fluff to add to your reading list. This is contemporary chick-lit meets fantasy werewolf tales. Told more from the point of view of the wolves than the ever popular vampire stories. |
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2.5 stars | Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life As a Saints fan, I was ready to tear into this book. I really admire the things Payton has done with the Saints’ organization, especially committing to moving into a devastated city. Imagine, how difficult that would be. But, neither Payton, nor his writer, did a very good job with the book as a whole. It felt forced, almost rushed, and somewhat superficial. The parts I did like, though, were about the beginnings of his time in New Orleans, as well as the interesting little tidbits about the Superbowl experience that do not make it into other print venues. |
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2.5 stars | Cauldron I’ve always enjoyed McDevitt’s simple writing style for a light read; but, after reading so many of his adventure sci-fi tales, they are all starting to seem the same. He gets a little preachy on the same topics over and over. Blah. |
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3 stars | On the Edge (The Edge, Book 1) Fluff, fluff, entertaining fluff. |
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3 stars | The Devil’s Eye (Alex Benedict) Would have been much better if the length had been edited. The first half moved along pretty quickly, entertainingly. Then, it started to drag too much. |
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4 stars | Magic Bleeds (Kate Daniels, Book 4) Book four in the series is a very strong entry. |
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3.5 stars | Magic Strikes (Kate Daniels, Book 3) More fun in book three. |
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3.5 stars | Magic Bites (Kate Daniels, Book 1) Went back to read book 1 in this series. Now, book 2 makes more sense. |
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3.5 stars | Magic Burns (Kate Daniels, Book 2) If you like fantasy (the kind with shapeshifters, pseudoscience, magic) with a healthy dose of sarcasm, this light and easy to read adventure is for you. Unfortunately, I did not know it was book 2 of a series. Now I have to go back and read book 1. |
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1.5 stars | Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name: A Novel (P.S.) Have you ever had a friend who did stupid things constantly, and those things just made no sense? This book is about her. |
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3.5 stars | Camouflage I loved The Forever War by Haldeman. I really enjoyed this intriguing story of an alien that has no memory of where it came from. |
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3 stars | The Survivors This odd, little novel was one of those recommended for you suggestions that Amazon randomly comes up with. I don’t know what of my reading habits told Amazon that I wanted to read a 1950’s pulp sci-fi novel, but this time Amazon guessed well. I really enjoyed this light, interesting read. My favorite part was the killer hooved animals that had a single horn (when reared the height of these marauding “unicorns” was said to be 15 feet). These unicorns didn’t just stampede a man; rather, they dismembered him and then giddily mashed the bits to pulp. Thus –> pulp fiction! This novel was originally entitied The Survivors, but is reprinted under the title Space Prison. |
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4 stars | The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest Loved, loved, loved this trilogy of novels. This one was a very satisfying conclusion to the story. |
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3 stars | The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel Another, fun, light-reading experience that’s quite entertaining. Not as good as her other two novels, but still a good book. |
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3.5 stars | Garden Spells We read a Sarah Addison Allen novel earlier for book club; I enjoyed it very much, so I tried another of the author’s works. I was not disappointed. |
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3 stars | Wicked Lovely I was pleasantly surprised by this story about a girl sucked into a not-so-innocent, fairy world against her will. |
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2 stars | The Space Between Us While this novel is well-written, and it is actually quite engaging, I found it to be very depressing and made me feel downbeat while reading it. It may just be a case of the wrong book at the wrong time for me. |
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4 stars | The Art of Racing in the Rain
sob… |
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4 stars | The Art of Raising a Puppy Because I’ve never had a dog… |
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3.5 stars | The Sugar Queen This recent book club pick, was a light, fluffy, yet completely engaging and fun book to read. It was just the perfect escape during a stressful week. I read it in one night. Maybe, I stayed up a little too late doing so, but, hey, it was enjoyable, like candy. |
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3.5 stars | Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) Not as good as The Hunger Games, but still well-written and fast-paced. It succumbs to the middle book syndrome in a trilogy: familiar faces, comfortable plot, not quite finished because its job is to draw you into the finale. |
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5 stars | The Book Thief Re-read this one for book club. |
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4 stars | The Hunger Games This novel is an extremely compelling entry into the young adult literature arena. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The premise is brutal: each district in a future dystopia where America used to be must send two tributes (a boy and a girl in the age range 12-18) who represent their home district in a fight to the death. This annual event is a gruesome combination of Miss America, American Idol and Survivor. |
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3 stars | Marsbound Very light, entertaining read about a girl who travels with her family to live and work on Mars for a few years, acts like a moody teen, and ends up encountering something interesting. This is not hard-core sci/fi by any means, but it’s fun. |
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1 star | Moonfall The event of a comet hitting the moon and the people dealing with the aftermath could have been a very, heart-pounding and exciting story. However, Moonfall, reads like this: First this happened. Then this happened. Then this other thing happened. Then something happened… And so on, for the first half. The second half reads like: and then this happened and someone died. and then this happened and someone died. And then another thing happened and somebody died… ugh. |
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4 stars | A Wrinkle in Time Where was this book when I was a kid? I just read it with my daughter because it was a little more complex than what she normally chooses. She was struggling with a few ideas and needed someone to bounce them off. I would have loved this book when I was 13. It won the Newberry in 1963. How come I never knew about it? |
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5 stars | Dune, 40th Anniversary Edition (Dune Chronicles, Book 1) The first time I read Frank Herbert’s classic space epic, I was 17. At the time, I thought it was one of the best books I had ever read; definitely a top-10 tome. Well, I picked it up last week to read it again, and I was wowed all over again. Thirty years later, I was moved by the quality of the writing and story telling. Herbert is one of my favorite authors, still, to this day, and he never lets me down. |
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2 stars | The Elegance of the Hedgehog Most recent book club pick. Too pretentious and quite heavy-handed with philosophy. |
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4 stars | The Girl Who Played with Fire This is the second book by Stieg Larsson about The Girl. I liked this one even better than the first. My only complaint is that there was not a clean wrap-up in the ending. There is a third book coming out in May, but I believe that will be it, since the author died in 2004. |
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4 stars | The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Vintage) I just discovered this series. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is filled with details about the lives of two gritty characters in Sweden. It’s not like any other book I’ve ever read. A journalist caught up in a scandal and a mystery enlists the aid of a very disturbed researcher to help him finish a job. |
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3 stars | Saving the World (Maximum Ride, Book 3) This third installation in the Maximum Ride series basically wraps up the story. There are other books following on, but I am not interested in continuing a series indefinitely. It started to get repetitive. |
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3 stars | School’s Out – Forever (Maximum Ride, Book 2) Last winter, I read the first book in the Maximum Ride series. Written for teen-aged readers, the books are quick-paced, thrilling and dark. A group of genetically modified kids (with wings) have escaped the evil scientists who have been experimenting on children and are trying to stay alive while solving the mystery surrounding their existance. |
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5 stars | The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game I loved, loved, loved this book, not only for the biography of Michael Oher, but for the fascinating details on how the offensive line has evolved in football over the past 40 years or so. I have not seen the movie, so I wonder how much of the football detail made it in. |
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3 stars | Beautiful Creatures I have been entertaining my fondness for teen fantasy fiction, lately. This book is centered on a magical girl coming into her powers, having to choose between good and evil. It starts out very strong and entertaining, but falls off a little at the end as the authors tried to wrap it up. |
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4 stars | The Help by Kathryn Stockett. A novel about the black women who served wealthy white women in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960s. The author did a good job of portraying the vast range of relationships between these women, running the gamut of hatred to love. I’ve read reviews where people took exception to the dialog written for the maids in this book. Their critique is that it’s condescending to portray the black women talking badly but not the whites. In fact, there was a great disparity in education at that time, and the author captured dialog exactly as I remember it; I even picked up phrases I know white women in Jackson used, that I’ve never heard elsewhere. |
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