You’re Not You was depressssssinggggggg but compelling. Oddly compelling. Like a trainwreck – not the writing, the story itself.
A college student who doesn’t know what she wants, or who she is, and she’s having an affair with a married guy.
A married woman with ALS whose husband feels the need to “replace” her before she’s dead.
Depressing.
About 50 pages to the end of Odalisque: Book One of the Percheron Saga, I realized I was going to hate the book. I realized this because it is what I’ve always thought as a part of a “real” series. It’s a book that doesn’t wrap up the adventure, it doesn’t even come close to wrapping up the adventure. We haven’t even hit the climax – or maybe there are two climaxes and book three contains the denouement and wraps it all up tidy? I don’t know. I just know when I finished it last night, I was annoyed. Now I have to track down Book 2 and Book 3. Immediately.
Damn it. Book Two hasn’t even been released yet! How did this happen? I blame TW for choosing this from the library shelf in the first place.
Because it seems as if all I’m blogging about are books and wii, I’ll toss in a kid story along with the “book talk”. How’s that? Soon I’ll blog about something else. I swear.
You know Bookburger right? I noticed a post there about the making of Twilight into a movie. There was much discussion about whether Zac Efron would make a good “vampire Edward”. I thought it was an “ok” choice, not terrible but not great and I said so on the Bookburger blog. Well errr I didn’t notice it but that post was a contest and because of my comment I won an audio version of Eclipse. How cool is that? It’s really cool because on someone’s blog – sassymonkey’s or Kit Cat’s – I said I was going to try and get the audio version because we might enjoy it more than reading the print version (the reviews are hit or miss for this one and we loved the other two.)
So anyway, the day I realized I won this audio book I picked up Liz from school. We were talking about her homework and from there we somehow started talking about her crafting. She mentioned that she really wanted to get busy knitting because she wants to knit a Zac Efron doll for A’s birthday – and to knit some clothes for him. (Heh. This is pretty amusing. How do you knit a Zac Efron doll? I guess we will ask Lorena and crew this weekend…)
I thought it was a weird coincidence that I had just found out I won a book based on a comment about Efron and here she was talking about him. So I told her about winning the contest and we discussed whether Efron would make a good vampire Edward. She doesn’t know the character but she thinks Efron would be a weird vampire. But, her biggest concern is something else…
She wants to know why characters who are named Edward are never bad. It just makes sense to her that all characters named Edward SHOULD be bad – the alliteration of Evil Edward or Edward the Evillllllll is just so excellent, writers should work on that. Quit making Edwards and Eddies and Eds the good guys. They’re evil – they have to be. Liz has deemed it so.
Vampires, Zac Efron and Liz Read More »
It’s time to vote for the Quills. Here are the nominees. I read a lot and I’m surprised by how many of these I have NOT read. Very troubling. Who am I going to vote for? Who are you going to vote for? And does it really matter?
I wanted to love The Wayward Muse but I didn’t. Part fiction, part non-fiction – it just didn’t grab me. I wanted to like Jane Burden but I didn’t. I wanted to like Morris and Rossetti and I didn’t. I didn’t care anything about any of them and that’s disappointing because I really do like all three – the real people, not the people as “characters” in this book.
Disappointing.
It’s been ages since I read anything by Deaver. How long ago was The Bone Collector written? Years and years. I wasn’t sure The Sleeping Doll would be worth reading or anywhere near as good as The Bone Collector… it wasn’t as good but it was worth reading.
TW started it last night and said “boy it starts with a bang, doesn’t it?” – It does and there are bangs all of the way through it. I won’t go far as to say I couldn’t put it down but I will say that I enjoyed picking it up, every single time.
I’m not a geek, not really. Certainly not the type of geek found in She’s Such a Geek. My lack of geekness doesn’t prevent me from enjoying geeks or books about geeks or stories written by geeks. Thank goodness for that or else I’d have totally missed out on the pleasure derived from reading the stories of people like Analee, Violet Blue, Wendy and all of the other geek girls who shared their stories in this fabulous little book.
Being a BlogHer, I obviously enjoyed Wendy’s story about BlogHerCon vs DefCon. Loved it and am extra sorry that I missed the very first BlogHer Con and am extra grateful not to have missed BlogHerCon 6 and 7! If you’re a BlogHer and you’ve seen that little book ad on the left nav for She’s Such a Geek and wondered if it was worth reading – it totally is. If you have daughters, you should buy it and put it on their bookshelves – even if they aren’t geek girls. It’s not just a “geek positive” books, it’s a “woman positive” book. Read it and share it with everyone. You won’t be sorry.
Yet another favorite to add to this year’s list of great reads. Who would have guessed The Bestiary would be that good? Not me. I flipped through Nicholas Christopher’s other novels and don’t think I’ve ever read any. Oh wait, did I read Veronica? I know it was on my list to read at some point but from the description, I’m guessing I never got around to it… anyway, who knew the guy could write a great story with pretty terrific characters?
Toward the end, I was worried I was going to begin to hate it. I began to dislike the story just a tiny bit when Xeno, Bruno and Lena re-connected. I’m still not sure I like the Lena portion, though I suppose I knew it was coming all along. I loved the ending completely. It couldn’t have been better and I was able to overlook “Lena” and still check this one off as a favorite.
Ack, it seems like I just finished last year’s Booker short list, oh – that’s because I did just finish it. Darn. This year I swear I’m going to do better – even though I haven’t read a single one of these books and none of them have been on my list of books to read. How about you?
Booker Short List courtesy of Reading Matters:
Darkmans by Nicola Barker
The Gathering by Anne Enright
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Animal’s People by Indra Sinha
Have I ever mentioned I am not an Ian McEwan fan? It’s an interesting list… am I going to love any of these?
I was avoiding Fictional History of the United States With Huge Chunks Missing because I errrr thought it was non-fiction. I didn’t really pay attention to the title, just knew something about US history was on the library shelf, getting closer and closer to the top of the pile, and I just wasn’t feeling like reading it.
I mentioned my hesitation to TW and she informed me that it was fiction and really good and funny. She was right. Very amusing. I’m sorry I waited so long to read it.
Fictional History of the United States…. Read More »