I haven’t read the other books on the short list for the Booker Prize but if Never Let Me Go wins, I won’t be surprised.
This is an interesting take on the cloning idea that avoids the science fiction feel that too many cloning novels take on, (I’m not a huge Sci-Fi fan). What’s really interesting is that I didn’t know it was about cloning, lol. It took me pages and pages to realize that was how these children were “created”. I understood why they were created but it never hit me that they were clones. Once it hit me I said “duhhhhh”. 😉
There was one section in part three that felt wrong to me. Kathy H is talking about sex and the voice no longer sounds like hers, at least not to me. It’s a brief section, maybe a page at best, but it bugged me.
If you’re interested in another cloning novel that doesn’t stretch into science fiction a whole lot, Cast of Shadows was pretty good. There’s a computer gaming aspect to it that was really interesting as well.
Long, long ago or maybe just a year ago, I’m not really clear on time when it comes to books, some friends were going on and on about some woman named Anne McCaffrey and her dragon books. I informed these folks that either I’d never read them (possible, because I am not a huge “fantasy” buff) or if I had, they hadn’t impressed me enough to remember them. They were shocked and insisted I must read Anne McCaffrey.
So, I headed to my library website (which I love) and searched for Anne McCaffrey. She’s written a lot of books but the thing I hate about my library website is that it is not good about explaining which books belong to which series or which order these books were published. You can’t right click to open the search findings in a new window to check publish date either. I was short of time and wasn’t all that keen on some dumb fantasy books anyway so I reserved all of the books that seemed to be in a series called “Acorna: The Unicorn Girl“.
TW has read McCaffrey’s dragon books, probably not all of them but a lot, but she had not read Acorna so that was a nice bonus. Needless to say, we got hooked on the series and either read or listened to them on audio just as quickly as they came in or as quickly as they were published.
The most recent edition to the series is about Acorna’s daughter Khorri and since I don’t want to give away what happens to Acorna (it’s bad enough I just told you she has a daughter since in the first book she’s just an infant Linyaari!) I’ll just say that you ought to go grab the Acornas and if you have kids who like to listen to audio books, get them on audio and listen to them together. 🙂
By the way, I still haven’t actually read any McCaffrey dragon books! I started one, some collection of stories or something and got bored and took it back to the library. I think I will stick with the Linyaari instead.
Acorna – Anne McCaffrey Read More »
I am not sure how it happened but somehow the Outlaw Bible of American Literature ended up on my library reserve list. I picked it up a couple of weeks ago but didn’t look at it until today. Now I’m wondering if some of this and some pieces from the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry wouldn’t be good choices for Michelle this year.
Have any of you read either of these? Know anyone who has? I’m tempted to say we need to own both of these…
Outlaw Bible – Poetry? Literature? Read More »
The title is better than the book, lol. Maybe I am just non-fictioned out or maybe I’m not a Kathleen Norris fan and someone else might enjoy this more than I did. It started out well enough, a conservative and relatively sheltered young woman going from Hawaii to Bennington – shock of shocks – but moved quickly into true boredome. The woman was just plain boring, if you ask me. Even when she was doing a bit more “living” she was boring. Boring, boring, boring.
The Virgin of Bennington Read More »
I saw this reviewed on some book blog (I’m sorry for not remembering which in order to give proper credit) and promptly reserved it at the library. I was surprised to see that I was first on the reserve list, I assumed it would be more popular than that because of Lowry’s popularity among kids, parents and teachers alike.
TW read it on Saturday and kept laughing and I kept saying “what???!” so she’d read parts to me all the way through it. I picked it up early on Sunday morning and enjoyed it immensely. Though I’d have enjoyed it more if TW hadn’t read me almost all ofthe good parts the day before. 😉
This is the way a children’s author, or any author, should write a biography. I really loved it and would happily recommend it to anyone who is a Lois Lowry fan or even someone like me who likes her books well enough but isn’t as enthralled by them as the rest of the world seems to be.
I actually thought about re-reading some of her books just because I enjoyed “Looking Back: A Book of Memories” so much. (And if anyone knows where I can find the Anastasia books on CD, let me know. E loved the only one we could find and NEEEDS more Anastasia!)
OK could someone explain to me why people actually love A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson? More to the point can you explain why people call this a really funny book? Why they say things like “laughed my head off” and “extremely funny” when describing it?
I know I was sick but I didn’t laugh. OK I laughed once but it was in the second half of the book which most reviewers seemed to find less funny. I kept wondering if I had checked out the wrong version from the library or something.
A Walk in the Woodszzzzz Read More »
I’ve been a Jodi Picoult fan since the days of women.com. Kyra wandered onto a board one day and talked and talked and talked about The Pact. She talked so much about it that I went out and bought it in hardback and read it immediately. I’ve been hooked ever since on Picoult. (And I still own that hardback of The Pact and think of Ky every time I see it on the shelf.)
Vanishing Acts is not my favorite of Picoult’s library of family/relationship fiction. It’s pretty low on the list now that I think about it. I tend to enjoy Picoult telling the story from various points of view but this time none of the characters seem to see a single flaw in Delia (the woman who discovers her father kidnapped her from her mother when she was a child). Nobody is perfect, except Delia.
I saw some reviews that suggested the scenes from jail were too long and too violent and a distraction from the rest of the story. I didn’t feel that way at all. If those were glossed over and all was fine and dandy in prison, I’d have found that pretty unbelievable, ya know?
I wonder, did Picoult really need to add the scene where she “loses” her own child? Or toss in the “disclosure” from Andrew on the witness stand? Just a little too much, I think.
If you are a Picoult fan, you won’t really be sorry to read this. But, if you haven’t read any of her novels then I recommend you try My Sister’s Keeper or The Pact first.
It was a slow reading week for me but would have been slower if it hadn’t been for the car service fiasco. Work has been a little busy, moderators on vacation and such, and blogging has been even busier.
I skipped over a large stack of books that TW has already read in favor of Dearly Devoted Dexter. I was more excited about the release of the second Dexter than I was about Harry Potter and it did not let me down.
We discovered Darkly Dreaming Dexter last year, right before we headed to Miami for a cruise. It was amusing to drive down along the docks of Miami and see all of those metal storage containers that played such a large role in Darkly Dreaming.
Dexter is a bad bad guy. He’s not even really human. But he looks human and most people find him pretty charming. Women seem to fall at his feet and he’s not sure what to do about that. What he’d rather do is let his “dark passenger” take over and just KILL. But, he doesn’t…unless a really really BAD person comes along. Preferably one who is not nice to children, that’s Dexter’s preferred victim.
The Dexter books manage to be funny and gruesome at the same time, but not in the way a Christopher Moore slasher novel would be. It’s hard to explain, you just have to read it for yourself and find out.
After Dexter, I grabbed the next book from the library stack with a quickly approaching return date and that just happened to be Confessions of a Teen Sleuth. What a switch from Dexter to a grown up Nancy Drew! Ha!
I was a huge Nancy Drew fan as a kid. I’d use my allowance every weekend to buy a new Nancy Drew book and finish it within a couple of hours. Then I’d beg my mom or dad to take me to Sam Solomon’s (which was closer than the bookstore and a place my parents seem to like pretty well so it seemed like a good shot…) and get them to buy me another one – because I was bored and I neeeeeeded to read another and another and another. I didn’t read them all, I got sidetracked by adult novels or something – I’m blaming The Female Eunuch because I know I read that around the same time as I was reading the last of my Nancy Drews. Germaine Greer, DAMN YOU!
OK back to this little “parody”, it was ok. Not great. I like the gay girl version better but it had it’s amusing moments. Nancy and Frank Hardy and their love child that grew up thinking he was Ned’s child. Ha! Very amusing, indeed.
I’m about to pick up a book by another of my favorite authors but I’ll tell you about that in a couple of days…
Mass Murderers & Teen Sleuths Read More »
