Last Book You Read and Your Review of It

[Del Murder]

<i>The Girl Who Played with Fire</i>

Read this on the plane during my recent trip to DC. It started off slow. Very slow. Slower than the first one even. Once the actual plot was established (about 40% in) it was a good read with an interesting mystery. The 'twists' weren't as profound as the first book but they were suspenseful. It seems like a lot of loose ends were left after this one (more than in <i>The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo</i>), so it looks like the third book ties more into this one. I'll probably have to read it at some point.

[Miriel]

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

I loved this book. It was equal parts bewildering, tragic, and awkwardly hilarious. I'm usually not fond of autobiographical books, but what a crazy ass story Jeannette Walls had to tell. I almost couldn't believe it until I read comments online from people who grew up with her and her family and who verified the truth of her story. I thought it was interesting that Walls specifically mentioned A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as being one of her favorite books growing up and how she related so much to Francie Nolan. For me, The Glass Castle was touching and provocative in a way that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn couldn't really match.

[Madame Adequate]

The Third World War by General Sir John Hackett.

Pretty interesting read. Written in the late 70s so some of the predictions were pretty amusing, but the overarching thing made reasonable sense and was convincing. That said, the Soviets simply did not think of nuclear weapons in the way Hackett portrays them to, so it's doubtful that things would have gone down as they did on that front. Good book, nonetheless.

[Freya]

Game of Thrones


I finally got around to finishing it. I had like 200 pages to go for the past few months. Just been busy and haven't had the time. Well I made time. This book is just hella awesome. I'm so excited that they are making it into a series this coming spring.

What was great about it was that it had it's twists and was very captivating. It has just enough fantasy in it to give it the "fantasy" title. It's more about politics, vicious, vicious politics. Even in those last 200 pages there were enough gasp moments to carry this book on to be one of my all time favorites. Definitely a recommended read... or just wait for the show :P

[Roto13]

Lost at Sea (By Bryan Lee O'Malley, who wrote Scott Pilgrim)

It was ok but too emo.

[Miriel]

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle () - There are passages in this book that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Beauty and poignancy that just shoots straight to your heart. I was sobbing at various parts of this book. I was luckily warned in advance about the truly awful ending of the book, so I was bracing myself for something heinous. It ended up being bad, but not the worst ending in modern American literature like some reviewers on Amazon are calling it. It was a pretty bizarre and bewildering conclusion to what was otherwise a great book.

The Girl Who Played With Fire () - The 2nd book in the Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. I really enjoyed this one which was suprising since I wasn't a big fan of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. But this book was gripping and such a page turner. There were elements of the book that were ridiculous and unbelievable, but that just made the book more amusing I think. Now I need to get The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox () - Young Adult! Really enjoyed the book, up until the ending. Nice writing style. It got slow and repetitive at times, but it is YA so I wasn't expecting too much. The ending was just silly though.

[Shlup]

The Hunger Games trilogy - Good stuff. An easy read, lots of unexpected events, a good amount of graphic violence, and a strong female lead. No real complaints.

[Depression Moon]

When did we get star smilies?

[Miriel]

The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein ()

I picked this up on a whim because it had a dog on the cover and it was sitting in the "Best Sellers" section. I thought, "hmm... a cute doggy, best selling book, it must be good!"

I was silently weeping by the end of it. Silently, instead of my normal loud wailing sobs because Del Murder was sitting next to me and I didn't want to make too much of a scene. It's a super fast read, nothing ground breaking or anything like that. But still, it touches your heart and it made me both sad and uplifted. I sat and hugged my two dogs afterwards when thinking about this book.

Vampire Academy Books 1-3 - Richelle Mead ()

I'm sick and spewing up snot and flem, I deserved a nice easy, slightly smutty read. The Vampire Academy series happens to be the perfect books for me right now. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the main female character who is a total badass, and not the "omg, help meeee!" kind of girl in other vampire books. She kicks ass, isn't afraid to embrace her sexuality, isn't super noble, but isn't a total smurfup either. She actually reminds me a bit of Buffy. The end of book 3 was kinda OMFG! So I'm launching right into Book 4.

[Peegee]

When did we get star smilies?

We didn't.

I just read # Batman: The Widening Gyre (with Walt Flanagan, DC Comics, 2009–2010) - it's not complete yet but it is very entertaining in a way I did not expect.

Perhaps out of character, Batman encounters another masked hero and considers retiring (or not working as much) in order to pass the role of masked crusader to Nightwing/Robin/the new guy. Without giving too many spoilers the twist at the last book made me go WAAAAAAH and now I'm waiting for 2011 to show me the end.

[Shiny]

The Picture of Dorian Gray-Oscar Wilde A glorious read, I loved it, literature at its most articulate. Long live Lord Wotton!

Recently read that too. Very homoerotic.

These Children That Come At You With Knives - The title is sort of misleading. The book is actually several short stories combined into one and they are a bit story tale like -- only instead of writing about the cliche princess-dragon-knight-scenario, it has unconventional characters and even less conventional endings. Definitely an interesting read with a very sardonic tone.

Hopefully The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo is as good as people are saying. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I usually like to see the movie before I read the book, as backwards as that sounds.

[Miriel]

Anna Karenina - Tolstoy

More than anything, I am proud of having finished this monster of a book, and pretty quickly too! Took me about... 2 weeks? I can understand the appeal of the book, especially when trying to imagine what it would have been like to read that book when it was first published. And a lot of it still stands the test of time. Some things never change I guess. And I was amazed at how well Tolstoy wrote from the female perspective. I felt sometimes that he did a better job writing from the female perspective than from the male. There were parts that were fascinating and engrossing and other parts that were unbelievably boring.

More than once, I would just totally knock out and fall asleep during one of those chapters full of philosophical ramblings or paragraph after paragraph of 19th century Russian farming techniques. My god.

It was a decent read, but I'm baffled by people who claim it's one of the greatest novels ever written. And what the smurf, Oprah? This is totally NOT the greatest love story ever told. In fact, most of the characters were highly unlikable. It's hard to read a book when you really don't care if almost every single character (with maybe the exception of Kitty) just went ahead and died.

[Miriel]

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls - Not anywhere near as good as her other book, The Glass Castle. It was decent in that the main character was an awe-inspiring woman. But I think you could tell that Walls was trying really hard not to turn the book totally fictitious by adding in too many details. It was pretty sparse. She told her Grandma's story with as much restraint as possible so it just wasn't engaging.

Little Bee by Chris Cleave - Enjoyed it! But it's one of those books that you expect a lot out of and then it ends up being just, "pretty good" but not something you would lend out to friends insisting they read it. There was something distant and remote about all the characters so that while you might laugh and cry for them, it doesn't really go straight to your heart like it should.