August Books
Sep. 2nd, 2013 01:28 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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christianreaderCinder by Marissa Meyer
I remember reading about this on someone's book blog, and thinking, "What's so exciting about the idea of a cyborg Cinderella?" I had no interest in reading it, but for some reason I checked it out one day - I think just because I'd heard so many people saying it was good, and I wanted to prove to myself that I wouldn't like it. And I loved it. It's such a creative, interesting take on not just Cinderella, but the whole idea of a futuristic world where humans and robots and cyborgs live side by side in a shaky harmony, where a global plague and the threat of war with the Lunar colonists threaten them all. Cinder is easy to like and easy to empathize with; Prince Kai is adorable and very crushworthy, and the evil Queen Levana would give me nightmares if she was real.
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
Sequel to Cinder. This is Marissa Meyer's take on Little Red Riding Hood, and it is fantastic. The setting shifts from futuristic, high-tech New Beijing to the French countryside, where life goes on much as it does now, except that everyone's driving hovercrafts and spaceships instead of cars. Scarlet's grandmother has disappeared, and a mysterious stranger in town, Wolf, might or might not know where to find her. Meanwhile Cinder is on the run from the global police after Queen Levana demands she be handed over for punishment, and Prince Kai tries desperately to find a way out of marrying Levana.
The Boy on the Bridge by Natalie Standiford
This one has a very stupid cover (the boy looks like an alien, and nothing about their clothes suggests "winter in 1982 in the Soviet Union"), but the setting - St. Petersburg/Leningrad - caught my attention. I had such high hopes for this one, but it fell short. The main character is extremely annoying, constantly whining about the cold, the food, how much she misses her loserish sort-of boyfriend back home, even while telling us that she's been dreaming of visiting Russia for most of her life. Her insta-romance with Alexei is obviously a pathetic attempt on his side to get out of Russia, but she refuses to see it or to listen to everyone else she knows telling her so. I've since found out that this is semi-autobiographical, but it doesn't make me like the book any more.
Her Nutcracker Prince by Rebecca Winters
The Boy on the Bridge reminded me of this one, which I read in high school - it's a Harlequin romance about a young woman who'd spent time in Russia and fallen in love with the KGB officer assigned to her. It's much more my kind of story - true love and happily ever after and a hero you can actually believe in. :-P
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
I know this is some big classic and all, but - I'm sorry if you love it - I thought this was one of the stupidest things I've ever read. It's meandering and silly and contradicts itself. I can't believe I wasted a whole evening reading this dumb book!
Adorkable by Sarra Manning
This one started so well, but the deeper it delved into the main character's life the less I liked her - or the book. Jeane was so self-obsessed and arrogant that I really wanted her to learn that she needed to tone it down a notch or seventeen and get along with people. Instead she makes a big mess of her life, goes from one extreme to another, and then gets her ego built back up with everyone telling her how amazing and inspirational she is. Gag, gag, gag. I really hated the attitude toward sex this book had, too.
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
Sometimes you just need to re-read an old favorite. Twilight is my comfort food. Stop judging me. (Yes, you, in the back, I can see you judging me back there.)
And lest you be thinking, "Oh, yeah, no wonder she didn't like that great classic Fahrenheit 451," let me point out to you that I read it only because Stephenie Meyer mentioned it as one of her favorite books in an interview.
The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker
I didn't finish this one, because I wasn't really in the mood for fantasy at the time. But it is really good, and I'll get back to it eventually. It's kind of like A Discovery of Witches meets Lord of the Rings, so if you liked that one you'd probably love this. A woman stumbles through a portal into a different world and gets swept up in an exciting new life, only to find out one terrifying night that her new life was all a sham and this fantasy world is less Renaissance Festival and more Real Middle Ages.
Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich
I've read the first Stephanie Plum book three times, but never got around to reading the rest of the series until now. These books are pure goofy fluff, and if you cut out the descriptions of people's outfits and what Stephanie eats, they'd be about 50 pages long. But they're funny, and so much fun to read.
As You Do: Adventures with Evel, Oliver, and the Vice President of Botswana by Richard Hammond
If you've never watched Top Gear (the UK version, not the much less interesting US one), you are missing out. I mostly read this for the section about Oliver, the cute little car Richard Hammond drove in the Top Gear Botswana special, and to be honest I wasn't very interested in the parts about dogsled racing or Even Knievel. To be really honest, Richard Hammond is not nearly as funny in print as on telly. But there were some funny moments and some cute pictures of him and Oliver.
The Chocolate Kiss by Laura Florand
I loved the first book in Laura Florand's Paris Chocolate series, and everyone kept saying they liked this one even better. I didn't particularly care for it, though. The heroine was too pointlessly prickly, and the hero came across as an MCP too often for my taste. These books have a lot more sex in them than I normally prefer to read, and the sex in this one was extremely graphic.
The Chocolate Touch by Laura Florand
This one was better, though the sex was still a little too much. I liked Dom and Jaime better than Philippe and Magalie, and their story was sweeter. Though I felt like Dom was too perfect, especially considering how messed up he was supposed to be. He did and said everything just right, and everything fell into place too easily. There wasn't any real conflict.
The Problem With Being Slightly Heroic by Uma Krishnaswami
Sequel to The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, one of my favorite books. I was so excited when it showed up at the library, since I had no idea a sequel was even planned. All of the elements I liked about the first one were there, but this one just doesn't work as well. The conflicts are all silly, trivial things that only a little kid would be worried about, the narrator sometimes tries to insert lessons that have nothing to do with what's going on, and the moral of the story I thought the author was going for - that movie stars shouldn't be confused with their onscreen characters - got sort of shuffled off to the side in the end.
Around India in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh
A really fun travelogue about a young British-Asian woman who decides to travel to as much of India as it's possible to see by train. She takes with her a rather cynical photographer who complains and criticizes and makes life generally miserable, but along the way they discover a side of India that most westerners never see.
Infinityglass by Myra McEntire
Such a disappointment. I had hoped that my "meh" feelings about Timepiece were just Second Book Syndrome, but this one was even worse. I think changing narrators was Myra McEntire's biggest mistake with this series. None of the other characters could measure up to Emerson in the first book, and the way she reintroduced Emerson and Michael and Kaleb and Lily felt so cheesy and awkward. Eventually I want to read Hourglass again, but I'll probably just pretend the sequels never happened.
Four to Score by Janet Evanovich
Another light, fluffy, slightly stupid but immensely enjoyable read to end the month.
I remember reading about this on someone's book blog, and thinking, "What's so exciting about the idea of a cyborg Cinderella?" I had no interest in reading it, but for some reason I checked it out one day - I think just because I'd heard so many people saying it was good, and I wanted to prove to myself that I wouldn't like it. And I loved it. It's such a creative, interesting take on not just Cinderella, but the whole idea of a futuristic world where humans and robots and cyborgs live side by side in a shaky harmony, where a global plague and the threat of war with the Lunar colonists threaten them all. Cinder is easy to like and easy to empathize with; Prince Kai is adorable and very crushworthy, and the evil Queen Levana would give me nightmares if she was real.
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
Sequel to Cinder. This is Marissa Meyer's take on Little Red Riding Hood, and it is fantastic. The setting shifts from futuristic, high-tech New Beijing to the French countryside, where life goes on much as it does now, except that everyone's driving hovercrafts and spaceships instead of cars. Scarlet's grandmother has disappeared, and a mysterious stranger in town, Wolf, might or might not know where to find her. Meanwhile Cinder is on the run from the global police after Queen Levana demands she be handed over for punishment, and Prince Kai tries desperately to find a way out of marrying Levana.
The Boy on the Bridge by Natalie Standiford
This one has a very stupid cover (the boy looks like an alien, and nothing about their clothes suggests "winter in 1982 in the Soviet Union"), but the setting - St. Petersburg/Leningrad - caught my attention. I had such high hopes for this one, but it fell short. The main character is extremely annoying, constantly whining about the cold, the food, how much she misses her loserish sort-of boyfriend back home, even while telling us that she's been dreaming of visiting Russia for most of her life. Her insta-romance with Alexei is obviously a pathetic attempt on his side to get out of Russia, but she refuses to see it or to listen to everyone else she knows telling her so. I've since found out that this is semi-autobiographical, but it doesn't make me like the book any more.
Her Nutcracker Prince by Rebecca Winters
The Boy on the Bridge reminded me of this one, which I read in high school - it's a Harlequin romance about a young woman who'd spent time in Russia and fallen in love with the KGB officer assigned to her. It's much more my kind of story - true love and happily ever after and a hero you can actually believe in. :-P
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
I know this is some big classic and all, but - I'm sorry if you love it - I thought this was one of the stupidest things I've ever read. It's meandering and silly and contradicts itself. I can't believe I wasted a whole evening reading this dumb book!
Adorkable by Sarra Manning
This one started so well, but the deeper it delved into the main character's life the less I liked her - or the book. Jeane was so self-obsessed and arrogant that I really wanted her to learn that she needed to tone it down a notch or seventeen and get along with people. Instead she makes a big mess of her life, goes from one extreme to another, and then gets her ego built back up with everyone telling her how amazing and inspirational she is. Gag, gag, gag. I really hated the attitude toward sex this book had, too.
Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
Sometimes you just need to re-read an old favorite. Twilight is my comfort food. Stop judging me. (Yes, you, in the back, I can see you judging me back there.)
And lest you be thinking, "Oh, yeah, no wonder she didn't like that great classic Fahrenheit 451," let me point out to you that I read it only because Stephenie Meyer mentioned it as one of her favorite books in an interview.
The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker
I didn't finish this one, because I wasn't really in the mood for fantasy at the time. But it is really good, and I'll get back to it eventually. It's kind of like A Discovery of Witches meets Lord of the Rings, so if you liked that one you'd probably love this. A woman stumbles through a portal into a different world and gets swept up in an exciting new life, only to find out one terrifying night that her new life was all a sham and this fantasy world is less Renaissance Festival and more Real Middle Ages.
Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich
I've read the first Stephanie Plum book three times, but never got around to reading the rest of the series until now. These books are pure goofy fluff, and if you cut out the descriptions of people's outfits and what Stephanie eats, they'd be about 50 pages long. But they're funny, and so much fun to read.
As You Do: Adventures with Evel, Oliver, and the Vice President of Botswana by Richard Hammond
If you've never watched Top Gear (the UK version, not the much less interesting US one), you are missing out. I mostly read this for the section about Oliver, the cute little car Richard Hammond drove in the Top Gear Botswana special, and to be honest I wasn't very interested in the parts about dogsled racing or Even Knievel. To be really honest, Richard Hammond is not nearly as funny in print as on telly. But there were some funny moments and some cute pictures of him and Oliver.
The Chocolate Kiss by Laura Florand
I loved the first book in Laura Florand's Paris Chocolate series, and everyone kept saying they liked this one even better. I didn't particularly care for it, though. The heroine was too pointlessly prickly, and the hero came across as an MCP too often for my taste. These books have a lot more sex in them than I normally prefer to read, and the sex in this one was extremely graphic.
The Chocolate Touch by Laura Florand
This one was better, though the sex was still a little too much. I liked Dom and Jaime better than Philippe and Magalie, and their story was sweeter. Though I felt like Dom was too perfect, especially considering how messed up he was supposed to be. He did and said everything just right, and everything fell into place too easily. There wasn't any real conflict.
The Problem With Being Slightly Heroic by Uma Krishnaswami
Sequel to The Grand Plan to Fix Everything, one of my favorite books. I was so excited when it showed up at the library, since I had no idea a sequel was even planned. All of the elements I liked about the first one were there, but this one just doesn't work as well. The conflicts are all silly, trivial things that only a little kid would be worried about, the narrator sometimes tries to insert lessons that have nothing to do with what's going on, and the moral of the story I thought the author was going for - that movie stars shouldn't be confused with their onscreen characters - got sort of shuffled off to the side in the end.
Around India in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh
A really fun travelogue about a young British-Asian woman who decides to travel to as much of India as it's possible to see by train. She takes with her a rather cynical photographer who complains and criticizes and makes life generally miserable, but along the way they discover a side of India that most westerners never see.
Infinityglass by Myra McEntire
Such a disappointment. I had hoped that my "meh" feelings about Timepiece were just Second Book Syndrome, but this one was even worse. I think changing narrators was Myra McEntire's biggest mistake with this series. None of the other characters could measure up to Emerson in the first book, and the way she reintroduced Emerson and Michael and Kaleb and Lily felt so cheesy and awkward. Eventually I want to read Hourglass again, but I'll probably just pretend the sequels never happened.
Four to Score by Janet Evanovich
Another light, fluffy, slightly stupid but immensely enjoyable read to end the month.
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