Kiwiria's October reads

[kiwiria.livejournal.com]

Street Magic - Tamora Pierce*, 3/5, Audiobook ~10hrs
No where near as good as the other books in the "Circle Opens" series. I constantly found my attention wandering, and had to go back to see what actually happened. Part of this was because I just didn't care for Evvy much, and part of it was the distinct lack of Briar doing any magic for himself.

The Penny - Joyce Meyer & Deborah Bedford, 1.5/5, 235 pages
If this had been a memoir I think I would really have liked it, because the style and story would have fitted a memoir well. Being a fictional story, however, it utilized a number of my literary pet peeves - lots of foreshadowing, stereotypical characters and very, very heavy-handed preaching. The book suffered greatly from having the story told rather than shown, and the testimony would have been so much stronger if the events of the story had been allowed to speak for themselves, rather than be constantly spelled out to the reader.

I know this is the lowest rating I've given in a LONG time, but I pretty much only finished it because I got stubborn.

Eternal Hunger - Laura Wright, 2/5, 284 pages
Paranormal erotica. Entertaining in the same way as a stereotypical Harlequin novel. It wasn't bad, but certainly not good either. The plot was actually half-decent, but very obviously just an excuse for the two main characters to 'get it on' as often as possible, and their relationship was so over-the-top unrealistic that it became plain ridiculous.

Had the author spent more page-time on the plot, and less page-time writing smut, it could actually have been an excellent book, as the genre does have its merrits. For an example of how it should be done, go read "Bitten" by Kelley Armstrong instead.

... and don't get me started on the front cover. Gah! I'm glad I had an ebook version of this and didn't have to look at it all the time, or it would certainly have scared me away.

Rebel - R.J. Anderson 4.5/5, 295 pages
This sequel to "Knife" is even better than the first book in the series! In "Knife" a lot of page-time was giving to setting up the universe and explaining the fairy's history. That wasn't necessary here, which made for a smoother story. Besides, I just found Linden's story more interesting than Knife's. Timothy was a very interesting addition to the universe, as was the power of the Empress and her fate.

"Rebel" is a quick and pleasant read - I finished it in 3 hours flat. I'll be keeping an eye out for "Arrow" now.

Sorcery and Cecelia - Patricia Wrede & Caroline Stevermer, 4/5, 319 pages
An epistolary novel of the best kind - it was actually written using letters! Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer spent 6 months sending letters back and forth "in character", and slowly but surely this novel grew out of the letters. What a fascinating way to write a book!

The plot itself is a pretty run-off-the-mill story, but very charming as we follow the lives of Cecelia and Kate - both of whom turn out to be experts at getting into scrapes! It was a good read to round off my read-a-thon challenge with, as it wasn't terribly taxing, but good entertainment that could hold my attention.

Tunnelmanden - Dennis Jürgensen, 4/5, 314 pages
(The Tunnel Man)
Surprisingly good, although I'm not too sure why it's surprising - I tend to like Dennis Jürgensen's books. They're seldom very deep or 'high literature', but they're almost always good entertainment.

I liked the moral dilemma of the story - if you could dictate who should die and who should live, would it be easier for you to opt-in or opt-out? And would you be able to choose at all, even when knowing that if you don't somebody else will make the decision for you - and it might be worse?

Alanna - Tamora Pierce*, 5/5, 216 pages
In the Hand of the Goddess - Tamora Pierce*, 5/5, 209 pages
Page - Tamora Pierce*, 4.5/5, 231 pages
Squire - Tamora Pierce*, 4.5/5, 339 pages
For the Read-A-Thon I decided to go crazy with rereading Tamora Pierce. That turned out to be a really good decision as they're quick and easy reads, while being intersting enough to keep me captivated even when tired. These four are probably my favourites out of all her books.

PS, I Love You - Cecelia Ahern*, 4.5/5, 502 pages
Henni and I watched the movie which made me really want to pick up the book again! It's definitely not your typical chick-lit fluff, as it actually has some real substance. It's beautiful and devastating. I didn't cry as much on this read-through which is probably a good thing!

Holly's Inbox - Holly Denham, 3.5/5, 710 pages
I presume this is fiction? Although it did confuse me that the author and the main character's names were the same, but as far as I could gather, the emails (originally found at www.hollysinbox.com) are all fictional.

Quite entertaining, and a very quick read (it may be 700+ pages, but there's so little writing on each, that it reads like a 2-300 page book). It was a bit too Bridget Jones'ish in places for my tastes (I'm glad Holly didn't make quite as many bad decisions though - her judgement was definitely much better thankfully), and I had a hard time relating to many of the characters, which obviously brought the rating down some (also, do people IRL really get as bitchy as Jennie? I've certainly never met any - but that may just be luck!). On the other hand, I loved the writing style, found myself laughing out loud in several places, and had a hard time putting it down, when it was time to head off to bed last night.

Perfect Chemistry - Simone Elkeles, 4.5/5, 360 pages
It never fails to puzzle me to see which books become hyped and which don't. I could see "Perfect Chemistry" being every bit as famous as "Twilight", yet so few people have ever heard of it! But perhaps I should just give it time. After all, it took "Twilight" a couple of years too ;)

aurillia recommended this book to me, and I'm glad she did, otherwise I probably wouldn't have heard about it yet. It's a fascinating alternative West Side Story (only much better! Never did care for WSS - nor R&J for that matter), with an ending that turned out to be not nearly as sugary-sweet and perfect as I had expected... not immediately so anyway. It had me in tears more than once and was more poignant than I had expected a book of that genre to be.

The epilogue was more than a little corny though.

It had definite shades of "Ten Things I Hate About You", but as I loved that movie, that's definitely not a bad thing ;)

The Knife of Never Letting Go - Patrick Ness, 3.5/5, 485 pages
This was very, very different from what I had expected, and unfortunately not as good as I had expected, for a variety of reasons.

First of all, the plot wasn't what I thought it would be. That's hardly the fault of the book, but still affected my reading experience.

Secondly, I didn't care much for the writing style. It got better as I went along and got more used to it, but still really annoyed me in places, and made me feel disconnected to the characters.

Thirdly, the end really bugged me. I won't say more in order to avoid spoilers, but will just leave it at that it employed one of my biggest pet peeves.

Had it not been for the end, I would probably have given this 4 stars, because it did keep me interested, and I was constantly intrigued by what would happen next. One thing it does have going for it, is that it is definitely a book that'll keep you guessing!

The Will of the Empress - Tamora Pierce*, 4/5, 539 pages
After the repetitiveness of "The Circle Opens" it was great to read something different, and see that Tamora Pierce still has what it takes :-) For some reason it took me a bit to get into it, but once I did, I didn't want to put it down!

Under the Dome - Stephen King, 4.5/5, 880 pages
I stumbled across this book at random, and thought it sounded an awful lot like "Gone" by Michael Grant, but since I loved that one, I was willing to give this a try as well. "Under the Dome" definitely has similarities both to "Gone" and to "Simpsons - The Movie", but after reading the book, I think it's more a matter of several people getting the same idea, than anybody being inspired by the others.

"Under the Dome" is the most captivating book I've read in a very, very long time. I started reading it Sunday afternoon, got to bed too late Sunday evening, read "just one more chapter" before leaving for work Monday morning, got to bed too late Monday evening, left for work late Tuesday and finally finished Tuesday evening. It's a long book, but every page counts. I got more and more intrigued and troubled as the pages went by, and more and more captivated by the story. Especially the beginning is fascinating as the havoc the dome causes is slowly revealed from several different perspectives, and the reader has NO idea what's going on.

As usual, Stephen King likes playing around with a large persons gallery and he mixes up a lot of different storylines and viewpoints to create this patchwork of a book. I think it works well though, and didn't have problems keeping the characters apart.

I did think events happened a tad too quickly though, and am not sure I find it feasible that a society would go to hell in a handbasket in just a couple of days, just because of greedy men and the power of mob-mentality. I think Stephen King could have made it more realistic by letting it cover twice or even three times as long a period of time as it did.

It's a 880-page chunkster. For the first 680 pages I was ready to call it the best book I'd read this year. Unfortunately it is pretty near impossible to end such a suspenseful novel in a satisfactory manner, and it did fall short on a couple of issues (being deliberately vague in order to avoid spoilers). It didn't let me down completely though, and I still adore it for being so utterly unputdownable, so it well deserves the honour of being the best Stephen King book I've ever read.

The Love Dare - Stephen & Alex Kendrick 2.5/5, 222 pages
A couple of years ago, I decided to do the 30 day challenge, and found it extremely satisfying. Somebody recommended this book to me as an alternative. I thought it sounded interesting, and got it out of the library about a month-and-a-half ago, deciding to read one chapter a day, and doing the challenges as they came.

It started out being very similar to the 30 day challenge, and I enjoyed following it (think my husband did too, even if he had no clue what was going on ;) ), but I quickly discovered that this wasn't nearly as well thought-through as the 30-day version. The authors made a lot of assumptions that made it less generally relevant, and many of the challenges couldn't be done just any day, but required a certain event taking place that day to even make sense (e.g. the challenge on how to make up after a fight - I'm not about to initiate a fight just in order to complete the challenge!). Also, they used not just one but three chapters on encouraging the reader to become a Christian. A worthy cause, to be sure, but not really appropriate as three challenges in a love dare (just to explain, the love dare is NOT about love in general - in which case these challenges would actually have been very appropriate - but solely about the love between a husband and a wife). Since it's a Christian book, I think it's okay to assume the reader is a Christian and just add an appendix with "If not..."

I finished it partly because I got stubborn and partly because some of the challenges were actually really good, but in general I'd recommend everybody do the 30 day version (even though that's aimed at wives and this book is aimed at both parts of the couple - just ignore any personal pronouns and you'll be fine ;) ) and give this one a miss.

I still want to see the movie "Fireproof" though, as it's apparently either inspired by this book, or this book was inspired by the movie. Sounds like it could be a very sweet movie.

The Night of the Mi'raj - Zoë Ferraris 3/5, 356 pages
(AKA "Finding Nouf")
I'm not usually a big fan mystery/crime/detective novels. They have to be really good - or at least "just right" for me to care much about them. As crime stories go, I'd have to say that this was just "okay". Though I understand the reasoning, I think it was a mistake to tell the story from Nayir's view point. Since Nouf was dead by the beginning of the book, the reader couldn't get to care about her, and therefore didn't need the closure of discovering her murder, and as Nayir didn't know enough about her to care for her either, the motivation to solve the murder was secondhand at best, and made it really difficult to relate or even care whether or not we found the murderer. Sure, I was curious, but that was about it.

But as always it was fascinating to read a book that takes place in a culture so foreign to what I'm used to, so Zoê Ferraris still managed to keep me interested by the atmosphere, even though I was somewhat indifferent to the plot.

16 Baby-Sitters' Club books(*) 2500 pages
Obviously I go through phases of reading these ;)

A total of 34 books, 13 rereads, only 1 non-fiction, strangely enough and 8996 pages read. The Read-a-thon and the BSC books helped a LOT on getting both of these numbers that high!


Book of the month: Under the Dome.
Biggest disappointment: The Penny. I had been looking so much forward to reading it, and it just wasn't worth it.

Comments

[sonneta.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly, the book The Love Dare is referred to in the movie Fireproof, BUT they didn't actually write the book until after the movie came out.

[kiwiria.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd heard something like that too, but wasn't quite sure.