Current Reads

Don't get your hopes up, but...I'm crossing my fingers for another two Mr. Benedict books. This one doesn't cover his whole life (or even his whole childhood) by quite a bit.

I was really hoping you'd say something along those lines. Trying not to get to excited over here, but I'll cross my fingers for more books.

Number Two and Rhonda aren't even in there (he hasn't met them yet), so there is room for expansion.

I was just about to ask you if either lady showed up in the first installment. There definitely has to be another book forthcoming because it's imperative for the world to know how all three people met!

pamchenko wrote:I liked Insurgent better than Divergent, too, but I did feel like people I didn't recognize were popping up all the time. But that might be a problem with my attention span more than the book itself.

Haha, I had the same issue. I couldn't remember what happened with Will at first, and then I kept confusing Cara and the other girl/woman who had a C name that I can't remember.
I am also super pleased that this book did not devolve into a love triangle. (I'm looking at you, Lauren Oliver.)

mokey75 wrote:

pamchenko wrote:I liked Insurgent better than Divergent, too, but I did feel like people I didn't recognize were popping up all the time. But that might be a problem with my attention span more than the book itself.

Haha, I had the same issue. I couldn't remember what happened with Will at first, and then I kept confusing Cara and the other girl/woman who had a C name that I can't remember.
I am also super pleased that this book did not devolve into a love triangle. (I'm looking at you, Lauren Oliver.)

I also liked Insurgent better than Divergent. I dunno, I felt like more happened to actually make the plot move along? I'm assuming the next book will be focused outside the city, so I'm glad the war between the factions won't be drug out too much more.

Mokey, WORD on the love triangle stuff.

I think a lot of the reason I liked Insurgent more was because it wasn't pounded into my brain 50 different times that Tris was seen as ugly. That really wore on me after a while in Divergent.

I loved Divergent, so now I'm even more excited for Insurgent since y'all seem to think it's better! As always, I'm just waiting for a copy in the library queue.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. It's a very good book but don't be misled by the frequent descriptions of 'a comic tour de force' or 'darkly comic'. It isn't. It's far more of a straight ahead modern Western - 'cowboy noir' would be the best description.

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett. Only the second book of his I've ever read that I was 'meh' on (the first being The Last Continent). The plot just seemed unbalanced and didn't flow together as smoothly as it normally does. There's a lot made about football for the first part, then it goes off and focuses on something else for a good chunk, and then nearer the end it remembers the bit about the football and we get back to that.

Just started The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern which I'm loving so far. Gorgeous, fun, fantastical!

A while back, I mentioned that I had just started reading the Harry Potter series. I devoured Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets and started [/b]Prisoner of Azkaban[b] almost immediately after CoS was done. That's how freaking ADDICTIVE this series is.

It's very interesting to me, because I have never been a big series reader, OR a big fantasy reader. In fact, I don't think I have ever finished a book series, and I never read more than the first few pages of a fantasy novel before HP. I had them pegged all wrong when I assumed they were kids' stuff, because these books are dark, and I've been told they get even darker. The characters are very real, and the story is well-written and smoothly paced...I'm glad I finally gave it a chance, because I'm loving it.

I know there are a lot of HP fans here, so this isn't the most interesting post, but I just wanted to share. I resisted for 10 years, but now I am a believer. :)

ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!

What kept me reading HP was the mystery aspect of it. The first four books are mysteries with a fantasy setting. If they had all been like the last book--what I call collect the objects--I'd have never bothered to read on. That type of fantasy does not interest me at anymore. I love JKR's humor and I find Harry to be a very appealing hero. My family is a big part of my life and I wanted to see him get his happy ending.

As for my current reading, I finished Lola and the Boy Next Door last night and now I'm trying to decide what to read next. The most likely candidate is Pete Hautman's What Boys Really Want which is about a teenage boy who begins writing a book on "What Boys Want". Stress is making me crave fluffy, fun reading.

Ok, favourite in the Dark is Rising series so far is now The Grey King. Mostly because I had a lot of fun and frustration attempting to pronounce all the Welsh names and places. And I loved the story.

Did you go all breathy with your ll's? "Machynlleth...Machynlleth..." *drool*
(You can hear actual Welsh on the net these days. link more)

I tried! Those links are so cool. I've never seen a language that didn't look like it sounded so much as Welsh.

I loved 'The Grey King' - it was my favourite of those books, mainly because I had a huge massive crush on Bran! That book was about the only thing that stopped me making an utter idiot of myself when I moved to Wales for University. I still messed up a bit...but lord, it helped. Of course, it was the same area, so I had a ready-made guide to some place names. Visited Machynlleth, Aberdyfi, Cader Idris, Tal-y-Llyn, Craig y Aderyn...Wales is just so beautiful.

I may or may not have chosen my University just because of where it was...

particle_person wrote:Did you go all breathy with your ll's? "Machynlleth...Machynlleth..." *drool*
(You can hear actual Welsh on the net these days. link more)

I need to visit Wales so I can try out Bran's Welsh lessons on the placenames. Yeah, The Grey King was my favorite between the ages of 12 and 14 and probably will be again.

I'm reading Kristin Cashore's Fire, which is good but not quite as captivating as Graceling. I think Fire is just too morose for me, even though she has reason to be.

What Boys Really Want wasn't doing it for me so now I'm reading The Orchid House which is one of those novels with parallel storylines-one set in the present day and the other during WWII in Britian and Thailand.

I like to read books three years late, so I just finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and aside from the title being overly twee I liked it a lot. Perfect rainy-day-with-tea reading.

inversed wrote:I'm reading Kristin Cashore's Fire, which is good but not quite as captivating as Graceling. I think Fire is just too morose for me, even though she has reason to be.

Man, I freaking loved Fire. I liked Graceling a lot but Fire was my favourite of the three. I think, anyway - I need to reread all three now that Bitterblue is out!

I read Bitterblue last week, followed it with Why We Broke Up, and am now working on The Scorpio Races. I'm attempting to burn through all my library books because I borrowed Game of Thrones from my friend and I suspect it will take me a while. I am decidedly ambivalent about reading it but I made a deal with my sister that I'd read it if she'd watch Battlestar Galactica.

Gaaaah I am so excited for Bitterblue. I'm like #57 on a waiting list at the library. I actually liked Fire a teensy bit more than Graceling too...I found Fire's relationship with her father so horribly fascinating.

Menshevixen wrote:Gaaaah I am so excited for Bitterblue. I'm like #57 on a waiting list at the library.

I feel you. I'm 120 on Insurgent. Fortunately the library got 42 copies of it so that's really only like being #3 on the list, right? I'm hoping it's a quick read that people are blowing through and returning quickly

I want to read both Bitterblue and Insurgent, but my university library doesn't have them. Only one of the branches has Insurgent being acquired, so I can't even put a hold on it yet. FRUSTRATION!

Last week I finished John Green's Looking for Alaska, which I liked, and Paper Towns, which I didn't. I still have Will Grayson, Will Grayson to go, but I'm taking a Green break for a bit and reading a freebie on my Kindle. It's called You Had Me at Halo by Amanda Ashby, a cute little BritChickLit story about a frivolous young woman who dies and is sent back to earth to share the body of a computer geek so she can sort out her "issues" and move up to the higher levels in heaven. It's light and frothy and totally inconsequential, but really fun so far. The only problem I'm finding with it -- which I'm finding with a LOT of books these days -- is the unacceptable number of spelling and grammatical errors peppered throughout the writing. And it's not just in e-books like this one, either; I see it even in physical books. Does no one use proofreaders anymore? I wish I didn't notice such things, but I do and it just takes me right out of the story each time I see a "peaked my interest" or "then" used instead of "than," to name two off the top of my head. I don't claim to be an expert on spelling and grammar, but it's very irritating to see so many mistakes in nearly everything I read lately. I expect it in fanfic, but not in published fare. Sorry for the rant!

It's not just you. I bought the mass-market HBO-branded Game of Thrones series box set last summer and all four of the books were RIDDLED with spelling errors. A few of them, I had to put the book down and walk away.

I was reading an article in The Atlantic the other day -- online, but like, on their website and everything. It was a MESS. It didn't look as if anyone had proofread it at all before it was posted. Random capitalized things, sentences that didn't make sense, juvenile phrasing. I was kind of flabbergasted.

Jude, it's nice to find one other person who didn't like Paper Towns. It's the only John Green book that I dislike, but it's his most popular work as far I can gauge!