Current Reads

Instant Monkeys wrote: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. It is delightfully atmospheric and creepy. I've had one of those evenings where I hear things like, a dog barking, or the air conditioner clicking off, and I think it has deep and unearthly meaning. I only paused to quickly make dinner. I actually stopped finally a few minutes ago because I didn't want to creep myself out TOO much before bed. Glad I got out three since I'm almost done with this one. The pictures are wonderful -- I vaguely remember reading an article about this book that said the author started with the pictures and imagined a story to go with them. I loooooove old pictures so that suits me fine.

Ooo, this sounds right up my alley! I'm going to look for it!

I'm almost finished a re-read of The Dark Tower series by Stephen King and I am sobbing all over again. WHY DO YOU DO THIS, KING.

John Scalzi's Red Shirts.

Thanks for that recommendation, Wildog! I saw it written up somewhere recently, and was wondering if I should read it.

I finished The Night Circus this past weekend, and I loved it.

gannetguts wrote:

Instant Monkeys wrote: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

Ooo, this sounds right up my alley! I'm going to look for it!

I recommend reading a hard copy if you can -- I don't know what the e-book editions are like, but there are a lot of creepy photos and things peppered throughout the book (that go with the text), and I suspect they wouldn't look great on a Kindle, etc. They're not in color but they're fairly detailed.

I finished it and I'm on to The Windup Girl.

sagitare wrote:

epudom wrote:A year after everyone else, I'm finally reading The Night Circus, and wow. It seems as though I have to take a pause after each description of the circus to imagine it all in my head and then get sad that it doesn't exist in the real world.

I'm trying to read it slowly so that I can savour it all, but am so desperate to find out what is going to happen next that I'll probably finish it tonight.

That was pretty much my reaction to it as well! It may be a basic love story at its heart but it's wrapped up in such wonderful imagery that you're just carried along with it.

I just finished The Night Circus and I have to say I didn't love it. The settings and descriptions of the circus were beautiful, but not of the characters engaged me and there wasn't much to the plot. I found it rather insubstantial.

Gillian wrote:

Algae wrote:I'm still reading Jasper Fforde. I finished the second Thursday Next book and I'm starting to get more comfortable in this odd little world he's created.

My mom wanted my dad to check out Fforde's Shades of Grey from the library for her, and he was all, "I will NOT!" Oh, Dad. The "50" is missing, so you're safe.

Shades of Grey is my favourite book of his so far. I just picked up a copy of "The Woman Who Died a Lot" at my local bookstore - I'm thrilled to find out a bit more about

Spoiler:

(It's really not that spoiler-y, just unresolved plot threads from the last book.)

A few days ago I finished a book called Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig. It's about a woman named Miriam who sees how people die when she touches them. She's given up trying to save them, since that only seems to bring about their deaths, but when she hitches a ride with a trucker and sees that he will be murdered a month later while calling her name, she has to figure out what's going on. I really liked it. It was very witty and I liked the way it was structured, with little interludes that reveal bits of Miriam's past and how her power works.

Right now I'm almost done with Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. It's supposed to be a lesbian classic, and I can see why even if I'm not sure I actually like it. The writing is excellent. The characters and setting are all very vivid and striking. Unfortunately, the main character Nancy is such an incredibly self-centered moron, it's hard to sympathize with her a lot of the time.

Raksha wrote:Right now I'm almost done with Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters. It's supposed to be a lesbian classic, and I can see why even if I'm not sure I actually like it. The writing is excellent. The characters and setting are all very vivid and striking. Unfortunately, the main character Nancy is such an incredibly self-centered moron, it's hard to sympathize with her a lot of the time.

I think Waters other books are much better. I feel like Tipping the Velvet is the "Big Gay Victorian Novel" that she had to write in order to get to more interesting novels. If you haven't read it I can not recommend The Night Watch enough. It travels backwards in time from just after World War II to the early days of the war and is just wonderful.

I also recommend Fingersmith, which is the first book of Waters' that I read, and is still my favorite.

Wildog27 wrote:John Scalzi's Red Shirts.

If you like/love Star Trek and especially if you like/love Galaxy Quest, you will like/love this book. I plowed through it very quickly to find out what happens and I actually am looking forward to reading it again and digesting it a little better. It turns surprisingly emotionally effective, especially in the second half. It's very well done.

I'm halfway through it. It's awesome so far.

inversed wrote:I also recommend Fingersmith, which is the first book of Waters' that I read, and is still my favorite.

Does it pick up? I got a good way into the book and it's just...nothing is happening. I wandered away and haven't gone back. Should I?

After a break because of camp related organisation and actual camp, I finally finished reading Meg Cabot's Underworld. (Because there was no way in hell I was bringing a book with me to a wet and mucky campsite!) I didn't enjoy it as much as I have her other books and I think it's because of the portrayal of the John and Pierce relationship. I get that he's the lord of the underworld and she's a seventeen year old girl, but they never communicate properly, he's quite morose and she always seems to be wrong-footed. Plus, he withholds things constantly. All of which are personal peeves of mine anyway so this are more my issues than anything else. I thought the story was a bit slight too. But I'm going with the theory that it's a kind of place holder until we get to the big story in the third book.

rivki8699 wrote:

inversed wrote:I also recommend Fingersmith, which is the first book of Waters' that I read, and is still my favorite.

Does it pick up? I got a good way into the book and it's just...nothing is happening. I wandered away and haven't gone back. Should I?

I would, though I was interested from the beginning so maybe it's just not your thing. There's a nice twist that I enjoyed.

inversed wrote:

rivki8699 wrote:

inversed wrote:I also recommend Fingersmith, which is the first book of Waters' that I read, and is still my favorite.

Does it pick up? I got a good way into the book and it's just...nothing is happening. I wandered away and haven't gone back. Should I?

I would, though I was interested from the beginning so maybe it's just not your thing. There's a nice twist that I enjoyed.

I liked it, too. If you like historical novels of suspense then I definitely recommend it. I think I tried reading another of her books that I couldn't get into, though, so YMMV. (At this point in my life, if I can't get into a book after the first couple of chapters, I see no point in trying to slog my way through it.)

Today I started reading Tana French's brand new book, Broken Harbor, and it promises to be just as good as her other books.

I love Tana French, so I can't wait to get to that one.

Right now I'm reading The Tragedy of Arthur and it's great thus far. It's ostensibly the introduction to a newly discovered Shakespeare play (the play is included), but the introduction is the life story of Arthur Phillips, whose father is a master con man, so...is the play real? The Tragedy of Arthur is written by Arthur Phillips, so it's got that meta thing going on too. I'm liking it.

I just finished The Windup Girl by Paolo Baciagalulpi. I sort of liked it and sort of didn't. It takes place in future Thailand, in a post-environmental-disaster time when many countries have been destroyed by rising seas and when "calorie companies" have a stranglehold on the world's food supply. So, not terribly unbelievable really (anyone see the news about the "Monsanto rider" today?). In that way it was totally fascinating and also scary. This dude does NOT feel the need to explain ANYTHING, just dropping you in and letting you pick up all the terms, half of which are in Thai. I sort of like that -- it was very immersive, and the city freaking comes to life, man. There's also a lot of politics and warring ministries and that, combined with all the terms I had to remember, meant it took a fair amount of concentration to figure out what the hell was going on some of the time. Lot of names to remember. Yet it could also be repetitive at times, with characters remembering stuff or musing over stuff in similar ways over and over.

And then you have the windup girl, who is a genetically engineered "New Person" invented by the Japanese but hated and feared by the Thais (we never leave Thailand so I don't know if they're hated and feared everywhere), and she was interesting in some ways but in other ways, I mean, she was a beautiful, perfect pleasure-bot who had to serve her masters even as she felt sad about it and of course

Spoiler:

There was interesting stuff about her, but a lot about her felt pretty cliche, and since she was the title and since I love robots that was a little disappointing.

Good book overall, certainly full of interesting (and scary) stuff, but also a bit of a slog in some spots. I might check some of his other stuff out though.

Instant Monkeys, I have that book out from the library and have renewed it twice now, but haven't gotten past page 10. I think I'm maybe just not in the right mood for it now. I did read Ship Breaker earlier this month, which was pretty good, but I didn't love that either. I got the sequel/companion book too, but I'm not going to get to it before I need to return it.

I think I'm in more of a Messy place right now and I'm going to give up on this dystopic stuff for a bit.

I definitely needed a break from dystopia after that book. Messy is a good choice. :)

I just finished Island of Lost Girls by Jennifer McMahon. I was underwhelmed, honestly. It was a good read, and a fast read (I read it in one day), and it was suspenseful and actually pretty much a page-turner. I mean, I got home from work and couldn't wait to keep reading it. But it was a little bit juvenile in the writing, which was my biggest complaint. And it's not that it was predictable exactly, but it wasn't one of those books where you're like "OMG I NEVER saw that coming."

It is a little bit similar to Gillian Flynn's books, but, to be blunt, not as good. Still excited for Gone Girl. Come on, people ahead of me on the list at the library for that one, read fast.

My next book, OK, I AM NOT ASHAMED. When I was a teenager my sister and I were obsessed with this book called Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade. I have no idea why. It was about an overweight girl named Elsie who moved to a new town and the kids made fun of her, blah blah, but then she makes friends and y'know, it was a YA (or MR!) novel and it was silly but we loved it for some reason. (We both had issues with Judy Blume's Blubber, and I think we saw this as some kind of corrective. I am actually curious to reread Blubber at some point, because it just seemed assholey to me when I was younger, and I wonder if I was missing something.) So, today I was at the Newton Public Library to see some photos and there was also a book sale and I bought some silly books for 50 cents each. One was a wonderful and SUPER INFORMATIVE book called The Internet. It was published in 2002. I CAN'T IMAGINE why they culled it and sold it for 50 cents. But ANOTHER book that also cost 50 cents was called How Do You Lose Those Ninth Grade Blues? and YES, IT IS A SEQUEL to Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade. I knew there was a sixth-grade one but I didn't know it went beyond that. So my MISSION is to read this book before Saturday, when I'm going to my sister's for my niece's 3rd birthday party, and I will gift this book to her. Probably along with The Internet, which we will hide somewhere in her house. Heh. Anyway, I don't think it will be hard to read this book in four days. And I am LOOKING FORWARD TO IT.

I tell you, being between classes I'm like a starving person. All I want to do is read a million books. I finished the three I got from the library so I'm going to go to the library again tomorrow, I think.

Instant Monkeys wrote:I bought some silly books for 50 cents each. One was a wonderful and SUPER INFORMATIVE book called The Internet. It was published in 2002. I CAN'T IMAGINE why they culled it and sold it for 50 cents.

When they write the book for this decade, it will be called The Internets, and it will have pictures of Damn You, Autocorrect! every other page. And long sections on fanfic, Fandom Wank, celebrity tweets with misspellings, and the end papers will have a complex pattern of tubes.

Instant Monkey, I love Barthe DeClements! Did you know there is a third book about Elsie, called Seventeen and In Between? It's out of print, obviously, but easy/inexpensive to find on the internet. I think I bought it on either Amazon or B&N (used but in decent condition) a couple of years ago for a few bucks.

I read and loved ALL THREE OF THOSE BOOKS. I still think about them all the time, actually, especially Seventeen and In Between. Oh no, now that you brought them up I might have to buy them for a penny each on Amazon.

I've got to look those books up (despite the fact that I've already got a pile a mile high to read right now). Thanks, Instant Monkeys!

I just finished Unwind by Neal Shusterman. Good grief. Has anyone read this? It's a dystopian novel about a future after a civil war between the pro-choice and pro-life factions. The compromise they come up with to end the war is to outlaw abortion for the unborn, but allow for parents to "retroactively abort" children ages 13-18 in a process called "unwinding." Unwinding is surgically taking apart the child and using all the parts in other people who need transplants. That way it can be said that the child isn't really being killed, but just being redistributed into other individuals. So parents can sign an order to unwind a troublesome teenager, or if a state home is getting overcrowded, the overflow can be unwound. There are also "tithes," where a child is raised in a religious home for the purpose of being unwound. So of course we have one of each of these types, and the story is how they try to escape being unwound, etc.

There is one scene...well, I won't go into it. But to say it's disturbing is a huge understatement. The book is definitely a page-turner, and a sequel is coming out next month as I understand. I'm still deciding whether to get it or not.

After that, I've decided to reread the entire Harry Potter series since I can borrow it for free on my Kindle. No dystopian novels for me...at least not right now. Enough already!

stargirl wrote:Instant Monkey, I love Barthe DeClements! Did you know there is a third book about Elsie, called Seventeen and In Between? It's out of print, obviously, but easy/inexpensive to find on the internet. I think I bought it on either Amazon or B&N (used but in decent condition) a couple of years ago for a few bucks.

Awesome!! I will look that one up. I gotta say, so far this book is not as good as I remember the other one having been when I was 12, heh. I wasn't going to read it on the bus because I was too embarrassed, but I got over myself.

I guess maybe the sixth-grade one was not about Elsie & Co.? I vaguely remember that being the case. Goody, I'm so excited there's a third. Looks like it can be gotten on Amazon for around $5, yay!

I think today I'm going to get out Sybil Exposed (I was SO fascinated with the Sybil stuff when I was younger, and have read the book and watched the Sally Field movie a bunch of times), and The City and the City by China Mieville.

Instant Monkeys wrote:

I think today I'm going to get out Sybil Exposed (I was SO fascinated with the Sybil stuff when I was younger, and have read the book and watched the Sally Field movie a bunch of times), and The City and the City by China Mieville.

I'm reading the Sybil book now and its fascinating. I also just started "Broken Harbour" by Tana French; hoping its as good as her other books have been.

I guess maybe the sixth-grade one was not about Elsie & Co.? I vaguely remember that being the case. Goody, I'm so excited there's a third. Looks like it can be gotten on Amazon for around $5, yay!

The sixth grade one takes place in the same world, mentions Elsie and Jenny, etc., but focuses on a different group of kids. The main character is Helen, I think, and she had trouble reading.

Ohhh, I remember that, Helen and her learning disability. That's right.

I tried to get the first Tana French one from my library, but that one is ALSO on hold. Do her books have to be read in order/are they a series? In the Woods is the first one, right?