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Showing posts from January, 2015

Ten Books I'd Love to Read With My Book Club

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My picks for the Tuesday Top Ten, as invented by  The Broke and Bookish . This week's theme is: Ten Books I'd Love to Read With My Book Club/If I Had A Book Club (or you could pick a specific kind of book club -- like if you had a YA book club or an adult book club or a science fiction book club etc.) I didn't pick a "themed book club"; instead I chose books base on the significance I thought they had, and my desire to hear other peoples' views on those books.        1. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho       2. The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling       3. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist       4. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak       5. American Gods by Neil Gaimen       6. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin       7. The Call of the Wild by Jack London       8. The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht These next two books, I actually can't vouch for, but I've been dying to read them.       9. Watership Down by Richard Adams       10. Dune

#timetoread

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National Readathon Day! I didn't realize that was a thing, but my GoodReads account informs me it is...A four hour block of reading, and it's happening today.I think it ought to be called International Readathon Day and get the whole world involved, but I guess GR wasn't feeling that ambitious. I've pledged to read: Native Dancer by John Eisenberg. What are you reading today?

Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

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Hollow City (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #2) by Ransom Riggs “I had come to the island to solve my grandfather’s mystery, and in doing so I had discovered my own.” Hollow City picks up right where the first novel ended. Jacob and his peculiar friends are trying to take rowboats across the sea to the mainland, having just survived an attack by wights. Their time loop has collapsed and Jacob is stuck in 1940 until a ymbryne can send him back home. Miss Peregrine can’t do it; she’s sick, stuck in bird form, and if they can’t find another ymbryne soon, she will be lost to them forever. So Jacob must help the peculiars evade capture while trying to find the last free ymbryne. This book has inspired me to invent a new adjective: creepadore -- when a thing is creepy and adorable at the same time. As in, “This book is so creepadore!” LOL. As with the first book, this story pits the expected innocence of YA child-heroes against the horror of unseen evil forces and comb

Quotable Thursday

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I just finished Hollow City and it made me invent a new word: creepadore: (adj)--when a thing is creepy and adorable at the same time. Here's a snippet: "Do all the animals here talk?" I asked. "Just Deirdre and I," Addison said, "and a good thing too. The chickens won't shut up as it is, and they can't say a word!" Right on cue, a flock of chickens bobbled toward us from a burned and blackened coop... ..."What happened to their coop?" Emma asked. "Every time we repair it, they burn it down again," he said. I'm hoping to have the review finished today and posted tomorrow! Quotable Thursday  originally brought to you by  Bookshelf Fantasies .

The Lost World by Michael Crichton

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"Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish." Ian Malcolm, presumed dead at the end of Jurassic Park , is alive and giving a lecture on Chaos Theory and Extinction when overzealous paleontologist Richard Levine shows up. Levine is tired of studying bones; he’s heard rumors about strange animals in Costa Rica and about Ian Malcolm’s extended stay there. He wants to put together an expedition to locate a “Lost World” where animals survived extinction and are still living in seclusion. Malcolm says no such place exists, but he’ll be happy to help if it’s ever found. As Levine begins to track down the last known rumored site of his Lost World he realizes he’s being monitored and all his careful planning means nothing if he isn’t the first one there. Lewis Dodgson is back and he wants what he paid for: dinosaur eggs. Levine rushes unprepared into the Lost World, forcing Malcolm to organize a rescue party… This was

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

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"...you cannot make an animal and not expect it to act alive. To be unpredictable. To escape. But they don't see that." Before I say anything about the book, I need to say Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park: The Lost World, are probably two of my all time favorite movies so I can’t really help but compare the books to the movies. I’ve probably watched those a thousand times. The movie were perfection and set the bar high; I never read the book because I was afraid it would suck and then how would I view the movie? Alternatively, what if the book was better and then the movie suddenly sucked? The third movie was a total disappointment. It would be a long time before I figured out the third movie had no book to support it, and I would then attribute the bad plot to the fact that the story had been nothing more than box office fan fiction. Now with advertisements for a fourth Jurassic Park , and a second fan fiction, I found myself once again intrigued and captivated b

Symbiont (Parasitology 2) by Mira Grant

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“Humans have been trying to clean up the world ever since they figured out soap and water. I think that’s what their Devil really taught them… …That was the true fall from grace. You can’t be part of nature if you’re trying to be clean all the time.” SymboGen, pharmaceutical pioneers, designed a solution for the world health crisis. They've genetically altered a tapeworm to combat allergies, diseases, and even act as birth control. Main character, Sally Mitchell becomes the poster child for SymboGen, after almost dying in a car accident and being saved by her patented Intestinal Bodyguard. But once the Intestinal Bodyguards begin waking up and attacking their hosts’ bodies, Sally begins to search for answers and discovers that the last six years of her life were a lie… Symbiont ’s one-liner synopsis, “The enemy is inside us,” doesn’t quite cover it. The enemy is inside us, but it’s also next to us, down the street from us, chasing us…The enemy is everywhere. The enemy

Evan Burl and the Falling by Justin Blaney

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Evan Burl and the Falling (Vol. 1-4) by Justin Blaney “Not all who dream are asleep.” Evan Burl lives at Daemanhur Castle under the supervision of his evil Uncle Mazol. Evan finds a magical book belonging to Mazol and steals it; he believes Mazol has been using this book to communicate with the man he believes to be his father…His father sends a letter through the book insisting that Evan will grow to be the most powerful and evil Sapient (wizard) that the world has ever seen; that Evan should be destroyed before he can suffer a Falling and change the world for the worse. Determined to prove the letter wrong, Evan dedicates himself to two things: 1. refusing to use Sapience and 2. protecting the Roslings. The Roslings are 12 little girls who are sent to Daemanhur through the sky inside of caskets -- who aren’t allowed to eat, who can’t get sick, and who can’t die -- and are forced into slavery. When the seemingly impervious Roslings start to fall ill and die, Evan is forc