Get Lost in Literature

First I want to start by saying this is the most relatable character I've read in years. Mor loves books.  "I care about so few people really. Sometimes it feels as if its only books that make life worth living, like on Halloween when I wanted to be alive because I hadn't finished Babel 17. I'm sure that isn't normal. I care more about people in books more than the people I see every day."  This is how I feel all the time. It's hard for me to relate to non-readers, even harder to relate to people who have no imagination. When I open a book, creep inside its pages, characters can come to life. So when I read this story, this girl who sees fairies and reads SF, who sees her librarian more than her friends...Well, I can't help but wonder if Jo Walton secretly wrote a fantastical spin off of my life. This is a story told by Morwenna (Mori) in diary formatting ( a format I normally dislike, but the book is just that good ) and she manages to dro...

My picks for the Tuesday Top Ten, as invented by  The Broke and Bookish . The rules for the Top Ten Tuesday REWIND, say to pick from previous topic that I want to do again or missed the first time around. So I read through the list and chose Top Ten Favorite Book Quotes from Tuesday, May 8, 2012...I didn't even have a blog in 2012, so it's safe to say I missed it!      1.    "If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals." --JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire      2.     "We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words." --Anna Sewell, Black Beauty      3.     "I have always felt that violence was the last refuge of the incompetent, and empty threats the last sanctuary of the terminally inept." --Neil Gaimen, Neverwhere    ...

In this futuristic world, there are Uglies and there are Pretties. Main character, Tally is an Ugly, who can't wait for her sixteenth birthday, that magical birthday when all newly 16-year-olds get to undergo plastic surgery to become a Pretty. Once Pretty, she gets to go to the New Prettytown, where a Pretty's only job is to have fun. Everything looks like its going to go according to Tally's plan, until her friend Shay, decides to run away rather than become pretty...And Tally is given the task of tracking her down and bring her back into civilization. I didn't love this book from start to finish, but some parts were definitely more lovable than others. At first the story was hard to get into: Even though the story is told by Tally, who is almost sixteen, her voice seemed to belong to someone much younger than a teenager approaching adulthood. In the beginning it was hard to relate to someone so childlike, but when Tally started meeting with the Agents of Special...

"Are you punishing Regan?" Yes . "You wish to harm her?" Yes . "To kill her?" Yes. "If she died, wouldn't you die too?" No. I would like to start by saying two things: 1. I have never seen the movie and have no idea how the novel compares with the film. 2. Do not read this book before bed, unless you're the kind of person that enjoys sleeping with the lights on. The story opens with Father Merrin, who is working on an archaeological dig in Iraq and is overcome with a feeling of foreboding as he discovers a statue of the wind demon, Pazuzu. Miles away, in Georgetown, Washington DC, Chris MacNeil is finishing up the filming of her next movie with director Burke Dennings before going home to her daughter, Regan. A normal life in the day of an actress except for the Jesuit priest watching the performance; Father Damien Karras. And it quickly becomes clear, that everything is not normal . Chris's Regan is developing ...

This week I read  The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty, and I absolutely loved it. William Peter Blatty's got a great voice. "Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all. It was difficult to judge." And so starts one of the worlds most notorious horror stories. Quotable Thursday originally brought to you by Bookshelf Fantasies . My review for The Exorcist  will be up on the blog tomorrow so drop in again!

If your edition of this book is anything like mine, it'll be decorated with rave reviews from critics who throw about words like "thrilling" and "sexy" and "addictive". These critics were clearly on the take. This book's only saving grace, is its characters. I love flawed characters and this book had plenty of them. Mikeal Blomkvist, adulterer, bad father, yet somehow still tortured by morals. Lisbeth Salander, no morals, frequently victimized, hacker extraordinaire. Not to mention the rapists, murderers, anti-semites, and traitors. Unfortunately, most of the characters aren't fully developed until halfway through the story and by then you're bored bonkers, waiting for the good stuff to happen. The book starts -- skimming over important things like character introductions -- by presenting you with a character dialogue about another character dialogue. Basically this story starts by having a character you don't really know, tell...

My picks for the Tuesday Top Ten, as invented by  The Broke and Bookish . Today's theme is Top Ten Reasons I Love Being A Reader and, like many of my fellow bibliophiles out there, this is a list that could go on forever, but I'll restrict it to 10. I love being a reader because... 1. ..my life is always full of exciting characters. 2. ...I'm always learning new things. 3. ...I get to travel to new, and sometimes strange, places. 4. ...I get to leave stark reality behind me, at least for a few hours. 5. ...It's an excuse to blog and chat with you fine people! 6. ...I never have to worry about getting bored. When I read... 7.  ...Magic is real. 8.  ...Monsters do exist. 9.  ...So do heroes. 10. ...I feel.

Parasite (Parasitology #1) by Mira Grant Parasite is the future. As humanity tries to scrub and sterilize every surface they and their children might encounter, they reduce their bodies’ tolerance for allergens. SymboGen, pharmaceutical pioneers, design a solution for the world health crisis. They've genetically altered a tapeworm to combat allergies, diseases, and even act as birth control. All you've got to do is swallow one little pill, every couple of years. What could go wrong? 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. One problem: When she wakes up from her coma she has know idea who she is, who her family is, or what they're saying to her because she's also forgotten English. Six years later, Sally Mitchell is still an amnesiac living under the thumb of Big-Pharma and it isn't easy. They treat her like a lab rat and expect her to beh...

I am officially here by reinstating Quotable Thursday to my blog and declaring my personal commitment to keeping frustration from sucking the fun out of my life. And I finally decided I couldn't wait any longer for a copy and brought the new Mira Grant novel, Parasite , home. "Some people will always be ungrateful. It's an unfortunate truth of the human race that we see everything as a zero-sum game. For them, if I have happiness, there's less happiness for you; if I have health, there's less health for you. When you look at life that way, it's inevitable that you'll start looking for the catch in everything." It seems I couldn't have picked a better book to start with...It was so suspenseful, I couldn't put it down. I stayed up half the night trying to find out what happened next. Which brings more good news, because the review should be up on Friday. Quotable Thursday originally brought to you by  Bookshelf Fantasies .

In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad #1) by Tana French As a child something happened to Rob Ryan and his friends, something horrifying that he cannot recall. Now  he is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad partnered with Detective Cassie Maddox who has her own checkered past. The pair find themselves investigating a murder that is eerily similar to the mystery of Rob's childhood...  I'm left with mixed feelings on this book. It was really slow to start and I felt I had to force myself into it... But once it had me hooked (by chapter five) I couldn't stop turning pages. I enjoyed that the author fleshed out her characters back stories so much and gave them depth because so many authors fail to tell us why characters are the way they are. But the downside is, is that there is such thing as having too many red-herrings. As the end neared, I kept expecting any minute now, any sentence now, one of those ghosts of the past will pop up to complicate matters...but the...

So for the past couple weeks, I’ve been AWAL. My Top Ten Tuesday and Wednesday Review post are filled out in several week advance so they don’t get forgotten, but you may have noticed I haven’t been doing Quotable Thursday as devoutly or posting reviews for my more current reads. If you haven’t noticed I was gone, please keep it to yourself. And in the interest of honesty, I admit, despite starting several books and I haven’t finished any of them this year. The sad reality is I’ve been sailing the HMS Depression and all together feeling sorry for myself. People say the job market is more competitive than ever. I don’t like the word competitive in relation to the job market. It implies competition. There is no competition. There are companies, both private and retail, running ads, online and in newspaper, for new employees. People fill out applications and resumes and cover letters and send them in, hoping for a nibble. These companies don’t require themselves to give a courtesy ca...

My picks for the Tuesday Top Ten, as invented by  The Broke and Bookish . Today's theme is: Books That Will Make You Swoon...And I admit I hesitated with this list, because I hear the word "swoon" and I know it is something often related to romance... And I don't read a lot of romance. I briefly considered not doing TTT today or just a partial list, but then I looked up the definition of "swoon" for inspiration and courage. Swoon 1. to faint from extreme emotion. 2. to be overwhelmed by ecstatic joy.  By those definitions this list opened up a bit, didn't it? Some of my favorite books are favorites because of the emotions they evoked. 1.  Dracula by Bram Stoker. This book inspired so many spin-offs: movies, plays, shows, and books. And for those more familiar with the "romantic" versions: The original was never really a romance novel. I swooned with fear from the intense atmosphere, the fate of the Demeter , and the cold obsessive rage...

The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs (The Highly Effective Detective #2) Private Investigator Teddy Ruzak, is about to be shut down for practicing without a license when a dead body is found just outside his office...He's also planning on adopting a dog. This book was really bizarre; it wasn't a bad story, it was just weird. First the writing style is just so young, I was under the impression that the book had been intended for children... until a couple of grope-scenes and dropped F-bombs reversed that line of thinking. Second, we're dealing with an overweight, amateur sleuth, with an ADD train of thought and a middle-school sense of humor...Which brings me right back to this book is for children even if there a child-inappropriate moments. I suppose this could also be for adults with childlike attention spans, but that person is not me. I marked this book with three stars because I gave me a laugh and kept me busy. The problem is, I can't tell if Ri...

My picks for the Tuesday Top Ten, as invented by  The Broke and Bookish . Today's theme is: Books to make you cry...I actually make it habit to stay away from books like that, but occasionally they sneak into my reading list. 1. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls.  I made my feelings about this book known in an earlier list, but in case you missed it...do not read it if you like dogs. 2.   Enders Game by Orson Scott Card . The ending...How could anyone stand it? 3.   Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.  This book ended on a happy note, but there were some tough moments mixed in. 4.   The Red Pony by John Steinbeck . Don't read if you're particularly fond of horses! 5.   The Children of Hurin by JRR Tolkien . This book was tragic from start to finish and I loved it anyways. Partly because it's Tolkien, partly because it was written in such a way that the reader knew ahead of time that this story was meant to be sad. 6.  ...