Get Lost in Literature

“The first rule of witchery is to acknowledge your deficits.” The third and final installment of the Another Day trilogy brings us Rain with her memory restored. Now that she remembers who she is, she can’t wait to return to Oz and figure out who she is meant to be. As with the Wicked Years and the first two installments of Another Day, I found the settings to be imaginative even though L. Frank Baum was there first. GM creates a world that makes you feel transported and strangely at home. Despite my appreciation of the setting, I found that this book lacked the charm of the first two books.  The beginning was a bit wishy-washy. It opens with Rain, Iskinaary, and Lucickles on a ship. Eventually there’s an explanation for how they got there but it didn’t come soon enough and it felt really random.  I didn’t find the subplot of Rain and Lucickles to be on par with their characters unless it’s to be considered a weird kind of character evolution…Which doesn’t make a whole lot of...

"When the world of man collapses in ruin, beauty will take over. " This is the sequel to Interview with the Vampire , where Lestat has returned to the limelight quite literally. Lestat has become a rock star, flaunting his vampireness to the world. He, having read Louis’s book, has decided to publish one of his own. His own memoir details his life as a human, his transformation into a vampire, and his quest for knowledge. I actually liked this book a little more than Interview with the Vampire but not by much. Lestat is super narcissistic which is on par with his character from IwtV .   But unlike Louis’s story, Lestat has been changed from a creepy pedo into a killer of killers which makes him a little more likable, but makes the story inconsistent. I like the question it presents though: Which vampire is telling the truth? As a human, he was a noble who felt trapped by his family. He longed to be an actor from a very young age and when he meets Nikki, a musician, that ...

"But once you sense that vastness, once something reveals it, hope emerges, whether you want it to or not, and it clings to you as stubbornly as lichen clings to rock." This is the story of Nora Seed, who is unbelievably depressed. After trying to commit suicide, she winds up at the Midnight Library where there are an infinite number of books filled with an infinite number of possibilities. Each book contains a life for Nora based on the decisions she could have made but didn't. The librarian tells her she can take each one for a test drive, and when she finds the life that makes her happy, she can stay there. When this book came out there was almost nothing else in my Good Reads newsfeed. I normally don't pay too much attention to over-hyped books, but this one caught my eye. I'm going to start by saying I liked how realistic Matt Haig was with Nora's depression. As someone who has had it, it does feel a lot like being a failure at everything, it feels lonely...

"He knew that I was here in Durham. He knew who I was." Alex Cross's niece, Naomi, has gone missing from North Carolina. She hasn't been heard from in four days. His family makes it his responsibility to find her, and since he helped raise her in childhood, he is more than willing to join the search. But his quest to find his missing niece introduces him to a serial killer that hunts in the area, and the fear that Naomi may be another victim. My first impression of this book was that it has a lot of graphic violence, mostly against women, including rape, beatings, and murder. If you are sensitive to any of these things, this is definitely not the book for you.  The further I read, the more disenchanted I became with the book... I mean, it's James Patterson, right? Extremely popular murder-mystery writer. And Kiss the Girls is one of his most hyped-up novels. So statistics implied I was going to really enjoy this book. But honestly, I like a lot of suspense in my ...

"It is the great misfortune of the coward that he sees danger everywhere, and of the snob that he perpetually underestimates those he considers his inferiors." ( Disclaimer : I try not to let the political views of authors dictate what I read. I do not agree with JK Rowlings views, but I still like her ability to tell a story. I absolutely understand why so many won't read her work anymore and don't need a lecture. ) Robin and Strike are back, with new mysteries and scandals. This time they've been hired to prove that the identity of a body found murdered and mutilated in a vault is that of their client's missing boyfriend. In the meantime, both detectives are dealing with increasingly complicated personal lives. Robin has just had a miscarriage and is suffering from PTSD due to her stay at Chapman Farm, and Strike is ready to admit he's in love with Robin even as he's reconciling how he feels about Charlotte's suicide. The mystery takes a darker t...

“And even if I turned out to be entirely sane—well then, great, it meant that an alien advance party was suddenly nosing around my planet. Worse, they were lawyering up.” ― Rob Reid, Year Zero Nick Carter--not that Nick Carter--has 48 hours to save the world. Aliens owe Earth all the money in the universe because they've been stealing our music. And rather than go universally broke on music pirating fines, they want to help us self-destruct. This book was funny, but you probably won't find the meaning to life inside of it, if that's what you're looking for. It does make a few cold jabs at the digital generation; media piracy is at an all-time high because everybody's doing it, simply because everybody else is doing it. And if you like lots of science in your science fiction, this probably isn't the book for you either. There's plenty of gadgets, intergalactic travel, aliens, and fantastic alien planets, but very little logic as to how any of this is possible...

  "This is all you need, isn't it? Just one good friend. Somebody you can be stupid with. Somebody who'll peel you off the ground, prop you against the wall." Ricky, Lewis, Cass, and Gabe have been friends for a long time, but the ten-year anniversary of a hunting trip gone wrong is upon them and no one wants to talk about it. And now an entity is stalking them, like a shotgun blast from the past. This book was okay, but I wasn't wowed. I liked the characters; they were all a little rough around the edges and it gave them an air of realness because they weren't perfect angels. Sometimes it's the imperfections that matter most. The book blurb on GoodReads states, "...a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience."  And I know when it came out it was one of the best horror novels of 2020. That's how it got added to my TBR list. Now it's officially been ...

"Earthquakes couldn’t crush us, floods couldn’t drown us, fires were too slow to catch us. Sulfur and brimstone were irrelevant. We were the gods of our own alternate universe. Inside the mortal world but over it, never slaves to its laws, only our own." Few books have incited as much Love and Hate as The Twilight Saga . All I'm going to say, is if you loathed Twilight through Breaking Dawn , you aren't going to like this book much better. It's Twilight , from Edward's POV; it isn't really any darker than Bella's POV, after all it is a vampire novel intended to be palatable for 13-year-old girls. It was never intended to be use as horror or erotica. If you loved Twilight, just the way it was, this book is for you. I feel like Stephenie Meyer has come a long way. She maintains the same level of teenage angst, self-flagellation, desperately sickeningly sweet love affair that we came to know in the first book, but her actual writing technique has improv...

Asher is a closeted trans boy who goes to sleep every night dreaming of a circus, where he is himself for the first time. By day, he lives his worst nightmare: Catholic School. Then one night, he's transported to his fantasy world, where dreams and reality begin to blend. I was skeptical during the prologue. I was promised a story that was similar to The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern , but the prologue wasn't just comparable, it was downright derivative. The circus is even named, "The Midnight Circus." Which, to be fair, it probably is hard to name a circus that comes only at night. But then the story morphs into its own. Asher lives with his mom, a nurse who is almost never home, and cared for by his ridiculously old-fashioned and super controlling grandparents. Grandparents who drag Ash to a church designed to teach him to hate himself and pay to send him to Catholic school after an incident in which he's injured. Grandparents who, after losing their son, dec...

  "This is all you need, isn't it? Just one good friend. Somebody you can be stupid with. Somebody who'll peel you off the ground, prop you against the wall." Ricky, Lewis, Cass, and Gabe have been friends for a long time, but the ten-year anniversary of a hunting trip gone wrong is upon them and no one wants to talk about it. And now an entity is stalking them, like a shotgun blast from the past. This book was okay but I wasn't wowed. I liked the characters; they were all a little rough around the edges and it gave them an air of realness because they weren't perfect angels. Sometimes it's the imperfections that matter most. The book blurb on GoodReads states, "... a novel that is equal parts psychological horror and cutting social commentary on identity politics and the American Indian experience."  And I know when it came out it was one of the best horror novels of 2020. That's how it got added to my TBR list. Now it's officially been...

  "There was something about the release of breath as you pulled the trigger, the stillness, the quiet before the almost-welcome recoil, that soothed and comforted her." Maya Burkett's husband is murdered and a few days after his funeral he appears on her new nanny cam. Now she must solve the mystery of what happened to her husband, who killed him and why or is he even really dead? The first sentence of the book was artfully designed to pull the reader in, and you can tell right away that when it comes to writing, Harlan Coben really knows his stuff. He created a collection of characters designed to evoke an emotional response, from our heroine newly widowed and tortured by PTSD to her deeply unlikeable babysitter. But after the plot and characters are introduced, the book slows down quite a bit. It's described as a 'thriller' but honestly, I think that word gets thrown around a little too much and sets expectation too high. For me, a thriller should be on-the...

  "The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience." Frank Herbert, Dune Please forgive my lackluster review, this one is not current, written in 2020. As you know, 2020 was a trying year, Covid-19 sucking the life out of most people, myself included. I can see why this book touched so many and I enjoyed reading it for the most part. I think some of the plot devices were a tad bit lazy: every oh-so-convenient moment that fell in line with The Prophecy, for example. But the characters were delightful in their schemes. The setting was great. Plot would probably have been better for me if I wasn't overthinking on overdrive, stress makes me cynical. I maybe think the world building and vocabulary could have been improved upon, just a bit, but I might also be reading this at the wrong age. I liked the touches on environmental and ecological issues. I liked that he addressed political and theological conflicts, and the void between the ruling class...

  "As I feel my way through the kitchen to the stairs... I realize there's one good thing about the dark. In the dark I can't see myself." Kasey LeBlanc, Flyboy Asher is a closeted trans boy who goes to sleep every night dreaming of a circus, where he is himself for the first time. By day, he lives his worst nightmare: Catholic School. Then one night, he's transported to his fantasy world, where dreams and reality begin to blend. I was skeptical during the prologue. I was promised a story that was similar to  The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern , but the prologue wasn't just comparable, it was downright derivative. The circus is even named, " The Midnight Circus. " Which, to be fair, it probably is hard to name a circus that comes only at night... But then the story morphs into its own. Asher lives with his mom, a nurse who is almost never home, and cared for by his ridiculously old-fashioned and super controlling grandparents. Grandparents who drag...

  I traditionally open each review with a quote from the book, but I regifted the book and couldn't look one up for you. I apologize for the quality of this, my last review of A-Z Challenge, but I suppose it's on par with the quality of the book. Upon reading the last few sentences of the story, I shouted aloud, "Oh, c'mon!" (I actually think I swore in my exclamation, but I try to keep this blog safe for kiddos.) The book starts great, just so you know. Pretty much as good as a murder mystery at an isolated research station could be. Paranoia, espionage, sabotage, set on the backdrop of the vicious polar landscape... Then towards the end, it's like the writer decided he doesn't really do murder mysteries anymore so here's an ending for sci-fi nerds instead... And I am a sci-fi nerd, but, c'mon.  I loved the ending in a way. I loved it in the way that I'd really love to read the beginning half of that story because, realistically, the ending ...

“Perhaps the logical conclusion of everyone looking the same is everyone thinking the same.” ― Scott Westerfeld, Uglies 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 New Prettytown, where a Pretty's only job is to have fun. Everything looks like it's 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 bringing her back to 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 ...

  “That version, as with so many of the stories we tell about our history, erased a woman- a plain, bad heroine- in favor of a less messy and more palatable yarn about two feuding brothers from New England.” ― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines Plain Bad Heroines is a book with two settings; the story begins in 1902 Rhode Island, at Brookhants School for Girls. The girls at the school become infatuated with each other, and obsessed with a memoir by teen author, Mary MacLane. They start a society that worships the book and, eventually, die tragically with the book in their company. Libbie Brookhants and her long time girlfriend, Alexandra Trills are trying to unravel the mystery before they themselves become unraveled. The second setting is in modern day Hollywood, where actresses Harper Harper and Audrey Wells have been cast to play leading roles in an upcoming horror movie titled: Happenings at Brookhants , based on the novel written by teen writer Merritt Emmons who will be c...

"They would use your life as if it were oil for a proper lamp. You must defy them, but you must defy them with purity and confidence." Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice This is the story of Louis, a vampire from New Orleans -- which is the perfect place for a vampire to come from IMHO. It’s of his maker, Lestat, and his companions Claudia and Armand. I find there are two types of vampires in pop culture. The first type is the ruthless killer who embraces its vampire nature, like in classic story Dracula or newer NOS4A2 . You also have the brooding vampire, overly emotional, like in Twilight or Vampire Diaries . Lestat is the former, Louis the latter. Lestat is greedy, flamboyant, reveling in his own nature; coldly and sometimes erratically trying to teach Louis what it means to be a vampire. “Let the flesh instruct the mind.” Louis is aghast at what he’s become and hesitant to start killing humans because he’s retained more of his human nature… I say hesitant because...

“It was not that he was feckless, more that he had simply not been around the day they handed out feck.”― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys Charles Nancy is an unlucky sort of fellow; he prefers to be called Charles or Charlie but everyone calls him Fat Charlie, whether he likes it or not because that was the name his father gave him. With a wedding on the horizon, Rosie thinks it's time for Fat Charlie to start mending those old embarrassing bridges and invite his family to the wedding. Unable to say no, Charlie reaches out to Mrs. Higgler, a family friend who might know how to contact his old man... But he's too late. Mr. Nancy is dead and Mrs. Higgler's got news for Charlie. His father wasn't just a trickster, he was trickster God and Charlie has a long-lost brother who communicates through spiders... This book started out laugh out loud funny. I loved the glimpse into what an ancient God's idea of parenting would be, and those parenting skills then topped by the peculiar...

  "The world changes, Glokta, the world changes. The old order crumbles. Loyalty, duty, pride, honour. Notions that have fallen far from fashion. What has replaced them?" He glanced over his shoulder for a moment, and his lip curled. "Greed..."  This book was a collection of fascinating characters. There's Logan the Bloody Nine, a barbarian warrior who has lost everything. Bayez, First of the Magi, wise and powerful. There's Jezal, spoiled rich boy who's in love with Ardee, a woman who hides her feelings behind alcohol and cruelty. There's Glokta the torturer and Ferro the escaped slave, and Ferro's rescuer Yulwei who may or may not also be magi.  With characters such as these you'd think the plot would be outrageous, and in a way, it is...As far as I could tell, there is no plot. Bayez calls upon Logan for help but doesn't explain with what and Logan never asks. Yulwei saves Ferro in return for a favor, but we aren't told what the f...

"Right now we were hunting the wights, but if they ever realized it, they'd start hunting us right back." The Conference of the Birds by Ransom Riggs The plot of this story isn't that spectacular. Jacob rescues Noor and helps her look for the mysterious V, with the usual fights with hollows and wights mixed in. Oh yeah, let's not forget the love at first sight teen romance that's about to unfold. That's pretty much it. I'm not sure that this plot offered enough, I certainly expected more from it. The previous stories have been so successful with Jacob and his friends, I didn't understand the sudden teen romance that pushed all these other great characters into the background.  With every book the photos are fewer and fewer, so if pictures are what you're after, don't depend on it. That's fine by me, because with every book the author is pulling more and more from imagination, and I'll give credit where it's due: he's got ple...