A quick note to those few readers that I've got:
First, thanks! I appreciate you checking out the blog! I've noticed that there tends to be a lot of traffic on Saturdays, so going forward, please keep an eye out for posts on SATURDAYS at 12pm Eastern Standard Time. (That's -5 hours from GMT, for anyone who doesn't know.) This will be the final Sunday post. Thanks for your time, and for reading this silly little blog!
On to the good stuff!
Summary:
Sophie's whole world crumbles one day when she finds out that her boyfriend of several years cheated on her. What's worse, he cheated with one of her dearest friends. The boyfriend breaks up with her saying that he just doesn't love her anymore. She can't except that, and presses for a real answer, and learns of the affair. Worse than the affair itself is that another dear friend knew the whole time and kept the secret because she was closer to the cheater friend than Sophie. Sophie has to deal with her crumbling world, and get over her heartbreak over two friends' deceptions.
Thoughts:
Not great. It's all about a woman's bond with her dearest friends, and comes around to the female version of "bros before hos." Sophie has to get herself to a place where she can accept that the affair happened, and try to mend herself enough that she might be able to mend fences with the friends that hurt her so deeply. She couldn't care less about the boyfriend. It's her besties that hurt her more for lying about the whole thing. She's stuck in a bitter, unforgiving place. If I were in her shoes, I'd probably be stuck for a lot longer than she was, but I've been known to hold grudges for a very, very long time.
If the writing were a little better, I wouldn't have minded the story so much. But it's not great. It's boring, and the story drags. I have a very hard time putting a book down for good without finishing it, and I plodded through this one, but it was a chore. Reading to me is a release, a joyful and happy experience where I get to see more of the world around me, and not just the tiny little corner that I know. This book made reading feel like a homework assignment. Not worth the several weeks this took me to finish it, or even the thirty seconds of download time it took me to get the book. (I downloaded it when it was free, as it still is as of this writing.)
Book 56 of 70
Pages: 251 read as an e-book
Genre: chicklit
Grade: D-
Would I Recommend?: Bland. Don't bother.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
The Abundance of Katherines (John Green)
Summary:
Colin is a new high school graduate with an obsession with anagrams and girls named Katherine. His first girlfriend was Katherine, then his second happened to be Katherine too. And every girl afterward, too, right up to his nineteenth Katherine. Each one of them broke up with him, and after the nineteenth break-up, he feels he's doomed to repeat the same mistake forever. His plump Middle-eastern best friend Hassan decides that they are going to spend the summer doing something not depressing, and going on a road trip. They wind up in a town called Gutshot. They meet a cute girl named Lindsey, her boyfriend Colin (The Other Colin, or TOC for short), and her mom, Hollis. They wind up staying in Gutshot for the summer, helping Hollis out in their little general store, and interviewing the townspeople about the world of Gutshot, and Colin decides to work out a mathematical equation for how long his relationships went on with all the Katherines. His singular focus is admirable to a point, but becomes sadly over-obsessed. Will he ever get over Katherine XIX, and be able to move on?
Thoughts:
Not the best John Green book I've read. I've become fairly enamored with his writing, to be sure, but this was not his best. The main character is annoying about his obsession, and while reading, I just wanted to smack him upside the head most of the time. Sure, the kid's brilliant. He's got a thing for anagrams, and he was a child prodigy. Great. So you're a smart kid. That doesn't mean you have to obsess over the littlest things. But that's how Green wrote him, and it wound up working. But the book dragged for far too long before we get to the good plot bits inside. I trudged through this one far more than I did with either Will Grayson, Will Grayson or The Fault in Our Stars. I'm disappointed, but not every book by a favored author can be fabulous. Just most of them. Oh, and one other minor, nitpicking thing that drove me completely mad. The physical inside the book was annoying. I don't know if it was Green's decision, the publisher, or a little of both, but there were page numbers only on the right side pages, which wound up being the odd numbers. This would have been fine for the most part, but the book dragged, and I kept wanting to know how much more until the end. What made it especially difficult was when the first page of a new chapter fell on an odd page. There were no page numbers on the page because the top of the page was an attractive, wide open space. Looks nice, but if you're only numbering every other page to begin with, this makes it hard to find a page or keep track of anything. As I said, nitpicky, but damn, I couldn't stand it.
Book 55 of 70
Pages: 215, 228 if you count the appendix
Genre: teen lit, romance
Grade: C
Would I Recommend?: Read the other two Green books I mentioned above over this one. I was disappointed. But if you're being a completionist about Green's work, I have read far worse books, so it's not completely unreadable.
Colin is a new high school graduate with an obsession with anagrams and girls named Katherine. His first girlfriend was Katherine, then his second happened to be Katherine too. And every girl afterward, too, right up to his nineteenth Katherine. Each one of them broke up with him, and after the nineteenth break-up, he feels he's doomed to repeat the same mistake forever. His plump Middle-eastern best friend Hassan decides that they are going to spend the summer doing something not depressing, and going on a road trip. They wind up in a town called Gutshot. They meet a cute girl named Lindsey, her boyfriend Colin (The Other Colin, or TOC for short), and her mom, Hollis. They wind up staying in Gutshot for the summer, helping Hollis out in their little general store, and interviewing the townspeople about the world of Gutshot, and Colin decides to work out a mathematical equation for how long his relationships went on with all the Katherines. His singular focus is admirable to a point, but becomes sadly over-obsessed. Will he ever get over Katherine XIX, and be able to move on?
Thoughts:
Not the best John Green book I've read. I've become fairly enamored with his writing, to be sure, but this was not his best. The main character is annoying about his obsession, and while reading, I just wanted to smack him upside the head most of the time. Sure, the kid's brilliant. He's got a thing for anagrams, and he was a child prodigy. Great. So you're a smart kid. That doesn't mean you have to obsess over the littlest things. But that's how Green wrote him, and it wound up working. But the book dragged for far too long before we get to the good plot bits inside. I trudged through this one far more than I did with either Will Grayson, Will Grayson or The Fault in Our Stars. I'm disappointed, but not every book by a favored author can be fabulous. Just most of them. Oh, and one other minor, nitpicking thing that drove me completely mad. The physical inside the book was annoying. I don't know if it was Green's decision, the publisher, or a little of both, but there were page numbers only on the right side pages, which wound up being the odd numbers. This would have been fine for the most part, but the book dragged, and I kept wanting to know how much more until the end. What made it especially difficult was when the first page of a new chapter fell on an odd page. There were no page numbers on the page because the top of the page was an attractive, wide open space. Looks nice, but if you're only numbering every other page to begin with, this makes it hard to find a page or keep track of anything. As I said, nitpicky, but damn, I couldn't stand it.
Book 55 of 70
Pages: 215, 228 if you count the appendix
Genre: teen lit, romance
Grade: C
Would I Recommend?: Read the other two Green books I mentioned above over this one. I was disappointed. But if you're being a completionist about Green's work, I have read far worse books, so it's not completely unreadable.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Fearless Fourteen (Janet Evanovich)
Summary:
One of Joe Morelli's distant cousins(of which there are seemingly thousands), Loretta, is a bondee that Stephanie's got to pick up. Thanks to Stephanie's good nature, she agrees to take care of Loretta's teenaged son until she gets out of jail. The only trouble is that Loretta's got no cash and can't bond herself out. Then, when she finally is out, Loretta gets herself kidnapped. Loretta's big brother, Dom, is slightly unhinged, and thinks that Loretta's kid is the product of Loretta and Morelli himself, and doesn't like that his nephew is staying in the home of a cop that used to be a total womanizer. Meanwhile, Ranger asks Stephanie to help him out on a private protection thing with him, for a crazy has-been singer named Brenda, who decides she wants to go into reality TV as a bounty hunter, following Stephanie's every move. Also, Morelli's house keeps getting broken into thanks to news that there might be buried treasure in or around it. Just another regular week in downtown Trenton through the eyes of Stephanie Plum.
Thoughts:
Completely silly as always. It was another fun one. The reappearance of Mooner (the stoner dude that Steph went to school with, and who still hasn't grown up, probably because of the stonerdom) is always a fun time, and the teenager, who calls himself Zook, is a pip too. But as I've been saying from early on with this series, you really need to start from the beginning. There's just too much going on to jump in halfway. Or, in this case, six books from the most recent, including the one Between-the-Numbers edition. The series is fun, and engaging, and I love getting my hands on another of these books, because I know it's going to be lots of fun, even if I do sail through them like they're children's books!
Book 54 of 70
Pages: 310
Genre: Mystery, romance, and we'll add comedy to this one...
Grade: A-
Would I Recommend?: Start from the beginning, and the ridiculous fun in this book will make all the more sense.
One of Joe Morelli's distant cousins(of which there are seemingly thousands), Loretta, is a bondee that Stephanie's got to pick up. Thanks to Stephanie's good nature, she agrees to take care of Loretta's teenaged son until she gets out of jail. The only trouble is that Loretta's got no cash and can't bond herself out. Then, when she finally is out, Loretta gets herself kidnapped. Loretta's big brother, Dom, is slightly unhinged, and thinks that Loretta's kid is the product of Loretta and Morelli himself, and doesn't like that his nephew is staying in the home of a cop that used to be a total womanizer. Meanwhile, Ranger asks Stephanie to help him out on a private protection thing with him, for a crazy has-been singer named Brenda, who decides she wants to go into reality TV as a bounty hunter, following Stephanie's every move. Also, Morelli's house keeps getting broken into thanks to news that there might be buried treasure in or around it. Just another regular week in downtown Trenton through the eyes of Stephanie Plum.
Thoughts:
Completely silly as always. It was another fun one. The reappearance of Mooner (the stoner dude that Steph went to school with, and who still hasn't grown up, probably because of the stonerdom) is always a fun time, and the teenager, who calls himself Zook, is a pip too. But as I've been saying from early on with this series, you really need to start from the beginning. There's just too much going on to jump in halfway. Or, in this case, six books from the most recent, including the one Between-the-Numbers edition. The series is fun, and engaging, and I love getting my hands on another of these books, because I know it's going to be lots of fun, even if I do sail through them like they're children's books!
Book 54 of 70
Pages: 310
Genre: Mystery, romance, and we'll add comedy to this one...
Grade: A-
Would I Recommend?: Start from the beginning, and the ridiculous fun in this book will make all the more sense.
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Plum Lucky (Janet Evanovich)
Summary:
Another Between-the-Numbers book in the Stephanie Plum series. This comes between Thirteen and Fourteen, and it's the St. Patrick's Day book. Diesel appears again as Stephanie is completely out of the holiday spirit. Grandma Mazur gets her hands on a duffel bag that was left on the sidewalk by a short guy wearing green. Of course that means he was a leprechaun and she found the pot of gold. Stephanie finds all this out the hard way, when the little guy comes after her, wanting his money back. He's stolen it from a mobster who wants it back in a bad way. Grandma Mazur, being the crazy grandma she is, has taken the cash to Atlantic City, where she's playing the slots and gambling it all away. Stephanie takes Lula and Connie with her to AC to try to get Grandma Mazur and the money back before anybody gets hurt.
Thoughts:
With Stephanie, if you put together Lula the ex-hooker, Connie the busty no-nonsense bond office assistant, and Grandma Mazur the old lady who thinks she's a teenager, all hell is going to break loose, and hilarity will ensue. Evanovich really knows what will make the most ridiculous thing happen, and goes out of her way to make it so. As always with the Between-the-Numbers books, this one is centered around Diesel, a magical-ish guy who kinda has a thing about Steph, rather than being completely in line with the rest of the Numbers. No matter what, though, this is a fun time, and if you're in the series, don't miss the Betweens, because they're just as much fun as the regular books, if not more.
Book 53 of 70
Pages: 256
Genre: Mystery, comedy
Grade: B+
Would I Recommend?: Only if you're reading the Plum series. But heck yes.
Another Between-the-Numbers book in the Stephanie Plum series. This comes between Thirteen and Fourteen, and it's the St. Patrick's Day book. Diesel appears again as Stephanie is completely out of the holiday spirit. Grandma Mazur gets her hands on a duffel bag that was left on the sidewalk by a short guy wearing green. Of course that means he was a leprechaun and she found the pot of gold. Stephanie finds all this out the hard way, when the little guy comes after her, wanting his money back. He's stolen it from a mobster who wants it back in a bad way. Grandma Mazur, being the crazy grandma she is, has taken the cash to Atlantic City, where she's playing the slots and gambling it all away. Stephanie takes Lula and Connie with her to AC to try to get Grandma Mazur and the money back before anybody gets hurt.
Thoughts:
With Stephanie, if you put together Lula the ex-hooker, Connie the busty no-nonsense bond office assistant, and Grandma Mazur the old lady who thinks she's a teenager, all hell is going to break loose, and hilarity will ensue. Evanovich really knows what will make the most ridiculous thing happen, and goes out of her way to make it so. As always with the Between-the-Numbers books, this one is centered around Diesel, a magical-ish guy who kinda has a thing about Steph, rather than being completely in line with the rest of the Numbers. No matter what, though, this is a fun time, and if you're in the series, don't miss the Betweens, because they're just as much fun as the regular books, if not more.
Book 53 of 70
Pages: 256
Genre: Mystery, comedy
Grade: B+
Would I Recommend?: Only if you're reading the Plum series. But heck yes.
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