30 posts tagged “books”
Courtney Stone finds herself single and betrayed by her fiance, so what better consolation than to fall into Jane Austen books? After a bender weekend with Pride and Prejudice, she wakes up in the nineteenth century a 30 year old spinster with a mother determined to marry her off to the man next door. As Courtney tries to get home, she slowly gets used to Jane's life and its parallels to Jane Austen's novels and starts to discover what event led to Jane to wish herself out of her life. Her discovery of that leads to a few self realizations of her own life in the future and helps Courtney on her journey home.
This story wasn't bad, but I'm not entirely certain it fit the challenge. It was more of a time travel story (hey, last month's theme!) and less of a romance. Nonetheless, it was a good, quick read and highly enjoyable, especially to someone who likes Jane Austen.
I read this for the Book a Month Challenge. This month's theme was time and hey, it was already in my library pile.
I really liked this book. It was interesting to read about his "stranger in a strange land" style experiences. Some of the stories made you laugh, like his interactions with his wife when she was menstruating and he had to declare her unclean, or think, when he examined how often he lied or coveted things. The stories he told about the people he met on his journey, like the Amish man in Lancaster, PA with the strange sense of humor, or his interactions with the Hebrew fiber tester, or his ex-uncle in the Holy Land, or his visit to the atheists, which made him realize that religions need a belief in something, otherwise there's just no focus, or the drunken orthodox dancing men, were great insights into other religious worlds. Over all it was a great book.
Like many other junior high girls, I loved Gone With the Wind. Oh yeah. Hoop skirts, big romance, scheming pretty girl, unrequited love, I was all over it. Absolutely one of my favorite books. The movie? Also fabulous. I watched it with my gran, at sleepovers, you name it. Then Scarlett came out. I got just as excited as everyone else. After all, Alexandra Ripley had been chosen by the family to write the sequel. She was a southerner. How bad could it be? Well, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't Gone With the Wind. Scarlett moves to Ireland? Um, okay. She finally ends up with Rhett, which you knew was going to happen. It just wasn't that satisfying. We won't even talk about things like The Wind Done Gone, which I thought was such total crap I didn't make it past the first five pages. All this is setup to let you know that, previously burned, I wasn't expecting much from Rhett Butler's People.
I'm glad to report that I was pleasantly surprised by this story. I think it is a great companion piece to GWTW. Not only do you get insight into Rhett's backstory, but the book fleshes out memorable scenes like the barbecue at Twelve Oaks or what really happened during the Klan raid after Scarlett was attacked. Not only do you gain insight into the life of Rhett, but you also get the story of his sister, Rosemary, as well as his relationship with Belle Watling and even a bit more about Melanie Wilkes. I liked that, unlike GWTW or Scarlett, this book let you into everyone else's head. Of course, the last third of the book is the author's version of what happened after Rhett left Scarlett and, while it wasn't the one true perfect ending to what GWTW started, it was a reasonably satisfying ending and well worth the $2.20 of fines I incurred finishing it well after it was due at the library.
That said, it wasn't without its faults. You know how I said it fleshes out scenes from GWTW and gives you Rhett's side? Yeah. Well, it also ignores some of them. Remember that great bit where Scarlett was a widow and there was that ball/fundraiser thing and Rhett said he'd give money to the confederacy if he could dance with Scarlett. Not in this book. When Bonnie dies? Not in there either, but at least it gets mentioned, vaguely, as well as when he leaves Scarlett. I can understand not wanting to trample on something that... iconic, for lack of a better word, but still. A sentence or two for such a defining moment? Really? Also, I understand that nothing no one ever writes is going to be the definitive answer to what happens after Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn/Tomorrow is another day, but the ending was kinda unsatisfying.
All in all, I liked this book. It made me want to read Gone With the Wind again. Okay, it really made me want to see the movie again, because I don't have enough free time to read that book over. Anyway, I really liked it.
Because all my friends were doing it and I am nothing if not a late bloomer follower, I just got done reading the Uglies/Pretties/Specials/Extras books by Scott Westerfeld. Also, because I tend not to do research on these things I thought this was a series of books about high school cliques. Ha ha wrong! The entire series is about a Utopian society 300 years in the future. Civilization as we know it was destroyed by biowarfare that ignited gas and oil, I think, and so society vowed to never go back to that and to be as green as possible. Also, because of a "wasting disease" where people didn't eat because they didn't think they were attractive enough, everyone gets surgery when they turn 16 that makes them pretty. And now, on with the book commentary...
Uglies is the tale of Tally Youngblood. All she wants to do is turn 16, be made pretty and go be with her friend. She's one of the last in her dorm to turn 16 so she has some serious envy going on. She makes friends with another girl, Shay, who has the same birthday and they go out and pull pranks and have a good time. One night Shay tells Tally there's another civilization out there called the Smoke, which is a group in hiding that lives off the land, but respectfully, and she's not going to turn pretty, she's joining them. She invited Tally to join her but Tally's horrified by this. Shay leaves Tally instructions in case she changes her mind and off she goes. Tally goes to turn pretty but DUN DUN DUNNNNNN! They won't do it unless she leads them to Shay. Tally sets out to find Shay and, of course, experiences a change of heart.
I think maybe this one was my favorite of all the books. I will admit, I am a fan of series beginnings because there's nothing to compare them to, you know? Sometimes when you read books later in the series you realize that they've changed direction or something you don't like happens to a character you do like and it's irritating. In this case, I really liked the story and I liked Tally's growth and change of mind and beliefs in the book and the choice she made at the end. With that, let's move on to book 2...
Pretties sees Tally Youngblood back in the city as newly turned Pretty. She may be a pretty bubblehead like the rest of them, but she still remembers her old tricks. Then a face from the past leads her to some pills and everything from book 1 comes back to her. The rest of the book is a journey out of town and out of being a pretty bubblehead as she breaks free from Utopia to try and live a real existence.
This one wasn't bad, but I think I was as frustrated by her struggle as she was. I was really annoyed by the final meet up at the end and her attitude towards non-pretty people, and I really hated the absolute ending because I thought it went against everything Tally was fighting for, even though she had no choice in the matter. Also, that bit with the anthropologists and the tribe was just odd. I understand it served to show just how horrible and control freaky the Specials were, but come on. I also realize I've been purposely trying to be vague in these descriptions to not give things away, only to be foiled by my brief plot synopses. With that, book 3...
Specials sees Tally as a member of Special Circumstances, the elite force that keeps the law in the pretty town. Tally and her friend Shay are members of a new breed of Specials. More and more people are curing themselves of being pretty and running off to join the New Smoke and they're fighting to stop it. Once again, circumstances separate Tally from the group and her experiences lead her to a change of heart and mind.
This one wasn't bad. I think I liked it better than Pretties, in that I think the struggle that she went through was an even harder one than curing herself from being pretty. Pretties seemed like more of a candy floss book and this one was more sharp edges and I think I liked that style better. I know, that's a crap comment but my brain's not working these days.
The final book in the series was Extras. Extras takes place a couple years after Specials, in China (Japan? Maybe Japan) instead of California. They are run by a fame based economy and Aya's trying to improve her rank so she joins a group of girls who surf on the top of trains. That leads to her discovering what might possibly be a government coverup. She breaks the story, which wins her the fame she wants, but all hell breaks loose and she finds herself on the run.
This one really frustrated me. I think it's because I read the books one right after the other and got used to the story through Tally's viewpoint and this one was all Aya, with Tally showing up about halfway in as a secondary character. I think Aya and her fame seeking and shallowness didn't really hold my attention. It just felt like it was written by someone else, almost. Kind of like all those later VC Andrews books. The style was there, the characters were there, but it wasn't the same. Also, there were some unresolved issues in this book and I'm still wondering "What about...?" The ending explains the major points, but there are some minor, but still important, ones and I'm wondering if I was disinterested enough and just glossed over them. Probably the least favorite of the set.
All in all, though, they were definitely a great read. I'd highly recommend them, if you're into future Utopian sci-fi.
It's been a while, but but it's been a very busy while so I'm going to try and make up for it with a bunch of posts. I've been doing a lot of reading lately- I have four books that go back to the library tonight- so it's time for some book haiku and maybe a little discussion as well.
This book was both why
and why I did not go to
camp. It's a good read.
book I've read this summer.It's so funny!!! Must buy.
remember the first book. I
doubt this one either.
And now, an actual review of something I've read. The premise sounded interesting: Call center in India. It's Thanksgiving in America and people keep calling with problems until suddenly the call center people get a call from God. Yeah, well. I should have read the reviews on Amazon, because Publisher's Weekly said "Lackluster writing and a preachy tone cripple what could have been an interesting premise." Yeah. I'd agree. It starts off with a conversation on a night train with the author and a woman about some friends of the woman's and how the author should make his second book about them, because a fantastic event happened to them. Um, yeah. Not so much. In between discussing the drama from their personal lives at work, they discover that not only has their incompetent boss stolen two guy's web site design and passed it off to corporate as his own, but they're also all getting downsized. They decide to skip out on work and go to a club and on the way home they take a shortcut that ends them in a pit at a construction site? None of their cell phones work, but hey! Suddenly God calls one of them and tells them they've lost sight of who they want to be and they need to make a change in their lives and that will set them free, both from the pit and from the struggles they're having in their lives. They get out of the pit and figure out a way to save the call center and the guy telling the story gets the girl in the end and you find out that the person the author was talking to on the train? Also God. You know, I don't think I've ever seen or read anything where the deus ex machina is actually God. Also, they're Indians. This is probably going to sound horribly ignorant, but shouldn't Buddha have called them? Also, I don't know how to explain this, but the way the author wrote God in this, it was almost like he didn't have an idea of how God really was. You know? It's like if I were to write a book featuring David Tennant, because I've seen a lot of shows and movies he's been in, and then people read my book and said it sucked and it was obvious that I had no clue what David Tennant was really like. Anyway, this book sounded really interesting, but I think it wasn't too well executed. If you're curious, go ahead and read it, just don't expect much.
Friday afternoon I was at 244 on the library hold list for Harry Potter. Where am I right now?
161.
The Husband braved the crowds to pick up our copy Friday night while I went downtown with D and her family and saw an 11 pm showing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Our plans for Friday night changed pretty frequently. Here's how it went.
6:30- Wristband pickup time. We got in line when it was halfway around the building. The Husband told his siblings that we'd be home by 7. Hah! Plan is we go home after getting wristband, have dinner, come back for dessert at Cheesecake Factory, then go to the bookstore and get Harry Potter.
7- We've gone maybe halfway down the block towards the doors to the store. Husband of person in line in front of us goes up to see what's going on. He comes back and tells us the line splits at the doors, so it should be a while. He also tells us with the number of people, we should get our book about 1:45. I call D and let her know I will be going to the movie with her and then we can come back and meet everyone at the bookstore in time to get the book.
7:45- We're finally around the corner. The line does not split like lady's husband said, it turns into one of those amusement park wrappy line things. We enter the wrappy part about now, after letting the siblings and D know it's going to take a while for dinner.
8:15- We finally make it inside to get the wristband. We get 225. Really? We waited almost two hours to be 225? Later we realize we were Gryffindor 225, and that means we get them at the back registers, as opposed to the music registers or the front registers. We weren't 225. We were 775, really. They tell us they'll start lining people up at 11:30 and the Husband will be last in line. We figure it'll be a while and D and I can still meet them at the bookstore.
We went to dinner, then parted company after more plan changes- originally we were going to all go get ice cream but D and I didn't have time so we went to the grocery store and got movie candy, then went down. The Husband dropped his sister off at our house, then they went down for ice cream and off to the book store.
12:45- The movie is over and I call the Husband to see where he is in line. He's home already. He said he only spent about 15 minutes in line, they were so well organized.
I went home and we were in bed asleep by about 1:30.
Since we only have the one copy, we've been nice to each other and we've been reading it aloud in the car. We went up for his sister's birthday on Saturday, about an hour each way, and then we bought a Wii on Sunday, and that ended up being about an hour each way, so we've read almost 300 pages now. The Husband's excited because he doesn't have rehearsal tonight, so he's going to come with me when we run errands and we'll read more in the car. Yay!
Yesterday morning I ended up at 284 on the Harry Potter hold list. I figured that's where I'd stay until this weekend when they handed the books out.
Not so. I just checked and right now I'm at 244. Huh. I wonder what the deal is. I had figured what with all that went down yesterday that I wouldn't get a book right away and I was okay with that, but now I'm starting to wonder. We'll know by this weekend!
In other news, the Husband and I had planned on just showing up eventually at Barnes and Noble to get a number to get a Harry Potter book. Then we saw they'd start handing out numbers at 6:30, so we thought maybe it'd be a good idea to get one then and go about our merry way. Then I heard from someone that their bookstore had to get extra books in because what they had didn't cover the number of reserves they already had, so now we're wondering if we shouldn't call ahead and reserve one. That was on his to do list, we'll see if it actually gets done.
When I left work yesterday I was 929 on the reserve list at the library. Since the number yesterday had dropped since the day before, I figured I'd check this morning and see where I was.
682.
How the hell did I drop so fast? I was going to page back to the reserve list and that's when I discovered something interesting and figured out the mystery. I have Mouse Tracks, which is a Firefox application that lets you do things with the mouse that you'd normally have to point and click to do. It's really cool, just swiping the mouse to the left to page back, or making an h to go to your home page or a backwards U to print something, but it's also a pain in the but when you're trying to highlight text and find yourself with another Firefox window. Yeah. Lots of trial and error on this one. Anyway, I accidentally refreshed the page instead of going back and that's when I saw it.
645.
What was going on? I decided to periodically refresh the page and, sure enough, my number kept going down. Eventually I figured it out. I bet the library is processing their books today. In our library, the way it works is you catalog the book, then to activate it in the system you check it in. At that point if there's a hold it comes up. I know the public library doesn't use the same software we do, but I bet that's what's going on. So, if the article I read the other day is correct, I'm thinking my hold number will end up being somewhere around 279. We'll have to see. It's been an hour and I'm at 402 right now. Who knows?
Yesterday I was at 931 on the library hold list for Harry Potter. When I renewed some of my library books this afternoon, I decided to make a quick check and see where I was today.
928
Wow. Since yesterday even. I'm tempted to check every day and see if it drops more. I promise, you'll be the first to know.
Usually I update these things on Mondays or Tuesdays, depending on how busy things get. This is the last Monday before the new Harry Potter book comes out, so why isn't this the final "Where am I on the Harry Potter library hold list" update? Because I'm going to update on Friday too. That's how big of a dork I am.
Last week: 936
This week: 931
Huh. I did some googling and as of last Thursday, there were over 2000 people signed up to get Harry Potter. They'd ordered 650 copies and were thinking of getting more if demand was great enough. So now I don't know. Will I get a book? Won't I? You'll know on Monday!
I should say, it's not like it'll be a big deal if I don't get one right away. It'll just mean the Husband and I can't read at the same time.
