Reading Challenged

Friday, October 14, 2011

Primal Desires

Title: Primal Desires

Author: Susan Sizemore
Publisher: Pocket Star
ISBN: 978-1-4165-1336-0
Why Read?: For Fun
Challenges: TBR Pile, iChallenge, Vampires, 100 Books in a Year

Thoughts: I like Sizemore's writing style. However, I really have no clue what this book was about. It was easy to read, but I think I started too late in the series although paranormal romance series tend to work as standalones. I was a little confused as to the relationships between all of the characters.
Rating: 2 stars

Little Women

Title: Little Women

Author: Louisa May Alcott
Publisher: ebook
ISBN: n/a
Why Read?: For Fun
Challenges: Classics, Show Me the Free, 100 Books in a Year

Thoughts: I have never read Little Women until now, but last year I did read a graphic novel version. The book was much longer and I think the graphic novel flowed better as a lot of the story was streamlined. Many of the chapters in the book seemed to almost stand on their own with a loose story holding them together. Overall, Little Women read like a morality tale, but it was cute.
Rating: 3 stars

Saturday, October 8, 2011

In My Mailbox 10/2-10/8

For possible review (on Bookloons.com):

Trance by Kelly Meding

Bunheads by Sophie Flack

Won:

Under the Boardwalk by Linda Howard, Geralyn Dawson, Jillian Hunter, Miranda Jarrett, & Mariah Stewart

Kill Me If You Can by James Patterson & Marshall Karp

Requested from Paperbackswap:

Tom's Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pearce

This fun weekly meme comes from The Story Siren.

All images come from Goodreads.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

A Visit from the Goon Squad

Title: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Author: Jennifer Egan
Publisher:Anchor
ISBN: 978-0-307-47747-7
Why Read?: Book Club
Challenges: 100 Books in a Year

Thoughts: A Visit from the Goon Squad is definitely unique. It is closer to a short story collection of interconnected tales than a novel. Each of the thirteen chapters follows a different protagonist and is written is a different style. The three chapters that stood out the most to me are "X's and O's", "Great Rock and Roll Pauses", and "Pure Language". The rest were rather meh.
Rating: 3 stars

The Half Life

Title: The Half Life

Author: Jennifer Weiner
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
ISBN: 978-1-4423-4187-6
Why Read?: For Fun
Challenges: Chick Lit, 100 Books in a Year

Thoughts: I am not sure if I would have liked this better if I read it rather than listened to it. As it was, I listened the whole time with my heart in my throat, hoping it would turn out one way (but then again, glad it didn't or I would have been pissed at Piper, the main character). If I had read it, I would have sped through it to find out the ending, but that is impossible to do with an audio book. Not a waste of my time, but definitely a story I could take or leave.
Rating: 2 stars

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

All These Things I've Done

Title: All These Things I've Done

Author: Gabrielle Zevin
Publisher: MacMillan Audio
ISBN: 978-1-4272-1358-7
Why Read?: For Fun
Challenges: 100 Books in a Year

Thoughts: A future where chocolate and coffee are banded could be pretty bleak, and if your family is the US's top exporter of chocolate, that means your family is a bunch of crimials, a mob actually. This is the predicament that 16-year-old Anya Balanchine finds herself in. As if she does not have enough trouble keeping track of her older, mentally-challenged brother and her spunky younger sister while their guardian, their grandmother, is on life-support, she is accused of poising her ex-boyfriend with chocolate. And on top of all of that, she, a girl from a criminal family, finds herself falling for the new boy at school - who just happens to be the ADA's son. This is one dystopian full of teen angst, but it works. The world Zevin imagines is on the verge of another dark age which very little hope, and the reader of this audio book, Ilyana Kadushin, manages to capture this mood perfectly - but a little more than I would have if I had read it rather than listened, and this threw me some at times.
Rating: 4 stars