Books
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Review: How it Ends by Laura Wiess
I was pleasantly surprised by this book, How it Ends by Laura Weiss. It is one of those that just captures you right away. It is a quick read and Weiss does a great job making interesting characters that readers can relate to. I would classify the novel as having a split personality disorder meaning it could be classified as a Young Adult (YA) and adult book as one main character is a high school student and the other is an older woman. Hanna (the high school character) is really engaging and captures the essence of a young teen struggling with the heart break of her first love. Every girl…
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Review: Pride Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame Smith
The satirical novel by Seth Grahame-Smith and of course Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has been gaining a very large cult following of readers. I was very hesitant to read this novel as I worried the zombies element would somehow desecrate the timeless tale. I have read many other PP spinoffs over the years and often found myself disappointed. I had to go into this book with an open mind and know that it would NEVER be the same as the original and was really meant to be something more light-hearted and funny rather than a serious novel. There has lately been a huge resurgence in the interest…
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Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon
I was wondering through Borders quite some time ago and when a colorful, bright orange book cover with a curious upside-down dog cut out in the middle of the book caught my attention. I picked it up and read the back cover and decided to buy it and put it in my ‘to read’ stack. Well I couldn’t ignore the book any longer, the orange cover beckoned me. I have to say this is one of the best books I have read in a long time. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon bordered on the odd, eccentric side but that’s what made it so…
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Review: Rooftop Soliloquy by Roman Payne
I just finished reading Roman Payne’s novel Rooftop Soliloquy and I have to say I had great expectations for this book. Payne was selected by Literature Monthly Magazine as one of the top five up and coming- out of the mainstream- authors and his new book RS sounded really interesting. As some of you might have guessed, I have a flair for the eccentric so this sounded right up my alley and I looked forward to reading it. The opening sentence of the book made me really want to read it as it sounded intriguing and tantalizing. As I began the book I was transported back to various locations in Paris that…
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2011 Victorian Literature Challenge
2011 Victorian Literature Challenge (Starts Jan 1, 2011) Selected Level: Desperate Remedies: 15+ books. Here is the list of books I’ll be reading over the next year as part of the 2011 Victorian Literature Challenge. I will try to blog and post about each one. Many of these I have read and many I have not but have wanted to and thought this would be the perfect excuse. All of these books were written during the specified Victorian timeline (1837-1901). These books are in no special order and I will not be reading in this order but I will post what I am reading. Challenge starts Jan 1 2011! Here’s…
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Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker
I finally finished reading the PadWorx interactive e-book (Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and can I just say, it was amazing. I have read Dracula before so I love the story but the interactive book added a whole new element. Lately bloggers and the media have been talking about e-readers and e-books, some have suggested that e-books and readers will soon dominate the market. When I got my iPad I knew that I could download books for it but I never dreamed that I would have a hard time going back to a paperback book. Having books at my fingertips is wonderful, and when there are books like this one by PadWorx…
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Review: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre is one of my favorite books of all time. I read the novel when I was in high school and then again sometime in between high school and college. The Bronte sisters were clearly more ‘wild’ and passionate in their love stories (one of my fav books is Wuthering Heights) than Jane Austen. I admired Jane’s sprit, especially when she totally called her aunt on the carpet about being more or less an evil, cold-hearted bitch to her. Jane was witty, charming, and above all strong. She really is the ideal woman both modernly and historically speaking. She stands up for herself and perseveres through difficulties and ultimately…
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Review: Drood by Dan Simmons
I recently picked up this book (Drood by Dan Simmons) in anticipation for Halloween. I wanted to read something that was scary and suspenseful with a historic Victorian London flair. This book started as a generally promising suspense/horror story but ended up being a huge disappointment. I’ll admit when I first started it I was completely hooked and into it but sadly as the weeks went by I had to force myself to finish it. The book is written from the famous English author Wilkie Collins (famous works include The Woman in White and The Moonstone) perspective. Collins often collaborated with the famous Charles Dickens in real life. The witty humor…
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Review: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I have just finished The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which actually went pretty fast compared to the four novels I read earlier. This collection of short stories was a fun fast read which satisfied my need to read but I did not feel committed to an entire long novel however after the first five short stories I found myself wondering if I was simply re-reading the same story over and over again? Every short story seemed to follow the same pattern, a client came to see Holmes, he enlisted Watson’s help, Holmes found some small detail in the client’s story that no one else could and made it look easy…
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Review: The Valley of Fear (A Sherlock Holmes Novel) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
As most of you know, I am finishing up the last of the four novels of Sherlock Holmes (A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, and The Hound of Baskervilles being the first three) titled The Valley of Fear. The first three novels were a little hit and miss for me. All of the first three novels that I read were a little on the long-ish and boring side, except for the various forensic science methods/techniques and the short lived love story between Mary and Dr. Watson. So I was totally hoping The Valley of Fear (VOF) was going to be more promising, sadly I was a little on the…