a game of thrones by george r.r. martin

Summary (from back cover): In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cole is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the North of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural focus are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.

My thoughts: Although I enjoyed Lord of the Rings, I must say, this held my interest much much better. Sure, the pages are dense with text, all the same. But the story moves and moves, and constantly throws you for a loop. Where Lord of the Rings can often bog you down in descriptions of places, A Game of Thrones makes it point and then moves on with the story. (The reason why I keep comparing the two is because I’ve often heard A Game of Thrones described as “the new Lord of the Rings”.)

The style of writing, however, does hold true to the time period and storyline; it is formal and very descriptive. Sometimes I have a hard time getting through this type of read, but not this time. Like I said, the storyline is constantly on the move! Not only was I able to thoroughly enjoy the style, but the characters were amazingly created as well. Some I fell in love with, while others I was quickly made to hate. I love it when enough details are given to create that conclusion. Therefore, I award A Game of Thrones a 10/10.

deadlocked by charlaine harris

Summary (from inside flap): Growing up with telepathic abilities, Sookie Stackhouse realized early on that there are things she’d rather not know. And now that she’s an adult, she also realizes that some things she knows about, she’d rather not see — like Eric Northman feeding off another woman. A younger one.

There’s a thing or two she’d like to say about that, but she has to keep quiet — Felipe de Castro, the vampire King of Louisiana (and Arkansas and Nevada), is in town. It’s the worst possible time for a human body to show up in Eric’s front yard — especially the body of the woman whose blood he just drank.

Now it’s up to Sookie and Bill, the official Area Five investigator, to solve the murder. Sookie thinks that, at least this time, the dead girl’s fate has nothing to do with her. But she is wrong. She has an enemy, one far more devious than she would ever suspect, who’s set out to make Sookie’s world come crashing down.

My thoughts: I know, I know — more vampire fiction. But believe me when I say, Charlaine Harris is quality. Enough so to spurn the HBO hit series True Blood.

But as much as I enjoy the series on the whole — I’ve even given it the affectionate nickname ‘vampire porn’ — this installment, Deadlocked, left me a little disappointed. Where the romance has been a crucial part of the series, everything leading up to a very important pairing between two main characters, this book seemed to have left that a little bit forgotten. Maybe it’s because the two lovebirds tend to fight a little more over the matter at hand, I don’t know. But it disappointed me nonetheless.

However, Charlaine Harris’ voice is just as strong as ever; that’s something I’ve always loved about her work. Everything is told through Sookie’s perspective and therefore her particular manner of speaking is very prominent. And one of the most unique I’ve ever found from a book written in first person.

Although it was lacking a little in the romance department, I still enjoyed it very much. I give Deadlocked a 7/10.

eleven minutes by paulo coelho

Summary (from back cover):

Eleven Minutes is the story of Maria, a young girl from a Brazilian village, whose first innocent brushes with love leave her heartbroken. Ata  tender age, she becomes convinced that she will never find true love, instead believing that “love is a terrible thing that will make you suffer….” A chance meeting in Rio takes her to Geneva, where she dreams of finding fame and fortune.

Maria’s despairing view of love is put to the test when she meets a handsome young painter. In this odyssey of self-discovery, Maria has to choose between pursuing a path of darkness — sexual pleasure for its own sake — or risking everything to find her own “inner light” and the possibility of sacred sex, sex in the context of love.

My thoughts:

Definitely makes my list of favorites. There’s a dark elegance to the story; it’s a kind of twisted fairy tale. Maria is an extremely likable character, one I can kind of relate to at the moment, though she’s very relatable over all. That she travels alone to a foreign country and is completely lost in it helps that factor. And where some stories about love can be extremely unrealistic, this wasn’t. There were ups and downs in all the right places.

I give Eleven Minutes a 10/10.

born wicked by jessica spotswood

Summary (from bn.com):

Everybody knows Cate Cahill and her sisters are eccentric. Too pretty, too reclusive, and far too educated for their own good. But the truth is even worse: they’re witches. And if their secret is discovered by the priests of the Brotherhood, it would mean an asylum, a prison ship - or an early grave.

Before her mother died, Cate promised to protect her sisters. But with only six months left to choose between marriage and the Sisterhood, she might not be able to keep her word … especially after she finds her mother’s diary, uncovering a secret that could spell her family’s destruction. Desperate to find alternatives to their fate, Cate starts scouring banned books and questioning rebellious new friends, all while juggling tea parties, shocking marriage proposals, and a forbidden romance with the completely unsuitable Finn Belastra.

If what her mother wrote is true, the Cahill girls aren’t safe. Not from the Brotherhood, the Sisterhood - not even from each other.

My thoughts:

My mom got Born Wicked for me for my birthday, and I have to admit, I was a little skeptic on whether or not I’d enjoy it. It was such a fun read though! The style was very simple, but better than Stephenie Meyer, that’s for damn sure. It was a nice book to read over spring break, an interesting plot line complete with sexual tension that I love. The parallels between the brotherhood and the Republican candidates was also quite interesting, as they both have pretty much the same beliefs.

I award Born Wicked a 6/10.

snuff by chuck palahniuk

Summary (from back cover):

In the crowded greenroom of a porn-movie production, hundreds of men mill around in their boxers, awaiting their turn with the legendary Cassie Wright. An gaining adult film star, Cassie intends to cap her career by breaking the world record for serial fornication by having sex with 600 men on camera — one of whom may want to kill her.

My thoughts:

I’ve been a fan of Chuck Palaniuk ever since I read my first book of his. He has such a talent for taking strange happenings and making them almost supernatural. Like this lovely novel Snuff here. Sure, it’s about a porn star, but he adds so much more substance to the storyline that it’s…amazing. My only - literally, only - complaint about this book is that the story seems a little choppy at times because it’s told through the perspectives of five different men.

I award Snuff a 9/10.

deja dead by kathy reichs

Summary (from back cover):

Her life is devoted to justice — for those she never even knew.

In the year since Temperance Brennan left behind a shaky marriage in North Carolina, work has often preempted her weekend plans to explore Quebec. When a female corpse is discovered meticulously dismembered and stashed in trash bags, Tempe detects an alarming pattern — and she plunges into a harrowing search for a killer. But her investigation is about to place those closest to her — her best friend and her own daughter — in mortal danger….

My thoughts:

I mainly picked up Deja Dead because I love the TV show “Bones” and that’s based extremely loosely on this series of books about the fictional life of Temperance Brennan. Although I was expecting something extremely different from what the book actually delivered, it entertained me fairly well until the end. However, where many books centered around a female character have some kind of sexual tension between the female lead and a male character, this book was lacking in that. That part was kind of a letdown because I was expecting a Booth-like character.

Overall, I would have to give this book an average rating of 6.5/10.

jasper jones by craig silvey

Summary (from inside cover): Charlie Bucktin, a bookish thirteen-year-old, is startled one summer night by an urgent knock on his bedroom window. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in their small mining town, and he has come to ask for Charlie’s help. Terribly afraid but desperate to impress, Charlie follows him into the night.

Jasper takes him to his secret glade, where Charlie witnesses Jasper’s horrible discovery. With his secret sitting like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and  pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and suspicion. He locks horns with his tempestuous mother, falls nervously in love, and battles to keep a lid on his zealous best friend. In the simmering summer when everything changes, Charlie learns why the truth of things is so hard to know, and even harder to hold in his heart.

My thoughts: I didn’t have many expectations going into reading this book as I thought it was written more for an audience of young teenagers. Because of my low expectations, I think I enjoyed it more than I would have.

It’s certainly an interesting story to be told, but I do have a few complaints about how it was done. For example, when Jasper’s “horrible discovery” is made known to us, he wishes to investigate it. I was led to believe that this would be more of a sleuthing story because of that, but truth be told there was minimal sleuthing. That’s what disappointed me the most. The author takes us on a journey through the small town and everyone’s lives, but fails to do what he at first promises.

However, the book does redeem itself in some ways. Another mystery is introduced, and that is the mystery of an elderly resident of the town. That one is unraveled, albeit very suddenly. And the language used strongly relates to the location where it is supposed to take place: Australia. Therefore, I rate Jasper Jones a 5/10.

fight club by chuck palahniuk

Summary (from bn.com): THE FIRST RULE about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.

Every weekend, in the basements and parking lots of bars across the country, young men with whitecollar jobs and failed lives take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded just as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter, and dark, anarchic genius, and it’s only the beginning of his plans for violent revenge on an empty consumer-culture world.

My thoughts:

I’ve read a few other Chuck Palahniuk books and have thoroughly enjoyed them all. Palahniuk has a way of humanizing characters that may not be the easiest to relate to. The narrator and Tyler Durden are very entertaining in their crazy ideas in fairly averages lives. The way the story is told surprised me, the way it jumps around. But it never lost me; if anything it made the story a little more clear before everything was revealed. I award Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk a 10/10.

the girl with the dragon tattoo by stieg larsson

Summary (from back cover): Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continued to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together the tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

My thoughts: Extremely entertaining from cover to cover and entirely well thought out. Going into it, I wasn’t sure how much I’d connect with the main character Blomkvist, but once the story gets going it’s pretty easy to understand him and his way of thinking. I love the relationship between him and Lisbeth Salander. They seem so different on the outside, but they both have a strong desire to delve as deep as they have to in order to find out the truth.

Near the end however, there was a time when one event seemed to jump too quickly to another, but that is the only thing that got on my nerves even the slightest bit. Overall, it would have to make my ‘favorite books’ list! I award The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a 9.5/10.

miss peregrine’s home for peculiar children by ransom riggs

Summary (from front cover): It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that Miss Peregrine’s children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow — impossible though it seems — they may still be alive.

My thoughts: A very entertaining and quick read, it will have you wondering your pants off. It’s very creatively done, especially how the photos are intertwined with the plot. The characters are very likable, and the imagery is enough to create a clear picture in one’s mind’s eye. However, there are some points when the plot line feels a bit cheesy and some relationships between characters highly unlikely. Therefore, I give Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children a 6/10.

the lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring by j.r.r. tolkien

Summary (from back cover): In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages, it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit.

In a sleepy village in the shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

My thoughts: Everyone these days seems to be more overcome with Pottermania that we’ve forgotten about the classics. Though I’ll admit I’ve only ever read the first two LOTR (I’m ashamed….) along with The Hobbit, I’ve promised myself I will read them all this time around. And you know what? I’m loving it so far. The Fellowship of the Ring is written in a way that calls to memory olden times. But that’s more than okay - it’s not like it’s supposed to take place in a modern world. The language is what I struggled so much with when I was 13/14 years old - it just didn’t make sense to me why they speak as they do. But now, 19-year-old me just thinks it’s beautiful.

And the land that Tolkien creates is just so intricate, and the books even come accompanied by maps. Every once in a while I can’t help but think of the comparison my senior year English teacher gave - the lands in Lord of the Rings are akin to the different circles of hell in Dante’s Inferno. Knowing that this time around makes for a more fascinating read.

Everything about this book is top notch. I award The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring a 10/10.

the invention of hugo cabret by brian selznick

Summary (from inside cover): Orphan, clock keeper, and theif, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks - like the gears of the clocks he keeps - with an eccentric, bookish girl and a bitter old man who runs a toy booth in the train station, Hugo’s undercover life and his most precious secret are put in jeopardy. A critic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message from hugo’s dead father form the backbone of this intricate, tender, and spellbinding mystery.

My thoughts: While I rarely revert to reading children’s books, The Invention of Hugo Cabret was just an absolutely wonderful treat! The story was quite an interesting one with some suspense mixed in. The fantasy aspect of the tale works very well and is easily believable. It’s a giant book - over 500 pages - but about half of those pages are pictures which continue telling the story. It’s very originally done the way the pictures are interwoven with the text, and works to the story’s advantage because it creates a clearer image.

It’s an easy and a quick read for older readers, but I definitely recommend it! And did you know there’s a sequel??

I award Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret a 7.5/10.

donnie brasco: my undercover life in the mafia by joseph pistone

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Summary (from front & back flap): “The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it, no paper notices plastered on lampposts and billboards. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

Within these nocturnal black-and-white-stiped tents awaits an utterly unique experience, a feast for the senses, where one can get lost in a maze of clouds, meander through a lush garden made of ice, stare in wonderment as the tattooed contortionist folds herself into a small glass box, and become deliciously tipsy from the scents of caramel and cinnamon that waft through the air.

Welcome to Le Cirque des Reves.

Beyond the smoke and mirrors, however, a fierce competition is under way — a contest between two young illusionists, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood to compete in a ‘game’ to which they have been irrevocably bound by their mercurial masters. Unbeknownst to the players, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will.

As the circus travels around the world, the feats of magic gain fantastical new heights with every stop. The game is well under way and the lives of all those involved — the eccentric circus owner, the elusive contortionist, the mystical fortune-teller, and a pair of red-headed twins born backstage among them — are swept up in a wake of sepals and charms.

But when Celia discovers that Marco is her adversary, they begin to think of the game not as a competition but as a wonderful collaboration. With no knowledge of how the game must end, they innocently tumblr headfirst into love. A deep, passionate, and magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

Their masters still pull the strings, however, and this unforeseen occurrence forces them to intervene with dangerous consequences, leaving the lives of everyone from the performers to the patrons hanging in the balance.”

My thoughts: As Erin Morgenstern’s debut novel, The Night Circus starts her off with a bang! The language in it is beautiful, elegant, exquisite. She paints pictures of what’s going on - which is important as it is a circus entirely different from anything we may know.

And the storyline might sound like something many of us are familiar with (Water for Elephants), but I assure you it is not. This is a world of Morgenstern’s own creation and is not comparable to what we are used to. The love plot is very drawn out and not always predictable. But who wants predictability in their reading? The plot of the circus is quite expertly woven.

This is a book I will definitely be recommending for years to come! I award it a 10/10.

water for elephants by sara gruen

From bn.com:

As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.

My thoughts:

Such a riveting book! From the very beginning I was hooked. It’s not just the way the author tells the story - her language and all - but the characters themselves and the depth they have. Definitely one of my favorite books. Glad I read it! (Even though I mostly only picked it up because I wanted to see the movie, but only after I read it.)

My rating: 10/10