May Reading Wrap Up

Cumulative Books Read in 2012: 66
Books Read This Month: 13
Difference from previous month: +4
Avg Rating: 3.07 Stars
Difference from previous month: -0.13 stars
Pages Read: 4,076
Difference from previous month: +1,089 pages

OK- So May wasn't terrible... It really wasn't the BEST reading month I've had, there were some real clunkers, but overall, I've read more so that's a plus. :)

For the Real Life Bookclub:

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was amazing. I don't think I would have ever picked up this book, if not for my bookclub, but I was blown away by it. I thought it was well-written, and intriguing, and immensely thought-provoking. It was surprisingly sympathetic as well, and brutally honest, which is exactly what it should have been. Definitely one for the re-read pile.

The Awesome:

Summer Knight by Jim Butcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a great book. I loved Butcher's take on fairies, and his books never fail to entertain. I've just started the 7th book in the series (Summer Knight was the 4th) so I'm definitely hooked! Highly recommend this series. :D

The Good:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book once I got into it. I thought that the epistolary format worked pretty well, and I liked the characters and the feeling of the time. It wasn't really as emotional as I'd have expected it to be, but still very enjoyable and worth reading.

The Bad:

The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This was really one of the worst written books I've ever read. 3rd graders have better command of punctuation and grammar than this guy. Oy. This was really bad, to the point where it was almost funny, but still. Just... Just bad. Save yourself the red ink and read something else. You're not missing anything with this one.

Did Not Finish:

Ghost Story by Peter Straub. I just... could not... continue reading. It was like wading through quicksand. Blah. I'm not even taking the time to link and whatnot.

April Reading Wrap Up

Books Read: 9
Difference from previous month: -6
Avg Rating: 3.20 Stars
Difference from previous month: -0.09 stars
Pages Read: 2,9877
Difference from previous month: -631 pages

Oh boy... April was even worse than March for reading. I read fewer books and overall liked them less... Here's hoping that May will be better!

For the Real Life Bookclub:

House Rules by Jodi Picoult
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book was very interesting and informative. It was my first Picoult book, and I really enjoyed it. I thought it was well-written, and intriguing, and that it fairly portrayed Asperger's Syndrome as well as how it would affect a family and a community. I definitely look forward to more of her books, now that I have an idea of what I can expect.

The Awesome:

The Alienist by Caleb Carr
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a great book, and I'm very glad I read it. There were great characters, a very interesting and perplexing series of horrific murders, and reasonable theories used to solve them. Add in the awesome detailing of 1890s New York city and its inhabitants, and their mindsets, appalling as they may have been, and this was definitely well worth reading.

The Good:

The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So... Y'all know I'm a huge, huge Brandon Sanderson Stephen King fan, right? Because if I saw that man walking down the street, I would probably start babbling in adoration and drool all over myself in the most embarrassing way possible. I LOVE HIS BOOKS. Love.
(Yeah, I just copied this from last month's post about Brandon Sanderson... because it's just as apt for Stephen King as it was for BSands. Actually, more so. ♥)

I thought that this one was a good addition to the Dark Tower series, but I admit to wanting more with the ka-tet. This was more of a Mid-World/Multiverse story, and didn't do much to move the ka-tet along their path, but it was good, and worth reading nonetheless.

The Bad:

Children of Men by P.D. James
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

You may never, ever see this again from me, because it goes against pretty much everything I believe to be true... but in this case, I'm going to say it, because this book is the exception to the rule.

Just see the movie. It's more concise, more entertaining, more exciting, and more interesting. Plus Clive Owen. Win.

The Did Not Finish:

No DNFs this month... woo! :)

March Reading Wrap-up

Books Read: 15
Difference from previous month: +2
Avg Rating: 3.29 Stars
Difference from previous month: + 0.37 stars
Pages Read: 3,618
Difference from previous month: - 945 pages

So... yeah, remember this?

Obviously, my monthly reading plan did not work, and was a huge fail. I didn't read half of the books I wanted to, and it felt wayyyyy too much like work to go at it like that. So, back to the weekly ones in April.

And I read nearly a thousand fewer pages. I feel like a failure. BUT... On the plus side, I read a few children's books on We Give Books, which means that I've donated a few as well. So maybe not a total failure?

So... anyway, here are the highlights of what I did manage to get around to reading. Enjoy! :)

For the Real Life Bookclub:

The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book was... interesting. It was my first Rushdie book, and I pretty much loved the first half of it. I thought it was funny and irreverent and awesome. Unfortunately, the second half didn't quite match up to the first half's greatness, so this one is only a 3 star book for me, but I definitely look forward to more of Rushdie's books... now that I have a tiny idea of what I can expect.

The Awesome:

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Obviously, I loved this book. You can read my full review here, but I will just say that this book was fantastic. I loved the characters, the world, the funny, and the horror. It was everything that I think a "Space Opera" should be... now that I know what one is. ;)

The Good:

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So... Y'all know I'm a huge, huge Brandon Sanderson fan, right? Because if I saw that man walking down the street, I would probably start babbling in adoration and drool all over myself in the most embarrassing way possible. I LOVE HIS BOOKS. Love.

I thought that this one was great, but it definitely did feel like a first book, and I thought that the ending was a bit weak and open ended... but I guess that leaves me with the hope that he'll come back to write another book in this world and firm up the ending for me. That would be awesome.

Anyway, this book is full of great characters, and interesting magic, and other general greatness. I highly recommend it. Start with this one, and then watch Sanderson's stories get exponentially more and more amazing with each one. :D

The Bad:

Rapunzel by Rachel Isadora
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Oh boy... This book was great on one level: the artwork. Every other facet of this book was a huge fail. From the Wiki-summary-like storytelling, to the blackhole where the stories life and substance should be, to the fact that the main character, Rapunzel has only one line in the entire book, and it's insanely vapid, to the fact that the only quality worth mentioning in that main character is the fact that she's beautiful... it was just a really, really atrocious retelling.

And this is for small children, ages 4-7. Sure, let's teach them that nothing else matters if you're pretty. The guy will fall in love with you, for no reason at all, then he'll solve all of your problems, and then you'll magically solve all of his because you love him sooo very much... for no reason at all. Great.

If this one hadn't been less than 40 pages long, it would have been a DNF. That's pretty sad.

The Did Not Finish:

No DNFs this month... woo! :)

February Reading Wrap-up

Books Read: 13
Difference from previous month: - 2
Avg Rating: 2.92 Stars
Difference from previous month: - 0.35 stars
Pages Read: 4,563
Difference from previous month: + 967 pages

I didn't have any 5 star books this month! :( That makes me kind of sad. Oh well... nothing to do about it now. Here's the wrap up, sans all the formatting and pictures this time, because I'm feeling kind of bleh at the moment.

The Great:
Tie: The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe & Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.
Both of these were great in their own way. I didn't really expect to like The Hum and the Shiver, so the fact that I was drawn into the world and the writing as much as I was made for a very pleasant surprise. I had issues with the book, but maybe, just maybe, if this is the start to a series, or if there's a sequel, those will go away. ;)

Flowers for Algernon was great, and definitely made me think, but it was not nearly as emotional as I would've liked, and that's the main reason I couldn't give the book 5 stars. It was a bit detached... I wanted more humanity. I really did enjoy it though.

The Good:
Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie
I was pleasantly surprised to like this one as much as I did! Very funny, sweet and very readable!

The Bad:
Tie again: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness & Genesis by Bernard Beckett.
Ugh... Sorry, fans...I really, really, really wanted to love this book, especially after loving A Monster Calls... but there was just a lot that I did not like about it at all. Very disappointing.

Genesis was interesting... in the way that advanced placement school history lessons are interesting to non-AP students. Which is to say, not very. That's how the story read, felt, and was presented. Original? Sure. Fun? Not so much. And then the twist at the end made the whole thing moot for me, and I was left wondering what the hell the whole point was in the first place. Bah. No good.

The DNF:
Coupla these, too: World Without End by Ken Follett & Guilty Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
World Without End was just too, too long... Soooooooooo long. And so similar to Pillars of the Earth that it was practically the same story. I quit about 80% through that one. So much time wasted that could have been spent doing something else.

Guilty Pleasures just didn't do anything for me at all. The writing didn't work, the story didn't interest me... Just nothing happening for me. That's pretty much all there is to say.

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Soooo... How was your reading month? Anything good? Want to vent about a total wall-banger that you wish had never come into your life? Leave me comments! :)

January 2012 Reading Wrap Up

Because I kinda like lists, I think I'll start doing a monthly wrap up with my choices for the Great, the Good, and the Bad, and the DNF. Sounds fun, right? Sure, sure, just humor me. ;)

Books Read: 15
Avg Rating: 3.27 Stars
Pages Read: 3,596

The Great:
The End of the Party by Graham Greene
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a short story (and by short, I mean SHORT -- it's only 6 pages long), so I hemmed and hawed a bit before deciding to feature this one. But the more I think about it, the more I know it deserves to be right where it is, topping this list. This little story packs a wallop. It's easily one of the best short stories I've ever read, and I've read a lot of them. This is the kind of story that sticks with you for a long, long time. I highly recommend reading it. You can find it here for free online.

The Good:
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one is pretty dang different than my usual reading fare, but I really enjoyed it. It made me cringe, it made me think, it made me very glad that we didn't lose to Germany and/or Japan in WWII!

If you haven't had a chance to read this one, I'd say to give it a chance. It's intriguing and unique, that's for sure!

The Bad:
The Death Cure by James Dashner
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

After loving The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials, The Death Cure just belly flopped into the pool of What The Hell?! and soaked me in a wave disappointment.

It was illogical, a huge cop-out, and just plain bad. Maddeningly, infuriatingly, Hulk-needs-to-smash-this, atrociously bad.

DNF:
The God Killers by David Simpson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars (Did Not Finish)

I thought this book's premise was very intriguing, and that it definitely has potential. Unfortunately, the writing just made reading the book extremely hard, and it overwhelmed the story.

I don't consider myself to be an overly critical reader, but I just can't recommend this one. If it was re-worked and edited, I think it has definite potential to be a good book. But as it was when I attempted it (because I just couldn't continue reading it), it needs a lot of work.