12-26-11 Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman - Non-Fiction

2 - You know, I have to give this a 2 because even though I only read this about three weeks ago, I can't remember a thing about it except it had some funny parts and I didn't hate it. Even looking it up on www.bn.com and reading the reviews does not jar anything. So I would say read this if you've run out of stuff or just need to take up time. You won't remember anything about it anyway.

12-14-11 The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks - Fiction

2 - Sappy, but what do you expect from Sparks? I saw the twist, bittersweet ending coming and, yeah, I was right. This is a standard boy from the wrong side of the tracks falls in love with girl from a good family and they are kept apart but then come back together years later. Honestly, read The Notebook instead. Much better.

7-6-11 An Exaltation of Larks by Robert Reed - Fiction

2 - I didn't get it. I'll flat out say it. This book was kind of interesting and I finished it because I figured I'd get it by the end but, no. FYI - The turtles are the eternal beings and they are screwing with the past and giving everyone a chance to relive their existence once. I don't know, the characters were interesting and the story was pretty good but I got lost somewhere in the discussion of the time continuum and the ability to keep living out life and then returning to start over in 15 month intervals. Time travel stuff does have a tendency to confuse me when you get past the simple "Back to the Future" explanations but I just feel like I really didn't get this.

5-4-10 An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke - Fiction

2 - I thought from the jacket description that this would be an amusing mystery-type book. Nope. It was a real downer of a book that focuses on the cause and effect of truth and lies in our relationships. So it was not the kind of book I was looking to read which may have colored this review slightly. Add to that the fact that I found the main character, Sam, to be a bit .... desperate and pathetic are the best words I can come up with, and this became a slog through the marsh for me. Sam burned down the Emily Dickinson house with two people inside by accident as a teen but was tried and convicted as an arsonist and a murderer and served 10 years in prison. When released, he goes back to his parents' house who then ask him to please go to college because it's too hard for them to have him live there. So he goes to college, gets a degree, gets a wife, has two kids, and is living the average everyday life. Except he never told his wife about the fire but did tell her that his parents were dead. His world starts to crumble when the son of the people who died in the fire hunts him down. Basically, you can't get along in the world when your entire life is built from lies. I don't think I'll pick up anything else by Brock Clarke no matter how quirky it sounds.

2-13-10 Confidence Game by Michelle M. Welch - Fiction

2 - Mediocre. That's the best way to sum this one up. Too much politics without any depth or real background, shallow emotion, whiny emotionlessness. The characters are flat with no emotional hook for the reader. The politics of the world are laid flat like a map with no interest from any history and no explanation of true governmental structure. About halfway through the book I just wanted it to be over so I could start something else. There's barely a plot and I'm not sure even after finishing it if I guessed the right plot. I'd not bother with this one unless you have nothing else to read.

12-7-09 No Touch Monkey! And other travel lessons leaned too late by Ayun Halliday – Non-Fiction

2 – I would never in a million years travel anywhere with this woman, not even to the nearest bus stop.  She’s way too hippy-dippy and her knowledge of the locales is as good as if I picked a spot on the map and rolled my way through the area like a D&D player.  Yes, there are some amusing points in her travels but even when those come up all you can think is “She’s a bloody idiot.”  Getting surrounded by feral dogs in the middle of a monkey forest alone at midnight isn’t a great dog travel story, it’s the mark of a moron who’s lucky she lived long enough to have children and write this book.  A definite low in my travel book reading.

11-27-09 The Wizard Lord by Lawrence Watt-Evans – Fiction

2 – Ugh.  The character types and ideas are very interesting but the personalities and back stories (or lack of) that Watt-Evans used make the reader not really give a shit.  And this is the first book in a trilogy!  Needless to say, I will not be reading the second or third books because I just don’t care what happens.  The world he created is average in the fantasy genre but the character types are fascinating.  There is a set of eight heroes whose sole purpose is to keep the Wizard Lord in check.  The heroes are the Leader, the Seer, the Swordsman, the Archer, the Scholar, the Speaker, the Beauty, and the Thief.  The Wizard Lord’s power is tied to each of them so even if he goes over to the dark side he can’t just kill them off.  See….a great premise.  If only Watt-Evans had worked on some character development.  You don’t even like the main character, the new Swordsman; you’re just indifferent to him.  Glad I got this at the library so I can give it back.

10-16-09 When Shadows Fall by Brian Scott Smith – Fiction

2 – Garbage.  Not utter garbage or it would only rate a 1, but still garbage.  This book reads like a bad B horror flick.  Smith goes overboard on trying to make the bad guys really bad guys by pulling out all the Satanist clichés instead of giving decent back-story or information.  And his use of language is pretentious and sophomoric at the same time.  For example: “…it was their job to foil this cosmically diabolical plot and save the earth from accelerated ruin.”  I mean, really.  He uses animal and human sacrifice, spirit guides, mass murderers, demons, psychics, and zombies to try to make this scary but succeeds only in making the story messy because there is no back-story, no reason.  You don’t give a rat’s ass about any of the characters because they are shallow constructs.  Even so, some of the horror scenes are well written and the basic premise of the book is good.  The execution of the premise is what sucks.  I would suggest run screaming if you see this book.

7-8-09 Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve – Fiction

2 – Boring.  this is a twist on the King Arthur tales telling the true story of Arthur and how he came to be the legend of today through tricks and stories.  Somewhat interesting because of some of the history of the time but the total story told through the eyes of a young girl, Gwyna, who is the servant of Myrdden (Merlin) is dull and slow moving.  Not a lot of action or intrigue, not really any emotion.  Just words with some interesting historical references.  Really dull.

4-23-09 Frozen Fire by Tim Bowler - Fiction

2 - Ummmm, I didn't get it. I'll admit it...I. Did. Not. Get. This. Book. It was intriguing. The story of a girl who ends up being drawn to/tied to a mysterious boy who may or may not be from this world and who opens her eyes to a new vision of the world and her place in it. I think. I don't know. It won the Carnegie Medal.

4-9-09 The Wood Wife by Terri Windling - Fiction

2 - Boring. I like my fantasies to have a little more oomph; a bit more action. This is a quiet story which does suit the eventual end but just waaaay to slow for me. Windling based this on the art of Brian Froud and it's interesting in that way. The story is very contemplative. A cosmopolitan woman moves out to the Tucson desert to write a biography about a poet friend and ends up being introduced to a completely new world.

12-22-08 Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher - Fiction

2 - Eh. That's what I have to say about this book. Just.....Eh. I won't reread this, I don't want to read the sequel, I don't care what happens to the characters. The initial premise is interesting, a boy suddenly finds that statues can move and no one else can see them, but that's it. George, the boy, starts running at the end of chapter two and doesn't stop until the end of the book. What's he running from? Evil statues. What's he running to? Who freakin' knows! Nothing is explained in this book, not the who's, the why's, or the what the hell's. The whole point of the book is that George needs to find the Stone Heart but when he finally gets to that part he decides that maybe what he thought was the Stone Heart isn't and it could be something else. What? Don't know. And don't care.

11-30-08 What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn - Fiction

2 - Nope, didn't really like this one. I'd heard a lot about it, it won a Costa First Novel Award, but it just was not what I thought it would be and wasn't enjoyable either. This is another case of don't believe the cover blurb. this is not a mystery, this is not really about the girl who disappears, this is a character study of lonely, lost people. And boring. I finished it for two reasons: it was short and I really hoped to find out what happened on the day Kate Meaney disappeared. You do, in the very last chapter. Finally.

2-20-08 The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes - Fiction

2 - This book started out great: weird characters, a strange murder, the hint of not-quite-right. And then it turned into the Energizer bunny - it just kept going and going and going. By the end of the book, the great conclusion !SEMI-SPOILER! is that the two murders at the beginning meant nothing and were only used to draw the main character, and the reader, into the mess that was the main storyline. Blah. The most interesting characters, The Prefects (which I couldn't help but picture as Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum which actually made them creepier), were only in maybe the last 50 pages. I just was not happy with this book at all.

1-27-08 Jenna Starborn by Sharon Shinn - Fiction

2 - I can't believe it, but I did not like this book. I found it dull and slow with characters I just couldn't get invested in. The story of Jenna, a manufactured human who was neglected by her commissioner, Jenna Starborn follows this incredibly normal and well adjusted young woman on her journey through life. Perhaps if you liked Jane Eyre you would like this book as it is a re-imagining of that tale, but for me it is a true disappointment from Shinn.

12-11-07 The Night Climbers by Ivo Stourton - Fiction

2 - From the description on the jacket, I expected a bit of an action/thriller with building climbing escapades providing the backdrop for the story. WRONG! There are only, maybe, 12 pages describing the group's night climbing. The rest of the story is about a group of spoiled college kids, with the narrator being the odd man out being from a family with an average financial income, whose money supply is cut off. Amid increasing gambling and shopping debts, Francis, the cash cow of the group, hatches a plan involving a forged Picasso to get their extravagant lifestyle back on track. The narrator, James, is a whiny, wishy-washy boy/man without any truly redeeming qualities; Francis is a stereotypical moneyed bad boy who actively tries and succeeds in being disowned by his wealthy father; Jessica is a shallow, thin character with only beauty on her side; Michael is the epitomy of a pompus ass. the only character who is remotely interesting is Lisa, and the reader learns next to nothing about her. For me, this was an extremely disappointing book focused primarily on the limitlessness of excess.

8-1-07 Like Death by Tim Waggoner - Fiction

2 - If H.P. Lovecraft wrote hard-core porn. That's my best description of this book. I'm not easily turned off or super squeamish but it really was disgusting. The basic storyline really wasn't too bad, but I almost put this book down for good many times. Blech! Now I need to go shower.

7-28-07 Strangewood by Christopher Golden - Fiction

2 - This is marketed as horror but it's not really scary and not particularly good. An author's son suddenly goes into an unexplainable coma. It turns out the son has been kidnapped into Strangewood, the setting for his books. Here's where the story loses its punch: the author writes kids books. So the author OD's to put himself into a coma and enters Strangewood to canter around with his characters. So he's charging through Strangewood with characters named Mr. Tinklebum, Brownie the dancing bear, Fiddlestick the dragon, and the Peanut Butter General. The main baddie is Jackal Lantern. You see why it's just not scary.

5-30-06 Monster Blood Tattoo: Foundling by D.M. Cornish - Fiction

2 - This book was OK, but not an interesting enough story for me to bother with the second book. It's about monster hunters and an extremely dimwitted boy.

9-20-05 Desert Places by Blake Crouch - Fiction

2 - Not much to say on this one. It started out interesting, then went to crap. Kinda interesting middle, then crap again.