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My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Okay, look. It’s very silly. It’s teenagers becoming vampyres. Oh yes, with a ‘y’. And yet, it’s like a high school book, because the house of night is a school for kids going through the change to become vampyres. Or die, whichever.
The lead character has mary sue written all over her (she’s the bestest and most talented wampyre to be (aka fledling) in the history of ever! she has a million talents and the most popular guy in school instantly loves her!) and I admit it – it is utterly moronic. But it’s fun! And the lead character isn’t a Bella, as in her life doesn’t revolve around some dude, and she can stand up for herself just fine.
Good, simple fun. I like it.
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
It had so much potential. A girl narrowly escapes death of a car accident and ends up hearing people’s thoughts and seeing their auras. There was so many places this could go, but in the end it ended up being a hybrid of Twilight and GloomCookie, only more Twilight than GloomCookie due to the absolute bastardisation of the Goth character (did you know that if you skip instead of skulk, you’re not REALLY into the Goth scene? No, me either) and descending into really boring stereotypes.
I read the book in one evening, praying for it to improve, and I was bored. Bored bored bored. And I will read the next one because I already bought it and clearly I am a masochist. Plus I do kind of want to know where they go from where this book ended (no spoiler), because it doesn’t seem like it really needs a sequel. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone I know because even though it was a quick and easy read, it just made me annoyed.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book was recommended to me by a bookshop girl in Oxford Street, who I need to go back and thank. I could not put this book down – I ate through this in a day.
Glass Houses is yet another YA novel with vampires, but the vampires are scary beasts who you need to hide from, not creatures to have meaningful or co-dependent relationships with. Our Heroine, Claire, is in Morganville to go to college when she is pushed down the stairs of the dorms by the dorm bully who has it in for Claire after Claire made her look stupid. Claire survives, and escapes into a house share in the town, which it turns out is run by vampires. If you’re not under vampire protection in Morganville, it’s open season on your blood. And in this house, no one is under protection. Claire, having made an enemy who has powerful friends, is in big trouble.
I was honestly scared by the book. Okay, I’m a wimp, but I was on the edge of my seat (so to speak) the entire time. Well written, great world building, good characters, and one entirely unbelievable Goth girl (see the Eve diaries at the end for maximum eye-rolling effect) – could’ve researched that part a bit better. But fair enough, the world doesn’t revolve around me and my gothness, and it was delightful to have a heroine that was young, strong and very smart.
Of course this is a series, and I’ve already ordered the next three books.
In 2008, I read 44 books. In 2009, I read 51 books. I doubt I’ll have time to beat that this year! Then again, I did get a Kindle from Mr Pharmacist and I am most certainly a book addict. Edit: Holy crap, I’ve read almost 40 books and it is only June at the time of writing. New personal best??)
- Iain M. Banks – The Algebraist
- Sean O’Neill – The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque
- Sapphire – Push
- Charles Storss – Glasshouse
- Rachel Caine – Glass Houses (The Morganville Vampires #1)
- Laurell K. Hamilton – Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #1)
- Laurell K. Hamilton – The Laughing Corpse (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #2)
- Joe Haldeman – The Forever War
- Martin Roach – Take That: Inside the Biggest Comeback in British Pop History (horrible, and badly researched!)
- Laurell K. Hamilton – Circus of the Damned(Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #3)
- Rachel Caine – The Dead Girls’ Dance (The Morganville Vampires #2)
- Rachel Caine – Midnight Alley (The Morganville Vampires #3)
- Rachel Caine – Feast of Fools(The Morganville Vampires #4)
- Rachel Caine – Lord of Misrule (The Morganville Vampires #5)
- Rachel Caine – Carpe Corpus (The Morganville Vampires #6)
- Rachel Caine – Fade Out (The Morganville Vampires #7)
- Iain M. Banks – The Wasp Factory
- Arthur Conan Doyle – A Study in Scarlet/The Sign of Four
- Wil Wheaton – Just a Geek
- Martin Millar – The Good Fairies of New York
- Rick Riordan – The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson #1)
- Rick Riordan – The Sea Of Monsters (Percy Jackson #2)
- Rick Riordan – The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson #3)
- Laurell K. Hamilton – The Lunatic Cafe (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #4)
- Laurell K. Hamilton – Bloody Bones (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #5)
- Stieg Larsson – The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
- Stieg Larsson – The Girl who Played with Fire
- Stieg Larsson – The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest
- Philip Pullman – The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
- Melissa Marr – Stopping Time
- Orson Scott Card – Shadow of the Hegemon
- Rick Riordan – The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson #4)
- Rick Riordan – The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson #5)
- Seth Grahame-Smith – Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
- Terry Pratchett – Equal Rites
- Melissa Marr – Radiant Shadows
- Robert J. Sawyer – FlashForward
- Stephenie Meyer – The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner
Fujitsu Flepia is slow, expensive, but heralds a color e-paper age – Boing Boing Gadgets.
I have an iRex iLiad myself and love it to bits. To me, this is the most exciting thing happening in gadget world right now. My hope is that e-book readers will revolutionise the book industry in the same way the iPod has changed how we buy music. The Kindle is a good step in the right direction – especially when it comes to availability of titles – but I can’t wait to see what happens next.
My main concern with e-books so far is that they’re difficult to find, every online store for e-books I’ve seen have been a nightmare to navigate. And as many smart people, including Jakob Nielsen have pointed out, the e-book readers are great for fiction, but horrible for non-fiction. I have attempted to read manuals on the iLiad, and it’s an absolute nightmare.
Will the technology move to a point where you can quickly scroll through the pages of the book, like you can with a hard copy? Here’s hoping.
I want to recommend a good site for book lovers: BookMooch.
The concept is really simple.
- You register, and add books you own that you would happily part with
- Other users request books from your list
- You send off some books, and get points
- You use the points to request books for yourself.
I registered yesterday, and so far I’ve had 11 requests out of my 38 books, with another 10 that someone has shown interest in, and might get. I’ve added books I want to a wish list, and will receive a notification if any of them become available. I need to find more books though as I already have 12 points, so any book recommendations are welcome! I especially like contemporary fiction and sci-fi, but I am open minded. See my goodreads profile for books I’ve already read.
One of my goals for 2009 is to consume less, as in buy fewer new things. I want to, as much as possible, buy books, games and other articles second hand, and sell or give away items I no longer use. I have a small TV, a DVD player and two compact music systems to give away to anyone who fancies them, and a big bag of clothes. The intent is to take it all to a charity shop, only I don’t have a car, which makes it more difficult. BookMooch fits in really well with this goal.
Another goal I have for this year is to spend less money shopping. And while this may cost me postage, it should be cheaper than buying new! Besides, with my extremely expensive pending root canal, I will have no money to buy anything for ages anyway, so I might as well get used to it now.
It’s a new year, time for a new list. In 2008, I read 44 books. I want to read more this year!
Reading list for 2009:
- Kurt Vonnegut – Mother Night
- Mark Haddon – A Spot of Bother
- Mohsin Hamid – The Reluctant Fundamentalist
- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward – All the President’s Men
- Mikhail Bulgakov – The Master and Margarita
- David Frost – Frost/Nixon
- Jeff Povey – The Serial Killers Club
- Orson Scott Card – Speaker for the Dead (Audio Book)
- Caroly Jessop – Escape
- Andy Secombe – The last house in the galaxy
- Richard Matheson – I am Legend
- Neil Stephenson – Cobweb
- Kurt Vonnegut – Slapstick – or lonesome no more
- Elissa Wall – Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect
- Mikael Niemi – Populärmusik från Vittula
- Barack Obama – The Audacity of Hope (audio book)
- Ben Goldacre – Bad Science
- Marjane Satrapi – Embroideries
- Barney Stinson – The Bro Code
- Phillip P. Pan – Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China
- Elissa Wall – Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect
- Kurt Vonnegut – Slapstick, or Lonesome No More!
- Neal Stephenson – Anathem
- John Hodgman – Areas of my expertise (audio book)
- John Scalzi – Old man’s war
- Mark Brooks - World War Z
- Orson Scott Card – Xenocide (Ender saga book 3)
- Melissa Marr – Wicked Lovely
- Orson Scott Card – Children of the Mind (Ender saga book 4)
- Orson Scott Card – Ender’s Game (repeated read)
- Rachel North – Out of the Tunnel
- Will Wheaton – Dancing Barefoot
- Melissa Marr – Ink Exchange
- Melissa Marr – Fragile Eternity
- Terry Pratchett – Nation
- Reza Aslan – How to win a cosmic war
- John Scalzi – The Ghost Brigades
- Charlaine Harris – Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1)
- Charlaine Harris -Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse, #2)
- Charlaine Harris – Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #3)
- Max Brooks – The Zombie Survival Guide
- Gwen Ifill – Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama
- Charlaine Harris- Dead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse, #4)
- Charlaine Harris – Dead as a Doornail (Sookie Stackhouse, #5)
- Charlaine Harris – Definitely Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #6)
- Charlaine Harris – All Together Dead (Sookie Stackhouse, #7)
- Charlaine Harris – From Dead to Worse (Sookie Stackhouse, #8)
- Charlaine Harris – Dead and Gone (Sookie Stackhouse, #9)
- Alfred Bester – The Stars My Destination
- Peter F. Hamilton – The Dreaming Void
- Michael Wolff – Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch
Way past last year 
I’m giving reading this a second go as it came with my Illiad, and I was reminded it existed by the two annoying love birds in the Twilight series going on about it for half a book. So far, I’m not sure I’m liking it at all, but I’m willing to give it another chapter this time, so that perhaps I can at least find the plot. If it has one. Oh please, have a plot.
Is it possible to read this book without getting the Kate Bush song stuck in your head? I’m not managing, I’ve been humming it for two days straight. I don’t know the lyrics, so I’m just singing gibberish, apart from the chorus. I understand Cathy is going to be banging on a window eventually? I swear, finding out what the hell this song is about is probably reason enough to read the book.
A ~ next to the ones I’ve already read.
Here’s the full list of books my Illiad came with:
1. 20,000 leagues under the seas – Jules Verne
2. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
3. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll ~
4. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
5. Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
6. Beowulf – Anonymous
7. Beyond Good and Evil – Friedrich Nietzsche
8. Candide – Voltaire
9. Carmilla – Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
10. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
11. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
12. Dracula – Bram Stokers
13. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
14. Emma – Jane Austen ~
15. Grimm’s Fairy Tales – Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm ~ (some, anyway)
16. Gulliver’s Travels –Jonathan Swift ~
17. Hamlet – William Shakespeare ~
18. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
19. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
20. King Solomon’s Mines – Henry Rider Haggard
21. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
22. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
23. Paradise Lost – John Milton
24. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
25. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
26. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen ~
27. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
28. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Arthur Conan Doyle
29. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain
30. The Art of War – Sun Tzu
31. The Brothers Karamasov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
32. The Call of Cthulhu – H.P. Lovecraft
33. The Call of the Wild – Jack London
34. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
35. The Divine Comedy – Dante
36. The Hound of Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle
37. The Iliad – Homer
38. The Jungle Book – Rudyard Kipling
39. The Lost Continent – C.J. Cutcliffe Hyne
40. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde ~
41. The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli
42. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
43. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
44. The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
45. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – Frank Baum
46. The Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
47. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
48. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
49. White Fang – Jack London
50. Wuthering Heights – Charlotte Bronte
I’ve read some of these, but not all. Which one have you read? Which ones did you like? Did you hate any? Do tell.
I’ve gone through three days of migraine. Saturday started okay, good session with osteopath. Then all his good work was completely undone by my pilates session, where something just clearly went wrong, I was in agony in my lower back. I went home, and straight to bed.
Drugs took care of things most of Sunday, though I was still in pain in my muscles so was pretty miserable. We tried to remedy my mood by going to see X-files, which was absolutely rubbish actually. You can tell by how not with it we were when we were both surprised by the fact that Mully and Scully are now a couple but they address each other with their last names. Wow. It’s probably more for the die-hards than for me, who lost interest after a few seasons.
Not that I’m pretending some sort of high-brow betterness or anything. I’ve spend most of the weekend immersed in the Twilight series, reading New Moon and Eclipse before today starting with Breaking Dawn. The latter two were highly enjoyable, Breaking Dawn is a big o_O of a book. At least it took my mind off the migraine for the most part. I couldn’t watch tv or be on the computer most of the day, so my only option was lying in bed, reading. This one past the time well enough.
As I’m reading it using my Illiad e-book reader, I had to switch to a paperback when I was in the bath (an attempt to release tension in my muscles and joints), and enjoyed a chapter of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet. What can I say, I enjoy YA novels. Sometimes you want a gourmet meal, and other times you’re perfectly happy with a Whopper Junior Cheese with onion rings, know what I’m saying?
It is now past 11pm and I’m not tired at all, due to the whole sleeping most of the day thing. Sigh. I guess I’ll read more of Breaking Dawn, then. As someone somewhere on the internet said, the pages are lined with crack. Very addictive stuff, honestly.
T-13
“I’d rather die than be with Mike Newton,” I protested. “I’d rather die than be with anyone but you.”
“Don’t be melodramatic, please.”
THANK YOU, EDWARD.
Hey, couldn’t you have said that once or twice in the last book?
..yes, I finished Twilight, and started New Moon straight away. Who drugged me and made me do this to myself? Fess up.
