Book bag

It is September 9th.  How did that happen?

It's like I was sucked into this blackhole of craziness and the universe decided to spit me out on the other side about six weeks later.

The first two weeks of August I did not read ANYTHING.

NOTHING.

NADA.

I know you are saying SERIOUSLY?   and I'm saying I KNOW, RIGHT??

I will tell you why.

It's called THE OLYMPICS.

Laundry didn't get done. Dinners didn't get fixed.  The house didn't get cleaned. It was like I hadn't had chocolate for two years and then someone locked me inside Godiva's factory.  Except obviously I HAVE had chocolate (and a lot of it) recently so that isn't a good analogy.  But you get the idea.

So here it is a month later and if you think I wasn't reading the whole time post-Olympics then you need to read my blog more cuz you obviously don't know me well AT ALL.

The problem is that now I can't really remember all I read. But here are some of the titles I do remember:

1)

The Demon King (A Seven Realms Novel) by Cinda Williams Chima / YA / **** 

and

2)

Exiled Queen, The (A Seven Realms Novel) by Cinda Williams Chima / YA / ****

and

3)

 The Gray Wolf Throne (A Seven Realms Novel) by Cinda Williams Chima / YA / **** 1/2

I first read "The Demon King" and the rest of the accompanying fantasy series last September for book group. I really enjoyed it and was excited to learn of a fourth book coming out in the fall.  My wonderful sister gave me an Amazon gift card for my birthday and I purchased the series for myself with it (thanks, sister).  

It is a tale of several young people from different walks of life who are trying to make the right choices for themselves and those around them. They each have their own sets of challenges.  The characters are imperfect and likeable.  There is a lot of adventure, a touch of romance, and several individual plot-lines that all wrap into one overarching story. The series does a great job "world-building" without overburdening the story. I highly recommend it.

4)

Shiver (Wolves of Mercy Falls) by Maggie Stiefvater / YA / ***1/2

and

5)

Linger (Wolves of Mercy Falls, Book 2) by Maggie Stiefvater / YA / **1/2

I had first read Shiver last year and did not give it a very good ranking as if just felt too teen angsty. I decided to give it another try as I had really enjoyed a new book by this author, called "THE SCORPIO RACES".  I was glad I read this book again. I enjoyed it much more the second time.  I do however wish she had ended with "Shiver".  The book "Linger" definetely feels like a book wherein the author had a story in mind, wrote the story, had success from said story, so decided to make a sequel.  The story line drags and stumbles and takes away from the magic of the first book.

6)

Trail of the Spellmans: Document #5 by Lisa Lutz / A / ****

This author totally CRACKS ME UP. She continues the narrative of Isabel Spellman, part of a family of Private Investigators. Life in the family business is never dull.  Not only are they spying on people for pay, but spying on each other in a constant  game of family dysfunction.  This author is laugh out loud funny and has a clever wit.

7)

Uglies (The Uglies) by Scott Westerfeld / YA / ****

This is a great dystopian story of a society that eliminates all jealousy, racism, and covetnous by surgerically altering all members of their society at age 16 to make them "pretty".  Tally Youngblood can't wait to leave the boring life of the "Uglies" for the non-stop fun and partying life of the "Pretties".  Unfortunately she makes friends with a group intent on defying the government and staying the way they are. This group has realized that the surgery to make you pretty also makes you mindless and compliant.  Before she knows it, she must betray her subversive friends in order to earn her altering surgery.  But as she works to find a way to break faith with her new found friends, she is won over to their cause.

This book is the start of a series and unfortunately is the best of the books.

8)

The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks / YA /***

From Goodreads: "Think vampires are romantic, sexy, and powerful? Think again. Vampires are dead. And unless they want to end up staked, they have to give up fanging people, admit their addiction, join a support group, and reform themselves."

This book opens with the Reformed Vampire Support group finding one of their members staked and consequently turned into ashes.  This odd-ball group of characters work together to solve the mystery.  They don't plan to take revenge on the killer... but instead plan to try to "reform" him and show him that they are just "people" too. It was quirky, sometimes humorous and had the potential to be quite witty.

9)

The Song of Achilles: A Novel by Madeline Miller / A / ***

Achilles was gay.  Who knew????

10)

The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag: A Flavia de Luce Novel (Flavia de Luce Mysteries) by Alan Bradley / YA / *** 1/2
Great quotes:
“You are unreliable, Flavia,' Father said. 'Utterly unreliable.'
Of course I was! It was one of the things I loved most about myself.” 
and
“I remembered that Beethoven's symphonies had sometimes been given names... they should have called the Fifth the Vampire, because it simply refused to lie down and die.” 
and
“I have to admit, though, that Cynthia was a great organizer, but then, so were the men with whips who got the pyramids built.” 

This is my second "Flavia de Luce Novel". The true delight of these novels is the 11 year old heroine, Flavia.  Her delighfult cheekiness and insatiable curiousity gets her into all kinds of scrapes and more than makes up for a mystery that was ho-hum. Thank you Ashlee for introducing us to these books.