Tintin's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 06 Apr 2025 11:26:38 -0700 60 Tintin's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg The Wonder 28449257
An educated sceptic, Lib expects to expose the fast as a hoax right away. But as she gets to know the girl she becomes more and more unsure. Is Anna a fraud, or a 'living wonder'? Or is something more sinister unfolding right before Lib's eyes?

Written with all the propulsive tension that transported readers of Room, The Wonder asks what lengths we would go to for the love of a child.]]> 291 Emma Donoghue 0316393878 Tintin 0 to-read 3.60 2016 The Wonder
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Man Called Ove 18774964
Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon, the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him the bitter neighbor from hell, but must Ove be bitter just because he doesn't walk around with a smile plastered to his face all the time?

Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.]]> 337 Fredrik Backman 1476738017 Tintin 0 to-read 4.35 2012 A Man Called Ove
author: Fredrik Backman
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2012
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue]]> 50623864
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 Victoria E. Schwab 0765387565 Tintin 0 to-read 4.16 2020 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Our Infinite Fates 210395729 They've loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They've killed each other in every one.

Evelyn remembers all her past lives. She also remembers that in every single one, she’s been murdered before her eighteenth birthday by Arden, a supernatural being whose soul―and survival―is tethered to hers.

The problem is that she’s quite fond of the life she’s in now, and her little sister needs her for bone marrow transplants in order to stay alive. If Evelyn wants to save her sister, she’ll have to:

1. Find the centuries-old devil who hunts her through each life―before they find her first.
2. Figure out why she’s being hunted and finally break their curse.
3. Try not to fall in love.

The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue meets This is How You Lose The Time War in this fantastical love story that defies death as two souls reincarnate through the centuries.]]> 352 Laura Steven 1250333881 Tintin 0 to-read 3.76 2025 Our Infinite Fates
author: Laura Steven
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Emperor and the Endless Palace]]> 146145975 “What if I told you that the feeling we call love is actually the feeling of metaphysical recognition, when your soul remembers someone from a previous life?�

In the year 4 BCE, an ambitious courtier is called upon to seduce the young emperor—but quickly discovers they are both ruled by blood, sex and intrigue.

In 1740, a lonely innkeeper agrees to help a mysterious visitor procure a rare medicine, only to unleash an otherworldly terror instead.

And in present-day Los Angeles, a college student meets a beautiful stranger and cannot shake the feeling they’ve met before.

Across these seemingly unrelated timelines woven together only by the twists and turns of fate, two men are reborn, lifetime after lifetime. Within the treacherous walls of an ancient palace and the boundless forests of the Asian wilderness to the heart-pounding cement floors of underground rave scenes, our lovers are inexplicably drawn to each other, constantly tested by the worlds around them.

As their many lives intertwine, they begin to realize the power of their undying love—a power that transcends time itself…but one that might consume them both.

An unpredictable roller coaster of a debut novel, The Emperor and the Endless Palace is a genre-bending romantasy that challenges everything we think we know about true love.]]> 312 Justinian Huang 0778305236 Tintin 0 to-read 3.48 2024 The Emperor and the Endless Palace
author: Justinian Huang
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician, #1)]]> 20727654
Yet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined—animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.

An Excisioner—a practitioner of dark, flesh magic—invades the cottage and rips Thane’s heart from his chest. To save her teacher’s life, Ceony must face the evil magician and embark on an unbelievable adventure that will take her into the chambers of Thane’s still-beating heart—and reveal the very soul of the man.

From the imaginative mind of debut author Charlie N. Holmberg, The Paper Magician is an extraordinary adventure both dark and whimsical that will delight readers of all ages.]]> 222 Charlie N. Holmberg 1477823832 Tintin 0 to-read 3.61 2014 The Paper Magician (The Paper Magician, #1)
author: Charlie N. Holmberg
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sophie’s Choice 228560 562 William Styron 0679736379 Tintin 0 to-read 4.18 1979 Sophie’s Choice
author: William Styron
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Taste of Gold and Iron (Mahisti Dynasty, #1)]]> 58724599 The Goblin Emperor meets "Magnificent Century" in Alexandra Rowland's A Taste of Gold and Iron, where a queer central romance unfolds in a fantasy world reminiscent of the Ottoman Empire.

Kadou, the shy prince of Arasht, finds himself at odds with one of the most powerful ambassadors at court—the body-father of the queen's new child—in an altercation which results in his humiliation.

To prove his loyalty to the queen, his sister, Kadou takes responsibility for the investigation of a break-in at one of their guilds, with the help of his newly appointed bodyguard, the coldly handsome Evemer, who seems to tolerate him at best. In Arasht, where princes can touch-taste precious metals with their fingers and myth runs side by side with history, counterfeiting is heresy, and the conspiracy they discover could cripple the kingdom’s financial standing and bring about its ruin.]]> 512 Alexandra Rowland 1250800382 Tintin 0 to-read 4.03 2022 A Taste of Gold and Iron (Mahisti Dynasty, #1)
author: Alexandra Rowland
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Maddest Obsession (Made, #2)]]> 40613322 He rules it.

Her dresses are too tight, her heels too tall. She laughs too loudly, eats without decorum, and mixes up most sayings in the book. Little do most know it’s just a sparkly disguise, there to hide one panic attack at a time.

Nobody can crack Gianna’s facade . . . no one anyway, until he comes along.

Most see a paragon of morality; a special agent upholding the law. In the New York underworld, others know him as a hustler, a killer, his nature as cold as the heart of ice in his chest. Christian Allister has always followed the life plan he’d envisioned in his youth, beneath the harsh lights of a frigid, damp cell. With a proclivity for order and the number three, he’s never been tempted to veer off course. But perhaps one should never say never . . .

One winter night and their lives intertwine. She hates him—his stone-cold demeanor, his arrogance and too-perceptive eye—but over the years, even as their games consist of insulting each other’s looks and intelligence, she begins to live to play with him.

Nowhere in Christian’s plans had he ever prepared for Gianna. She’s chaos embodied, not his type, and married, but none of that can stop his eyes from following her wherever she goes.

All along, she doesn’t even know that she’s his—his frustration, his fascination.

His maddest obsession.]]> 333 Danielle Lori Tintin 0 to-read 4.22 2019 The Maddest Obsession (Made, #2)
author: Danielle Lori
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake (Love By Numbers, #1)]]> 6584134 A lady does not smoke cheroot. She does not ride astride. She does not fence or attend duels. She does not fire a pistol, and she never gambles at a gentlemen's club.

Lady Calpurnia Hartwell has always followed the rules, rules that have left her unmarried—and more than a little unsatisfied. And so she's vowed to break the rules and live the life of pleasure she's been missing.

But to dance every dance, to steal a midnight kiss—to do those things, Callie will need a willing partner. Someone who knows everything about rule-breaking. Someone like Gabriel St. John, the Marquess of Ralston—charming and devastatingly handsome, his wicked reputation matched only by his sinful smile.

If she's not careful, she'll break the most important rule of all—the one that says that pleasure-seekers should never fall hopelessly, desperately in love.]]> 397 Sarah MacLean 0061852058 Tintin 0 to-read 4.06 2010 Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake (Love By Numbers, #1)
author: Sarah MacLean
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Far From the Madding Crowd 31463 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780141439655

Independent and spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer Boldwood, soldier-seducer Sergeant Troy and the devoted shepherd Gabriel Oak. Each, in contrasting ways, unsettles her decisions and complicates her life, and tragedy ensues, threatening the stability of the whole community. The first of his works set in the fictional county of Wessex, Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with his evocative descriptions of rural life and landscapes, and with unflinching honesty about sexual relationships.]]> 433 Thomas Hardy Tintin 0 to-read 3.96 1874 Far From the Madding Crowd
author: Thomas Hardy
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1874
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Persuasion 2156 249 Jane Austen 0192802631 Tintin 0 to-read 4.15 1817 Persuasion
author: Jane Austen
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1817
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Very Very Lucky 141236490 A life-affirming story from million-copy bestselling author Amanda Prowse about having it all, losing it all, and how new friends can show each other the way back to happiness.

With kids to look after, an ailing mother and a neglected husband, life is full for Emma Fountain—too full, she realises, when she wakes up in IKEA after falling asleep in one of the show beds. Only her crazy, funny best friend Roz keeps her sane. But when Roz climbs in through her bathroom window one day to deliver terrible news, Emma’s belief that she can find a way around any obstacle crumbles in the face of a problem she just can’t fix.

For recently widowed Thurston, life without his beloved wife of sixty-two years has lost all its joy and sense of purpose. That is until he finds himself driving his niece to work one day and meets Emma, whose busy days are the opposite of his own. As Thurston is drawn into the whirlwind of Emma’s chaotic life, and as his calming influence starts to bring her troubles into perspective, an unlikely friendship grows.

In a world where grief is the price we pay for love, can two very different people realise that the little things in life are precious, that love is all around us, and that, even after all, they might still be very, very lucky?]]> 378 Amanda Prowse 1542024854 Tintin 0 to-read 4.32 Very Very Lucky
author: Amanda Prowse
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.32
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Annihilation: A Novel 205351986 A stunning political thriller from the author of Serotonin and Submission about faith and family, love and mortality, social upheaval and political controversy.

In Michel Houellebecq's Annihilation, it is 2027 and France is in a state of economic decline and moral decay. Unemployment, rural poverty, and income inequality have reached unprecedented levels. As the country plunges into a closely fought presidential campaign, the French state falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks. A video posted on the internet depicts the guillotining of Finance Minister Bruno Juge.

As an adviser to Minister Juge, Paul Raison is close to the heart of government. His wife, Prudence, is a Treasury official, while his father, Édouard, now retired, has spent his career working for the French counterterrorism agency. Paul’s personal life is as troubled and as atomized as that of the his marriage has become strained, while his ties with his siblings are distant. But when Édouard suffers a stroke, Paul has an opportunity to repair his relationship with them, as they determine to free their father from the medical center where he is wasting away.]]> 0 Michel Houellebecq 0374608431 Tintin 0 to-read 3.76 2022 Annihilation: A Novel
author: Michel Houellebecq
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Remains of the Day 28921 Librarian's note: See alternate cover edition of ISBN 0571225381 here.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.]]> 258 Kazuo Ishiguro Tintin 0 to-read 4.14 1989 The Remains of the Day
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1989
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Piranesi 50202953
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.]]> 272 Susanna Clarke 163557563X Tintin 0 to-read 4.22 2020 Piranesi
author: Susanna Clarke
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The God of Small Things 9777
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family—their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes—Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic.]]> 321 Arundhati Roy 0679457313 Tintin 0 to-read 3.97 1997 The God of Small Things
author: Arundhati Roy
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say]]> 35018200 New York Times bestselling memoirs, Corrigan distilled our core relationships to their essences, showcasing a warm, easy storytelling style.ĚýNow, in Tell Me More, she’s back with a deeply personal, unfailingly honest, and often hilarious examination of the essential phrases that turn the wheel of life.

In “I Don’t Know,� Corrigan wrestles to make peace with uncertainty, whether it’s over invitations that never came or a friend’s agonizing infertility. In “No,� she admires her mother’s ability to set boundaries and her liberating willingness to be unpopular. In “Tell Me More,� a facialist named Tish teaches her something important about listening. And in “I Was Wrong,� she comes clean about her disastrous role in a family fight—and explains why saying sorry may not be enough. With refreshing candor, a deep well of empathy, and her signature desire to understand “the thing behind the thing,� Corrigan swings between meditations on life with a preoccupied husband and two mercurial teenage daughters to profound observations on love and loss.

With the streetwise, ever-relatable voice that defines Corrigan’s work, Tell Me More is a moving and meaningful take on the power of the right words at the right moment to change everything.]]> 240 Kelly Corrigan Tintin 5 library-book
The prose flows, is easy to read and deceptively deep.

Kelly Corrigan has a way of making us see the beauty in magic in our everyday lives.]]> 4.16 2018 Tell Me More: Stories About the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say
author: Kelly Corrigan
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/23
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: library-book
review:
What a moving and touching book. I’m not even a mom (and probably never will be) but Kelly Corrigan’s descriptions of her life as a mother, while grappling with grief from a parent and friend lost to cancer, felt very relatable.

The prose flows, is easy to read and deceptively deep.

Kelly Corrigan has a way of making us see the beauty in magic in our everyday lives.
]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 58784475 In this exhilarating novel, two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

On a bitter-cold day, in the December of his junior year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn't heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. These friends, intimates since childhood, borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo. Overnight, the world is theirs. Not even twenty-five years old, Sam and Sadie are brilliant, successful, and rich, but these qualities won't protect them from their own creative ambitions or the betrayals of their hearts.

Spanning thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin's Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 401 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243344 Tintin 0 to-read 4.12 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> When You Reach Me 8466181 199 Rebecca Stead 0375850864 Tintin 5 young-adult, newbery
Miranda is a 6th grader raised by a single mom in 1979 New York. She's more independent than most kids, but overall she's happy and well-adjusted. A normal kid in a normal world. And then a mysterious note arrives.

What puzzles Miranda is that the note knows things it shouldn't have, things that happen only after she had read the note. The notes keep on coming. Who could have sent the note? And how could the note-sender have known?

The mystery is at the core of the story, but there's more to it than that. The story is more than the sum of its parts. In it we see Miranda interact with grown-ups. We see her lose friends, then make new ones. We see her transform from a child to a teen on the cusp of adolescence. We see her question her old beliefs and judgments and make new choices. We see her grow up.

There are no cardboard characters in this story. Each character, whether young or adult, felt fleshed-out and real. Character dynamics are believable. This makes characters easy to relate to, as the issues they face are relevant to young adults' lives. (And grown-ups as well, because the themes of friendship, maturity, and judgment are universal).

On to more technical details, I admire how seamlessly Rebecca Stead weaved her story. She packs in a lot (mystery, character dynamics and development, relevant themes) in just under 200 pages. And none of it comes across as forced or pretentious. Stead never uses static descriptions for her characters, and she paints them so well you feel as if you could have known them even better than your real-life friends.

She also uses a favorite technique of mine, which is telling one immediately apparent story while spinning a different one from underneath the covers. So what I perceived as a simple, straightforward slice-of-life story gained a deeper dimension later on. When executed well as in this case, it's ingenious and and makes you want to reread the book right after the last page.

It's also worth noting that When You Reach Me riffs heavily from the seminal YA classic A Wrinkle in Time. It figures prominently in the story and would no doubt please L'Engle fans. Even with L'Engle's influence, When You Reach Me is original in its own right. I actually like it better than a A Wrinkle....

When You Reach Me well deserves it place in the Newbery Winner shelf beside its older sister. 5 stars.]]> 4.19 2009 When You Reach Me
author: Rebecca Stead
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2011/03/04
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: young-adult, newbery
review:
This book fully deserves the Newbery Medal and accolades it had received.

Miranda is a 6th grader raised by a single mom in 1979 New York. She's more independent than most kids, but overall she's happy and well-adjusted. A normal kid in a normal world. And then a mysterious note arrives.

What puzzles Miranda is that the note knows things it shouldn't have, things that happen only after she had read the note. The notes keep on coming. Who could have sent the note? And how could the note-sender have known?

The mystery is at the core of the story, but there's more to it than that. The story is more than the sum of its parts. In it we see Miranda interact with grown-ups. We see her lose friends, then make new ones. We see her transform from a child to a teen on the cusp of adolescence. We see her question her old beliefs and judgments and make new choices. We see her grow up.

There are no cardboard characters in this story. Each character, whether young or adult, felt fleshed-out and real. Character dynamics are believable. This makes characters easy to relate to, as the issues they face are relevant to young adults' lives. (And grown-ups as well, because the themes of friendship, maturity, and judgment are universal).

On to more technical details, I admire how seamlessly Rebecca Stead weaved her story. She packs in a lot (mystery, character dynamics and development, relevant themes) in just under 200 pages. And none of it comes across as forced or pretentious. Stead never uses static descriptions for her characters, and she paints them so well you feel as if you could have known them even better than your real-life friends.

She also uses a favorite technique of mine, which is telling one immediately apparent story while spinning a different one from underneath the covers. So what I perceived as a simple, straightforward slice-of-life story gained a deeper dimension later on. When executed well as in this case, it's ingenious and and makes you want to reread the book right after the last page.

It's also worth noting that When You Reach Me riffs heavily from the seminal YA classic A Wrinkle in Time. It figures prominently in the story and would no doubt please L'Engle fans. Even with L'Engle's influence, When You Reach Me is original in its own right. I actually like it better than a A Wrinkle....

When You Reach Me well deserves it place in the Newbery Winner shelf beside its older sister. 5 stars.
]]> <![CDATA[Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)]]> 6472227 An alternate cover for this isbn can be found here.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol -- a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before... and surprising readers at every turn.]]> 473 Suzanne Collins Tintin 5
Honestly, my expectations were low. You know how Movie XXX Part II rarely lives up to its predecessor? I expected that to be the case here. That Suzanne Collins is a one-trick pony and that only the fans' positive response to her previous book is what keeps the momenting going.

Well, I was wrong.

The moment I opened the book, I was sucked back into the dystopian world of Panem, in the aftermath of Katniss and Peeta's victory over the previous Games. As a victor, Katniss should be enjoying her new life of abundance, but dark and sinister thing keep lurking beneath the surface. There is the hardship of the people of District 12, which has been exacerbated by the arrival of a new Peacekeeper and obliteration of the Hob. A strained relationship with her best friend Gale. Rumors of riots and stirrings going on in other districts. A direct threat to Katniss and all her loved ones by President Snow himself. The people of Panem are restless, and President Snow blames her for it.

The undercurrents of tension and suspense are so high I finished this book in two days, even though I could only get snatches of time to read & never had a single long, comfortable reading session. I allot at least a week to finish a novel, as a rule. I consciously restrain myself from reading too fast. But I couldn't restrain myself with this one and sped through the entire book.

Each time, whenever you think things couldn't get any worse, they do. When you think Collins would have run out of surprises to pull, she gives you more. It's tension building upon tension and more tension, a fast-paced story that never lets up keeping you on your toes. Un-put-downable. It's brilliant.

Even better, my biggest gripe with the previous book (underdeveloped romance angle) has been fixed. No eye-rolling from me. I even found it amusing that Katniss' reaction to a surprise confession of love was EXACTLY the same as mine (and the thoughts that ran through her head were exactly like mine, too). And I could genuinely understand her confusion. I can't choose between Peeta or Gale, myself.

I also empathized more with the characters compared to Book 1. Not just the heroine Katniss but everyone who is against or a victim of the Capitol, from Haymitch to Cinna to Mags and the rebels in other Districts. I rooted for them. I felt their pain as if it were my own.

I love this book. A full FIVE stars.

]]> 4.29 2009 Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2)
author: Suzanne Collins
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2011/02/13
date added: 2016/12/27
shelves: young-adult, dystopian-post-apocalyptic
review:
I didn't think it probable, but the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy exceeded my expectations.

Honestly, my expectations were low. You know how Movie XXX Part II rarely lives up to its predecessor? I expected that to be the case here. That Suzanne Collins is a one-trick pony and that only the fans' positive response to her previous book is what keeps the momenting going.

Well, I was wrong.

The moment I opened the book, I was sucked back into the dystopian world of Panem, in the aftermath of Katniss and Peeta's victory over the previous Games. As a victor, Katniss should be enjoying her new life of abundance, but dark and sinister thing keep lurking beneath the surface. There is the hardship of the people of District 12, which has been exacerbated by the arrival of a new Peacekeeper and obliteration of the Hob. A strained relationship with her best friend Gale. Rumors of riots and stirrings going on in other districts. A direct threat to Katniss and all her loved ones by President Snow himself. The people of Panem are restless, and President Snow blames her for it.

The undercurrents of tension and suspense are so high I finished this book in two days, even though I could only get snatches of time to read & never had a single long, comfortable reading session. I allot at least a week to finish a novel, as a rule. I consciously restrain myself from reading too fast. But I couldn't restrain myself with this one and sped through the entire book.

Each time, whenever you think things couldn't get any worse, they do. When you think Collins would have run out of surprises to pull, she gives you more. It's tension building upon tension and more tension, a fast-paced story that never lets up keeping you on your toes. Un-put-downable. It's brilliant.

Even better, my biggest gripe with the previous book (underdeveloped romance angle) has been fixed. No eye-rolling from me. I even found it amusing that Katniss' reaction to a surprise confession of love was EXACTLY the same as mine (and the thoughts that ran through her head were exactly like mine, too). And I could genuinely understand her confusion. I can't choose between Peeta or Gale, myself.

I also empathized more with the characters compared to Book 1. Not just the heroine Katniss but everyone who is against or a victim of the Capitol, from Haymitch to Cinna to Mags and the rebels in other Districts. I rooted for them. I felt their pain as if it were my own.

I love this book. A full FIVE stars.


]]> <![CDATA[Gifts (Annals of the Western Shore, #1)]]> 1268890
It is only the gifts that keep a fragile peace.

The gifts are powers, running from father to son and from mother to daughter. The Barre can call animals. The women of Cordemant can blind or make deaf, or take away speech. Brantor Ogge of Drummant has the gift of slow wasting. But the Caspro gift is both best and worst: it is the gift of undoing.

Gry's gift runs true, but she will not use it to call animals for the hunt. Orrec too has a problem, for his gift of undoing is wild: he cannot control it - and that is the most dangerous gift of all...

Gifts is Ursula Le Guin at her best: an exciting, moving story beautifully told.]]> 274 Ursula K. Le Guin 1842554980 Tintin 0 3.88 2004 Gifts (Annals of the Western Shore, #1)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/08/29
shelves: to-read, backread, young-adult
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim]]> 402129 He goes on vacation with his family.
He gets a job selling drinks.
He attends his brother’s wedding.
He mops his sister’s floor.
He gives directions to a lost traveler.
He eats a hamburger.
He has his blood sugar tested.

It all sounds so normal, doesn’t it?

In his newest collection of essays, David Sedaris lifts the corner of ordinary life, revealing the absurdity teeming below its surface. His world is alive with obscure desires and hidden motives � a world where forgiveness is automatic and an argument can be the highest form of love. Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim is another unforgettable collection from one of the wittiest and most original writers at work today.
--front flap]]> 257 David Sedaris 0316143464 Tintin 0 to-read, backread, nonfiction 3.97 2004 Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
author: David Sedaris
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2016/06/13
shelves: to-read, backread, nonfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine, #1)]]> 11058389 Ěý
An abandoned orphanage.
�
Ěý
A strange collection of very curious photographs.
�
Ěý
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 the 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. 

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography,ĚýMiss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar ChildrenĚýwill delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows.]]> 352 Ransom Riggs 1594745137 Tintin 4 ebook STORY:
When he was a kid, Jacob believed his grandfather’s fantastic stories of levitating girls, bee-controlling boys, and monsters in a far-off orphanage from World War 2. After all, there are pictures to prove it. He’s now 16 and feels betrayed by his grandfather’s lies. But a devastating event leads him to question his beliefs and propel him on a journey to find out who his grandfather really was.

WRITING STYLE:
Ransom Riggs is an author I’m going to watch out for. I liked his poignant portrayal of Jacob’s love-hate for his grandfather. I was surprised at how deep Jacob’s insights and depth of feeling were at times� I couldn’t believe it was a YA book.

ENJOYMENT FACTOR:
The concept of the Peculiar Children was bizarre and interesting. The creepy photos supplementing the book add to the otherworldy feel. It wasn’t only the mystery that kept me turning pages� Jacob’s emotional turmoil and internal conflicts, deftly conveyed by the author, enthralled me more. I would rate the first half of the book a full five stars. HOWEVER, once the monsters…err� hallowgast came in, it all went downhill for me. The Peculiar Children and time loops were fantastic of themselves, but adding man-eating monsters into the mix diluted the story and turned it into one shallow cliche.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS (The X Factor):
As I mentioned previously, I thought the first half of the story was gripping and well-written. The second half however was a slippery downhill slope due to the shallow antagonists and the clumsy set-up for a sequel. However, the good still outweighs the bad so I'm watching out for the sequel.]]> 3.58 2011 Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine, #1)
author: Ransom Riggs
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.58
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2015/09/21
shelves: ebook
review:
STORY:
When he was a kid, Jacob believed his grandfather’s fantastic stories of levitating girls, bee-controlling boys, and monsters in a far-off orphanage from World War 2. After all, there are pictures to prove it. He’s now 16 and feels betrayed by his grandfather’s lies. But a devastating event leads him to question his beliefs and propel him on a journey to find out who his grandfather really was.

WRITING STYLE:
Ransom Riggs is an author I’m going to watch out for. I liked his poignant portrayal of Jacob’s love-hate for his grandfather. I was surprised at how deep Jacob’s insights and depth of feeling were at times� I couldn’t believe it was a YA book.

ENJOYMENT FACTOR:
The concept of the Peculiar Children was bizarre and interesting. The creepy photos supplementing the book add to the otherworldy feel. It wasn’t only the mystery that kept me turning pages� Jacob’s emotional turmoil and internal conflicts, deftly conveyed by the author, enthralled me more. I would rate the first half of the book a full five stars. HOWEVER, once the monsters…err� hallowgast came in, it all went downhill for me. The Peculiar Children and time loops were fantastic of themselves, but adding man-eating monsters into the mix diluted the story and turned it into one shallow cliche.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS (The X Factor):
As I mentioned previously, I thought the first half of the story was gripping and well-written. The second half however was a slippery downhill slope due to the shallow antagonists and the clumsy set-up for a sequel. However, the good still outweighs the bad so I'm watching out for the sequel.
]]> If I Stay (If I Stay, #1) 6990472 On a day that started like any other�

Mia had everything: a loving family, a gorgeous, adoring boyfriend, and a bright future full of music and full of choices. Then, in an instant, almost all of that is taken from her. Caught between life and death, between a happy past and an unknowable future, Mia spends one critical day contemplating the one decision she has left—the most important decision she’ll ever make.

Simultaneously tragic and hopeful, this is a romantic, riveting and ultimately uplifting story about memory, music, living, and dying.

Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.]]> 261 Gayle Forman 014241543X Tintin 4 young-adult
One thing that I realized is that the emotional attachment would've been stronger if it was a fanfic. This doesn't mean that the book has poor characterization -- it's full of well-rounded characters, in fact. It's just that fanfiction has spoiled me because I come into fanfic emotionally invested from the start.

The book relies on heavy emotional involvement from the reader. And it worked, even with my hard little heart, because I was in danger of tearing up near the end. I had a few misgivings about it that put it in danger of 3-star territory (meaning it's a well-written book but failed to fully involve me), but the ending sealed the deal (ends with a triumphant 4 stars!) I LOVE the ending. Everything wraps up brilliantly. The payoff was totally worth it. It's the emotional high point of the book and it took my breath away.

My misgivings are:
1. Very depressing theme (I live for comedy!) But this was a good change from what I usually read.
2. The hospital scene felt drawn-out, (but the payoff was good).
3. The numerous flashbacks irritated me for a while before I got into the groove of it. (The payoff made it worth it, and the flashbacks were tastefully done so I forgive it for the most part).
4. I dunno, but I find Mia's and Adam's relationship to be a little too loving and mature for teenagers. Can 17 year olds really be capable of such deep and introspective love?

But all in all, it was very good storytelling and I'd want to pick up a few techniques and ideas from it. Especially the whopper of an ending. It's exactly the kind of soaring ending that I love. (Did I mention that I'm crazy about the ending!?!?!)

I'd like to reread this again someday, maybe while I'm working on a particularly emotional project.]]> 3.85 2009 If I Stay (If I Stay, #1)
author: Gayle Forman
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/09/11
date added: 2015/04/07
shelves: young-adult
review:
Initially, I wasn't sure if I'd like this book. I bought it on a whim, recommended by the staff at FB. I'm (currently) not a big fan of 1st person POV stories, and the story was althroughout depressing (!!!) But it was evident from the early chapters that Gayle Foreman is a talented writer. Clear prose, emotional but not overly-melodramatic storytelling. The central theme of the story is simple: Will Mia choose to live or to die? But the story of how she arrives at her answer was beautifully rendered, tugging at my heartstrings though I didn't cry due to my heightened resistance against melodrama.

One thing that I realized is that the emotional attachment would've been stronger if it was a fanfic. This doesn't mean that the book has poor characterization -- it's full of well-rounded characters, in fact. It's just that fanfiction has spoiled me because I come into fanfic emotionally invested from the start.

The book relies on heavy emotional involvement from the reader. And it worked, even with my hard little heart, because I was in danger of tearing up near the end. I had a few misgivings about it that put it in danger of 3-star territory (meaning it's a well-written book but failed to fully involve me), but the ending sealed the deal (ends with a triumphant 4 stars!) I LOVE the ending. Everything wraps up brilliantly. The payoff was totally worth it. It's the emotional high point of the book and it took my breath away.

My misgivings are:
1. Very depressing theme (I live for comedy!) But this was a good change from what I usually read.
2. The hospital scene felt drawn-out, (but the payoff was good).
3. The numerous flashbacks irritated me for a while before I got into the groove of it. (The payoff made it worth it, and the flashbacks were tastefully done so I forgive it for the most part).
4. I dunno, but I find Mia's and Adam's relationship to be a little too loving and mature for teenagers. Can 17 year olds really be capable of such deep and introspective love?

But all in all, it was very good storytelling and I'd want to pick up a few techniques and ideas from it. Especially the whopper of an ending. It's exactly the kind of soaring ending that I love. (Did I mention that I'm crazy about the ending!?!?!)

I'd like to reread this again someday, maybe while I'm working on a particularly emotional project.
]]> <![CDATA[The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America]]> 259028 447 Erik Larson 0375725601 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 3.97 2003 The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
author: Erik Larson
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2015/03/09
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> Hoot 294420
The site of Coconut Cove's future Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House is experiencing a slight problem: survey stakes removed, alligators in the port-a-potties, and painted-over patrol cars. But who's behind the clever vandalism and pranks? New Florida resident Roy Eberhardt isn't aware of these goings-on, but he has often noticed a barefoot boy running down the street faster than anything. His curiosity piqued, Roy starts to inquire around and even follows the boy once, only to be told by Beatrice Leep, a.k.a. Beatrice the Bear, to mind his own business. Despite Beatrice's warning and plenty of bullying from the lunkheaded Dana Matherson, Roy follows the boy, whose name is Mullet Fingers, one day and winds up in the middle of an ecological mission to save a parliament of burrowing owls from being bulldozed.]]> 292 Carl Hiaasen Tintin 0 3.73 2002 Hoot
author: Carl Hiaasen
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2014/06/22
shelves: to-read, backread, young-adult
review:

]]> Kafka on the Shore 11279563 Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle—yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.]]> 408 Haruki Murakami 0739455419 Tintin 0 to-read, backread, borrowed 4.13 2002 Kafka on the Shore
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/03/04
shelves: to-read, backread, borrowed
review:
Thanks to Dra. Ranee for lending me this book :)
]]> <![CDATA[How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide]]> 311747 --Pick the right book for them among the cattle call of pre-packaged blurbs and enticing cover art
--Recognize a misleading title at first glance
--Look beyond the politics of book reviewers
--Learn to read the extras―epigraphs, forewords, afterwords―to understand themes only hinted at in the main text
--Find real aspects of the author cleverly hidden in the narrative structure
--And much more
In a book that is as wry and humorous as it is learned and opinionated, John Sutherland tells you everything you always wanted to know about how to read fiction better than you do now (but, were afraid to ask).]]> 263 John Sutherland 0312359896 Tintin 0 to-read, backread, nonfiction 3.20 2006 How to Read a Novel: A User's Guide
author: John Sutherland
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.20
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/02/14
shelves: to-read, backread, nonfiction
review:

]]> Angels in America 72003 304 Tony Kushner 1559362316 Tintin 0 to-read 4.27 1995 Angels in America
author: Tony Kushner
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2013/01/03
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Love You, Beth Cooper (P.S.)]]> 1163100
It would have been such a sweet, romantic moment. Except that Beth, the head cheerleader, has only the vaguest idea who Denis is. And Denis, the captain of the debate team, is so far out of her league he is barely even the same species. And then there's Kevin, Beth's remarkably large boyfriend, who's in town on furlough from the United States Army. Complications ensue.]]> 287 Larry Doyle 0061236187 Tintin 2
Maybe saying 'no business' is too harsh. Let me rephrase: he should have honed his novel-writing first and not just ported his script to the novel format, bugs and all.

It may not look it but my favorite genre is comedy and I Love You Beth Cooper being tagged as a romance-comedy (romance being another favorite), it should have been easy to please me. A story only has to make me laugh with mirth a few times and I'll gladly give it a four star rating. Instead all I got was a big disappointment.

The plot involves nerdy, geeky Denis Cooverman, high school valedictorian, and his unrequited love for the hot and popular cheerleader Beth Cooper. It's like a John Green plot with zany turns and crazier characters. Only John Green writes about nerdy boys ten times better.

The first thing that disconcerted me within the first few pages is the writing style. Full of noticeable scene transitions (with the first words of each new scene in comic book font), sudden flashbacks, detailed mental mental movies and even an actual sitcom-style script complete with song references for background music, it reads like like a big fat screenplay jammed into an 8 oz. coke bottle of a novel. The 3rd-person omniscient POV prevents any self-identification and feels like a camera changing shots and panning across the screen.

Even the characters come straight from a bad sitcom or cartoon: they're one-dimensional, unsympathetic, and unlikeable. High school is one big cliche. Developments are exaggerated and over-the-top unrealistic, which is why I think Doyle's brand of slapstick comedy would work better on a visual medium (cartoon, comic book, film, television). All the absurd antics, beatings, and humiliation are supposed to be humorous, but I found them too unfunny.

Feeling no commitment at all to the characters or story, I dropped it a third of the way through and only forced myself to finish last weekend. Characters finally begin to show some depth at the last quarter of the book, but by then I was far too removed to care.

One star for the occasional laugh, another for the belated gain of depth and the high note ending. A generous 2 stars.]]> 3.29 2007 I Love You, Beth Cooper (P.S.)
author: Larry Doyle
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.29
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2011/03/06
date added: 2012/01/29
shelves:
review:
I have no doubt that Larry Doyle can be a humorous writer (how else could he have credits in Beavis and Butthead and The Simpsons?), but he has no business writing a novel and should have stuck to writing for the screen.

Maybe saying 'no business' is too harsh. Let me rephrase: he should have honed his novel-writing first and not just ported his script to the novel format, bugs and all.

It may not look it but my favorite genre is comedy and I Love You Beth Cooper being tagged as a romance-comedy (romance being another favorite), it should have been easy to please me. A story only has to make me laugh with mirth a few times and I'll gladly give it a four star rating. Instead all I got was a big disappointment.

The plot involves nerdy, geeky Denis Cooverman, high school valedictorian, and his unrequited love for the hot and popular cheerleader Beth Cooper. It's like a John Green plot with zany turns and crazier characters. Only John Green writes about nerdy boys ten times better.

The first thing that disconcerted me within the first few pages is the writing style. Full of noticeable scene transitions (with the first words of each new scene in comic book font), sudden flashbacks, detailed mental mental movies and even an actual sitcom-style script complete with song references for background music, it reads like like a big fat screenplay jammed into an 8 oz. coke bottle of a novel. The 3rd-person omniscient POV prevents any self-identification and feels like a camera changing shots and panning across the screen.

Even the characters come straight from a bad sitcom or cartoon: they're one-dimensional, unsympathetic, and unlikeable. High school is one big cliche. Developments are exaggerated and over-the-top unrealistic, which is why I think Doyle's brand of slapstick comedy would work better on a visual medium (cartoon, comic book, film, television). All the absurd antics, beatings, and humiliation are supposed to be humorous, but I found them too unfunny.

Feeling no commitment at all to the characters or story, I dropped it a third of the way through and only forced myself to finish last weekend. Characters finally begin to show some depth at the last quarter of the book, but by then I was far too removed to care.

One star for the occasional laugh, another for the belated gain of depth and the high note ending. A generous 2 stars.
]]> <![CDATA[American Gods (American Gods, #1)]]> 4407
Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what - and who - it finds there...

This is the author's preferred text, never before published in the UK, and is about 12,000 words longer than the previous UK edition.

]]> 635 Neil Gaiman Tintin 0 ebook, on-hiatus 4.10 2001 American Gods (American Gods, #1)
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2011/09/28
shelves: ebook, on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders]]> 862816
�New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice

Ěý

“Dazzling tales from a master of the fantastic.�
�Washington Post Book World

Ěý

Fragile Things is a sterling collection of exceptional tales from Neil Gaiman, multiple award-winning (the Hugo, Bram Stoker, Newberry, and Eisner Awards, to name just a few), #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Graveyard Book, Anansi Boys, Coraline, and the groundbreaking Sandman graphic novel series. A uniquely imaginative creator of wonders whose unique storytelling genius has been acclaimed by a host of literary luminaries from Norman Mailer to Stephen King, Gaiman’s astonishing powers are on glorious displays in Fragile Things. Enter and be amazed!]]> 359 Neil Gaiman 0061252026 Tintin 3 on-hiatus 3.97 2006 Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2006
rating: 3
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2011/09/28
shelves: on-hiatus
review:
I like Neil Gaiman's writing style - very engaging, but a lot of the stories here seem to me like fragments. Very good ones every now and then, though. I'm only halfway through the book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)]]> 28187 Alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here

Percy Jackson is a good kid, but he can't seem to focus on his schoolwork or control his temper. And lately, being away at boarding school is only getting worse - Percy could have sworn his pre-algebra teacher turned into a monster and tried to kill him. When Percy's mom finds out, she knows it's time that he knew the truth about where he came from, and that he go to the one place he'll be safe. She sends Percy to Camp Half Blood, a summer camp for demigods (on Long Island), where he learns that the father he never knew is Poseidon, God of the Sea. Soon a mystery unfolds and together with his friends—one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena - Percy sets out on a quest across the United States to reach the gates of the Underworld (located in a recording studio in Hollywood) and prevent a catastrophic war between the gods.]]> 377 Rick Riordan 0786838655 Tintin 0 on-hiatus 4.31 2005 The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1)
author: Rick Riordan
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2011/09/28
shelves: on-hiatus
review:

]]> The Complete Sherlock Holmes 188572
The sign of four --

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes : A scandal in Bohemia ; The red-headed league ; A case of identity ; The Boscombe Valley mystery ; The five orange pips ; The man with the twisted lip ; The adventure of the blue carbuncle ; The adventure of the speckled band ; The adventure of the engineer's thumb ; The adventure of the noble bachelor ; The adventure of the beryl coronet ; The adventure of the copper beeches --

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes : Silver blaze ; The yellow face ; The stock-broker's clerk ; The "Gloria Scott" ; The Musgrave ritual ; The Reigate puzzle ; The crooked man ; The resident patient ; The Greek interpreter ; The naval treaty ; The final problem --

The return of Sherlock Holmes : The adventure of the empty house ; The adventure of the Norwood builder ; The adventure of the dancing men ; The adventure of the solitary cyclist ; The adventure of the priory school ; The adventure of Black Peter ; The adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton ; The adventure of the six Napoleons ; The adventure of the three students ; The adventure of the golden pince-nez ; The adventure of the missing three-quarter ; The adventure of the abbey grange ; The adventure of the second stain.

Volume 2. Introduction / by Loren D. Estleman --

The hound of the Baskervilles --

The valley of fear --

His last bow : The adventure of Wisteria Lodge : The singular experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles ; The tiger of San Pedro ; The adventure of the cardboard box ; The adventure of the red circle ; The adventure of the Bruce-Partington plans ; The adventure of the dying detective ; The disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax ; The adventure of the devil's foot ; His last bow --

The case-book of Sherlock Holmes : The adventure of the illustrious client ; The adventure of the blanched soldier ; The adventure of the Mazarin stone ; The adventure of the three gables ; The adventure of the Sussex vampire ; The adventure of the three Garridebs ; The problem of Thor Bridge ; The adventure of the creeping man ; The adventure of the lion's mane ; The adventure of the veiled lodger ; The adventure of Shoscombe old place ; The adventure of the retired colourman.]]> 1796 Arthur Conan Doyle Tintin 4 classics, ebook, on-hiatus 4.50 1915 The Complete Sherlock Holmes
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1915
rating: 4
read at: 2010/11/01
date added: 2011/09/28
shelves: classics, ebook, on-hiatus
review:
Sherlock Holmes is surprisingly an accessible read. Great light classic reading, and Holmes' (and their movie/tv spinoffs) deduction skills are amazing!
]]> <![CDATA[Dragon Bound (Elder Races, #1)]]> 9637479
As the most feared and respected of the Wyrkind, Dragos Cuelebre cannot believe someone had the audacity to steal from him, much less succeed. And when he catches the thief, Dragos spares her life, claiming her as his own to further explore the desire they've ignited in each other.

Pia knows she must repay Dragos for her trespass, but refuses to become his slave—although she cannot deny wanting him, body and soul.]]> 312 Thea Harrison 0425241505 Tintin 0 to-read 4.06 2011 Dragon Bound (Elder Races, #1)
author: Thea Harrison
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2011
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/09/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Before Ever After 12091493 Her Max. And he is alive and well.

As outrageous as Paolo's claims seem—how could her husband be alive? And if he is, why hasn't he looked her up? Shelley desperately wants to know the truth. She and Paolo jet across the globe to track Max down—if it is really Max—and along the way, Shelley recounts the European package tour where they had met. As she relives Max's stories of bloody Parisian barricades, medieval Austrian kitchens, and buried Roman boathouses, Shelley begins to piece together the story of who her husband was and what these new revelations mean for her "happily ever after." And as she and Paolo get closer to the truth, Shelley discovers that not all stories end where they are supposed to.]]> 296 Samantha Sotto Yambao 0307955176 Tintin 4 STORY:
Shelley is devastated with grief over her husband Max’s death. Then one day a familiar stranger knocks on her door, and Shelley’s world is turned upside down. There is more to her husband than she realized. Who was Max?

WRITING STYLE:
The prose was a bit bizarre for me� I love it one minute, it grates on me the next. Not because it was horrible, but because for me the writing bears a slightly freakish resemblance to fanfiction. I can't pinpoint it exactly, but it gave me that vibe. (Let it be known that I'm a big fan of fanfiction-- I'm just not used to seeing it on the printed page).

ENJOYMENT FACTOR:
For the most part, I enjoyed this book. I laughed out loud from a number of funny lines. I thought Max (in all his incarnations) genuinely funny, quirky, and fascinating. There were a number of poignant scenes (my favorite was with the Abbott somewhere around 1000 A.D.) The book is a mish-mash of all my favorite fantasies: country-hopping adventure, a journey through time and history (but no, there isn’t any time travel involved), romance, hot guys, hot-guy-ogling, good food. What I didn’t like: some parts were overly melodramatic or cheesy. Now, I have a high tolerance for melodrama (else Jennifer Donnelly won’t be one of my fave authors) but cheesiness just makes me roll my eyes. Also, while Max is fascinating, I found Shelley relatively cardboard-dry. I never really empathized with her or her motivations. And I couldn’t understand what was so special about her that would make an immortal guy fall. Thankfully, Shelley doesn’t veer too far into Mary Sue territory and they were already married so I could overlook this. The meat of the book is about Max, and his story kept me turning pages.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS (The X Factor):
Do you remember those fantasies you had in high school? Hot guy on your heels, sweeping you off your feet into one fantastic adventure. To add to the mystery, Dream Boat is a Demon/Vampire/Insert-Paranormal-Trope-Here. And filthy rich to boot (how else could you live in the lap of luxury and afford your globe-trotting escapades?). You may have tried putting your fantasy in writing (inevitably with a Mary Sue stand-in) but soon gave up as it became increasingly obvious that your story had devolved into utter dreck. But never fear, Before Ever After Is Here! All your favorite fantasies are realized and collected into one cohesive plot that makes sense! If your fantasies were similar to mine, it’s almost a wish a come true. Of course, if you deem such fantasies beneath you, I doubt you will find much enjoyment in the book. Rating: 3.5 stars
]]> 3.95 2011 Before Ever After
author: Samantha Sotto Yambao
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2011/09/06
date added: 2011/09/06
shelves:
review:
STORY:
Shelley is devastated with grief over her husband Max’s death. Then one day a familiar stranger knocks on her door, and Shelley’s world is turned upside down. There is more to her husband than she realized. Who was Max?

WRITING STYLE:
The prose was a bit bizarre for me� I love it one minute, it grates on me the next. Not because it was horrible, but because for me the writing bears a slightly freakish resemblance to fanfiction. I can't pinpoint it exactly, but it gave me that vibe. (Let it be known that I'm a big fan of fanfiction-- I'm just not used to seeing it on the printed page).

ENJOYMENT FACTOR:
For the most part, I enjoyed this book. I laughed out loud from a number of funny lines. I thought Max (in all his incarnations) genuinely funny, quirky, and fascinating. There were a number of poignant scenes (my favorite was with the Abbott somewhere around 1000 A.D.) The book is a mish-mash of all my favorite fantasies: country-hopping adventure, a journey through time and history (but no, there isn’t any time travel involved), romance, hot guys, hot-guy-ogling, good food. What I didn’t like: some parts were overly melodramatic or cheesy. Now, I have a high tolerance for melodrama (else Jennifer Donnelly won’t be one of my fave authors) but cheesiness just makes me roll my eyes. Also, while Max is fascinating, I found Shelley relatively cardboard-dry. I never really empathized with her or her motivations. And I couldn’t understand what was so special about her that would make an immortal guy fall. Thankfully, Shelley doesn’t veer too far into Mary Sue territory and they were already married so I could overlook this. The meat of the book is about Max, and his story kept me turning pages.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS (The X Factor):
Do you remember those fantasies you had in high school? Hot guy on your heels, sweeping you off your feet into one fantastic adventure. To add to the mystery, Dream Boat is a Demon/Vampire/Insert-Paranormal-Trope-Here. And filthy rich to boot (how else could you live in the lap of luxury and afford your globe-trotting escapades?). You may have tried putting your fantasy in writing (inevitably with a Mary Sue stand-in) but soon gave up as it became increasingly obvious that your story had devolved into utter dreck. But never fear, Before Ever After Is Here! All your favorite fantasies are realized and collected into one cohesive plot that makes sense! If your fantasies were similar to mine, it’s almost a wish a come true. Of course, if you deem such fantasies beneath you, I doubt you will find much enjoyment in the book. Rating: 3.5 stars

]]> Room 7937843
Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough ... not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.]]> 321 Emma Donoghue Tintin 4 STORY:
For five-year-old Jack, the Room is the World. There is Room, and there is Outside, but that's only on TV. Ma says that the things he sees in TV are real, but he doesn't believe her. Jack is content to stay in Room. But one day, he and Ma hatch a plan to escape. But is it better to stay in the familiar safety of Room rather than the strange, real world Outside?

WRITING STYLE:
Told from the perspective of Jack, Donaghue’s prose nails the language and thought patterns of a precocious five-year. When Jack thinks and speaks, he sounds like a true kid. I remember having similar thoughts as a child� that I’ll get to do or know things “when I’m six years old,� that time moves slowly, that some things exist only on TV. Even Jack’s grammatical errors and run on sentences make him sound authentic: ’Her ones (teeth) are pretty rotted because she forgetted to brush them, she's sorry and she doesn't forget anymore but they're still rotted. �

ENJOYMENT FACTOR:
I enjoyed the POV of a boy who has only known the small cramped world of a 12 by 12 foot room. Their great escape kept me on my toes and furiously turning pages. The only thing that prevented me from fully enjoying the book are the actions of some of the stupid adults after they were able to escape. I don’t understand how someone could act so coldly to a rape victim and her child. Not to mention the idiotic questions of the talk show host that makes even Boy Abunda’s insulting guerilla interview tactics seem decent by comparison.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS (The X Factor):
The X Factor of this book is the unique perspective of Jack himself. But even more chilling is that the novel was inspired by the real life case of Josef Fritzl who kept his own daughter locked up in the basement for twenty-four years, raped her repeatedly, and even had SEVEN children by her. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Thanks a lot to K.D. for giving me his copy :)
]]> 4.04 2010 Room
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at:
date added: 2011/09/06
shelves:
review:
STORY:
For five-year-old Jack, the Room is the World. There is Room, and there is Outside, but that's only on TV. Ma says that the things he sees in TV are real, but he doesn't believe her. Jack is content to stay in Room. But one day, he and Ma hatch a plan to escape. But is it better to stay in the familiar safety of Room rather than the strange, real world Outside?

WRITING STYLE:
Told from the perspective of Jack, Donaghue’s prose nails the language and thought patterns of a precocious five-year. When Jack thinks and speaks, he sounds like a true kid. I remember having similar thoughts as a child� that I’ll get to do or know things “when I’m six years old,� that time moves slowly, that some things exist only on TV. Even Jack’s grammatical errors and run on sentences make him sound authentic: ’Her ones (teeth) are pretty rotted because she forgetted to brush them, she's sorry and she doesn't forget anymore but they're still rotted. �

ENJOYMENT FACTOR:
I enjoyed the POV of a boy who has only known the small cramped world of a 12 by 12 foot room. Their great escape kept me on my toes and furiously turning pages. The only thing that prevented me from fully enjoying the book are the actions of some of the stupid adults after they were able to escape. I don’t understand how someone could act so coldly to a rape victim and her child. Not to mention the idiotic questions of the talk show host that makes even Boy Abunda’s insulting guerilla interview tactics seem decent by comparison.

OTHER OBSERVATIONS (The X Factor):
The X Factor of this book is the unique perspective of Jack himself. But even more chilling is that the novel was inspired by the real life case of Josef Fritzl who kept his own daughter locked up in the basement for twenty-four years, raped her repeatedly, and even had SEVEN children by her. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

Thanks a lot to K.D. for giving me his copy :)

]]> Graffiti Moon 7863274
Ed thought he was in love with Lucy, until she broke his nose.

Dylan loves Daisy, but throwing eggs at her probably wasn't the best way to show it.

Jazz and Leo are slowly encircling each other.

An intense and exhilarating 24 hours in the lives of four teenagers on the verge: of adulthood, of HSC, of finding out just who they are, and who they want to be.

A lyrical new YA novel from the award-winning author of Chasing Charlie Duskin and the Gracie Faltrain series.]]> 264 Cath Crowley 0330425781 Tintin 0 to-read 3.86 2010 Graffiti Moon
author: Cath Crowley
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)]]> 2054 379 Raymond Chandler 0394757688 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 4.19 1953 The Long Goodbye (Philip Marlowe, #6)
author: Raymond Chandler
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1953
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/08/25
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World]]> 10374 Lord Jim.

Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. Tracking one man's descent into the Kafkaesque underworld of contemporary Tokyo, Murakami unites East and West, tragedy and farce, compassion and detachment, slang and philosophy.]]> 400 Haruki Murakami Tintin 3 STORY:
Golden Beasts. Calcutecs. Dream-readers. Breached encryption systems. Consciousness. Sentient Shadows. Unconsciousness. Scientists. Libido. Infra-nocturnal Kappas. End of the World. Is this making sense yet?

<.........>description

WRITING STYLE:
No? That’s OK. I didn’t think so either. It’s guess it’s supposed to be bizarre and surreal. I have to give it to the man, though. Murakami is the only writer (so far) to hold my interest while simultaneously throwing me in the middle of a lab maze. I’ll certainly read more from him—if only to get that 'i-don't-know-what-exactly-im-reading-but-its-kinda-cool' high.

ENJOYMENT FACTOR:
I could go on a long treatise about the nature of consciousness and memory, but I’m too tired and I’d rather sum up the both the good and bad in three letters: WTF?!

OTHER OBSERVATIONS (The X Factor):
I imagine the experience would be similar to snorting cocaine while drunk.
]]> 4.14 1985 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
author: Haruki Murakami
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1985
rating: 3
read at: 2011/08/24
date added: 2011/08/24
shelves:
review:
STORY:
Golden Beasts. Calcutecs. Dream-readers. Breached encryption systems. Consciousness. Sentient Shadows. Unconsciousness. Scientists. Libido. Infra-nocturnal Kappas. End of the World. Is this making sense yet?

<.........>description

WRITING STYLE:
No? That’s OK. I didn’t think so either. It’s guess it’s supposed to be bizarre and surreal. I have to give it to the man, though. Murakami is the only writer (so far) to hold my interest while simultaneously throwing me in the middle of a lab maze. I’ll certainly read more from him—if only to get that 'i-don't-know-what-exactly-im-reading-but-its-kinda-cool' high.

ENJOYMENT FACTOR:
I could go on a long treatise about the nature of consciousness and memory, but I’m too tired and I’d rather sum up the both the good and bad in three letters: WTF?!

OTHER OBSERVATIONS (The X Factor):
I imagine the experience would be similar to snorting cocaine while drunk.

]]> The Line of Beauty 139087
As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family. His two vividly contrasting love affairs, one with a young black clerk and one with a Lebanese millionaire, dramatize the dangers and rewards of his own private pursuit of beauty, a pursuit as compelling to Nick as the desire for power and riches among his friends.

Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly comic, this U.K. bestseller is a major work by one of our finest writers.]]> 438 Alan Hollinghurst 0739464469 Tintin 0 to-read 3.76 2004 The Line of Beauty
author: Alan Hollinghurst
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/08/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1)]]> 6186357 There are alternate cover editions for this ASIN here and here.

If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human.

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone.

Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade.

Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive.

Everything is going to change.

Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.

Remember. Survive. Run.]]> 384 James Dashner 0385737947 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 4.05 2009 The Maze Runner (The Maze Runner, #1)
author: James Dashner
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/08/22
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> White Teeth 3711 White Teeth revels in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, confounding expectations, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.]]> 448 Zadie Smith 0375703861 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 3.80 2000 White Teeth
author: Zadie Smith
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/08/22
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> Middlesex 2187 Middlesex tells the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, who travel from a tiny village overlooking Mount Olympus in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, witnessing its glory days as the Motor City and the race riots of 1967 before moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Pointe, Michigan. To understand why Calliope is not like other girls, she has to uncover a guilty family secret, and the astonishing genetic history that turns Callie into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction. Lyrical and thrilling, Middlesex is an exhilarating reinvention of the American epic.]]> 529 Jeffrey Eugenides 0312422156 Tintin 0 to-read 4.03 2002 Middlesex
author: Jeffrey Eugenides
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/08/14
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Super Sad True Love Story 10144430
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The New York Times � The Washington Post � The Boston Globe � San Francisco Chronicle � The Seattle Times � The Oprah Magazine � Maureen Corrigan, NPR � Salon � Slate � Minneapolis Star Tribune � St. Louis Post-Dispatch � The Kansas City Star � Charlotte Observer � The Globe and Mail � Vancouver Sun � Montreal Gazette � Kirkus Reviews

In the near future, America is crushed by a financial crisis and our patient Chinese creditors may just be ready to foreclose on the whole mess. Then Lenny Abramov, son of an Russian immigrant janitor and ardent fan of “printed, bound media artifacts� (aka books), meets Eunice Park, an impossibly cute Korean American woman with a major in Images and a minor in Assertiveness. Could falling in love redeem a planet falling apart?]]> 334 Gary Shteyngart 0812977866 Tintin 0 to-read 3.43 2010 Super Sad True Love Story
author: Gary Shteyngart
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/07/30
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)]]> 136251
In this final, seventh installment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectacular fashion the answers to the many questions that have been so eagerly awaited.]]> 759 J.K. Rowling Tintin 3 STORY:
Harry finally realizes what it takes to defeat Voldemort � but it is no easy solution. What choice will he make?

ENJOYMENT FACTOR:
I started this over a year and a half ago and hated it so much I left it unfinished 1/3 of the way. I finally coerced myself to finish it before seeing the final HP movie. I didn’t hate it as much the 2nd time around (I think the loathing may have been partly due to the bad taste that Book 6 left in my mouth) and despite myself I enjoyed the story (for the most part). Rowling fleshes out her characters, showing the good and bad in them (prime example: Dumbledore). Rowling also aces at raising the stakes, shrouding the plot in mystery, getting her characters in trouble and out again. The plotline is convoluted and it sags heavily in the middle but the secrets kept this reader plodding along.

WRITING STYLE:
Rowling’s love of adverbs borders on the obscene. The greatest affront is in the last chapter:

Harry to his son: “Albus Severus, you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I have ever known.�

Really, Rowling? Snape worked as a double-agent to the two most powerful wizards at great personal cost, duped Death Eaters and Order members alike, endured the hate and distrust of all, sacrificed his life for love, and HARRY CAN’T EVEN BE FREAKING SURE that he was the bravest!??!

Fortunately the movie’s scriptwriters promptly fixed this oversight.

(;_;)

OTHER OBSERVATIONS (The X Factor):
As I watched the movie soon after finishing the book, it’s difficult for me to divorce the two. I LOVED the movie. If only for those 5 minutes of Snape’s memories in the pensieve, the most moving performance I have seen in recent years. (All hail Alan Rickman!) I know people are complaining about all the revisions, but I actually appreciated most of the things they changed in the movie. They cut out the plodding (and unnecessary parts), focused on the meat and bones, and fixed all the inconsistencies and awkward plotting I noticed in the book. For example:

1) Ravenclaw’s diadem (a horcrux) was accidentally destroyed in the book by Fiendyre. The explanation being that the cursed fire was so potent it was one of the few things that could destroy a horcrux. Sorry but I don’t buy that. If so, Harry and co. shouldn’t have wasted their time and energy looking for a magical object (Sword of Gryffindor) to destroy the horcrux when they could have used their energies to learn the Fiendfyre curse instead. They fixed this in the movie by using a Basilisk fang to destroy the horcrux instead of Fiendfyre.

2) In the book I had no idea how Neville pulled the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat � wasn’t it stolen by Griphook? The movie makes this clearer.

3) I liked the scene where Harry realizes what he MUST do to defeat Voldemort (I believe it’s the climax of the entire series), but I found Harry’s face-off with his archnemesis cheesy to the point of being ridiculous. He duels with the most murderous and evil Wizard in history in full view of the entire school because, as he tells Voldy: ’I sacrificed my life for them so now they’re immune to you. You can’t hurt them!â€� I understand the rationale (same principle as his mother’s sacrifice) but that doesn’t stop me from rolling my eyes. They fixed this in the movie by moving the duel in a private area with no spectators and not giving anyone â€magic immunityâ€�. (Although I doubt if the light saber rays shooting from the duelersâ€� wands was an improvement).

4) The plot point of an Ultimate Elder Wand didn’t sit well with me. I thought by this time Harry and Voldemort would face off in a true test of skill � I expected something along wandless magic. But why bother when you can win by technicality and have an Elder Wand to Rule Them All (a.k.a. deus ex machina). Unfortunately this plot hole was beyond the scope of the movie to fix.

That said, I think the book and movie complement each other perfectly. The movie highlights the best parts and improves on the story, while the book gives a thorough explanation of everything.

COMMENT ON THE HP SERIES AS A WHOLE:
Rowling’s greatest achievement is in creating memorable, distinctive characters and a magical world readers would want to live in again and again. I remember being struck with awe when I read Book One nearly a decade ago. However, I found Rowling’s stories increasingly diluted and un-enjoyable from Book 4. Not because of the dark tone, but because the convoluted plot lines made it harder to figure out the true story beneath. Coincidentally, this was also the time Rowling probably fired her editor and her books afflicted with elephantiasis syndrome.

My major disappointment with the series, however, is the uselessness of its main character. Harry Potter never improved in his abilities� his achievements are from pure luck and genetics. He doesn’t study, he doesn’t practice, he doesn’t make the effort. Even his questionable talents in wizardry and Parseltongue could be directly attributed to Voldemort. Harry Potter is mediocre, and remained a mediocre pawn of Dumbledore all through out.
]]> 4.61 2007 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7)
author: J.K. Rowling
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.61
book published: 2007
rating: 3
read at: 2011/07/20
date added: 2011/07/29
shelves:
review:
STORY:
Harry finally realizes what it takes to defeat Voldemort � but it is no easy solution. What choice will he make?

ENJOYMENT FACTOR:
I started this over a year and a half ago and hated it so much I left it unfinished 1/3 of the way. I finally coerced myself to finish it before seeing the final HP movie. I didn’t hate it as much the 2nd time around (I think the loathing may have been partly due to the bad taste that Book 6 left in my mouth) and despite myself I enjoyed the story (for the most part). Rowling fleshes out her characters, showing the good and bad in them (prime example: Dumbledore). Rowling also aces at raising the stakes, shrouding the plot in mystery, getting her characters in trouble and out again. The plotline is convoluted and it sags heavily in the middle but the secrets kept this reader plodding along.

WRITING STYLE:
Rowling’s love of adverbs borders on the obscene. The greatest affront is in the last chapter:

Harry to his son: “Albus Severus, you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I have ever known.�

Really, Rowling? Snape worked as a double-agent to the two most powerful wizards at great personal cost, duped Death Eaters and Order members alike, endured the hate and distrust of all, sacrificed his life for love, and HARRY CAN’T EVEN BE FREAKING SURE that he was the bravest!??!

Fortunately the movie’s scriptwriters promptly fixed this oversight.

(;_;)

OTHER OBSERVATIONS (The X Factor):
As I watched the movie soon after finishing the book, it’s difficult for me to divorce the two. I LOVED the movie. If only for those 5 minutes of Snape’s memories in the pensieve, the most moving performance I have seen in recent years. (All hail Alan Rickman!) I know people are complaining about all the revisions, but I actually appreciated most of the things they changed in the movie. They cut out the plodding (and unnecessary parts), focused on the meat and bones, and fixed all the inconsistencies and awkward plotting I noticed in the book. For example:

1) Ravenclaw’s diadem (a horcrux) was accidentally destroyed in the book by Fiendyre. The explanation being that the cursed fire was so potent it was one of the few things that could destroy a horcrux. Sorry but I don’t buy that. If so, Harry and co. shouldn’t have wasted their time and energy looking for a magical object (Sword of Gryffindor) to destroy the horcrux when they could have used their energies to learn the Fiendfyre curse instead. They fixed this in the movie by using a Basilisk fang to destroy the horcrux instead of Fiendfyre.

2) In the book I had no idea how Neville pulled the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat � wasn’t it stolen by Griphook? The movie makes this clearer.

3) I liked the scene where Harry realizes what he MUST do to defeat Voldemort (I believe it’s the climax of the entire series), but I found Harry’s face-off with his archnemesis cheesy to the point of being ridiculous. He duels with the most murderous and evil Wizard in history in full view of the entire school because, as he tells Voldy: ’I sacrificed my life for them so now they’re immune to you. You can’t hurt them!â€� I understand the rationale (same principle as his mother’s sacrifice) but that doesn’t stop me from rolling my eyes. They fixed this in the movie by moving the duel in a private area with no spectators and not giving anyone â€magic immunityâ€�. (Although I doubt if the light saber rays shooting from the duelersâ€� wands was an improvement).

4) The plot point of an Ultimate Elder Wand didn’t sit well with me. I thought by this time Harry and Voldemort would face off in a true test of skill � I expected something along wandless magic. But why bother when you can win by technicality and have an Elder Wand to Rule Them All (a.k.a. deus ex machina). Unfortunately this plot hole was beyond the scope of the movie to fix.

That said, I think the book and movie complement each other perfectly. The movie highlights the best parts and improves on the story, while the book gives a thorough explanation of everything.

COMMENT ON THE HP SERIES AS A WHOLE:
Rowling’s greatest achievement is in creating memorable, distinctive characters and a magical world readers would want to live in again and again. I remember being struck with awe when I read Book One nearly a decade ago. However, I found Rowling’s stories increasingly diluted and un-enjoyable from Book 4. Not because of the dark tone, but because the convoluted plot lines made it harder to figure out the true story beneath. Coincidentally, this was also the time Rowling probably fired her editor and her books afflicted with elephantiasis syndrome.

My major disappointment with the series, however, is the uselessness of its main character. Harry Potter never improved in his abilities� his achievements are from pure luck and genetics. He doesn’t study, he doesn’t practice, he doesn’t make the effort. Even his questionable talents in wizardry and Parseltongue could be directly attributed to Voldemort. Harry Potter is mediocre, and remained a mediocre pawn of Dumbledore all through out.

]]> <![CDATA[Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)]]> 37442 When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to be the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.

]]> 406 Gregory Maguire 0060987103 Tintin 0 backread, currently-reading 3.52 1995 Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wicked Years, #1)
author: Gregory Maguire
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.52
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/07/27
shelves: backread, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes]]> 181077 80 Eleanor Coerr 0698118022 Tintin 0 to-read 4.12 1977 Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes
author: Eleanor Coerr
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1977
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/07/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Twits 980151 76 Roald Dahl 0140346406 Tintin 0 to-read, backread, children-s 3.83 1980 The Twits
author: Roald Dahl
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/07/23
shelves: to-read, backread, children-s
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years, #2)]]> 3287692
What dark force left Liir in this condition? Is he really Elphaba's son? He has her broom and her cape - but what of her powers? Can he find his supposed half-sister, Nor, last seen in the forbidding prison Southstairs? Can he fulfill the last wishes of a dying princess? In an Oz under new and dangerous management, can Liir keep his head down long enough to grow up?]]> 413 Gregory Maguire 0061714739 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 3.48 2005 Son of a Witch (The Wicked Years, #2)
author: Gregory Maguire
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/07/23
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)]]> 13214
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.� At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare�) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.]]> 289 Maya Angelou 0553279378 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 4.30 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Maya Angelou's Autobiography, #1)
author: Maya Angelou
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.30
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/07/23
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> Never Let Me Go 102927 One of the most acclaimed novels of the 21st Century, from the Nobel Prize-winning author.

Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense of the fragility of life.]]> 282 Kazuo Ishiguro 057122413X Tintin 0 3.86 2005 Never Let Me Go
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/07/23
shelves: to-read, backread, dystopian-post-apocalyptic
review:

]]> The Alienist 682762
The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in a highly unorthodox move, enlists the two men in the murder investigation, counting on the reserved Kreizler's intellect and Moore's knowledge of New York's vast criminal underworld. They are joined by Sara Howard, a brave and determined woman who works as a secretary in the police department. Laboring in secret (for alienists, and the emerging discipline of psychology, are viewed by the public with skepticism at best), the unlikely team embarks on what is a revolutionary effort in criminology-- amassing a psychological profile of the man they're looking for based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who has killed before--and will kill again before the hunt is over.

Fast-paced and gripping, infused with a historian's exactitude, The Alienist conjures up the Gilded Age and its untarnished underside: verminous tenements and opulent mansions, corrupt cops and flamboyant gangsters, shining opera houses and seamy gin mills. Here is a New York during an age when questioning society's belief that all killers are born, not made, could have unexpected and mortal consequences.]]> 599 Caleb Carr 0553572997 Tintin 0 to-read 4.04 1994 The Alienist
author: Caleb Carr
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/07/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld, #32)]]> 618145
Something is coming after Tiffany. . . .

Tiffany Aching is ready to begin her apprenticeship in magic. She expects spells and magic—not chores and ill-tempered nanny goats! Surely there must be more to witchcraft than this!

What Tiffany doesn't know is that an insidious, disembodied creature is pursuing her. This time, neither Mistress Weatherwax (the greatest witch in the world) nor the fierce, six-inch-high Wee Free Men can protect her. In the end, it will take all of Tiffany's inner strength to save herself . . . if it can be done at all.]]> 407 Terry Pratchett 0060586621 Tintin 0 backread, currently-reading 4.31 2004 A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld, #32)
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/07/06
shelves: backread, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History]]> 3087190
The question of cleanliness is one every age and culture has answered with confidence. For the first-century Roman, being clean meant a two-hour soak in baths of various temperatures, scraping the body with a miniature rake, and a final application of oil. For the aristocratic Frenchman in the seventeenth century, it meant changing your shirt once a day and perhaps going so far as to dip your hands in some water. Did Napoleon know something we didn't when he wrote Josephine "I will return in five days. Stop washing"? And why is the German term Warmduscher ―a man who washes in warm or hot water―invariably a slight against his masculinity? Katherine Ashenburg takes on such fascinating questions as these in Dirt on Clean , her charming tour of attitudes to hygiene through time.

What could be more routine than taking up soap and water and washing yourself? And yet cleanliness, or the lack of it, is intimately connected to ideas as large as spirituality and sexuality, and historical events that include plagues, the Civil War, and the discovery of germs. An engrossing fusion of erudition and anecdote, Dirt on Clean considers the bizarre prescriptions of history's doctors, the hygienic peccadilloes of great authors, and the historic twists and turns that have brought us to a place Ashenburg considers hedonistic yet oversanitized.]]> 368 Katherine Ashenburg 0374531374 Tintin 4 nonfiction
How did they get by without deodorant? Without toothbrushes or toothpaste? How did they clean their backsides and how did they banish unpleasant odors away?

Fortunately for me, Katherine Ashenburg had done the research to answer my burning questions. The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History chronicles the history of washing in the Western world from Roman times to present.



The short answer? Humanity did without soap and deodorant for millenia. But did they wash their bodies? It depends on the religion, country, and time period. The early Greeks and Romans were very well washed but didn't use soap. Instead they used a metal implement called a strigil to scrape off dirt. Muslims and Jews were required by religious law to wash. Christian Europe, on the other hand, shunned washing for centuries.

Christian saints and mystics, who associated the Roman practice of bathing with hedonism, never washed at all. Abbessa Paula, friend to St. Jerome, said: 'A clean body and a clean dress mean an unclean soul.' The familiar adage 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness. wouldn't come until many centuries later.

Throughout medieval Christian Europe, bathing was something to be feared and suspected. Most people took a bath only once a year -- royalty even less. Taking a bath was so dangerous kings only took one upon doctor's advice and with an excess of precaution. For kings and nobles, the crux of cleanliness was in washing the hands and changing into a clean linen shirt everyday. They covered the dirt on their bodies with makeup, powdered wigs, and flamboyant dresses. Dirt and bodily secretions were considered protective and healthy. Washing and soaking the body, no. Bad breath, body odor, lice, and fleas were the order for the day.

Yecchhh. Which brings another question: How could they bear to have sex with each other? Ashenburg writes: " In fact, there's no evidence that the birth rate ever fell because people were too smelly for copulation."

Yes, people most definitely smelled. But in a world where everyone smells the same, no one would know the difference.

In fact, fastidiousness in cleanliness and keeping odors at bay is a very recent introduction. It took root around the latter half of the 20th century thanks to the efforts of soap and deodorant advertisers. All of a sudden, young men and women the world over were terrorized thinking they could be losing jobs, sabotaging relationships, and offending others with their body odor -- without even knowing it!

And so in less than a hundred years the evolution of personal hygiene, at least in the developed world, has made a 360-degree turn. But heightened cleanliness with the advent of antibacterial soaps, constant handwashing, and sanitized environments has brought about an unexpected result: highly resistant strains of bacteria have emerged, and people's immune systems are getting weaker. Have we become too clean?

It's evident from many of my Japanese friends who experienced severe diarrhea simply from taking a sip of Philippine tap water, the same tap water that millions of Filipinos drink daily. One even had a severe case of food poisoning after eating raw salad from a buffet at Manila Hotel! Clearly Japanese immune systems, used to high levels of cleanliness in food handling and preparation (perishable goods expire mere hours after production based on the stamped date) are poorly equipped to handle the myriad bacteria present in our food and water.

My favorite lines from the book are Ashenburg's arguments that "Clean is a moving target" (Cleanliness is relative. What might be considered clean today might not be tomorrow) and that "The nose is adaptable and teachable." (No, I don't think we can do much about our brother Bumbays/Kenyans/Arabs except live with their natural odor). As for myself, my only argument is this: If we Filipinos paid half as much attention to the cleanliness of our surroundings as we do our bodies, imagine what a much better place our country could be.

Rating: 4.5 stars, because I hoped for more coverage on Asia and Ashenberg never mentioned anything about backside hygiene. To compensate, she has references to hygiene practices (or lack thereof) down there.]]> 3.81 2007 The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History
author: Katherine Ashenburg
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2011/04/15
date added: 2011/06/29
shelves: nonfiction
review:
Emerging squeaky clean after a shower where I lathered my hair with vanilla-scented shampoo and conditioner, scrubbed every inch of my body with J&J milk body wash, and rinsed off everything with soothing warm water, I often used to wonder how our ancestors did without the conveniences of soap, showers, or toilet paper.

How did they get by without deodorant? Without toothbrushes or toothpaste? How did they clean their backsides and how did they banish unpleasant odors away?

Fortunately for me, Katherine Ashenburg had done the research to answer my burning questions. The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History chronicles the history of washing in the Western world from Roman times to present.



The short answer? Humanity did without soap and deodorant for millenia. But did they wash their bodies? It depends on the religion, country, and time period. The early Greeks and Romans were very well washed but didn't use soap. Instead they used a metal implement called a strigil to scrape off dirt. Muslims and Jews were required by religious law to wash. Christian Europe, on the other hand, shunned washing for centuries.

Christian saints and mystics, who associated the Roman practice of bathing with hedonism, never washed at all. Abbessa Paula, friend to St. Jerome, said: 'A clean body and a clean dress mean an unclean soul.' The familiar adage 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness. wouldn't come until many centuries later.

Throughout medieval Christian Europe, bathing was something to be feared and suspected. Most people took a bath only once a year -- royalty even less. Taking a bath was so dangerous kings only took one upon doctor's advice and with an excess of precaution. For kings and nobles, the crux of cleanliness was in washing the hands and changing into a clean linen shirt everyday. They covered the dirt on their bodies with makeup, powdered wigs, and flamboyant dresses. Dirt and bodily secretions were considered protective and healthy. Washing and soaking the body, no. Bad breath, body odor, lice, and fleas were the order for the day.

Yecchhh. Which brings another question: How could they bear to have sex with each other? Ashenburg writes: " In fact, there's no evidence that the birth rate ever fell because people were too smelly for copulation."

Yes, people most definitely smelled. But in a world where everyone smells the same, no one would know the difference.

In fact, fastidiousness in cleanliness and keeping odors at bay is a very recent introduction. It took root around the latter half of the 20th century thanks to the efforts of soap and deodorant advertisers. All of a sudden, young men and women the world over were terrorized thinking they could be losing jobs, sabotaging relationships, and offending others with their body odor -- without even knowing it!

And so in less than a hundred years the evolution of personal hygiene, at least in the developed world, has made a 360-degree turn. But heightened cleanliness with the advent of antibacterial soaps, constant handwashing, and sanitized environments has brought about an unexpected result: highly resistant strains of bacteria have emerged, and people's immune systems are getting weaker. Have we become too clean?

It's evident from many of my Japanese friends who experienced severe diarrhea simply from taking a sip of Philippine tap water, the same tap water that millions of Filipinos drink daily. One even had a severe case of food poisoning after eating raw salad from a buffet at Manila Hotel! Clearly Japanese immune systems, used to high levels of cleanliness in food handling and preparation (perishable goods expire mere hours after production based on the stamped date) are poorly equipped to handle the myriad bacteria present in our food and water.

My favorite lines from the book are Ashenburg's arguments that "Clean is a moving target" (Cleanliness is relative. What might be considered clean today might not be tomorrow) and that "The nose is adaptable and teachable." (No, I don't think we can do much about our brother Bumbays/Kenyans/Arabs except live with their natural odor). As for myself, my only argument is this: If we Filipinos paid half as much attention to the cleanliness of our surroundings as we do our bodies, imagine what a much better place our country could be.

Rating: 4.5 stars, because I hoped for more coverage on Asia and Ashenberg never mentioned anything about backside hygiene. To compensate, she has references to hygiene practices (or lack thereof) down there.
]]> <![CDATA[The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History]]> 2111775
The apparently routine task of taking up soap and water (or not) is Katherine Ashenburg’s starting point for a unique exploration of Western culture, which yields surprising insights into our notions of privacy, health, individuality, religion and sexuality.

Ashenburg searches for clean and dirty in plague-ridden streets, medieval steam baths, castles and tenements, and in bathrooms of every description. She reveals the bizarre rescriptions of history’s doctors as well as the hygienic peccadilloes of kings, mistresses, monks and ordinary citizens, and guides us through the twists and turns to our own understanding of clean, which is no more rational than the rest. Filled with amusing anecdotes and quotations from the great bathers of history, The Dirt on Clean takes us on a journey that is by turns intriguing, humorous, startling and not always for the squeamish. Ashenburg’s tour of history’s baths and bathrooms reveals much about our changing and most intimate selves � what we desire, what we ignore, what we fear, and a significant part of who we are.]]> 368 Katherine Ashenburg 0676976638 Tintin 4 nonfiction
How did they get by without deodorant? Without toothbrushes or toothpaste? How did they clean their backsides and how did they banish unpleasant odors away?

Fortunately for me, Katherine Ashenburg had done the research to answer my burning questions. The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History chronicles the history of washing in the Western world from Roman times to present.



The short answer? Humanity did without soap and deodorant for millenia. But did they wash their bodies? It depends on the religion, country, and time period. The early Greeks and Romans were very well washed but didn't use soap. Instead they used a metal implement called a strigil to scrape off dirt. Muslims and Jews were required by religious law to wash. Christian Europe, on the other hand, shunned washing for centuries.

Christian saints and mystics, who associated the Roman practice of bathing with hedonism, never washed at all. Abbessa Paula, friend to St. Jerome, said: 'A clean body and a clean dress mean an unclean soul.' The familiar adage 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness. wouldn't come until many centuries later.

Throughout medieval Christian Europe, bathing was something to be feared and suspected. Most people took a bath only once a year -- royalty even less. Taking a bath was so dangerous kings only took one upon doctor's advice and with an excess of precaution. For kings and nobles, the crux of cleanliness was in washing the hands and changing into a clean linen shirt everyday. They covered the dirt on their bodies with makeup, powdered wigs, and flamboyant dresses. Dirt and bodily secretions were considered protective and healthy. Washing and soaking the body, no. Bad breath, body odor, lice, and fleas were the order for the day.

Yecchhh. Which brings another question: How could they bear to have sex with each other? Ashenburg writes: " In fact, there's no evidence that the birth rate ever fell because people were too smelly for copulation."

Yes, people most definitely smelled. But in a world where everyone smells the same, no one would know the difference.

In fact, fastidiousness in cleanliness and keeping odors at bay is a very recent introduction. It took root around the latter half of the 20th century thanks to the efforts of soap and deodorant advertisers. All of a sudden, young men and women the world over were terrorized thinking they could be losing jobs, sabotaging relationships, and offending others with their body odor -- without even knowing it!

And so in less than a hundred years the evolution of personal hygiene, at least in the developed world, has made a 360-degree turn. But heightened cleanliness with the advent of antibacterial soaps, constant handwashing, and sanitized environments has brought about an unexpected result: highly resistant strains of bacteria have emerged, and people's immune systems are getting weaker. Have we become too clean?

It's evident from many of my Japanese friends who experienced severe diarrhea simply from taking a sip of Philippine tap water, the same tap water that millions of Filipinos drink daily. One even had a severe case of food poisoning after eating raw salad from a buffet at Manila Hotel! Clearly Japanese immune systems, used to high levels of cleanliness in food handling and preparation (perishable goods expire mere hours after production based on the stamped date) are poorly equipped to handle the myriad bacteria present in our food and water.

My favorite lines from the book are Ashenburg's arguments that "Clean is a moving target" (Cleanliness is relative. What might be considered clean today might not be tomorrow) and that "The nose is adaptable and teachable." (No, I don't think we can do much about our brother Bumbays/Kenyans/Arabs except live with their natural odor). As for myself, my only argument is this: If we Filipinos paid half as much attention to the cleanliness of our surroundings as we do our bodies, imagine what a much better place our country could be.

Rating: 4.5 stars, because I hoped for more coverage on Asia and Ashenberg never mentioned anything about backside hygiene. To compensate, she has references to hygiene practices (or lack thereof) down there.]]> 3.71 2007 The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History
author: Katherine Ashenburg
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2011/04/15
date added: 2011/06/29
shelves: nonfiction
review:
Emerging squeaky clean after a shower where I lathered my hair with vanilla-scented shampoo and conditioner, scrubbed every inch of my body with J&J milk body wash, and rinsed off everything with soothing warm water, I often used to wonder how our ancestors did without the conveniences of soap, showers, or toilet paper.

How did they get by without deodorant? Without toothbrushes or toothpaste? How did they clean their backsides and how did they banish unpleasant odors away?

Fortunately for me, Katherine Ashenburg had done the research to answer my burning questions. The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History chronicles the history of washing in the Western world from Roman times to present.



The short answer? Humanity did without soap and deodorant for millenia. But did they wash their bodies? It depends on the religion, country, and time period. The early Greeks and Romans were very well washed but didn't use soap. Instead they used a metal implement called a strigil to scrape off dirt. Muslims and Jews were required by religious law to wash. Christian Europe, on the other hand, shunned washing for centuries.

Christian saints and mystics, who associated the Roman practice of bathing with hedonism, never washed at all. Abbessa Paula, friend to St. Jerome, said: 'A clean body and a clean dress mean an unclean soul.' The familiar adage 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness. wouldn't come until many centuries later.

Throughout medieval Christian Europe, bathing was something to be feared and suspected. Most people took a bath only once a year -- royalty even less. Taking a bath was so dangerous kings only took one upon doctor's advice and with an excess of precaution. For kings and nobles, the crux of cleanliness was in washing the hands and changing into a clean linen shirt everyday. They covered the dirt on their bodies with makeup, powdered wigs, and flamboyant dresses. Dirt and bodily secretions were considered protective and healthy. Washing and soaking the body, no. Bad breath, body odor, lice, and fleas were the order for the day.

Yecchhh. Which brings another question: How could they bear to have sex with each other? Ashenburg writes: " In fact, there's no evidence that the birth rate ever fell because people were too smelly for copulation."

Yes, people most definitely smelled. But in a world where everyone smells the same, no one would know the difference.

In fact, fastidiousness in cleanliness and keeping odors at bay is a very recent introduction. It took root around the latter half of the 20th century thanks to the efforts of soap and deodorant advertisers. All of a sudden, young men and women the world over were terrorized thinking they could be losing jobs, sabotaging relationships, and offending others with their body odor -- without even knowing it!

And so in less than a hundred years the evolution of personal hygiene, at least in the developed world, has made a 360-degree turn. But heightened cleanliness with the advent of antibacterial soaps, constant handwashing, and sanitized environments has brought about an unexpected result: highly resistant strains of bacteria have emerged, and people's immune systems are getting weaker. Have we become too clean?

It's evident from many of my Japanese friends who experienced severe diarrhea simply from taking a sip of Philippine tap water, the same tap water that millions of Filipinos drink daily. One even had a severe case of food poisoning after eating raw salad from a buffet at Manila Hotel! Clearly Japanese immune systems, used to high levels of cleanliness in food handling and preparation (perishable goods expire mere hours after production based on the stamped date) are poorly equipped to handle the myriad bacteria present in our food and water.

My favorite lines from the book are Ashenburg's arguments that "Clean is a moving target" (Cleanliness is relative. What might be considered clean today might not be tomorrow) and that "The nose is adaptable and teachable." (No, I don't think we can do much about our brother Bumbays/Kenyans/Arabs except live with their natural odor). As for myself, my only argument is this: If we Filipinos paid half as much attention to the cleanliness of our surroundings as we do our bodies, imagine what a much better place our country could be.

Rating: 4.5 stars, because I hoped for more coverage on Asia and Ashenberg never mentioned anything about backside hygiene. To compensate, she has references to hygiene practices (or lack thereof) down there.
]]> Brave New World 8192287 Brave New World, originally published in 1932, presents Aldous Huxley's legendary vision of a world of tomorrow utterly transformed. In Huxley's darkly satiric yet chillingly prescient imagining of a "utopian" future, humans are genetically designed and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively serve a ruling order. A powerful work of speculative fiction that has enthralled and terrified readers for generations, it remains remarkably relevant to this day as both a warning to be heeded and as a thought-provoking yet satisfying entertainment.]]> 424 Aldous Huxley 006200171X Tintin 0 3.84 1932 Brave New World
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1932
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/04/15
shelves: dystopian-post-apocalyptic, currently-reading
review:

]]> Room 9205617 238 Emma Donoghue 0316129119 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 3.95 2010 Room
author: Emma Donoghue
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/04/10
shelves: to-read, backread
review:
Thanks to K.D. for this book :)
]]> <![CDATA[Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1)]]> 960
A devastating new weapon of destruction.
When world-renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to a Swiss research facility to analyze a mysterious symbol -- seared into the chest of a murdered physicist -- he discovers evidence of the unimaginable: the resurgence of an ancient secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati...the most powerful underground organization ever to walk the earth. The Illuminati has now surfaced to carry out the final phase of its legendary vendetta against its most hated enemy -- the Catholic Church.

Langdon's worst fears are confirmed on the eve of the Vatican's holy conclave, when a messenger of the Illuminati announces they have hidden an unstoppable time bomb at the very heart of Vatican City. With the countdown under way, Langdon jets to Rome to join forces with Vittoria Vetra, a beautiful and mysterious Italian scientist, to assist the Vatican in a desperate bid for survival.
Embarking on a frantic hunt through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, deserted cathedrals, and even the most secretive vault on earth, Langdon and Vetra follow a 400-year-old trail of ancient symbols that snakes across Rome toward the long-forgotten Illuminati lair...a clandestine location that contains the only hope for Vatican salvation.

An explosive international thriller, Angels & Demons careens from enlightening epiphanies to dark truths as the battle between science and religion turns to war.]]> 736 Dan Brown 1416524797 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 3.95 2000 Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1)
author: Dan Brown
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/04/10
shelves: to-read, backread
review:
No longer on my wish-list c/o of Monique :) Thank you!
]]> The Red Tent 113348 Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her through a hard-working youth, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land. Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates an intimate connection with the past. Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich storytelling with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's society.
]]> 321 Anita Diamant 0312195516 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 4.06 1997 The Red Tent
author: Anita Diamant
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/04/10
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Chocolate War (Chocolate War, #1)]]> 415001
Refusing to sell chocolates in the annual Trinity School fund-raiser may not seem like a radical thing to do. But when Jerry challenges a secret school society called The Vigils, his defiant act turns into an all-out war. Now the only question is: Who will survive?]]> 263 Robert Cormier 0440944597 Tintin 0 3.32 1974 The Chocolate War (Chocolate War, #1)
author: Robert Cormier
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.32
book published: 1974
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/04/10
shelves: to-read, backread, young-adult
review:
thanks to Dra. Ranee for this book! :)
]]> The Metamorphosis 485894 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes."

With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."]]> 201 Franz Kafka 0553213695 Tintin 3
The impression that left me after the last page went so much against my expectations and principles that immediately after I searched for an analysis online to see if I had missed anything. But no. Over 70% of my own thoughts mirrored that of the online analysis. Kafka meant it to be that way. And it bewilders me, because that made the whole story a black hole of selfishness, cruelty, and despair.

From the beginning I had surmised that Gregor's transformation was metaphorical, but conflicting details continued to confuse me. I'm not sure what exactly Kafka was trying to do here... something along the lines of magical realism? Unreliable narrator? (Which is mostly third-person limited omniscient?)

MINOR SPOILER ALERT

But the most bewildering and bothersome thing for me is that there is no redemption whatsoever for Gregor. His family members are absolutely inhuman, selfish, and hateful. With family members like that, one would be better off with strangers. Most perplexing of all, by the end it is the family members who are redeemed, not poor Gregor. The 'hero' lives out his whole life wretched and miserable while the very people who cause his suffering gain a better life! Was Kafka trying to make an anti-thesis to the conventional hero story? Simply commenting on family dependency and and objectification of hardworking breadwinners? Because I find such a story, though poignant, very frustrating!

SPOILER END

As for what I liked about this story, I was able to connect at an emotional level to unwanted and unappreciated Gregor. I wept during the last quarter of the story. A writer who can stir my emotions gets extra points in my book.

I'm still trying to sort out my feelings for this short novel, but for the meantime I give it 3 stars.]]> 3.90 1915 The Metamorphosis
author: Franz Kafka
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1915
rating: 3
read at: 2011/03/25
date added: 2011/03/28
shelves:
review:
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.... so goes the first lines of this famous work. I admit, I only checked this out to see what I was missing by not having read Kafka. The experience left me a bit bewildered and confused...

The impression that left me after the last page went so much against my expectations and principles that immediately after I searched for an analysis online to see if I had missed anything. But no. Over 70% of my own thoughts mirrored that of the online analysis. Kafka meant it to be that way. And it bewilders me, because that made the whole story a black hole of selfishness, cruelty, and despair.

From the beginning I had surmised that Gregor's transformation was metaphorical, but conflicting details continued to confuse me. I'm not sure what exactly Kafka was trying to do here... something along the lines of magical realism? Unreliable narrator? (Which is mostly third-person limited omniscient?)

MINOR SPOILER ALERT

But the most bewildering and bothersome thing for me is that there is no redemption whatsoever for Gregor. His family members are absolutely inhuman, selfish, and hateful. With family members like that, one would be better off with strangers. Most perplexing of all, by the end it is the family members who are redeemed, not poor Gregor. The 'hero' lives out his whole life wretched and miserable while the very people who cause his suffering gain a better life! Was Kafka trying to make an anti-thesis to the conventional hero story? Simply commenting on family dependency and and objectification of hardworking breadwinners? Because I find such a story, though poignant, very frustrating!

SPOILER END

As for what I liked about this story, I was able to connect at an emotional level to unwanted and unappreciated Gregor. I wept during the last quarter of the story. A writer who can stir my emotions gets extra points in my book.

I'm still trying to sort out my feelings for this short novel, but for the meantime I give it 3 stars.
]]> Jellicoe Road 7042434 In this lyrical, absorbing, award-winning novel, nothing is as it seems, and every clue leads to more questions.

At age eleven, Taylor Markham was abandoned by her mother. At fourteen, she ran away from boarding school, only to be tracked down and brought back by a mysterious stranger. Now seventeen, Taylor's the reluctant leader of her school's underground community, whose annual territory war with the Townies and visiting Cadets has just begun. This year, though, the Cadets are led by Jonah Griggs, and Taylor can't avoid his intense gaze for long. To make matters worse, Hannah, the one adult Taylor trusts, has disappeared. But if Taylor can piece together the clues Hannah left behind, the truth she uncovers might not just settle her past, but also change her future.]]> 419 Melina Marchetta Tintin 0 4.36 2006 Jellicoe Road
author: Melina Marchetta
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/27
shelves: young-adult, backread, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1)]]> 41865
First, Edward was a vampire.

Second, there was a part of him - and I didn't know how dominant that part might be - that thirsted for my blood.

And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Deeply seductive and extraordinarily suspenseful, Twilight is a love story with bite.]]> 498 Stephenie Meyer 0316015849 Tintin 0 ebook, young-adult, on-hiatus 3.66 2005 Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1)
author: Stephenie Meyer
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/27
shelves: ebook, young-adult, on-hiatus
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Desperate Duchesses (Desperate Duchesses, #1)]]> 6215865 400 Eloisa James 034096104X Tintin 0 backread, on-hiatus 3.48 2007 Desperate Duchesses (Desperate Duchesses, #1)
author: Eloisa James
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/27
shelves: backread, on-hiatus
review:

]]> Père Goriot 59143 Père Goriot can rightly be regarded as one of the greatest of Balzac’s novels,� writes Henry Reed of this masterful study of a father who sacrifices everything for his daughters. This novel marked the true beginning of Balzac’s towering project La Comédie Humaine, his series of novels and short stories depicting “the whole pell-mell of civilization.� In Père Goriot, the great novelist probes the “bourgeois tragedy� of money and power from two different directions. While Goriot is willingly reduced to poverty to support his ambitious daughters, an impoverished young man of integrity becomes money hungry. Attracted to one of Goriot’s daughters, Rastignac succumbs to the fever of social climbing. The resulting tale is a commentary on wealth and human desire that still rings true in the twenty-first century.
Ěý
Translated and with an Afterword by Henry Reed
and with an Introduction by Peter Brooks


]]> 294 Honoré de Balzac 0451529596 Tintin 0 to-read 3.79 1835 Père Goriot
author: Honoré de Balzac
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1835
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Flowers in the Attic (Dollanganger, #1)]]> 43448 Such wonderful children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror! It wasn't that she didn't love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake—a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father. So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic. Just for a little while. But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years. Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways. Sometimes he sends children to do his work—children who—one by one—must be destroyed.... 'Way upstairs there are four secrets hidden. Blond, beautiful, innocent struggling to stay alive....']]> 389 V.C. Andrews 0743496310 Tintin 0 to-read 3.84 1979 Flowers in the Attic (Dollanganger, #1)
author: V.C. Andrews
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Discworld, #28)]]> 64336 The Barnes & Noble Review
With the debut of his first young-adult novel, science fiction writer Terry Pratchett invites readers ages 12 and up to visit Discworld -- an imaginary land well known to Pratchett's adult following. At the heart of this tale is a slightly twisted take on the old Pied Piper theme, a talking, thinking cat named Maurice, and a supporting cast of equally talented rats who bear such comical names as Big Savings, Nourishing, and Dangerous Beans.


Maurice and the rats have teamed up with a young lad named Keith to implement a clever moneymaking scheme. Upon entering a town, the rats make a general nuisance of themselves -- stealing food and widdling on things -- until the townsfolk become desperate to get rid of them. Then Maurice and Keith appear on the scene and offer to save the day by ridding the town of its infestation for a small fee. It seems like a surefire plan until the group arrives in the town of Bad Blintz and gets hooked up with Malicia, a young girl with a vivid imagination and a knack for finding trouble. When it's discovered that Bad Blintz already has a rat problem -- one that a couple of shifty-eyed rat catchers claim to have under control -- things turn deadly. For lurking beneath the town's streets is an obstacle course of mangling rattraps and noxious poisons. And beyond that is a monster so powerful and ugly, even Malicia couldn't imagine it.


As Maurice and the rats battle for their very survival, a number of provocative themes surface: life after death, good versus evil, and the sacrifice of the few for the many. But be forewarned -- those in search of lighter fare in these troubled times may not find what they are looking for in Pratchett's vision Despite plenty of razor-sharp wit and lighthearted moments, this tale has an underbelly as dark as the tunnels beneath Bad Blintz. Though The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents is deeply witty and engaging, some readers may find parts of the story -- descriptions of how some of the rats die and how others eat their dead -- rather intense. (Beth Amos)

]]> 368 Terry Pratchett 0613657578 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 4.00 2001 Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (Discworld, #28)
author: Terry Pratchett
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/18
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Velveteen Rabbit & Other Stories]]> 2664788 128 Margery Williams Bianco 0061459429 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 4.26 The Velveteen Rabbit & Other Stories
author: Margery Williams Bianco
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.26
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/18
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> Doctor Zhivago 977510 558 Boris Pasternak 0679731237 Tintin 0 to-read 3.74 1957 Doctor Zhivago
author: Boris Pasternak
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1957
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Platero and I 1082366 New Yorker

This lyric portrait of life and the little donkey in a remote Andalusian village is the masterpiece of Juan Ramón Jiménez, the Spanish poet awarded the 1956 Nobel Prize for Literature.]]> 218 Juan Ramón Jiménez 0292764790 Tintin 0 to-read 3.89 1914 Platero and I
author: Juan Ramón Jiménez
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1914
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them (Ruby Oliver, #2)]]> 1735781
Here is how things stand at the beginning of newly-licensed driver Ruby Oliver's junior year at Tate

Ěýâ€� Not speaking. But far away in Tokyo.
Ěýâ€� Not speaking.
Ěýâ€� Speaking--sort of. Chatted a couple times this summer when they bumped into each other outside of school--once shopping in the U District, and once in the Elliot Bay Bookstore. But she hadn't called Ruby, or anything.
Ěýâ€� Didn't care what anyone thinks.
Ěýâ€� Didn't have any other friends.
Ěýâ€� Dr. Speaking.
Ěýâ€� And Jackson. The big one. Not speaking.

But, by Winter Break, a new job, an unlikely but satisfying friend combo, additional entries to The Boy Book and many difficult decisions help Ruby to see that there is, indeed, life outside the Tate Universe.]]> 195 E. Lockhart 0385732090 Tintin 5 young-adult, favorites
If I had this book it would've been so much easier to survive adolescence. Easier to cope as a social retard. I would have had a guide to help me navigate the confusing sea of boy-girl relationships. I wouldn't have had to grope my way through like a headless chicken, clueless and alone.

If you're suffering from depression due to problematic relationships, no need to pop pills or see a shrink. Reading this book is therapy in itself.

Ruby Oliver novels have nothing extraordinary in them. The plot isn't what you'd call high-concept. The story is about a teenage girl coping with heartbreak and alienation from friends, trying to fit in, trying to figure out who she is and what she wants, and trying to find hope in new love and new friendships. Any girl who had a more-or-less normal childhood would have been in Ruby Oliver's shoes at one point in her life. That makes Ruby Oliver extremely relate-able. She has an authentic teenage voice. They way she overanalyzes things is very close to how my own mind works. I would have had the same thoughts running through my head in a similar situation. It's why I love this series. Ruby Oliver is the most relate-able fictional character I've ever read.

Just because this is YA doesn't mean only teens can relate. Most of the social friction and relationship issues experienced by the teens in this book mirror the issues experienced by any woman in her 20s, 30s, 40, and maybe even beyond (I have a friend here in Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ who's 40 and loves this series). Here's a sample of the guides Ruby and her friends compiled to address their dilemmas:

The Care and Ownership of Boobs
What to Wear When You Might Be Fooling Around
Levels of Boyfriends
Neanderthals on the Telephone: Or, How to Converse
Boy-Speak: Introduction to a Foreign Language
Why Girls Are Better than Boys

...you get the drift. What girl hasn't experienced the awkward telephone conversations and the confusing and contrary alien language of boy-speak? (None, unless you've been locked up all your life in a convent).

One of the complaints I saw from the previous book was that "nothing happened." Something did happen, but since the changes are internal (Ruby's emotional journey), people who can only recognize plots triggered by external events would totally miss the point. As for me, Ruby Oliver's story is exactly the kind of slice-of-life teenage story that I dig, so give it 5 stars.]]> 3.85 2006 The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them (Ruby Oliver, #2)
author: E. Lockhart
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2006
rating: 5
read at: 2011/03/16
date added: 2011/03/16
shelves: young-adult, favorites
review:
Where oh where was this book when I was fifteen!?!?!?

If I had this book it would've been so much easier to survive adolescence. Easier to cope as a social retard. I would have had a guide to help me navigate the confusing sea of boy-girl relationships. I wouldn't have had to grope my way through like a headless chicken, clueless and alone.

If you're suffering from depression due to problematic relationships, no need to pop pills or see a shrink. Reading this book is therapy in itself.

Ruby Oliver novels have nothing extraordinary in them. The plot isn't what you'd call high-concept. The story is about a teenage girl coping with heartbreak and alienation from friends, trying to fit in, trying to figure out who she is and what she wants, and trying to find hope in new love and new friendships. Any girl who had a more-or-less normal childhood would have been in Ruby Oliver's shoes at one point in her life. That makes Ruby Oliver extremely relate-able. She has an authentic teenage voice. They way she overanalyzes things is very close to how my own mind works. I would have had the same thoughts running through my head in a similar situation. It's why I love this series. Ruby Oliver is the most relate-able fictional character I've ever read.

Just because this is YA doesn't mean only teens can relate. Most of the social friction and relationship issues experienced by the teens in this book mirror the issues experienced by any woman in her 20s, 30s, 40, and maybe even beyond (I have a friend here in Ĺ·±¦ÓéŔÖ who's 40 and loves this series). Here's a sample of the guides Ruby and her friends compiled to address their dilemmas:

The Care and Ownership of Boobs
What to Wear When You Might Be Fooling Around
Levels of Boyfriends
Neanderthals on the Telephone: Or, How to Converse
Boy-Speak: Introduction to a Foreign Language
Why Girls Are Better than Boys

...you get the drift. What girl hasn't experienced the awkward telephone conversations and the confusing and contrary alien language of boy-speak? (None, unless you've been locked up all your life in a convent).

One of the complaints I saw from the previous book was that "nothing happened." Something did happen, but since the changes are internal (Ruby's emotional journey), people who can only recognize plots triggered by external events would totally miss the point. As for me, Ruby Oliver's story is exactly the kind of slice-of-life teenage story that I dig, so give it 5 stars.
]]> A Northern Light 64481
Set in 1906 against the backdrop of the murder that inspired Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Jennifer Donnelly's astonishing debut novel effortlessly weaves romance, history, and a murder mystery into something moving, and real, and wholly original.

Includes a reader's guide and an interview with the author.]]> 396 Jennifer Donnelly 0152053107 Tintin 4 young-adult real.

16 year old Mattie Gokey is a bookish, hardworking girl with big dreams of going off to New York for college. But her family's poverty holds her back. She is torn between following her dream and staying to help her family; between making her own way in the world and getting married and inevitably stuck in the rural town she desperately wants to leave.

Set 1906 in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York, Jennifer Donnelly paints the life and people of the town so vividly you'd think she'd been there a hundred years back. If there's one thing about Donnelly's writing that I truly admire, it's how real her characters and their situations seem. Mattie's situation could have happened to anyone --it's happening even now, in our own country. Her dilemma is valid and strikes close to home. Would you stay with your family knowing that doing so will effectively trap you into a life you want to escape, or would you be selfish and try to make something of yourself? It's a question with no easy answers.

The harsh reality of Mattie’s world is clear in her own words:

"People in books are good and noble and unselfish, and people aren't that way....and I feel, well...hornswoggled at times. By Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. Why do writers make things sugary when life isn't that way? Why don't they tell the truth? Why don't they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow's eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won't come out? Or that cancer that has a smell to it?"

Many of the developments veer into melodrama, though it's not quite as heavily melodramatic as her newer novel, Revolution. There is also a heart-wrenching subplot of a real-life murder mystery intertwined with the main story.

Beautifully written and bittersweet. The reality of it all affected me so much I can only give it 4 stars, not the 5 it actually deserves. I guess I am one who'd rather read those sugary works.]]> 3.83 2003 A Northern Light
author: Jennifer Donnelly
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2003
rating: 4
read at: 2011/03/13
date added: 2011/03/15
shelves: young-adult
review:
This book is all too grippingly real.

16 year old Mattie Gokey is a bookish, hardworking girl with big dreams of going off to New York for college. But her family's poverty holds her back. She is torn between following her dream and staying to help her family; between making her own way in the world and getting married and inevitably stuck in the rural town she desperately wants to leave.

Set 1906 in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York, Jennifer Donnelly paints the life and people of the town so vividly you'd think she'd been there a hundred years back. If there's one thing about Donnelly's writing that I truly admire, it's how real her characters and their situations seem. Mattie's situation could have happened to anyone --it's happening even now, in our own country. Her dilemma is valid and strikes close to home. Would you stay with your family knowing that doing so will effectively trap you into a life you want to escape, or would you be selfish and try to make something of yourself? It's a question with no easy answers.

The harsh reality of Mattie’s world is clear in her own words:

"People in books are good and noble and unselfish, and people aren't that way....and I feel, well...hornswoggled at times. By Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. Why do writers make things sugary when life isn't that way? Why don't they tell the truth? Why don't they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow's eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won't come out? Or that cancer that has a smell to it?"

Many of the developments veer into melodrama, though it's not quite as heavily melodramatic as her newer novel, Revolution. There is also a heart-wrenching subplot of a real-life murder mystery intertwined with the main story.

Beautifully written and bittersweet. The reality of it all affected me so much I can only give it 4 stars, not the 5 it actually deserves. I guess I am one who'd rather read those sugary works.
]]> Ilustrado 8042442
To understand the death, Miguel scours the life, piecing together Salvador’s story through his poetry, interviews, novels, polemics, and memoirs. The result is a rich and dramatic family saga of four generations, tracing 150 years of Philippine history forged under the Spanish, the Americans, and the Filipinos themselves. Finally, we are surprised to learn that this story belongs to young Miguel as much as to his lost mentor, and we are treated to an unhindered view of a society caught between reckless decay and hopeful progress.

Exuberant and wise, wildly funny and deeply moving, Ilustrado explores the hidden truths that haunt every family. It is a daring and inventive debut by a new writer of astonishing talent.]]> 306 Miguel Syjuco 0374941033 Tintin 5 filipino
Part of my difficulty reviewing Ilustrado is that I can't use the same yardstick I use for reviewing most fiction. My usual standards-- character dynamics, plot progression, willful suspension of disbelief -- don't matter as much in this book. It’s different. I had to set a different standard.

You'd think that a story covering the lives and family histories of two separate individuals spanning 150 years across three continents, and continuing into the 21st century would take thousands of pages to work. But Syjuco manages the feat in 300 pages, complete with a stark and honest depiction of modern Manila and political and literary commentaries.

Syjuco's portrayal of the madness which is the Philippines strikes close to home. Too close to home at times, I think. The protagonist shares with the author the name Miguel Syjuco, and the real Syjuco also shares with the fictional character the trait of coming from a traditionally rich and political family (his father is a politician allied with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo), among others. I can't help but think this novel is a kind of pseudo-autobiography. Syjuco is indeed the embodiment of the present-day Ilustrado, children of the landed rich who were sent to study abroad to be 'Enlightened.' Now as it was then, they hold the greatest potential to change our country. You can't argue with political clout and economics.

No book review or summary I've read comes close to describing what Ilustrado actually is, so I encourage others to read it for themselves. There are, however, stylistic choices that significantly up the barriers of entry. Ilustrado is not what I'd call accessible. Here are my reasons:

Unabashed literary style
Good prose; overwritten at times. Syjuco is also fond of using 10-dollar words. After a while I gave up and took out a dictionary.(And I never consult a dictionary while reading).

Liberal use of Post-Modern techniques
Prior to Ilustrado I only approached post-modern literature with a meter-long poking stick. Post-modern stories are notorious for being out-there and just plain weird compared to regular stories. Reading it was like a crash course on post-modernist literature as it uses nearly every technique in the post-modernist arsenal. But if you're open to exploring the genre and getting out of your reading comfort zone, it's a rewarding experience.

(As an aside, I looked up post-modernism while reading and was surprised at the number of popular works that could be considered post-modern. The Matrix. Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy. Inception. Even The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is post-modern!)

Non-linear storyline
The main story is more or less linear, but timelines and settings jump. The prologue ends with the protagonist writing:
"The facts, shattered, are gathered, for your deliberation, like a broken mirror whose final piece has been forced into place." And that's exactly how it is.

Complexity of Narrative
This is not an easy read, the kind you can breeze through in a sitting. It's the kind of book that benefits the most from a second reading. The narrative is like a bundle of knots to be unraveled -- close and deliberate observation is required.


Syjuco's depiction of the Philippines is at times dark, at times jokingly funny, but always rings true. It's like holding a polished mirror. Which is why I think Filipinos above all should read this book. Only a Filipino could catch most of the oblique references and see the jokes for the self-deprecating slurs they really are. We laugh at these jokes because they contain truth, but when we laugh, we are laughing at nothing but ourselves!

It's not a perfect read. I didn't like all of the techniques he used or thought all parts of the book interesting. But considering his background, I admire Syjuco's courage to speak out his political opinions, no holds barred. The picture he paints of present-day Philippines isn't pretty, but it's close to reality. Ilustrado a modern-day descendant of Rizal's novels. And despite myself, I do love the post-modern twist. I love how the book melded both fact and fiction to the point where it becomes impossible to tell the two apart.

This bold novel gets 5 stars from me.]]> 3.39 2008 Ilustrado
author: Miguel Syjuco
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2011/03/11
date added: 2011/03/14
shelves: filipino
review:
The scope and breadth of this novel is so mind-boggling I don't even know where to start.

Part of my difficulty reviewing Ilustrado is that I can't use the same yardstick I use for reviewing most fiction. My usual standards-- character dynamics, plot progression, willful suspension of disbelief -- don't matter as much in this book. It’s different. I had to set a different standard.

You'd think that a story covering the lives and family histories of two separate individuals spanning 150 years across three continents, and continuing into the 21st century would take thousands of pages to work. But Syjuco manages the feat in 300 pages, complete with a stark and honest depiction of modern Manila and political and literary commentaries.

Syjuco's portrayal of the madness which is the Philippines strikes close to home. Too close to home at times, I think. The protagonist shares with the author the name Miguel Syjuco, and the real Syjuco also shares with the fictional character the trait of coming from a traditionally rich and political family (his father is a politician allied with Gloria Macapagal Arroyo), among others. I can't help but think this novel is a kind of pseudo-autobiography. Syjuco is indeed the embodiment of the present-day Ilustrado, children of the landed rich who were sent to study abroad to be 'Enlightened.' Now as it was then, they hold the greatest potential to change our country. You can't argue with political clout and economics.

No book review or summary I've read comes close to describing what Ilustrado actually is, so I encourage others to read it for themselves. There are, however, stylistic choices that significantly up the barriers of entry. Ilustrado is not what I'd call accessible. Here are my reasons:

Unabashed literary style
Good prose; overwritten at times. Syjuco is also fond of using 10-dollar words. After a while I gave up and took out a dictionary.(And I never consult a dictionary while reading).

Liberal use of Post-Modern techniques
Prior to Ilustrado I only approached post-modern literature with a meter-long poking stick. Post-modern stories are notorious for being out-there and just plain weird compared to regular stories. Reading it was like a crash course on post-modernist literature as it uses nearly every technique in the post-modernist arsenal. But if you're open to exploring the genre and getting out of your reading comfort zone, it's a rewarding experience.

(As an aside, I looked up post-modernism while reading and was surprised at the number of popular works that could be considered post-modern. The Matrix. Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy. Inception. Even The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is post-modern!)

Non-linear storyline
The main story is more or less linear, but timelines and settings jump. The prologue ends with the protagonist writing:
"The facts, shattered, are gathered, for your deliberation, like a broken mirror whose final piece has been forced into place." And that's exactly how it is.

Complexity of Narrative
This is not an easy read, the kind you can breeze through in a sitting. It's the kind of book that benefits the most from a second reading. The narrative is like a bundle of knots to be unraveled -- close and deliberate observation is required.


Syjuco's depiction of the Philippines is at times dark, at times jokingly funny, but always rings true. It's like holding a polished mirror. Which is why I think Filipinos above all should read this book. Only a Filipino could catch most of the oblique references and see the jokes for the self-deprecating slurs they really are. We laugh at these jokes because they contain truth, but when we laugh, we are laughing at nothing but ourselves!

It's not a perfect read. I didn't like all of the techniques he used or thought all parts of the book interesting. But considering his background, I admire Syjuco's courage to speak out his political opinions, no holds barred. The picture he paints of present-day Philippines isn't pretty, but it's close to reality. Ilustrado a modern-day descendant of Rizal's novels. And despite myself, I do love the post-modern twist. I love how the book melded both fact and fiction to the point where it becomes impossible to tell the two apart.

This bold novel gets 5 stars from me.
]]> <![CDATA[Read Real Japanese Essays: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors]]> 2308180 Read Real Japanese Essays, and its companion volume Read Real Japanese Fiction, allows readers to experience the work of several of todays foremost writers as if they were lifelong Japanese speakers.

The pieces in Read Real Japanese Essays are informed by the personalities of the writers: Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Mitsuyo Kakuta, Junko Sakai, Yoko Ogawa, Kou Machida, Keiichiro Hirano and Hideo Levy. By turns humorous, serious, beautiful and biting, they have been selected on the basis of their appeal. All are stimulating works that will motivate readers to want more.

Just like real Japanese books, the text in this collection runs from top bottom and from right to left. For those needing backup, the essays have been supplemented with facing-page translations of the phrases used therein, often with notes on nuance, usage, grammar or culture. In the back of the book, moreover, is a built-in Japanese-English learner's dictionary and a notes section covering issues of nuance, usage, grammar and culture that come up in each essay. Best of all, the book comes with a free audio CD containing narrations of the essays, performed by a professional voice actress. This will help users to become familiar with the sounds and rhythms of Japanese, as well as the speed at which the language is normally spoken.]]> 238 Janet Ashby 4770030576 Tintin 0 currently-reading, nonfiction 4.05 2008 Read Real Japanese Essays: Contemporary Writings by Popular Authors
author: Janet Ashby
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/13
shelves: currently-reading, nonfiction
review:
Putting the Murakami Haruki essay first in the book was a good idea. Totally hilarious - I love Murakami already. I want to read more of him! In Japanese! And now after putting it off since forever I'm actually motivated to read the rest of the book *gasp*
]]> V for Vendetta 403459 V for Vendetta takes place in a totalitarian England following a devastating war that changed the face of the planet. In a world without political freedom, personal freedom and precious little faith in anything comes a mysterious man in a white porcelain mask who fights political oppressors through terrorism and seemingly absurd acts. It's a gripping tale of the blurred lines between ideological good and evil.]]> 286 Alan Moore 0930289528 Tintin 0 4.16 1990 V for Vendetta
author: Alan Moore
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/13
shelves: dystopian-post-apocalyptic, currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian]]> 693208
Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live.

With a foreward by Markus Zusak & interviews with Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney
]]> 230 Sherman Alexie 0316013684 Tintin 0 4.05 2007 The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
author: Sherman Alexie
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/09
shelves: to-read, backread, young-adult
review:

]]> The Country Girls 990259 227 Edna O'Brien 0752881167 Tintin 0 to-read 3.63 1960 The Country Girls
author: Edna O'Brien
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.63
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Snow Flower and the Secret Fan]]> 1103
As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. Together, they endure the agony of foot-binding, and reflect upon their arranged marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.]]> 269 Lisa See 0812968069 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 4.06 2005 Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
author: Lisa See
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/08
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> Kissing in Manhattan: Stories 26064
James Branch, a shy young accountant with an unusual love for the Preemption’s antique elevator, and a strange destiny...

Patrick Rigg, a Wall Street lothario who soothes his pain by seducing
beautiful women, carrying a gun, and attending the nightly sermons of a foreboding priest...

Rally McWilliams, a fetching, hopeful young writer who roams the city at night, searching for the soulmate she believes in but can’t find...

Charged with joy and a deadly sense of humor, Kissing in Manhattan is a daring new writer’s vision of a world where men and women, good and evil, love and sex, meet, battle, and embrace on every street corner.]]> 274 David Schickler 0385335679 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 3.60 2001 Kissing in Manhattan: Stories
author: David Schickler
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/08
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> Corelli’s Mandolin 3388 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is set in the early days of the second world war, before Benito Mussolini invaded Greece. Dr Iannis practices medicine on the island of Cephalonia, accompanied by his daughter, Pelagia, to whom he imparts much of his healing art. Even when the Italians do invade, life isn’t so bad—at first anyway. The officer in command of the Italian garrison is the cultured Captain Antonio Corelli, who responds to a Nazi greeting of “Heil Hitler� with his own “Heil Puccini�, and whose most precious possession is his mandolin. It isn't long before Corelli and Pelagia are involved in a heated affair--despite her engagement to a young fisherman, Mandras, who has gone off to join Greek partisans. Love is complicated enough in wartime, even when the lovers are on the same side. And for Corelli and Pelagia, it becomes increasingly difficult to negotiate the minefield of allegiances, both personal and political, as all around them atrocities mount, former friends become enemies and the ugliness of war infects everyone it touches.

British author Louis de Bernières is well known for his forays into magical realism in such novels as The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord and The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman. Here he keeps it to a minimum, though certainly the secondary characters with whom he populates his island—the drunken priest, the strongman, the fisherman who swims with dolphins—would be at home in any of his wildly imaginative Latin American fictions. Instead, de Bernières seems interested in dissecting the nature of history as he tells his ever-darkening tale from many different perspectives. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin works on many levels, as a love story, a war story and a deconstruction of just what determines the facts that make it into the history books.]]> 437 Louis de Bernières 067976397X Tintin 0 to-read, backread 3.97 1994 Corelli’s Mandolin
author: Louis de Bernières
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/08
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> Bel Canto 5826 318 Ann Patchett Tintin 0 to-read, backread 3.93 2001 Bel Canto
author: Ann Patchett
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/08
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> The Lathe of Heaven 59924
In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George's dreams for his own purposes.

The Lathe of Heaven is an eerily prescient novel from award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin that masterfully addresses the dangers of power and humanity's self-destructiveness, questioning the nature of reality itself. It is a classic of the science fiction genre.]]> 176 Ursula K. Le Guin 0060512741 Tintin 0 to-read, wishlist 4.12 1971 The Lathe of Heaven
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/06
shelves: to-read, wishlist
review:

]]> Shame in the Blood 5669178 Shame in the Blood (Shinobugawa) is considered one of the finest contemporary love stories in all of modern Japanese literature. The narrator, a young college student, has had two brothers disappear, lost two sisters to suicide, and his third sister is physically disabled. He is determined not only to survive but to thrive in spite of tormented thoughts that his family’s blood is cursed.
Told as six interlocked and layered stories, the novel builds and deepens as the particulars of everyday life provide a moving, beautiful testimony to the love and power of youth and commitment. The whole story is tinged with melancholic sadness often associated with Japanese literature, where the feeling of love itself is “a little death.�
First published in Japan, Shame in the Blood was made into a film directed by Obayashi Nobuhiko, and won the Akutagawa Prize for Literature, launching Tetsuo Miura’s career. Working in the great tradition of Japanese novelists from Soseki to Kawabata, from Mishima to Abe, Miura takes his place as one of the greatest living Japanese writers.]]> 224 Tetsuo Miura 1582434700 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 3.20 1961 Shame in the Blood
author: Tetsuo Miura
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.20
book published: 1961
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/06
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry 1177751 274 Mildred D. Taylor 0140366253 Tintin 0 3.95 1976 Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
author: Mildred D. Taylor
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/06
shelves: to-read, backread, young-adult
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail]]> 103342 294 Malika Oufkir 0786886307 Tintin 0 to-read, backread, nonfiction 4.04 1999 Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail
author: Malika Oufkir
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/02
shelves: to-read, backread, nonfiction
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Master & Commander (Aubrey & Maturin, #1)]]> 77430 Sophie. Accompanied by his eccentric new friend, the physician and naturalist Stephen Maturin, Aubrey does battle with the naval hierarchy, with his own tendency to make social blunders, and with the challenges of forging an effective crew -- before ultimately taking on enemy ships in a vivid, intricately detailed series of sea battles.]]> 464 Patrick O'Brian 0393307050 Tintin 0 to-read, backread 4.08 1969 Master & Commander (Aubrey & Maturin, #1)
author: Patrick O'Brian
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/03/02
shelves: to-read, backread
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1)]]> 6043848 TODD HEWITT IS THE LAST BOY IN PRENTISSTOWN.

But Pretisstown isn't like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in a contant, overwhelming, never-ending Noise. There is no privacy. There are no secrets.

Or are there?

Just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd unexpectedly stumbles upon a spot of complete silence.

Which is impossible.

Prentisstown has been lying to him.

And now he's going to have to run...]]> 479 Patrick Ness 1406320757 Tintin 3
On one hand, it is a well-written, compelling dystopian story that kept me turning pages. On the other hand, I found the payoff unsatisfying and a number of premises hard to swallow.

Todd Hewitt lives at Prentisstown in New World, where men and every living creature can hear each other's thoughts (called Noise). There is no privacy, even in one's own mind.

It's an interesting and original concept. Patrick Ness puts us right into the protagonist's mind as he narrates the story from the first-person perspective complete with the misspellings, grammatical errors, colloquialisms, and run-on sentences that characterize Todd. It's takes a while to get used to the writing style, but when you do, it's rewarding. You recognize Todd telling you his story from the page as best as he can despite his illiteracy and limited knowledge of the world. It's one of the best examples I know of a writer disappearing into his prose.

Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown and is eagerly awaiting for the day he becomes a man on his 13th year. For reasons unclear to him, he is forced to run away a month before his birthday. It's the first time he had ever stepped out of the boundaries of Prentisstown, and what he finds out beyond the border tears down everything he knew as truth and reveals hidden secrets. The secrets surrounding Prentisstown and the unrelenting chase of the Prentisstown army for their wayward member keeps tension running high throughout the book.

***SPOILERS WITHIN***

Ness doesn't tell us outright, but he drops hints to the reader that New World is another planet colonized by humans. We know that New World has two moons, that the sky 'is the color of fresh meat,' that the humans warred with the original inhabitants called the Spackle.

New World is an allegory of the colonization of America (also called New World back then). The events at the futuristic New World mirror that of the colonization of North America 500 hundred years ago. Todd's town left the Old World as a group of religious immigrants (the Puritans and other Christian groups in the 16th century). They branched out and spread across New World, displacing and nearly wiping out the native Spackle inhabitants (Native American Indians). Since the Noise endemic to the planet is something that humans do not understand, they look for a scapegoat and demonize the Spackle. It's basically history repeating itself.

I initially found this setup hard to believe for being incredibly backward (and I thought this was the future where space travel is possible?). The inhabitants of New World had essentially thrown away the Renaissance, three centuries of progress, and free thought. But looking at the present day, I begrudgingly agreed that such a thing was possible if the following groups continue to exist as they do today:

1) The Amish
2) Mormon fundamentalists
3) Muslim/Christian/Jewish fundamentalists


In short, any closed group resistant to change and a mentality of 'think like us or else.'

What I find hardest to believe, though, are the bad guys who just . won't. die. I feel like this was some kind of action movie or video game where the bad guy keeps on going after being chomped off by giant crocodiles, beaten to a pulp, and having his nose ripped off. I guess something as mundane as bacteria and infection doesn't exist in New World.

And then there is the unbelievable stamina of Todd and his companions. Never mind being sore and bloody all over, they can still hike hundreds of miles without food, water, or sleep. Hunger Games was at least believable because when the characters get hurt, they really do get hurt and don't just magically recover after eating raisins

And the terrible secret of Prentisstown and Todd's internal dilemma which is the premise of the book? I didn't buy it at all. The first couple of times I could forgive him for not wanting to kill, but the third and fourth time is a bit too much, if he had even any notion of self-preservation. My problem is that Todd's being complicit with all of Prentisstown by killing is symbolic, and symbols only have as much power and meaning as one gives them. Is a symbol worth his, Manchee's, and Viola's lives? I think not. And how could Todd miss the secret when he could have known by listening to the Noise?

Not to mention the fact that Prentisstown itself defies logic (they're paving their own way to extinction -- though Ness rationalizes it as the workings of the crazy mind of Mayor Prentiss). And that none of the towns, even Haven, had anything to fight off an army from a small town heading for extinction. (You would think that with their higher population, and freer access to the other towns of New World they would have put up a fight. Did all men get trapped in Prentisstown?).

But if there's one thing I really loved in this novel, it's the dog Manchee. I'm a sucker for fiercely loyal characters and dogs. And I loved Manchee's doggie voice: 'Ow, Todd?' 'Poo, Todd.'. And then he gets killed off. I know his death is to contribute to character development but darn, why do all my favorite characters die? I felt much the same way when L died in Death Note. I really didn't care much about what happened after that.

And then there's the ending which I found extremely unsatisfying. I don't even mind that it ends on a cliffhanger. What I do mind is that the ending makes Todd's whole journey pointless, and there isn't even any shred of redemption.

In sum, this is a gripping read with a number of poignant highlights. But the book's rationalized premise stretched my disbelief and the ending frustrated me more than inspired me to immediately pick up the next book in the series, so I give it 3 stars.]]> 4.07 2008 The Knife of Never Letting Go (Chaos Walking, #1)
author: Patrick Ness
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2011/02/24
date added: 2011/03/02
shelves: young-adult, dystopian-post-apocalyptic
review:
I have a hard time rating this book.

On one hand, it is a well-written, compelling dystopian story that kept me turning pages. On the other hand, I found the payoff unsatisfying and a number of premises hard to swallow.

Todd Hewitt lives at Prentisstown in New World, where men and every living creature can hear each other's thoughts (called Noise). There is no privacy, even in one's own mind.

It's an interesting and original concept. Patrick Ness puts us right into the protagonist's mind as he narrates the story from the first-person perspective complete with the misspellings, grammatical errors, colloquialisms, and run-on sentences that characterize Todd. It's takes a while to get used to the writing style, but when you do, it's rewarding. You recognize Todd telling you his story from the page as best as he can despite his illiteracy and limited knowledge of the world. It's one of the best examples I know of a writer disappearing into his prose.

Todd is the last boy in Prentisstown and is eagerly awaiting for the day he becomes a man on his 13th year. For reasons unclear to him, he is forced to run away a month before his birthday. It's the first time he had ever stepped out of the boundaries of Prentisstown, and what he finds out beyond the border tears down everything he knew as truth and reveals hidden secrets. The secrets surrounding Prentisstown and the unrelenting chase of the Prentisstown army for their wayward member keeps tension running high throughout the book.

***SPOILERS WITHIN***

Ness doesn't tell us outright, but he drops hints to the reader that New World is another planet colonized by humans. We know that New World has two moons, that the sky 'is the color of fresh meat,' that the humans warred with the original inhabitants called the Spackle.

New World is an allegory of the colonization of America (also called New World back then). The events at the futuristic New World mirror that of the colonization of North America 500 hundred years ago. Todd's town left the Old World as a group of religious immigrants (the Puritans and other Christian groups in the 16th century). They branched out and spread across New World, displacing and nearly wiping out the native Spackle inhabitants (Native American Indians). Since the Noise endemic to the planet is something that humans do not understand, they look for a scapegoat and demonize the Spackle. It's basically history repeating itself.

I initially found this setup hard to believe for being incredibly backward (and I thought this was the future where space travel is possible?). The inhabitants of New World had essentially thrown away the Renaissance, three centuries of progress, and free thought. But looking at the present day, I begrudgingly agreed that such a thing was possible if the following groups continue to exist as they do today:

1) The Amish
2) Mormon fundamentalists
3) Muslim/Christian/Jewish fundamentalists


In short, any closed group resistant to change and a mentality of 'think like us or else.'

What I find hardest to believe, though, are the bad guys who just . won't. die. I feel like this was some kind of action movie or video game where the bad guy keeps on going after being chomped off by giant crocodiles, beaten to a pulp, and having his nose ripped off. I guess something as mundane as bacteria and infection doesn't exist in New World.

And then there is the unbelievable stamina of Todd and his companions. Never mind being sore and bloody all over, they can still hike hundreds of miles without food, water, or sleep. Hunger Games was at least believable because when the characters get hurt, they really do get hurt and don't just magically recover after eating raisins

And the terrible secret of Prentisstown and Todd's internal dilemma which is the premise of the book? I didn't buy it at all. The first couple of times I could forgive him for not wanting to kill, but the third and fourth time is a bit too much, if he had even any notion of self-preservation. My problem is that Todd's being complicit with all of Prentisstown by killing is symbolic, and symbols only have as much power and meaning as one gives them. Is a symbol worth his, Manchee's, and Viola's lives? I think not. And how could Todd miss the secret when he could have known by listening to the Noise?

Not to mention the fact that Prentisstown itself defies logic (they're paving their own way to extinction -- though Ness rationalizes it as the workings of the crazy mind of Mayor Prentiss). And that none of the towns, even Haven, had anything to fight off an army from a small town heading for extinction. (You would think that with their higher population, and freer access to the other towns of New World they would have put up a fight. Did all men get trapped in Prentisstown?).

But if there's one thing I really loved in this novel, it's the dog Manchee. I'm a sucker for fiercely loyal characters and dogs. And I loved Manchee's doggie voice: 'Ow, Todd?' 'Poo, Todd.'. And then he gets killed off. I know his death is to contribute to character development but darn, why do all my favorite characters die? I felt much the same way when L died in Death Note. I really didn't care much about what happened after that.

And then there's the ending which I found extremely unsatisfying. I don't even mind that it ends on a cliffhanger. What I do mind is that the ending makes Todd's whole journey pointless, and there isn't even any shred of redemption.

In sum, this is a gripping read with a number of poignant highlights. But the book's rationalized premise stretched my disbelief and the ending frustrated me more than inspired me to immediately pick up the next book in the series, so I give it 3 stars.
]]> I Capture the Castle 341896
“This book has one of the most charismatic narrators I've ever met.� -- J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series

Adapted to a feature film in 2003, I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls, and her own first descent into love.

By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle"-- and the heart of the reader-- in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments.]]> 343 Dodie Smith 031231616X Tintin 0 3.87 1948 I Capture the Castle
author: Dodie Smith
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/02/28
shelves: to-read, backread, young-adult
review:

]]> Getting Rid of Bradley 140584
When someone shoots at her and then her car blows up, Zack decides she needs twenty-four-hour police protection. Next thing Lucy knows, Zack has moved in to her big Victorian house, making them both sleepless…and not just from things that go bump in the night!]]> 336 Jennifer Crusie 0373772211 Tintin 4
Lucy Savage finds her life threatened when her ex-husband Bradley is involved in an embezzlement case. Luckily for her, the rough but competent cop Zack Warren steps up the plate to protect her. As expected from a romance novel, the physical attraction is instantaneous, but what's remarkable about it is that the characters willfully fight against it and keep their hands off each other for more than half the book. It's great because Lucy and Zack actually get to know each other better, the sexual tension builds up, and it's more believable than ending up in bed with no preliminary (sadly, an all-too-common occurrence in romance fiction).

Lucy and Zack's personalities provide a source of both conflict and comedy. She's a physics teacher, highly logical, loves her house and her 3 dogs, and wants to be independent. He's a cop who relies on his instincts, undomesticated, and his over-protectiveness stifles Lucy's wish to be independent (he's overprotective for good reason-- there have been numerous threats to Lucy's life). They're both afraid of commitment.

More than the plot itself, what endeared this book to me is the dynamics between characters. It's most evident between Lucy and Zack, but it also extends to the side characters and even the dogs. Jennifer Crusie's novel is character-driven and I loved seeing her characters interact. It was a constant source of comedy. My copy is full of highlighter markings because the dialogue was just too good and funny to pass up.

While I generally don't trust book blurbs, I totally agree with this one from Kirkus Reviews in the back cover:

Crusie seems incapable of writing a boring page, or one that's not aglow.

The story isn't perfect as I saw a number of loopholes and I found the upbeat pacing a bit too fast for my taste. I also had to (willingly) suspend my disbelief a few times. But the silly grin on my face the whole time I was reading this book more than made up for its faults. In fact, even with all its shortcomings, I find it better plotted than 90% of the romance books I've read.

It took me nearly a year of searching, but I finally found the perfect blend of romance and comedy in Jennifer Crusie. I'm glad she has a dozen other books for me to read -- and this one isn't even her highest-rated book!

A dazzling 4 stars =D



***

Tintin's Notes to Self:

* OMG Zack's personality is almost exactly like Leon's! They're both cops, they both rely on their guts, they're sloppy and rough around the edges but have a big heart inside. And Lucy isn't D, but she's a dog lover so she's similar to D in that respect.

* Reread this book and learn from the pure awesomeness of Crusie's dialogue.

* The love scenes are tender and passionate without being explicit (hmmm, could learn from that!).]]> 3.59 1994 Getting Rid of Bradley
author: Jennifer Crusie
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.59
book published: 1994
rating: 4
read at: 2011/02/24
date added: 2011/02/24
shelves:
review:
Reading this was pure joy. And to think I was almost ready to throw in the towel over romance. I'm glad I gave the genre another chance.

Lucy Savage finds her life threatened when her ex-husband Bradley is involved in an embezzlement case. Luckily for her, the rough but competent cop Zack Warren steps up the plate to protect her. As expected from a romance novel, the physical attraction is instantaneous, but what's remarkable about it is that the characters willfully fight against it and keep their hands off each other for more than half the book. It's great because Lucy and Zack actually get to know each other better, the sexual tension builds up, and it's more believable than ending up in bed with no preliminary (sadly, an all-too-common occurrence in romance fiction).

Lucy and Zack's personalities provide a source of both conflict and comedy. She's a physics teacher, highly logical, loves her house and her 3 dogs, and wants to be independent. He's a cop who relies on his instincts, undomesticated, and his over-protectiveness stifles Lucy's wish to be independent (he's overprotective for good reason-- there have been numerous threats to Lucy's life). They're both afraid of commitment.

More than the plot itself, what endeared this book to me is the dynamics between characters. It's most evident between Lucy and Zack, but it also extends to the side characters and even the dogs. Jennifer Crusie's novel is character-driven and I loved seeing her characters interact. It was a constant source of comedy. My copy is full of highlighter markings because the dialogue was just too good and funny to pass up.

While I generally don't trust book blurbs, I totally agree with this one from Kirkus Reviews in the back cover:

Crusie seems incapable of writing a boring page, or one that's not aglow.

The story isn't perfect as I saw a number of loopholes and I found the upbeat pacing a bit too fast for my taste. I also had to (willingly) suspend my disbelief a few times. But the silly grin on my face the whole time I was reading this book more than made up for its faults. In fact, even with all its shortcomings, I find it better plotted than 90% of the romance books I've read.

It took me nearly a year of searching, but I finally found the perfect blend of romance and comedy in Jennifer Crusie. I'm glad she has a dozen other books for me to read -- and this one isn't even her highest-rated book!

A dazzling 4 stars =D



***

Tintin's Notes to Self:

* OMG Zack's personality is almost exactly like Leon's! They're both cops, they both rely on their guts, they're sloppy and rough around the edges but have a big heart inside. And Lucy isn't D, but she's a dog lover so she's similar to D in that respect.

* Reread this book and learn from the pure awesomeness of Crusie's dialogue.

* The love scenes are tender and passionate without being explicit (hmmm, could learn from that!).
]]> <![CDATA[The Importance of Being Earnest]]> 92303
Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gwendolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack's ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack's country home on the same weekend the "rivals" to fight for Ernest's undivided attention and the "Ernests" to claim their beloveds pandemonium breaks loose. Only a senile nursemaid and an old, discarded hand-bag can save the day!

This Prestwick House Literary Touchstone Edition includes a glossary and reader's notes to help the modern reader appreciate Wilde's wry wit and elaborate plot twists.]]> 89 Oscar Wilde 158049580X Tintin 0 to-read 4.17 1895 The Importance of Being Earnest
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1895
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/02/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Goose Girl (The Books of Bayern, #1)]]> 179064 She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste.

Her name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt’s stories and learning the language of the birds, especially the swans. And when she was older, she watched as a colt was born, and she heard the first word on his tongue, his name, Falada.

From the Grimm’s fairy tale of the princess who became a goose girl before she could become queen, Shannon Hale has woven an incredible, original, and magical tale of a girl who must find her own unusual talents before she can lead the people she has made her own.]]> 383 Shannon Hale 1582349908 Tintin 0 4.14 2003 The Goose Girl (The Books of Bayern, #1)
author: Shannon Hale
name: Tintin
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2003
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/02/23
shelves: to-read, young-adult, wishlist
review:

]]> The Picture of Dorian Gray 9228805
In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind.]]> 244 Oscar Wilde 1403739072 Tintin 3 classics
Dorian initially starts out as pure and innocent until he is influenced by Lord Henry (Harry) Wotton, a man who lives a hedonistic life and encourages Dorian to live solely for pleasure of the senses. In contrast, his artist friend Basil Hallward (who also painted the portrait) has more conservative views and tries to steer Dorian towards a moral path. But Dorian ignores Basil and idealizes Lord Henry instead. He then leads a life of immorality and sin in the pursuit of pleasure that should have left a mark on his physical person. But he remains as perfect and unblemished as the day the portrait was made. Both his youthful beauty and the scandals surrounding him made him a much-talked about personality in London society.

There is more to this book than the plot. Full of wry witticisms mainly supplied by the walking-talking quotation book Lord Henry (Dorian accuses him 'You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram') and commentaries on late 19th-century London society, life, sin, and the nature of Art, the book never runs out of ideas from start to finish. Most of Lord Henry's opinions are cynical and should be taken with a grain of salt: Art is a malady; Love an illusion; Religion the fashionable substitute for Belief, but they also present a different way of looking at things.

The novel as a whole is good, but some writing and plot devices prevented me from thoroughly enjoying the work and being satisfied with it. It may be unfair to judge a work over a century old with modern standards, but I felt extremely grateful to Hemingway for exerting a great influence on 20th century fiction while reading this book. Reading this requires extensive knowledge of Greek mythology, Roman history, plays, and other obscure and esoteric knowledge (thankfully I had an annotated copy). I found the middle chapters tedious with their extensive, florid descriptions of exotic objects and ancient fancies that I literally found my eyelids getting heavy and putting the book away before I dozed off on my chair.

My other gripe is that while we are told of Dorian's descent into vice, sin, and corruption, we aren't shown what these sins of his are. I'm not exactly sure what actions he did for the portrait to turn vile and hideous as a reflection of his soul. Only in the later part of the book are we shown a concrete evidence of his sin (murder), but he had been morally degraded long before that. I also find the portrait itself underused as a plot device. Wilde could have done more with it than keep it hidden at all times. Granted, Oscar Wilde precedes Hemingway by nearly 50 years, but modern storytelling has spoiled me in my expectations.

But if there's one thing Wilde does best, it's dialogue. His proficiency as a playwright is evident in the snappy exchange and verbal sparring of his characters. I never skipped the dialogue as it was a pleasure to read (Wilde wrote a number of plays but only one novel).

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a classic piece of literature that contains a surprising number of insights from the point-of-view of a cynical, hedonistic, 19th century Englishman. One wonders if Oscar Wilde was writing about himself, as his life was also marred by scandal and controversy. Worth reading, but I wouldn't put it up high in the to-read list. 3.5 (rounded to 3) stars.]]> 3.76 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray
author: Oscar Wilde
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.76
book published: 1890
rating: 3
read at: 2011/02/23
date added: 2011/02/23
shelves: classics
review:
Young, innocent Dorian Gray receives a portrait with a strange ability to preserve his youth and beauty while the portrait itself ages and shows his life's degradation from the canvas. It's a high-concept, attention-grabbing premise.

Dorian initially starts out as pure and innocent until he is influenced by Lord Henry (Harry) Wotton, a man who lives a hedonistic life and encourages Dorian to live solely for pleasure of the senses. In contrast, his artist friend Basil Hallward (who also painted the portrait) has more conservative views and tries to steer Dorian towards a moral path. But Dorian ignores Basil and idealizes Lord Henry instead. He then leads a life of immorality and sin in the pursuit of pleasure that should have left a mark on his physical person. But he remains as perfect and unblemished as the day the portrait was made. Both his youthful beauty and the scandals surrounding him made him a much-talked about personality in London society.

There is more to this book than the plot. Full of wry witticisms mainly supplied by the walking-talking quotation book Lord Henry (Dorian accuses him 'You would sacrifice anybody, Harry, for the sake of an epigram') and commentaries on late 19th-century London society, life, sin, and the nature of Art, the book never runs out of ideas from start to finish. Most of Lord Henry's opinions are cynical and should be taken with a grain of salt: Art is a malady; Love an illusion; Religion the fashionable substitute for Belief, but they also present a different way of looking at things.

The novel as a whole is good, but some writing and plot devices prevented me from thoroughly enjoying the work and being satisfied with it. It may be unfair to judge a work over a century old with modern standards, but I felt extremely grateful to Hemingway for exerting a great influence on 20th century fiction while reading this book. Reading this requires extensive knowledge of Greek mythology, Roman history, plays, and other obscure and esoteric knowledge (thankfully I had an annotated copy). I found the middle chapters tedious with their extensive, florid descriptions of exotic objects and ancient fancies that I literally found my eyelids getting heavy and putting the book away before I dozed off on my chair.

My other gripe is that while we are told of Dorian's descent into vice, sin, and corruption, we aren't shown what these sins of his are. I'm not exactly sure what actions he did for the portrait to turn vile and hideous as a reflection of his soul. Only in the later part of the book are we shown a concrete evidence of his sin (murder), but he had been morally degraded long before that. I also find the portrait itself underused as a plot device. Wilde could have done more with it than keep it hidden at all times. Granted, Oscar Wilde precedes Hemingway by nearly 50 years, but modern storytelling has spoiled me in my expectations.

But if there's one thing Wilde does best, it's dialogue. His proficiency as a playwright is evident in the snappy exchange and verbal sparring of his characters. I never skipped the dialogue as it was a pleasure to read (Wilde wrote a number of plays but only one novel).

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a classic piece of literature that contains a surprising number of insights from the point-of-view of a cynical, hedonistic, 19th century Englishman. One wonders if Oscar Wilde was writing about himself, as his life was also marred by scandal and controversy. Worth reading, but I wouldn't put it up high in the to-read list. 3.5 (rounded to 3) stars.
]]> An Abundance of Katherines 49750 Katherine X just wanted to be friends
Katherine XVIII dumped him in an e-mail
K-19 broke his heart

When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton's type happens to be girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact.

On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has ten thousand dollars in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun--but no Katherines. Colin is on a mission to prove The Theorem of Underlying Katherine Predictability, which he hopes will predict the future of any relationship, avenge Dumpees everywhere, and finally win him the girl.

Love, friendship, and a dead Austro-Hungarian archduke add up to surprising and heart-changing conclusions in this ingeniously layered comic novel about reinventing oneself.]]> 229 John Green 0525476881 Tintin 0 3.54 2006 An Abundance of Katherines
author: John Green
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/02/23
shelves: to-read, young-adult, wishlist
review:

]]> <![CDATA[O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 (The O. Henry Prize Collection)]]> 2621157 372 Laura Furman 0307280349 Tintin 3
Unfortunately I hadn't done my research and didn't realize that these stories are primarily of the literary genre. I was expecting a mixed bag of genres, not pure literary.

I have mixed feelings about this genre. Even those in the writing field have conflicted views on what comprises literary fiction. The most cynical say anything that is dreary, moves slowly, and wrapped in sufficiently vague albeit florid prose can be classified as literary. On the other hand, literary works are often non-formulaic, cannot be neatly cast to a mold, and the best ones display incredible depth and insight. They tend to demand more from the reader because much has to be read between the lines. But the reward is great for a reader who perseveres.

However, I cannot say that the works in this collection would enjoy a wide appeal from a broad audience. I suspect only MFA students in Creative Writing programs and their mentors could truly say they enjoy most of the works in this book.

There is only one story here that I really loved, strategically placed right in the middle of the book as if the editor knew it was the spice and incentive to keep the otherwise bored reader reading. It was also the most conventional of the stories, not striving to do anything new and clever or trying too hard to be profound.

LOVED:
Touch by Alexi Zenter

CAUGHT MY INTEREST:
A Change in Fashion Steven Milhauser
The Transitional Object Sheila Kohler
Prison by Yiyun Li
A Game of Cards by Rose Tremain
Every Move You Make by David Malouf
A Composer and His Parakeets by Ha Jin

WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT BUT,:
Village 113 by Anthony Doerr
Taiping by Brittani Sonnenberg

WANTED TO LIKE IT BUT IN THE END THOUGHT IT RIDICULOUS:
Bye-bye Natalia by Michel Faber

CANNOT BRING MYSELF TO CARE ABOUT SUBJECT MATTER:
Other people's deaths by Lore Segal
On the Lake by Olaf Olafsson
What Do You Want to Know For? by Alice Munro
The Necessity of Certain Behaviors Shannon Cain
Bad Neighbors by Edward P. Jones
Scenes from the Life of the Only Girl in Water Shield, Alaska by Tony Tulathimutte
The Bullock Run by Roger McDonald
Folie a Deux by William Trevor
The Little Boy by Mary Gatskill
A Little History of Music by William Gass

This collection, for the most part, was not enjoyable. Bleakness and dreariness seem to be requisite for literary fiction. It was hard to find joy in the pages. I got so weary of it I had to force myself to finish each story over a prolonged period of many months.

Most of the stories are centered on a theme such as loss, fear, or regret. Some also played with form. I gather that the writers explored their theme and form in the story, but I just couldn't bring myself to care.

But the stories have their merits. Each sentence is beautifully crafted. The subtle prose in elegant cadences is beyond reproach. It's almost a balm to the mind-numbing loss of subtlety in many genre works (hello, Stephenie Meyer?) Often, though, they seemed to me like perfect pieces of a puzzle that don't form a remarkable whole.

1 star for Touch, which truly touched me.
1 star for writing that didn't make me want to stab someone with a blunt knife
1 star for the new ideas I got from this book

----------------------------------------------

Speaking of short stories (literary or otherwise), I recommend:(/b>
(click link to read online)

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Dianna Wynne Jones

The Lottery Ticket by Anton Checkhov

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Alan Poe

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe (yes I love Poe)
]]> 3.77 2008 O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 (The O. Henry Prize Collection)
author: Laura Furman
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2008
rating: 3
read at: 2011/02/21
date added: 2011/02/21
shelves:
review:
Last year when I wanted to write short stories, I picked up this book to get a survey of what were supposedly the best stories by the best writers. These were the winners handpicked by the judges for the prestigious O. Henry Prize, after all.

Unfortunately I hadn't done my research and didn't realize that these stories are primarily of the literary genre. I was expecting a mixed bag of genres, not pure literary.

I have mixed feelings about this genre. Even those in the writing field have conflicted views on what comprises literary fiction. The most cynical say anything that is dreary, moves slowly, and wrapped in sufficiently vague albeit florid prose can be classified as literary. On the other hand, literary works are often non-formulaic, cannot be neatly cast to a mold, and the best ones display incredible depth and insight. They tend to demand more from the reader because much has to be read between the lines. But the reward is great for a reader who perseveres.

However, I cannot say that the works in this collection would enjoy a wide appeal from a broad audience. I suspect only MFA students in Creative Writing programs and their mentors could truly say they enjoy most of the works in this book.

There is only one story here that I really loved, strategically placed right in the middle of the book as if the editor knew it was the spice and incentive to keep the otherwise bored reader reading. It was also the most conventional of the stories, not striving to do anything new and clever or trying too hard to be profound.

LOVED:
Touch by Alexi Zenter

CAUGHT MY INTEREST:
A Change in Fashion Steven Milhauser
The Transitional Object Sheila Kohler
Prison by Yiyun Li
A Game of Cards by Rose Tremain
Every Move You Make by David Malouf
A Composer and His Parakeets by Ha Jin

WOULD HAVE BEEN GREAT BUT,:
Village 113 by Anthony Doerr
Taiping by Brittani Sonnenberg

WANTED TO LIKE IT BUT IN THE END THOUGHT IT RIDICULOUS:
Bye-bye Natalia by Michel Faber

CANNOT BRING MYSELF TO CARE ABOUT SUBJECT MATTER:
Other people's deaths by Lore Segal
On the Lake by Olaf Olafsson
What Do You Want to Know For? by Alice Munro
The Necessity of Certain Behaviors Shannon Cain
Bad Neighbors by Edward P. Jones
Scenes from the Life of the Only Girl in Water Shield, Alaska by Tony Tulathimutte
The Bullock Run by Roger McDonald
Folie a Deux by William Trevor
The Little Boy by Mary Gatskill
A Little History of Music by William Gass

This collection, for the most part, was not enjoyable. Bleakness and dreariness seem to be requisite for literary fiction. It was hard to find joy in the pages. I got so weary of it I had to force myself to finish each story over a prolonged period of many months.

Most of the stories are centered on a theme such as loss, fear, or regret. Some also played with form. I gather that the writers explored their theme and form in the story, but I just couldn't bring myself to care.

But the stories have their merits. Each sentence is beautifully crafted. The subtle prose in elegant cadences is beyond reproach. It's almost a balm to the mind-numbing loss of subtlety in many genre works (hello, Stephenie Meyer?) Often, though, they seemed to me like perfect pieces of a puzzle that don't form a remarkable whole.

1 star for Touch, which truly touched me.
1 star for writing that didn't make me want to stab someone with a blunt knife
1 star for the new ideas I got from this book

----------------------------------------------

Speaking of short stories (literary or otherwise), I recommend:(/b>
(click link to read online)

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Dianna Wynne Jones

The Lottery Ticket by Anton Checkhov

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Alan Poe

The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe (yes I love Poe)

]]> The Chrysalids 826845 A world paralysed by genetic mutation

John Wyndham takes the reader into the anguished heart of a community where the chances of breeding true are less than fifty per cent and where deviations are rooted out and destroyed as offences and abominations.]]> 200 John Wyndham Tintin 0 3.92 1955 The Chrysalids
author: John Wyndham
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1955
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/02/19
shelves: to-read, dystopian-post-apocalyptic
review:

]]> Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1) 22328 Alternate cover for ISBN: 9780441569595

Case was the sharpest data thief in the Matrix, until an ex-employer crippled his nervous system. Now a new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run against an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a mirror-eyed girl street-samurai riding shotgun, he's ready for the silicon-quick, bleakly prophetic adventure that upped the ante on an entire genre of fiction.]]> 271 William Gibson Tintin 0 3.87 1984 Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)
author: William Gibson
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/02/19
shelves: to-read, dystopian-post-apocalyptic
review:

]]> We 76171 The exhilarating dystopian novel that inspired George Orwell's 1984 and foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet Russia

Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is a powerfully inventive vision that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Ayn Rand. In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul. Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, We is the classic dystopian novel and was the forerunner of works such as George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. It was suppressed for many years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, yet is also a powerful, exciting and vivid work of science fiction. Clarence Brown's brilliant translation is based on the corrected text of the novel, first published in Russia in 1988 after more than sixty years' suppression.]]> 256 Yevgeny Zamyatin 0140185852 Tintin 0 3.91 1924 We
author: Yevgeny Zamyatin
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/02/19
shelves: to-read, dystopian-post-apocalyptic
review:

]]> A Clockwork Orange 227463 A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes to reform Alex to "redeem" him, the novel asks, "At what cost?"

This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."]]> 192 Anthony Burgess Tintin 0 3.98 1962 A Clockwork Orange
author: Anthony Burgess
name: Tintin
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2011/02/19
shelves: to-read, dystopian-post-apocalyptic
review:

]]>