Skip to content

Reading the End Posts

The Wednesday Wars, Gary D. Schmidt

Recommended by: http://melissasbookreviews.com I really don’t know how to explain this book. I liked it a lot, but anything I could say about it would make it sound like the kind of book that doesn’t appeal to me at all. Like: A teenage boy learns lessons about life during the period of turmoil and chance in the 1960s. (Ugh.) Or: A teenage boy finds the plays of William Shakespeare surprisingly relevant to his life. (Hm. Did you think of that one all by yourself, Gary D. Schmidt?) No, but seriously. Both of these things are true, but The Wednesday Wars…

2 Comments

Forever Rose, Hilary McKay

They are turning into the sort of people I used to call Grown Up and I cannot stop them although I would if I could. I would slow them down anyway. Sometimes I want to shout “Wait for me! Wait for me!” Like I did when I was little and they walked too fast. They always turned back then, however much of a hurry they were in, but I do not think they can turn back now. So I do understand. Oh, excellent book! Even though it made me a little sad, because it is the last in the series,…

11 Comments

Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer

God knows I quote: “Isabella.”  He pronounced my full name carefully, then playfully ruffled my hair with his free hand [when I think vampires, I think of playful hair-ruffling…you?].  A shock ran through my body at his casual touch.  [Of course it did.]  “Bella, I couldn’t live with myself if I ever hurt you.  You don’t know how it’s tortured me.”  He looked down, ashamed again.  “The thought of you, still, white, cold…to never see you blush scarlet again, to never see that flash of intuition in your eyes when you see through my pretenses [I love that he’s so…

25 Comments

Little Boy Lost, by Marghanita Laski

Recommended by: imani, more or less. Or rather, she mentioned The Victorian Chaise-Longue, also by Marghanita Laski, and I picked up Little Boy Lost at the library at the same time. So “recommended” is actually a pretty big stretch on this, but whatever. For a while I was convinced that this book had to be in translation. It just had these weird bits that you get when you are reading books in translation, and the author’s name is unusual and might quite easily have been foreign; and anyway I was all set to write this review and say I hate…

1 Comment

OMG SIZZLING GYPSIES

Or, I didn’t know the third Libba Bray book was out already! Actually, ultimately, I am not that huge a fan of these books.  They entertain me but I can’t remember a single character’s name except Gemma.  I can’t even remember the sexy gypsy boy’s name, just that Gemma was having Totally Shocking Dreams about him the likes of which no nice Victorian girl would repeat to a biographer.  So basically I am not going to live or die by what happens in The Sweet Far Thing (not sure about this title), but I will be chagrined if the sexy…

Leave a Comment

East, by Edith Pattou

Recommended by: http://melissasbookreviews.blogspot.com/ I say definitely yes to this.  If I had read it when I was small, it would have become one of my favorite books and I would have read it over and over again.  As it is, I liked it but I probably wouldn’t buy it. Basically it’s a retelling of “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”, which is not my favorite fairy tale at all because the girl is such a silly brat.  I always think of Fire and Hemlock (ah, Fire and Hemlock), because Polly had a rather scathing view of the…

4 Comments

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by C.S. Lewis

I have argued with myself long and hard before giving this a “favored authors” category, because actually I don’t like C.S. Lewis as a person. I do not favor him at all. I think he was a bit of a sexist jerk, and the reason I don’t read the Chronicles of Narnia more often is that I think C.S. Lewis is a jerk and I’m always saying to myself, Well why would I want to read the books of such a jerk? And then, of course, since I’ve been reading the Narnia books since I was three (I mean, I…

2 Comments

Airborn, by Kenneth Oppel

Recommended by: http://poodlerat.bellonae.com Aw, this book was cute.  I liked it.  There were some things about it that could have been improved, but it was a quite endearing story.  It’s set in an alternate Victorian universe where everyone flies about on tremendous flying machines that run on a particular kind of gas; the main character is this kid Matt Cruse who flies on a passenger airship for a living, having lost his father, also an airship crewman.  He meets a high-spirited girl called Kate who is on a hunt for these flying cloud creatures that her now-dead grandfather always wanted…

Leave a Comment

Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen

Heard about this because it was one of those books that is always on front shelves at Bongs & Noodles. I know it is contradictory to say that I enjoyed this and then file it as an unfavorite, but it’s true. I enjoyed it in that I carried on reading it all the way to the end, so I guess something about it must have been interesting and absorbingish. Basically, the story is narrated by an old man who is slipping in and out of the present into his past, when he worked as a circus vet in the Depression.…

3 Comments

Purple Hibiscus, by Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie

Recommended by: http://poodlerat.bellonae.com I totally love this woman’s name. Her book was sad. All about a controlling abusive Catholic Nigerian (what a string of adjectives) father and his wife and two children; the young girl narrates the story. That’s it, really. I wish I had more to say about this book. I enjoyed it a lot, but it was very very sad. And also melancholy. Ms. Adichie is good at evoking a mood. However, this book was very very sad and never will I ever read it again although I enjoyed it. It’s a fast read – I read it…

Leave a Comment