Death Note Vol. 6, by Tsugumi Ohba

Oh. Em. Gee.

This is another of the books I've read recently only because they were due back at the library. After things got very wonky in the last book, I was not sure I was going to like this next one.

But I did.

Things? Still wonky. L still doesn't trust Light, which is as it should be, but now also he's decided to go after Kira whatever the costs while the ex-police guys are like, um, shouldn't we try to stop him killing people even if we can't catch him? So there is a split, and Light gets caught on L's side even though he doesn't like it on account of the handcuffs that keep him attached to L at all times. Oh, and also on account of his girl-thing Misa being really excited about being used as bait to find Kira.

But! While Misa is doing the bait thing, she discovers that in fact she used to be a Kira and that Light was also one (they had made themselves forget this previously), so now she has even more leverage with the new Kira, provided she doesn't slip up in front of the people who want to capture her. Who are also the people she is acting as bait for. And it's all crazy and stuff.

But but! It gets even crazier when the plans start to come together and the new Kira is being chased and herded and almost caught... but then the book ends in a bit of a cliffhanger. And to make things worse, my husband says that what happens next is EVEN MORE INSANE. I am going to have to go track down book 7, like, yesterday. Sigh.

Recommendation: This stuff is insane, yo. Read it if you don't mind your brains EXPLODING EVERYWHERE.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson certainly knows how to do creepy well. I read her short novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle for last year's RIP Challenge, so grabbing another book by her seemed very smart for this year's!

The premise of the book is that there is a fellow, Dr. Montague, who is conducting some experiments at a place called Hill House. Basically, he's heard some stories about the house being haunted and basically uninhabitable, and he's hoping to make some notes on any phenomena he might come across. He takes on a couple of assistants, including Eleanor Vance, our protagonist. Eleanor and the others spend several nights in the house, observing some interesting things like something banging on doors, a very cold spot where no draft could come through, and the same or another something writing messages on walls. But even with all of the house's oddities, Eleanor finds herself starting to really love the house... perhaps too much?

Because that's what the book is really about. Eleanor has been essentially a shut-in for 11 years, taking care of her mother, and her sister doesn't respect her, and Eleanor has no friends or self-confidence until she shows up at Hill House. And then she tries a little too hard to be BFF(aeae)s with everyone, and of course it doesn't work quite that well, and so she makes friends with the only thing left to be friends with — the creepy house. Which goes about as well as you might expect.

I'll admit I was hoping for something a little scarier when I picked this up, but I am perfectly content with the psychological creep factor — I certainly understand the feeling of being shut in and having no one to hang out with, though I hope that my friends who have to love me through the Internet would keep me from getting eaten by a haunted house. You would, right? Please?

Ahem. So Jackson hits the interpersonal relations right on the nose, with the "lets be best friends!" attitude of strangers living together that slowly erodes into a "lets avoid each other like the plague!" when the people realize they don't actually like each other all that much, and with the clingy "wait let's still be frieeeeends" Eleanor, and especially with the pitch-perfect passive-aggressive Theo. Jackson also nails the creepy-haunted-house bit with the banging on the walls and the spinning room and the "oh, that's really creepy" moment between Eleanor and Theo. And THEN she offers up an excellent person going slowly and inexorably insane.

Basically I'm going to have to marry Shirley Jackson. Don't tell Scott.

Recommendation: For those who like a bit of psychological creepiness in their cereal, and who don't mind if that's the only kind of creepiness. Not for those who are looking for people popping out from behind doors, wielding knives and severed heads.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge, A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
books i done read
Reading matters
things mean a lot
A Striped Armchair
Well-Mannered Frivolity

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Double Indemnity, by James M. Cain

Another Cain! I really like this guy's work.

This book is more like The Postman Always Rings Twice than Mildred Pierce, because there's more murder plotting, but it of course still has that don't-trust-charismatic-people aspect to it. So good.

And the murder plotting here is EXCELLENT, because the murderer fellow, who is again offing a lust-object's husband, is an insurance agent and he knows what has to be done to make a murder play out like an accident. So there is lots of planning and trickery and secrets.

But of course there are more secrets than just this planned murder, as our murderer discovers AFTER he's done all this work, and those combined with the fact that he works with at least one good insurance agent who has totally figured out that there was a murder but can't quite prove it make this novel wonderfully suspenseful.

The ending is great as well; it combines a few excellent surprising endings that I've read before and makes them more interesting. It's just a good time all around!

Also, just a few pages into this book I realized that I had watched the movie version in my freshman English class, though I didn't remember it terribly well because I'm pretty sure the noir voice-over aspect put me to sleep. Definitely a more gripping book.

Recommendation: Good for those who like suspense and slowly unveiled evil characters, and also those who would like tips on planning a perfect murder.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain

I read Mildred Pierce for my book club a little while ago and loved it, so the fact that I had a couple other Cain works sitting in anthology form turned out to be an excellent thing.

Of course, The Postman Always Rings Twice isn't really anything like Mildred Pierce. In Mildred, Cain writes a moderately creepy story about the power of especially charismatic people, while in Postman... no, wait, it's still about the power of especially charismatic people. But here there be MURDERERS. That's the difference. Not such a big one, really.

Postman is about a drifter fellow who very quickly falls in love (well, lust) with a married woman and just as quickly they are planning her husband's death. They try once and fail, then try again and succeed, but of course murdering someone isn't really something you can get away with so easily, especially when an insurance company is involved.

The trial bit is what I think I liked the best... my husband's in law school so he's always coming home with very strange hypothetical and real cases, but this one takes the cake, especially in the way the lawyer uses all sorts of lawyer-y tricks that baffle and confuse and amaze me in the end.

I also liked that the narrator turns out to be possibly unreliable (not even definitely unreliable, how cool is that), and also the way the whole ending plays out, from the betrayals to the justice.

But it is a short book (~100 pages), so really you should just go read it.

Recommendation: Not for people who love their characters, but definitely for people who love their plots. Also for budding lawyers who want some true genius to aspire to, but not for those who want to have, like, integrity.

Rating: 8/10
(RIP Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh

When I was in elementary school, I had a Spy Club. My two best friends (at the time) and I would go out into the neighborhood and write down what was going on, no matter how boring it was, and then we would meet in my room to discuss. I don't know for certain, but I can only imagine that this was brought about by me reading Harriet the Spy.

As such, I have very fond memories of this book, in which one Harriet M. Welsch spies on people for fun, writing down everything she thinks about them from the mundane to the mean. Then, as these things go, Harriet's notebook gets picked up by her schoolmates, who find out just what Harriet thinks about them (focusing on the mean things, of course) and completely shun her. Then, in my memory, Harriet does something nice and everyone is friends again.

Spoiler: that is totally not the case! Oh my goodness. I had completely blocked from my mind how terrible of a person Harriet is. When her notebook is revealed to everyone, her first stop is the stationery store (this is an old book) to get a new notebook for writing down even more vicious things than before. And what brings her back to her friends is lying. Lying! She gets told by her former nanny that little white lies are very important for getting along in society, and so she just tells everyone j/k, lol, she was totally lying about all of those things she said. And apparently the other students believe her, even though they've been reading Harriet's mean screeds about other people in the school newspaper. Mmmmmmmmhmm.

So now, on the one hand, I feel very differently about Harriet. I'm even a little scandalized. But on the other hand, I have different fingers, and also I love this book a little more because it is so honest about how life tends to be. Granted, I'm not sure that Harriet would ever actually be accepted back into her old circles, but I can certainly believe that her friends would at least try to forgive her. I definitely see the Harriet of seven days after this book ends already getting in trouble again.

Recommendation: Perhaps this should be read by older kids, or at least ones mature enough not to take the ending as a license to lie all willy-nilly. Also good for adults who have a disposition toward schadenfreude.

Rating: 9/10
(Flashback Challenge)

See also:
Book Nut
Bermudaonion's Weblog

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Matilda, by Roald Dahl

Oh, Matilda. This was my first-ever Dahl book, and in fact the only one I'd read until reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this January. Good thing I bought that boxed set, so I can catch up!

Anyway, I read this in fifth grade as part of the not-yet-awesome Project Plus gifted program in my elementary school, and it was pretty much the greatest thing we did all year, or at least the most memorable. What smart 11-year-old doesn't wish for super powers beyond just being good at math and reading? Not me, that's for sure. I tried for weeks to move pencils and whatnot off of desks before realizing that my life wasn't quite crappy enough for making magic happen.

If you haven't read Matilda, I highly recommend it — it's the story of an incredibly precocious girl whose parents couldn't care less about her, who ends up at a school with a terrible headmistress but a wonderful teacher who helps Matilda realize her potential, both in school and in a bit of magic.

Of course, if you have kids of your own you might want to keep this out of their hands for a while, because Matilda isn't a little angel... she is very good at exacting revenge on those who make life difficult for her. At the very least, make sure that your peroxide and superglue are well hidden for several months after any nearby children read this book!

Recommendation: Excellent for precocious children, or former precocious children, or people who like to read about precocious children. Now precocious doesn't look like a word anymore.

Rating: 10/10
(Flashback Challenge)

See also:
Book Nut

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Death Note Vol. 5, by Tsugumi Ohba

Another one of these Death Note books... in this one things get rather more wonky than they have been previously, which is to say VERY WONKY.

Light gives up his Death Note (that thing that lets him kill criminals), and with it his memories of using said Note, which leaves him wondering if he could ever have been Kira — could he kill people in the name of justice? He thinks probably not. Mmhmm.

And he does it in a pretty strange fashion... he lets L (the guy trying to find Kira) see him locked up, with no one dying, then after he doesn't remember anything anymore a third Kira starts killing people, so now L thinks maybe the power just gets passed around? And maybe Light was Kira but now he's not? Which seems like not the right way to go about it, but okay. Also, L is a jerk and spends too much time testing people and eating cake and not enough actually solving crimes, so far as I can tell. What will the next book bring?

Recommendation: Um, well, you'll want to start at the beginning. But I would definitely recommend this series to anyone who is intrigued by ethical dilemmas and doesn't mind being very confused very often.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie

Before we even get into the story here, let me tell you that I. Hate. Acid paper. My copy of this book is the 1974 movie tie-in edition, and although I thought they were done with this terrible paper by then, they were not. So now my copy of Murder on the Orient Express is technically two half-copies of Murder on the Orient Express. Sigh. I suppose that it could have been worse, that I could have lost a page without noticing and be missing 1 percent of the book — possibly an important 1 percent!

But there were no missing pages, and every page was delightfully intriguing. This book had been an option in a mystery novels class I took in undergrad, so though I read a different book from the list (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, another Christie novel with a crazy ending) I knew how this one ended. Even still, I was drawn in to the story and the odd detecting skills of M. Poirot.

The story starts off as a classic locked-room problem — a Mr. Ratchett is found dead in his compartment on the Orient Express train. The chain is in place on his side of the door, and the communicating door between his compartment and the woman's next door is also locked. His cause of death is twelve stab wounds to the chest, of varying levels of severity. The doctor on board the train immediately presumes a crime of passion perpetrated by a woman, but the pipe cleaner left behind at the scene says perhaps a man. But the handkerchief also left behind says a woman. And while most of the stab wounds say right-handed person, one definitely says left-handed person. And, everyone on the train has an alibi for the presumed time of death. Poirot gets dragged into solving this impossible problem, and of course he does, because that's sort of his job.

I greatly enjoyed finally reading this novel, which is similar to a Sherlock Holmes story but with better showing of clues to the reader. I felt like I could have solved this case myself even without knowing the final result, and I liked watching Poirot come to his realizations mostly along with me (he is a bit smarter than I, unfortunately). I also absolutely love the ending; not the solution bit, but the bit right after that.

Rating: 7/10
(RIP Challenge)

See also:
an adventure in reading

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Death Note Vol. 4, by Tsugumi Ohba

Not much to say here... this series is really addictive and also confusing beyond belief. In this book we have shenanigans with the second Kira, who has the ability to learn anyone's name just by looking at that person (thus being able to kill said person more easily than Light can), more "I have to say this or L will suspect that I'm Kira, but also saying it might make him think I'm Kira too so, um, crap," and then a ridiculous ending that I for one did not see coming and which can only make the books after this even more confusing. AND it was less boring and repetetive than the last one. Good work, everyone!

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Gaudy Night, by Dorothy Sayers

This was a weird pick for my book club, largely because we all liked it. :) When we hopped on Skype to chat about it, we were all like, "Um, it's good... and stuff... can we read some more Dorothy Sayers now?" Which is interesting, because it's not really a straight-forward mystery novel like others of Sayer's, it's more of a treatise on marriage with a mystery thrown in. You'd think that three marriage-age women (with me married!) could have come up with something to say about that!

Of course, I had only just finished the book before the club, so I hadn't had too much time to think about what I might want to say about the institution of marriage (not that I've got any ideas now!). I was still all, "I can't believe that that was the murderer! I'm so terrible at guessing these things!" The mystery part goes as follows: Harriet Vane goes to a reunion at her college, and while there picks up some not-very-nice notes. She ignores them and goes home, but soon gets a call from the Dean or the Warden or someone from the college asking if Harriet might oh-so-kindly stop by and help them with this mystery, since she did so well solving that other mystery and also in writing all those mystery novels. The mystery is, of course, that a bunch of other people at the college are also getting these terrible notes, and also some manuscripts are being defaced, and it would all be such a scandal if the real police found out about it.

Harriet takes her sweet time (500 pages!) to figure it out, because there's also a bunch of stuff in there about Peter Wimsey, an amateur detective who has been attempting to woo Harriet for a very long time, and his relationship with Harriet, as well as many, many long, tedious discussions about whether women should marry and if they do should they have jobs because they're just going to flake out on their jobs every time their kids hiccup and if you feel you really just must marry someone should you pick someone you actually like or someone who is convenient for you and oh my goodness.

Sayers seems to side with those who choose to marry, seeing as how the women who argue against marriage read as more uppity than those who are for it, but she does throw in a woman for nearly every stereotype — the married and happy, the married and unhappy, the unmarried and happy, the unmarried and unhappy, the completely apathetic — and they all felt pretty real to me.

And of course I can't argue against marriage, being married myself, but I can certainly see the downside to a woman who gets a wonderful education and then abandons it to motherhood. Of course, I am also in awe of people who can spend all day with multiple children and not want to strangle them, so it's not like motherhood is all bonbons and soaps, right? So really, I am very unopinionated about this topic! Or possibly my opinion is "do whatever makes you happy." Yes, that's it. I like it.

I also like the ending of this mystery, but it's a hard slog to get there — take it on at your own risk!

Rating: 8/10
(Orbis Terrarum Challenge: England, Chunkster Challenge)

See also:
Of Books and Bicycles

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Death Note Vol. 3, by Tsugumi Ohba

I am like super in love with this series. It's like one of those television shows that you start watching because you're bored and then you have to watch to the end because OMG WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? You know? No? Oh.

Well. Anyway. I'm not going to worry you with the details of the series, you can read about that at that linky I gave you just now. The important thing in this book is that Light and L are going head to head against each other. As in, L has decided to show himself to Light, which devolves into the mind-twisting-est of mind-twisting plot lines, wherein both Light and L are trying to predict and out-predict each other, all, "If I say this, it means I'm the killer, but if I don't say it, L might think I'm hiding the fact that I'm the killer, so maybe if I say it in just this exact way I will protect myself!"

It hurts the brain, it does, and it takes up waaaaaaaaaay too much of the book. If Volume 4 is anything like this, I'm giving up.

Rating: 6/10
(Support Your Local Libary Challenge)

See also:
things mean a lot (Volumes 1-3)
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Death Note Vol. 2, by Tsugumi Ohba

Oh, here's that review I promised you! After reading Volume 1 for class, I've kind of gotten addicted.

So. Light still has the Death Note, he's still killing people for reasons he thinks are good and the police think are bad. Cool. Unfortunately for the police, Light has found out that a bunch of American FBI peeps are hanging around Japan, looking for him. So he decides that these guys are going to have to be written down as well. This is a bit of an ethical stretch, of course, but Light is very good at rationalizing. He is also quite good at sizing people up and manipulating them, as we get to see in this book when Light is all, "Oh, you see, I'm doing things like this just to make L think that I think in this certain way, but also there's some reverse psychology in there too, and some of this I'm just doing for funsies to trip L up." It's a bit confusing and twitch-inducing, but it works.

I enjoyed it, and I'm on to the next one now.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Death Note Vol. 1, by Tsugumi Ohba

My first manga! I'm growing up so fast!

So I had to read a manga for my YA class, and I was like... hmm. I know nothing about manga, except that sometimes it becomes movies or TV shows. Conveniently, my dear husband watches many of those movies and TV shows, and so when I showed him the list I had to choose from, he was like, "I've seen this... and this... and this... and this..." Delightful! And, being married to me, he sort of knows what I like, so he picked a couple and gave me a brief overview. A tough choice later, I ended up with Death Note.

At first, I was like, "Ohhhhhhhh goody." I had forgotten what I've disliked about all of the anime I've watched — that everything is made REALLY OBVIOUS. I was quoting passages of tedious exposition to Scott and saying, "Would you say that in real life? No you would not." He apologized for making me read a crappy book, but now I apologize to him, because I plowed through this book and pretty much immediately grabbed the next one from the library. It is so engrossing.

The premise is that there's this death god dude who is really bored and so he drops his "death note" down to Earth. It lands in Japan, where a high-school kid, Light, picks it up and is like, "Suuuuuure, Death Note description. I totally believe that if I write someone's name in here they'll die, and that if I specify the manner of death it will happen. Uh-HUH." Then we skip ahead a few days and find out that Light didn't just try it out, but is now a prolific murderer of bad guys of all sorts. He thinks that this will be awesome, and that people will start being good for fear of being murdered, and that eventually he will be able to rule over a world of good people. The police and a shadowy figure called only L think that they should probably stop this crazy serial killer.

It's good stuff. It's fast-paced and engaging and I forgive the terrible bouts of exposition because they are balanced by a really neat ethical problem and a thrilling plot line. I've got a bunch more books to read for class in the near future, but you can bet you'll be seeing Death Note Vol. 2 up here soon enough.

Rating: 9/10
(Orbis Terrarum Challenge: Japan, A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

When I heard about the movie coming out (which I still haven't seen... is it any good?), I realized that I had never actually read Alice in Wonderland, despite being very familiar with the various adaptations and references on the teevee. So when I found it as a free e-book, read by Michael York (swoon), I thought that this was as good a time as any to rectify that situation.

The story itself is pretty simplistic, as you probably know... Alice falls down a rabbit hole, drinks some stuff, gets small, eats some stuff, gets big, consumes various other things that make her big and small and big and small and big and small again, talks to a caterpillar, a hare, a cat, a griffin, a mock turtle, and various members of a deck of playing cards, and then wakes up from her dream.

The dialogue is very entertaining, with puns and allusions and poems abounding, and it's even better when read to you by Michael York, who has much more of a range of character voices than I'm used to in my audiobooks. It's also very short, so you should really just go listen to it for yourself. Have fun!

Rating: 7/10
(A to Z Challenge)

See also:
book-a-rama

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan

I've been in sort of a reading funk for the past week or so — I have a lot of books that I could read, but none of them are calling out to me. So I, of course, sent an appeal to the Twitterverse for something I should read. The Lightning Thief was the first response that piqued my interest, but of course with the movie out and all there was no chance I was going to get the book from the library any time soon. But then Fate smiled down upon me, and while I was at class that evening, I found a friend who had just finished his library copy of the book and even had it sitting in his car! I promptly borrowed the book and finished it in two sittings (a girl's gotta sleep!).

So that's a good story, but I'm afraid it might be better than the story behind The Lightning Thief. When I was in the middle of the book, Scott asked what the book was about, and I responded immediately with "It's like Harry Potter, but not as good." This could be my old-person self talking, because goodness knows that the story in A Wrinkle in Time is kind of lacking but I love it anyway, but I just really wasn't sold on the book.

The premise is that Percy Jackson, our hero, is actually a hero — like in the Greek myths and all that. We meet him before he knows this, when he's just an ADHD kid getting in trouble at school all the time because he makes weird things happen without trying. After some more backstory, a monster/car chase, and the death of Percy's mother, Percy ends up at a summer camp for "half-bloods" (illegitimate god-spawn) where no one wants to tell him a damn thing about anything.

Ahem. That part really bothered me. I mean, I get it that you don't want to give away the whole book right away by explaining everything, and that it's fun to do the exposition later, but seriously, every time Percy asks someone a question, they're all like, "What? You know the answer. Don't tell me you don't, that doesn't make sense," even the people who know that Percy doesn't know anything. Annoying.

Anyway, then stuff happens and Percy ends up on a quest to return a lightning bolt and... ugh. No, this part's bad, too. Well, quest: good. Returning lightning bolt: good. But! At the beginning of the quest, there's all this worry about how Percy can't even take a cell phone with him because the gods can track that (what?), but then he and his quest-mates meet up with, like, a millionty-twelve gods anyway. Also: they are gods. I think if they care about what Percy is doing they can find him.

Ahem. Aside from all of that, the concept of the book is decent, and if you want to learn more about the Greek myths, this book is the way to go. Lots of good information in here!

Rating: 6/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2005, A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
medieval bookworm
Age 30+ ... A Lifetime of Books
Maw Books Blog
Back to Books

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl

For all the reading I've ever done, the only Roald Dahl book I've read before this one is Matilda. Isn't that weird? I've seen pretty much every related movie to Dahl's books, but I have got to get on reading them proper!

So, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the 70's movie version of which is one of my favorite Gene Wilder films. Oh, Gene Wilder. Anyway, if you've seen that movie, or the more recent one, even, you've pretty much read the book. Charlie Bucket, a poor, starving child (I guess that part's not so much in the movie versions), hits it supremely lucky and finds one of five golden tickets that permit him entrance to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, a very secretive place. Charlie goes along with four other kids, all of whom are a little less than perfect: Augustus Gloop is a chocolate (and everything else) glutton, Veruca Salt is intensely greedy, Violet Beauregarde chews gum all day long for no apparent reason, and Mike Teavee, well, watches TV. One by one the children succumb to their faults and are removed from the factory (but live, I promise!), except for Charlie, who, as the last child standing, wins! Yay winning!

I was talking the book over with my husband last night after I finished and comparing it to my beloved Gene Wilder movie. The plot is entirely the same, of course, but there are some interesting differences in the story. The biggest difference is in how Charlie wins the crazy game that Wonka's playing; in the movie he is removed from the running after not following directions in the factory, but then gives back a piece of candy and is deemed trustworthy in Wonka's eyes, or something. In the book, however, Charlie is simply the last child standing and so wins — had he, in the book, gone after the fizzy lifting drinks (he does not), Mike Teavee could have been the winner. I think I like the movie ending better as a good story to tell your kids, but Roald Dahl does make a good case in the book for throwing out your television and installing bookcases, so that's a good moral, too!

Now to read another Dahl book; what do you all suggest?

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge)

See also:
Maw Books Blog

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle (? — 30 December)

I'm finished! Woohoo! I started reading this book shortly after I bought it in 2007, and then left off for two years, and then finally picked it up again... sometime earlier this year, and then ignored it again... goodness. But I have been making my way through the bulk of it over the last two weeks, and I can now say that I sort of know what this Sherlock Holmes fellow is about. Sweet.

I had read A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four in my mysteries course senior year, and The Hound of the Baskervilles a few months back, and found them delightful, but I wasn't really prepared for these short stories. In both the novels and the stories, Holmes gets called on a case, checks out the scene, makes some deductions, and solves the matter in a rather quick fashion, but in the stories, that's it. There's not a narrative to go along with the detecting; Holmes just does his thing and Watson reports it.

That's not to say I didn't like the stories. I just had to get used to them. :) And... I don't have much else to say about them! If you want a quick little reminder of how incredibly stupid you are, I recommend finding a Holmes story or two online and enjoying.

Rating: 7/10
(Baker Street Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane (22 December — 23 December)

I had seen a commercial or twelve for the movie adaptation of this book a while ago, but I decided I'd rather read the book instead, though I can't remember why I decided that. So I got the book from the library, and then it languished on my shelf for three months, and then I decided the library would probably like me to stop checking books out for months on end and so I read it. Good job again, self.

The premise of this novel is that there's a US Marshal called Teddy (short for Edward) Daniels who hops a ferry to Shutter Island with another Marshal to look into the disappearance of an inmate at the hospital/mental ward/jail-type institution on the island. The woman, called Rachel Solando, managed to escape from a teeny-tiny cell and past several guards without anyone noticing, so Daniels and Aule (the partner) think it was probably an inside job. As they're looking into this case, Daniels is also looking into some retribution — he's heard that the guy who set the fire that killed Daniels's wife is locked up on Shutter Island, and he'd like to give him a little what-for. But neither investigation is proving easy, what with how everyone on the island is being a little secretive about just what exactly goes on there, and how there's a convenient hurricane keeping Daniels and Aule stuck on this island for maybe a little longer than they thought...

I hate to admit it, but even though I should have seen the ending of this book coming, I did not. Not at all. And I liked that. I was so drawn in by Lehane's storytelling that I forgot to be looking for all the inconsistencies in the stories told by the characters. So good! And so I don't want to say too much about this book, because I want you to go read it and be surprised as well. Or you might not be surprised, because you're keener than I am, but you should still enjoy the plot twists and turns without my help.

One thing, though, for the people who have read this already... what do you think of the choice of Laeddis for a surname? It's either incredibly uncommon or nonexistant, which made the ending seem a little forced. If it had been the other way around, I would have believed it more.

Rating: 9/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2003)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (13 August)

-contented sigh- I love this book. You should, too. Go read it, now.

What? That's not enough information, you say? Well. Fine.

I first read this book three years ago while in New Zealand and had to tear myself away from the pages to go hang out with people in Auckland, which is one of my favorite places in the world, so... yeah. I'd been wanting to re-read it for awhile, but I worried it wouldn't hold up to a second reading, but then the movie was coming out and other people were reading it and I really wanted to read it again so I did! And it held up just fine.

This is a giant sappy love story about a girl called Clare who meets her future husband, Henry when she's six and he's thirty-six. But Henry doesn't meet Clare until he's twenty-eight and she is twenty. Right. Because Henry randomly travels through time, going to seemingly arbitrary wheres and whens. The story flows mostly chronologically through Clare's life, with brief jaunts elsewhen here and there, and describes Henry and Clare's meetings and courtship and attempts (successful and failed) to be a normal couple.

It's really sweet and made me cry a whole bunch at three in the morning while I was finishing it, even though I knew what was going to happen, even though everyone and his brother knows what's going to happen, which I think is a strong point of the novel. Or I'm just a big ol' sap. Or both. You never know.

Rating: 10/10
(Summer Lovin' Challenge)

See also:
The Soul of the Reviewer
book-a-rama

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (11 August)

I read this series of books for the first time in my senior year of high school (about five and a half years ago), after meeting a person who carried a towel around with him and asking him just why that was. He explained it was a Hitchhiker's Guide thing, to which I said, approximately, "A who in the what now?" Well. I promptly purchased the full five-book trilogy (um, yes) and devoured it within a couple weeks. Maybe just one. Maybe it was a few days. I don't remember, but it was rather quickly.

When I mentioned to my friend Nick (not the towel-carrier, in case that's not clear) a few weeks ago that I was going to re-read them, he warned me that they wouldn't hold up well to a second reading. I doubted him, but he was mostly right, at least with this first one. We'll see how the rest go, I suppose.

For those still going, "A who in the what now?", The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a British humor novel about travelling the galaxy. Sort of. The story starts off with our main protagonist, Arthur Dent, finding out that his house is going to be demolished by the local planning commission to make room for a bypass. He is understandably displeased, and has a lie-down in front the bulldozers to protect his house, at least until his friend Ford Prefect shows up to lead him off to the pub and inform him that the world is going to end in about twenty minutes. Then the Earth is vaporized. Meanwhile, we meet Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Imperial Galactic Government, who, at the unveiling of a fancy new spaceship that he then steals. Then Ford and Arthur have a series of improbable adventures, having managed to hitch a ride on the spaceship that eliminated the Earth, and eventually meet up with Zaphod and have more improbable adventures.

There's not much of a plot, and the humor really depends on its unexpectedness, which is where the book falls apart on a second read. It's still funny, but not nearly as much so as it was five years ago. Alas.

Rating: 8/10
(Summer Lovin' Challenge)

See also:
Book Nut

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.