Whitehead does a spot-on job of capturing the voice of this character Ben, a nerdy kid who doesn't quite fit in to any of his various worlds. The book is really funny, witty, well-written. In addition to capturing Benji's story as he navigates this pivotal summer, Whitehead also captures the feel of the African American Sag Harbor community: the ( Read more... )

Listened to this and also read it in hardback. We had a long gap between when we started and when we finished due to reading Rinkitink in the middle. I liked that this adventure takes place entirely in the land of Oz and introduces Scraps Patchwork, who is a really fun character. I also get a big kick out of the glass cat, and it's good that Ojo ( Read more... )

We listened to this in audiobook and also read it in hardback from the library. Although the "Oz" connection is really more of a deus ex machina (couldn't Baum have gotten Inga out of the Nome Kingdom without you know who getting involved? Would I have read it if he had?), it was really enjoyable, fun story with great magic. Almost as good as Ozma ( Read more... )

This book was amazing. It's a long book, but Tartt earns every page. And Boris! What a character. Fantastic book.

I'd give it 2.5 stars. The first two volumes gave me such incredibly high expectations for the series, and I doubt it could have ever lived up to them; I wasn't really happy with where Hannah's plotline went at all, and the characters seemed to be drawn more sexily and more scantily clad (which I didn't love and which is odd, since it looks like we ( Read more... )

I really enjoyed the twists at the end of this one, and I'm excited for where this series is going to go next.

This book was absolutely amazing. It completely lives up to the hype. What I kept thinking about as I read was that saying that "Fiction is a lie that tells the truth". In this book, Whitehead has invented a version of America's past. He's envisioned the underground railroad as a literal train track, and that's given him freedom to revise other ( Read more... )

This was a lot of fun. Not just your usual "kid goes to a magic school" YA novel. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

Really enjoyed the way that Miéville plays with the concept of language in this one. I genuinely did not know what was going to happen next.

Read this back in October and forgot to post about it. Apollo was really annoying and not as much fun to read as the standard interchangeable Riordan hero, but the book was pretty enjoyable for that reason: seeing Riordan do something different, seeing our heroes through entirely different eyes, hearing about events from someone without superpowers ( Read more... )