2008 reading list

[elizalavelle]

A tally of my books read in 2008



January

1. Stalemate by Iris Johansen
Rating 7/10
Thoughts: I enjoy her writing, and have read most if not all of the Eve Duncan novels. They're formula writing but good formula writing and there are still always surprises and tension. This was an enjoyable one to curl up with for the day.

2. The Woman in the Wall by Patrice Kindl
Rating 7.5/10
Thoughts: I liked this one pretty well. I think that I would have liked it more had I been younger when I read it. It's a good coming of age story and especially good for children who are shy. However, as an older reader I had moments of being like "oh come on!" where I couldn't completely suspend my disbelief. Still it was a good story and one I'd pass on to others.

3. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Rating 8.5/10
Thoughts: I didn't want to put this book down. It's got the classic trappings of a gothic mystery but is written on a higher level than books like Flowers in the Attic for example. Really great, and lots of fantastic lines for people who love books as the main character works in a bookshop and has a great love of literature herself.

4. The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
Rating 10/10
This is a re-read. I first borrowed this book a few years ago from my friend Viv. Since then I've acquired two copies of it and have read it several times. I however was just given a copy of the sequel which I didn't know existed so I wanted to reread this one first. I love this story. I usually enjoy any retelling of a classic story and this is no exception. This story retells Alice in Wonderland and even gets into how Lewis Carroll came to write his story. Fabulous idea, well executed, great fun to read.

5. Seeing Redd by Frank Beddor
Rating 9.5/10
Really liked this one. It's the sequel to The Looking Glass Wars and is a great continuation. It's darker and more adult than the first book and expands on the political spectrum of Wonderland and the bordering provinces which was briefly introduced in the first book. I'm not sure if the LGW was written with a trilogy in mind, it stands alone really well. This book obviously is setting up a third story. It's still fabulous but the ending wasn't so much of an ending as a "to be continued". I do love the direction this story is taking. There was still a tie to the Lewis Carroll works and yet this one expands a lot more as an original story as it's now moved beyond retelling a classic story.

6. Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons by Walter R. Brooks.
Rating 8/10
This is one of my favourite childhood books, I think mostly because I liked the illustration of the trees growing into an arch over the pathway to the haunted house. It's a cute story though and one that I've read and reread and now that I'm using it for my tutoring I'm sure I'll be rereading it a lot this year so even though it's not a full novel length book I'm counting it as I'll be reading it over and over and over I'm sure for the next few months.

7. The Naughtiest Girl in the School by Enid Blyton
Rating 8.5/10
I loved the Mallory Towers series and this is much in the same style of writing. While it's written simply enough for younger readers it was still good fun to read as an adult and I probably will seek out the rest of this series eventually as it was such fun.

8. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
Rating 10/10
I have no idea why I'd not read this one before BUT I'm almost glad that I hadn't as now I've had a course in Arthurian Literature and had a lot of background going into the retelling of the Arthurian legends. I loved this entire book and loved the way the stories were changed but kept true enough to the standard legends that they were still believable. Stunning work.

9. The Worst Witch at Sea by Jill Murphy
Rating 7.5/10
Very cute story. I'd only read the first Worst Witch book when I was younger and just found this one this year and gave it a go. It's cute and fun and simple. There felt like there was almost a bit too much story crammed in towards the end though. One plot line just felt tacked on to add even more excitement. But it's still a fun read and I'll read the others in this series should I come across them.

10. Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas (yes that Rob Thomas)
Rating 6/10
My hope was that if Rob Thomas could create Veronica Mars season 1 when he had time to think a plot through completely then his writing would be okay and people seemed to be nuts about this book so I thought it was worth reading. It's a mediocre book at best. I felt that this was someone writing about being someone they had never been so the entire book doesn't quite connect. Even though there's a lot of "write what you know" lessons in this book Thomas just doesn't seem to get there himself. There was nothing in this book that hasn't been written hundreds of times by hundreds of authors and there are definitely many books that give the same messages in a much better way.

11. The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
Rating 8/10
I really enjoy Kidd's writing style. I find myself happily entranced after the first page and am happy to just sit and read until the book is done. This book I didn't love as much as The Secret Lives of Bees but that was more because the main character is at a totally different stage of life from me so that while I understood what she was going through I didn't completely relate to it... I should tuck this book aside and see how it hits me in 10 years or so.

12. The Little Bookroom by Eleanor Farjeon
Rating: 8.5/10
Totally charming classic children's stories. Most of them are dated and probably won't go over well with a child who isn't used to classic lit. but they're very great and many of them are very touching. It was quite fun to read this book and being that it's all short stories it was perfect for the commute to and from work.

February

13. Enchantment by Orson Scott Card
Rating 10/10
I really like Card's writing. This novel steps away from Science Fiction and goes into fantasy territory but not typical Fantasy... he's looking at the root of early fairy tales and
dropping into classic stories and looking at them in different ways is something I love to read.

14. Inkspell by Cornelia Funke
Rating: 10/10
This series is every reader's dream. To be able to get into different stories, to be able to bring people and things out of books, it's a brilliant idea and while it's not an original one it's being really well executed by Funke. The idea of going to a fairytale world and seeing the reality that exists there, seeing the story change from what the intentions were... it's a really interesting idea and while this is a complete story it also sets up the next one really well.

15. Forever in Blue The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares
Rating 9/10
The fourth and last book in the Traveling Pants series. What a sweet book. I really like this whole series. Some of the lessons are a little young for me, I've been there and learned it myself but some are things which aren't restricted to age. I find I empathize most with Bridget for the entire series, I don't really relate to her character at all but her stories were the ones that made me really connect to the books. At times the dialogue was simplistic and I think there could have been more development on that front from the first to the fourth book but aside from that I have no complaints. I think this is a book that came together exactly as the author intended and it really finished the series perfectly. I'd love to have more to come but I think the Traveling Pants series finished on a high note. I'd definitely go back and reread all of them.

16. A Gift of Magic by Lois Duncan
Rating 7/10
It's been ages since I've read any of Duncan's books and I couldn't remember this one at all even though I'm sure I've read it. It's not one of her best I don't think but I did really like the little twist at the end (which I won't spoil) and I do like the way Duncan takes sort of out there ideas and blends them into a realistic story.

17. Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates
Rating 5/10
Totally not my kind of book at all. It was a fast read and I had lots of commuting to do today so I read the whole thing. I think had this book taken more than a day of reading I wouldn't have picked it back up. I still quite enjoy Oates' interesting style of writing. I know it drives some people nuts, I don't have a problem with reading it but I didn't like the subject matter so much in this one. I find that if I'm reading about a psychopath I like there to be some sympathetic quality to them. Not realistic I know but this character was just disgusting and I didn't enjoy reading about him. Meh. I also didn't have a really strong reaction to the book so it didn't even really rate points on shock value or on introducing a new idea.

18. Witch by Christopher Pike
Rating 6.5/10
Enjoyable because I have some nostalgia for this book. Like pretty much every Christopher Pike book there are good ideas here which make the book a decent entertaining read but Pike really skims the surface of what could have been a really interesting story. When this one got pulled out of my book boxes to use for Halloween decorating I put it aside to reread and see how it holds up. It's not bad, good fast reading when you're not in the mood for anything too detailed.

19. The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillippa Gregory
Rating 10/10
Wow what fun this one was. It's like a fractured fairy tale only with history, divine! I know there's a lot of historical criticism of this story because it takes a lot of liberties with the facts but it's historical FICTION and is a fantastic read. I quite enjoyed the days I was immersed in the English royal court with the Boleyns. I will definitely be checking out other books that Gregory has written :)

20. Serenity Found edited by Jane Epenson
Rating 8/10
Some essays I loved some not so much. Surprisingly to me I didn't really dig the one that was all about deconstructing the structure of Out Of Gas because to me that breakdown was pretty obvious I think. Whereas I really loved the essay all about the technical aspects of the ship and how it worked which isn't so much my type of thing usually but I think because it was something fairly new to my brain it was more interesting to me. Of course Nathan Fillion's essay is a clear highlight. The man is a great writer, wonderful hidden talent :) Also his mom is awesome!

21. Finding Serenity edited by Jane Epenson
Rating 8/10
I did read these in the wrong order. I'd started this one ages ago and then misplaced it. I re-found it once I'd started Serenity Found and then quickly realized I'd not read most of the essays so I plunged into this one right away. Again there were essays I loved and some that were only so so to me. One highlight was the breakdown of the musical themes and how they tied the show together. That's something I know I process without actually thinking about it so it was neat to have it taken apart and have it all explained. Also am I the only one who didn't get that Early was a reader as well or was that the assumption on the part of the essay writer and not so much a fact? I mean if he were a reader wouldn't he have been able to figure out where River was much more quickly? Jewel's essay was very cute. It is always neat to read about the show from the perspective of the actors but I think that when compared Nathan's essay is by far the better one. You can tell that the man knows how to write.

22. Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
Rating 10/10
I love this book. It's a childhood classic and one that still reads well as an adult. In fact I think upon rereading it now I was able to follow the path of the story in a different way. It's a really interesting complex story and yet one that shouldn't be too frustrating to children because it's told from a child's point of view. I think this was one of the first time travel sort of stories I read and the ideas here are so fundamental to other stories. This one has been made into a movie several times and the most recent one (1999) has good reviews. I'll have to look out for it :)

23. Spindle's End by Robin McKinley
Rating 6.5/10
In theory I should have liked this book more. Reading the back of the book indicated that it's a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale. So *yay* I like retelling fairytales, I like that a lot. But this one wasn't so much a fractured fairytale or even really that much of a new or different viewpoint so much as it was just adding more details and flushing the story out to be a 400 page novel. Not a bad one, just nothing really new or innovative there. There were a few great ideas in here and I found that the book would be taking off and then sort of stall for a bit and then get good again... and then stall. Part of this also could be because I'm not a huge fan of animal stories (Charlotte's Web and Black Beauty being the two that I really enjoyed) and while this one shouldn't have been an animal story there's a lot of "beast speech" (talking to animals) during which it almost felt like an animal story to me. I liked a lot of the descriptions of how magic worked in this world. I am of mixed opinion about the descriptive writing. It wasn't bad but at times just seemed to go on and on as though the writer was writing for length rather than to describe something important. Also the foreshadowing which was used was about as subtle as an anvil to the head. Not a bad book but I won't be running out to seek out the rest of McKinley's work.

March

24. Teach With Your Heart: Lessons I Learned From The Freedom Writers by Erin Gruwell
Rating 7.5/10
The book completely went in a self serving end for the last third of the story. It diverted from being about teaching and how that group of students was really engaged in their education to being about Erin and her political, financial and personal struggles. I really did like the first part of the book though and while of course without a rich CEO and a heck of a lot of luck stories like these don't come true but I liked the inspirational message in there and would keep this on my shelf for really bad teaching days. It is possible to get through to your students. It is extraordinarily rare for it to happen in this magnitude though. One thing that I wanted to read more about was how did she teach to the curriculum with this group of kids while incorporating all of the specific teaching materials which really reached the kids? Part of the struggle of teaching is that there are things you have to teach even if they may not be the best books/stories etc. to reach your students. Her classroom seemed to be just her using whatever worked which is great because that can work and clearly did in this case HOWEVER I'd suggest that many teachers could see greater successes in their classroom if they all were allowed to teach to what interested the students as opposed to what they had to teach. The negative aspect of "teaching to the test" was mentioned briefly in this story and then never touched on again.

25. Atonement by Ian Ian Mcewan
Rating 10/10
This one takes a bit to get into as the first 100 pages or so are setting up the story by slowly introducing you to the family and other characters and just letting you see how their day is unfolding. But it's fabulous writing and once I got to the climax of the story I couldn't put this book down! It was great and sad and just an interesting story on so many levels. I liked how the idea of telling the same story from three different view points was a theme that was repeated throughout the book.

26. Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman
Rating 7.5/10
This is a haunting story and is really well executed by the author. The story is told from many different points of view and each character is developed really well and becomes a three dimensional. This is a book with a twist, some of it I saw coming and some not so much. Funnily enough the twists I figured were coming were the ones I still liked the most whereas the extra surprising stuff I felt made the story a little less sinister. I was definitely drawn into the mystery and didn't want to stop reading until I knew exactly what had happened.

*I'm starting to add extras here which don't count to me as reading full books but still needed to be noted*

*Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 8 #11 - A Beautiful Sunset

*Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 8 #12 Wolves at the Gate part 1

*Nightmares and Fairytales issue #18

27. Christy by Catherine Marshall
Rating 8/10
I really liked this book. It's very much like Little House on the Prarie but for adults. While the religious overtones were sometimes a little much for me but I did like the general message of goodness and of thinking through why you're doing things for yourself. There are some great ideas in this book.

*Serenity - Better Days #1

28. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
Rating 8/10
This is all that Joyce Carol Oates was trying to accomplish with her novel Zombie. I don't think she was going for a likable character though but I think most of society needs to like reading about a character in order to really appreciate the book. Lindsay has created a serial killer who is dark and disturbed but also stays on the likable side of the fence. I didn't want to put this book down, there are some great twists in this one and a really interesting back story is created. It made me want to read more of the books in this series AND watch the television series.

*Haunted Mansion #6

*Haunted Mansion #7

*Nightmares and Fairytales #19

*Nightmares and Fairytales #20

*Nightmares and Fairytales #21

29. Saturday by Ian McEwan
Rating: 9/10
I'm developing a taste for McEwan's style of writing. Like Atonement this book doesn't really pick up until about half way though. You are inundated with a detailed description of a single day in the life of one man and also get some looks into his past and his family's past. For much of the beginning of the book I kept thinking that it was good writing but that I'd liked Atonement much better and then this one has that same sort of moment that just hits you and then I didn't want to put the book down again. All of the little stories and events from the first part of the book suddenly fall into place and once again I was totally wrapped up in the story before I realized it was happening.

30. After by Francine Prose
Rating 10/10
I give this one such a high rating not because the writing was spectacular but because it was real and extremely engaging. I could not put this book down. I started it on my way to tutoring and read it on the TTC, on the front porch, walking up my street in the rain... could not stop. I'm still sort of crawling out of my skin because of how unsettling this one is. It starts off as a very real story of what happens to near by high schools after a school shooting like Columbine and then just keeps progressing down a dark road. Really good stuff and a great look at high school from the point of view of a student.

31. The Worst Witch Strikes Again by Jill Murphy
Rating 7.5/10
I really do enjoy this series. It's cute and fun. I found that I liked this one more (but not really enough more to raise the rating to 8/10 than the last one in the series I read (The Worst Witch at Sea) because it was more direct and two the point. It's a shorter book but all of the plots are developed fully and there was no feeling of anything being tacked onto the story to add length.

32. Nightmares & Fairytales: Beautiful Beasts by Serena Valentino and FSc
Rating 8/10
I am leaving this one as a book because it's one of the omnibus editions not just a single comic. I really like this whole series (at least all of it that I've read thus far.) There are some really neat twists on classic fairytales and I quite like Valentino's style. Definitely one I recommend to a lot of people, even those who don't usually read comic books.

33. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Rating 10/10
I picked this one up ages ago and then Dell told me she'd just read it and that I *had* to read it right away and she's very trustworthy when it comes to books so I dove in and she was right. This is a brilliant story taking a different view point on the events of World War II with Death as the narrator who is telling a wonderful heartbreaking story. I often see this book in the children's section of the bookstore but it's not one I'd recommend for most children at all. It's a very real look at the hardships of war and I think most kids should be illusioned about that for a while. The main character is a young girl but I don't think that because there's a child as the main character that this is a book that should be read by children. However, it is one that I'd recommend to pretty much everyone I know.

34. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Rating: 9/10
I loved how the author set up the rules for time traveling. The elimination of that paradox of you can never meet yourself if you time travel because you will kill yourself and thus be dead which eliminates the entire incident…. and so forth - was fantastic! This made sense. I liked how the story moved backwards and forwards at the same time following Henry at some points and Claire at others. This was a really well thought out book. The love story was sweet and well done. This book was a pleasure to read! I don’t want to spoil anything for this. There’s a movie coming out soon which I’m curious to see but I think the book will be way better than the movie, some of it will be hard to translate onto the screen.

35. I am Morgan Le Fay by Nancy Springer
Rating 7.5/10
I liked this book but it felt like a very watered down version of The Mists of Avalon. So it scores very few originality points. Some things were different, the way in which Morgan eventually makes her way to Avalon, her love for Thomas instead of for Lancelot etc. But the feeling of the book was not overly original. I did enjoy reading it though, perhaps it would serve as a stepping stone for kids before they get to The Mists of Avalon.

36. The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
Rating 8/10
These do work best on stage (providing you have a good cast performing them.) I don’t think I’d have enjoyed reading them as much had I not seen the show a few times. When I was reading the monologues I was able to see them being performed in my head but that was due to the strength of the performances I’ve seen. The writing is good and the stories are all important in different ways but I think the acting really brings them to life best. That being said I do think this is an important piece of work. Whether you read it or see it it’s something that I think everyone should do at least once. The book of course does serve as a promotional too (at least the one I read) for Vday. A worthwhile thing to promote but it was a bit heavy handed.

37. Briar Rose by Jane Yolen
Rating 10/10
This is (according to the foreword) part of a series where various authors have rewritten fairytales and I think tried to get back to the original roots of a fairytale. Not a Disneyfied version, but the real harsh scary story. This one is brilliant and I definitely want to research and find out what the others are. It also referenced Beauty by McKinley (perhaps I should check that one out even though Spindle's End wasn't stellar... and was a good one to read shortly after The Book Thief because the themes worked together well. They weren't similar stories per sey but they were about similar places so the imagery was already in my head and it was easier to visualize the places in the book because of that. This story takes the story of Sleeping Beauty and takes you back to Nazi ruled Poland and the concentration camps. The parts of the story as it is told by the grandmother binds the chapters together and as you work through the book the roots of the story are slowly revealed. Some of the things that are revealed I saw coming, some not so much. This books is a fantastic blend of history and fiction and the story Yolen has created is very poignant and fully embraces the true nature of a fairytale.

April

38. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
Rating 8/10
I really liked this book a lot more than I thought I was going to. It's a well thought out, topical story. The major drawback for me was that no matter what way I looked at it I couldn't sympathize with the mother's character at all. I did like the technique that Picoult used of telling the story from all sorts of different viewpoints. It really filled out the story and made it more than just a typical story about a kid with cancer. The ending is one that'll stick with me for quite some time.

39. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
Rating 8/10
I haven't seen the movie that was made from this book but I wanted to when it first was in theatres, eventually I will see it. The book is really neat. It's one my brother studied in one of his English classes and it's easy to see how it would be a very teachable book. There were so many things linking the three stories together which would make great essay topics. I liked how this book was describing an average day in the lives of these three women yet in all of them there was a moment of something huge happening. Cunningham did a great job of telling three seperate stories that are subtlety linked and yet remain individual from each other.

40. The Golden Aquarians by Monica Hughes
Rating 8/10
What I really liked about this book is that Hughes had many opportunities where she could have backed away from the tough not happy plot and made things easier for her characters and the story still would have worked and yet she took the hard route and that kept the story really engaging. Once I'd realized that she wasn't going to suddenly give a happily ever after style of ending I was really engaged in the story because I didn't know how it was going to end. So far I've really liked everything I've read from her and this is no exception.

41. Thief of Hearts by Christopher Golden
Rating 7/10
Not a fabulous piece of writing but not a bad one either. This is a pretty typical formula young adult murder mystery type of book. However I do enjoy Golden's sense of dialogue and he has good descriptive skills. He pretty much has perfectly described a University Student's life to a T (you know aside from the increase in murder which fortunately is not part of the average student experience.) Definitely a fun relaxing read.

42. A Drowned Maiden's Hair: A Melodrama by Laura Amy Schlitz
Rating 9.5/10
This book is utterly charming. I picked it up in BMV solely because I liked the title and the cover and hoped it would be good. I lucked into a fabulous story. It's well written and the pacing of the action is great. I teared up for the ending (which was unfortunate as I was sitting in the food court at work at the time lol)and have already thought of a few people who I need to lend this book out to.

* Donald has a Difficulty by Peter Neumeyer and Edward Gorey
(I struggled with the decision of counting this in my book count or not but as it's so short I'm not counting it. It's still great fun though and no less of a book than the others.)

43. Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox
Rating 7/10
This is the first part of a two part series and it definitely reads like it's setting up the next part. The ideas in the book were good and I liked the application of dreams. I did find that this book left me feeling like I was sitting just outside of the action, I didn't really connect deeply with any of the characters so it was harder to really be involved in the story. I still will seek out the second part to the story to see how it all ends though.

*Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Season 8 #13: Wolves at the Gate part 2

*Serenity - Better Days part 2

44. Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Rating 8/10
This is a collection of fairytales that have been rewritten twisted from their original forms and made darker, more adult and very interesting. As with all collections there were some stories I really liked and was drawn into and then others that just couldn't grab me at all. I actually was surprised by the ones I didn't like as much because some of them were by authors whose work I usually adore but c'est la vie. I really love reading different takes on fairytales and other well known stories. This is always a really fun and interesting genre.

45. The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke
Rating 10/10
I really adore Funke's writing style. Her children's books are the perfect mix of fantasy and reality and are still highly enjoyable to read as an adult. This book took several twists and turns along the way and most of the time I couldn't guess what was going to happen next. I quite enjoy that Funke tries to keep an element of realism in her fantastic stories. Some things in this book end up with a picture perfect ending and some of the plot lines just miss that mark giving the story a bit more of an element of reality. Charming work.

46. Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
Rating 9/10
I am entirely addicted to this series now. I read this book in a day and at the end of that day had to buy the next two so I could start them right away. Much love for the Cullens! I did have a few moments during the story where I was jolted away from the plot by noticing that Meyer had incorrectly constructed a few sentences and written "but" instead of "and" and other little grammatical things like that. So the quality of writing isn't the best but the story is engaging and I was very glad that the book lived up to the hype.

47. New Moon by Stephanie Meyer
Rating 8.5/10
I liked this book but not quite as much as the first one because this one had less of the Cullens in it and I clearly have chosen what side I'm on in that fandom war ;) It also reads as a middle book and sets up a lot of things for the books to come. This still didn't stop me from spending much of the day curled up reading the story until I finished it. I really do like that Meyer doesn't drag things out in her books. When a big change is coming or something new is about to be revealed the characters are all as impatient to get there as the reader is. These stories hit the ground running and don't slow down at all.

48. Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer
Rating 9/10
Again these books are not literary masterpieces. The writing is not great. However, the stories are great fun and I love all of the characters. I'm entirely addicted to the Cullens. I finished this book right before bed and spent the night falling in and out of dreams about The Cullens. AWESOME! I even cried a little at the end of this book, can't say why without spoiling stuff but these characters do get to me. I found the second book lagged a little for me but this one picked right up again. I am so glad the fourth book is coming out this summer so that I don't have to wait too long to read what's going to happen to these characters.

49. Down a Dark Hall by Lois Duncan
Rating 7/10
This was another Duncan book I'd not read and I can see why this one wasn't widely reprinted and distributed. This was an okay book and I do like the phenomenons she plays with in her writing. In this story it's people who can connect in some way with the spirit world. It's a neat idea but even for a young adult book it's not fleshed out fully enough.

50. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Rating 7.5/10
I enjoyed this book a lot. It wasn't a masterpiece to me but the exploration between good and evil was interesting. Many of the reviews which were negative for The Thief Lord said that one of the ideas from her book was stolen from this one and I'd have to say that yes, the idea was. But the stories are so completely different that just stealing one object from this story doesn't really make her story less of a good story. It was neat to read where the object came from though, it actually would have been even better if Funke had directly referenced this story because it's plausible that the object would still move from place to place.

May

51. Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card
Rating 9/10
This one sometimes gets a little too sciency for me but most of the concepts manage to be explained in more human terms so I was able to make sense of it. I do enjoy time travel books and I like how this one looks at the impact time travel would make coupled with the study of History and with the state of the world and of things to come for us. It's a neat combination of events and effects. Plus it's interesting to speculate on what would happen if one changed just one historical event.

52. Pandora's Daugher by Iris Johansen
Rating 7/10
Not a bad story. It has the typical elements of a Johansen book but introduced some neat new characters. I wouldn't be surprised to see her visit them again in a future novel.

53. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
Rating 7.5/10
I really liked this one. It's immensely readable. I found that in parts I knew exactly where the story was going way before the characters did so it was a bit simple in that sense but there's a great story here and I can't wait to see how the series continues as I'm told the books get much longer as the trilogy progresses and I'm hoping that means that this story was just the means to introduce the characters and now they can get down to more complicated plots :)

54.Rebel Angels by Libba Bray
Rating 7.5/10
This one got a little more complex than the first in this series and I liked it more. I still found that I was predicting what was going to happen well before it happened. I think that a few things could have been foreshadowed less to make the "twists" in the story into more of a surprise. However, that being said, this was a fun book to read and I'm glad that I was loaned this series.

55. The Secret Bedroom by R.L. Stine
Rating 5/10
I found this one in a thrift shop on the weekend and remembered it as the first of the Fear Street books I read back when I was a kid and remembered parts of it sticking with me so I thought I'd reread it and see what I made of the story now. Most of it I'd forgotten. I think the idea that was there the most was that of the ghost possessing the main character and if she concentrated her being able to force the ghost out. The plot of this one is pretty dreadful. It's one of those classic ghost stories that gets told around the campfire with a lot of filler to make it longer. Meh not great at all. I can see where bits of it would have scared me as a kid though. It's back to the thrift shop with this one as it's readable but just barely.

56. The Baroness by Sarah Slean
Rating 10/10
This was fun, I went from a no quality book to a very high quality book. I love Sarah Slean's poetry (although some of these are her songs... which are also poem like.) I find that she has a way with words that can make my mind soar. Some of her work relates exactly to me I find, some of it comes from places I've not yet been. All of it is wonderful work and I'm so glad that she's continuing to release her poetry along with her music.

June

57. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
Rating 8/10
I liked this series but I felt as though the author sort of forgot some of the things she'd had her characters doing in the first book by the time we got to the third one. For sure she needed a much better editor. I also found that once again a lot of the plot twists were so foreshadowed and spelled out before they even happened that they weren't surprises at all. I think she could have done with cutting out some of the explanation and pulled off some true surprises in her story. That being said I did enjoy the story, it's got some great messages in it and the action was fast paced and exciting to read. This series was definitely a fun one.

58. The Fairy Rebel by Lynn Reid Banks
Rating 10/10
I love this book. As I'm at my parents house and all of my new books are at my apartment I had to go find other reading material and this one came up. It's just such a charming story. It's a quick read but one that I think adults can enjoy as much as children.

59. The Hidden World by Alison Baird
Rating 9/10
I must have had this one in my library of books for years. I can remember picking it up because it looked like it would be similar to the O.R. Melling faerie series but then I never got around to reading this one. Clearly that was a mistake because this is a really neat blend of multiple mythologies. There are a few parts of the story which were a bit cheesy but the rough bits are few and far between. I though the story ended a bit abruptly but there also weren't many other ways to end the story while staying true to the story as it had been laid out. The story is very charming and I will be doing a reread eventually.

60. Haunted House by Peggy Parish
Rating 7/10
This series of books doesn't hold up as well for older readers but they are ones I was charmed with when I was younger and for sure I'd pass them on to my kids. I like that there's the opportunity to work through word puzzles along with the kids in the story and that the stories don't get too unrealistic.

61. In the Dark of the Night by John Saul
Rating 7/10
This one fits in with they typical John Saul writing style. He still gets a little gory in his descriptions to go for the shock factor which I think is not necessary but it's a Stephen King tactic and it works. I think that Saul has taken an interesting idea for this one and combined people's fear of serial killers with that sick sort of interest to make a really gripping story. His work isn't high art or anything but I'm generally kept entertained by his stories. This wasn't amoung the ones I think are his best but it holds it's own.

62. The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King
Rating 9/10
Okay, yes this is totally Sherlock Holmes fanfiction with a Mary Sue character (seriously pretty much all that was missing from her was something like 'striking violet eyes' or some such nonsense) BUT it's good Mary Sue fanfic. I see from Amazon that King has written a series of these books and I definitely would pick up the next few and see if they're as much fun to read. I liked the different way of looking at the familiar Sherlock Holmes characters and the mysteries were fun to solve along with them.

63. Black Lightning by John Saul
Rating 6/10
This one is not one of his best at all. There was a decent idea there but it got buried in the attempt to throw the reader off. The attempt is to keep the reader from knowing exactly what is going on or who the real bad guy is but some of it is very transparent and some just is annoying. By the time the actual interesting supernatural theory the book was almost over and the idea wasn't really explored. Meh.

64. Sweet Valley Twins Super Edition: Class Trip by Francine Pascal
Rating 6.5/10
Yes I went there. I remembered loving this one when I was little and when I saw it in the store for $1 I decided to read it and see if I still liked it. Well I like the idea of encountering book characters in real life. This was sort of like a fractured fairytale stepping stone. The story itself is of course overly simple but I can see where I liked it when I was younger.

65. Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
Rating 8.5/10
I really enjoy the Dexter books. This is the second one in the series. I'm told that the television series differs from the book a lot for season two and I can see how that would happen. I really like the development of Rita's children and of how Dexter's relationship with them will work. There is a lot of darker stuff in this book, even more so than the first. The murders/attacks are more grisly and yet it's still readable.

66. Guardian by John Saul
Rating 7/10
Yes, John Saul binges can happen when I'm away from my books and they're in the first box I open up from storage lol. Actually this one is not a bad one. Again there's a neat twist on a supernatural tale but this one gets explored much better. There's still the element of mystery and trying to keep stuff from the reader until the very end but I found that the story came together much better here and it was easier to see where Saul wanted the story to go. It felt much less rushed than some of his more recent work. That being said it's still formula writing and it's not great formula but I find his work entertaining enough to pass the time when commuting.

67. The Virgin's Lover by Phillipa Gregory
Rating 7.5/10
This one was enjoyable but it's not really the view of Queen Elizabeth I that I am most fond of. This book takes place as she's just taken the throne and it portrays her more as a silly woman who can't make a choice to save her life and is just constantly flip flopping on important issues depending on what the men in her life tell her to do.

That being said the book is still an enjoyable read, I just far prefer the portrayals of Elizabeth that have her as a more strong and confident queen.

68. Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult
Rating 7.5/10
This is the second one I've read by this author and I like her writing, it's formula but it stays interesting. Her trick seems to be picking a topic that legally is one way but morally is another way. In this case a father who has kidnapped his child but took the child out of a not so great situation. Morally he's in the right but legally not so much. I find with her books there's the illusion that the reader is getting the full telling of both sides of the story but really you're given just enough to maybe feel some sympathy for the legal side (although once again I find that I do not) but one is supposed to side with the moral side.

69. Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities by Alexandra Robbins
Rating 8/10
I thought this was a pretty interesting look into sorority life. Now living in Canada I really have no personal experience with sororities, just what I've seen on television and in the movies really. This goes a little deeper and definitely illustrated how mob mentality really seems to play a lot into what goes on in the sororities. However, the experiences that these girls had was not far removed from what I experienced in residence. There were a lot of the same problems in residence and a lot of the same benefits as well. Still this was an interesting examination of these things and I found it neat to read about that lifestyle from the outside. I probably would have had a very different reaction to this book had I read it while I was in school.

July

70. Dorothy: Return to Oz by Thomas L. Tedrow
Rating: 7/10
Not the best Oz book ever but still enjoyable. The thing that was odd to me was that Tedrow stressed in his introduction about how he was raised on the Oz books and yet his own book is more true to the MGM movie than to the books. Also I couldn't figure out how the grandmother was the real Dorothy. The book was published in 1993, so let's say written in 1992 and the grandmother is 72 (or 62 if you believe the typo that appeared once in there) and she is the first Dorothy who went to Oz and she was there when she was 12. So she would have been born in 1920, would have been 12 in 1932 which was well after Baum wrote the entire Oz series. But it does sort of mesh up with the movie time line a little better. At any rate the math for me didn't work and that pulled me away from the story a bit. Also, it took them far to long to get to the actual Oz part of the story and when they got there Oz was different from the books, in the first place everyone who we knew in Oz has gotten old and died! Umm no, in Oz people don't grow up and don't die. That was a big thing to change. And a lot of the story was just a reworking of the movie. Sort of like an Oz Mary Sue fanfic.

Anyways, it's enjoyable as a book. It's a little preachy but still it made for a good story overall, probably because it copied a formula from a great classic book. As an Oz story it is not amoung the best. I far preferred The Emerald Wand of Oz and Trouble Under Oz by Sherwood Smith even though those two left you hanging for a sequel that might not ever be written. They were more true to the Oz that Baum created.

71. Child of the Morning by Pauline Gedge
Rating 8.5/10
I always have had a thing for Egyptian history. No clue why but I just like it. This book is about the only female Pharaoh in Egyptian history and it spans her entire lifetime which makes for a really neat story. It's detailed and complex with so many characters coming and going as the years go by but the author did a good job of keeping enough constant characters so that the story did not get too confused. This is a really neat take on what might have happened in Egypt at that time.

72. Boogyman by Gayle Wilson
Rating 6.5/10
This one was quite readable. The suspense was there and kept me turning the pages so I flew through it. However I guessed the identity of the killer early on, pretty much the moment they were introduced I knew how the story was going to end so it's definitely formulaic. Actually part of how it ended made no sense and would have worked better if they had had two people involved which is how I thought it should have gone down. So I guess I didn't fully guess who the guilty party was because I guessed there should be two people, and only one of them was right. Although the set up was there for the second person the entire way through literally until the very end of the book. It felt like maybe the decision was made later to make it only one person and Wright didn't go back to edit out all of the references to the second person. I don't know that I'd seek out other work by this author but if I come across any of her work I might pick it up and try another book.

73. By a Spider's Thread by Laura Lippman
Rating 7/10
I liked the mystery storyline of this book the B. plot however did not grab me at all. Now this isn't the first in this particular series so I think the fact that I had no attachment whatsoever to the main character at the start meant that I had a lot more trouble being interested in the personal parts of her story and was just a lot more interested in the mystery and in putting the pieces together. I really liked that everything wasn't immediately obvious and that the story came together really naturally. BUT on the other side of that the mystery solutions weren't so far fetched that they were impossible to guess, they just weren't overly obvious for the most part. I definitely would try others in this series to see if I grew more attached to the main character's personal life as well as to the mysteries.

74. Alchemist's Daughter by Katharine Mcmahon
Rating: 6.5/10
This one sort of felt like it was trying to be a great intellectual book but it was really sort of a romance novel in disguise until near to the end when it improved a bit. I got the symbolism that was used and that was interesting. I also did like the further explanations of alchemy because even though I know better I always associate it with turning things into gold and that was just a part of that science. I also did like that the ending was left a bit open ended rather than trying to tie everything up perfectly but I think the happy ending was highly hinted at anyways. I don't know, for the most part reading this I got the feeling that it a more simple type of book trying to pretend that it was intellectual. I think it would have been more of an enjoyable read had it just gone one way or the other.

(I'm lumping this next bunch of books together because they're not too long individually and I feel sort of like I'm cheating in my list if I count them all on their own.)

75. American Girl History Mysteries
Rating 8/10

a. The Night Flyers by Elizabeth McDavid Jones
This one had a few too many twists, especially near to the end. But it was very cute and learning about the use of homing pigeons in the war was neat. I think I'd learned it before (probably in elementary school) but I'd forgotten.

b. Hoofbeats of Danger by Holly Hughes
This one reminded me of a more adventurous Little House on the Prairie type of book. It's set in the time period which is probably all that it has in common really with those books but at least that shows the author had a fairly good grasp on the historical period she was pulling from.

c. Voices at River Bend by Katherine Ayres
Again the history used in this story was neat and was more stuff that I know I must have learned at some point in time but which was buried as I grew older. The mystery part of this was sort of like a Nancy Drew style of mystery and it tied up way too neatly in the end but I still liked it, even the sappy parts.

d. Secrets on 26th Street by Elizabeth McDavid Jones
This one, like the first of hers I read in this series, had the element of trying too hard for plot twists to make the predictable less predictable. Most of the surprises she was going for were easy to spot and I think even kids would get it right away, she's not great yet at hiding the clues in her story. However anything set in New York gets a bonus point from me, the setting was great and I enjoyed the story generally.

e. Mystery of the Dark Tower by Evelyn Coleman
I knew almost nothing about the Harlem Renascence going into this one. It was briefly mentioned during one of my University courses and I thought it sounded neat but it was something that was never focused on and we didn't have any courses that focused specifically on African American lit. so I think this sort of got missed. I think I'll have to go back and do more reading in this genre soon as it sounds like it was a fascinating time.

What I really like about these books is how at the end of each one there are a few pages about the history behind the story. Plus at the beginning there are maps of the area where the story takes place. It's a little educational bonus. These are definitely written from a formula and no matter the time period the main character is a strong independent girl who over comes some fear or hardship, learns to see their younger siblings as people and grows up and understands a bit more of the realities her parent's are facing. 5 in a row of these was a bit much for me but I found that the writing styles weren't bad and the background stories they were building on were really interesting.

76. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Rating 10/10
Wow is this one ever a fantastic book! I cannot believe that it took me this long to get around to it. I love the characters and I love that Brooklyn becomes a character in itself. While reading one can just see the neighborhood exactly as it's being described. While the story is depressing for much of the book because it's about depressing subject matter there is an underlying feeling of hope and beauty in it and it was beautiful to read.

77. A Time for Dancing by Davida Wills Hurwin
Rating 8.5/10
I don't know where I first heard of this story. I know I watched the movie while I was in residence, I suspect I downloaded it the summer I was up there by myself. Anyways since then I've been wanting to read the book it was based on and this year found out there was a sequel (see book #78 of this year) and finally went and picked them both up. This is a story that takes up residence in ones heart and I think a lot of different types of reaction to someone with cancer are represented here. The only person I know who had cancer was a friend of mine from elementary school and my mom was very much like Sam's mom and totally disengaged from the situation only I was too young to stay a part of it without someone taking me to the house. The story is great and sad and I cried along with the characters.

78. The Farther You Run by Davida Wills Hurwin
Rating 8.5/10
I'm so glad I read these right after each other as the two books really continue from each other. Even time line wise this one picks up just a few months after 'A Time For Dancing' leaves off. Again I think a lot of reactions were shown here to dealing with really tough life situations. These two are definitely a series of books I'd recommend to people dealing with similar life situations. I was glad to see some of the relationships that fell apart being rebuilt by the end of this story. It left me with a feeling that things were going to work out okay for the characters.

79. The Sisters Grimm Book 1: The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley
Rating 9/10
This book is adorable! I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for more of this series. I do have a fondness for anything that plays with fairytales and this definitely falls into that category. Not only that but there are Oz references in the first book. I love that this series is encompassing all fairytale creatures not just the ones from Grimm's Fairytales. There's a lot of potential for great stories as the familiar characters are recreated and modernized.

80. Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
Rating 7/10
In truth I read the bulk of this book some months ago but had 50 pages left which got put aside during roommate drama while my book was in the apartment and I'd move myself elsewhere. I rescued it this month though and polished it off. This is one of those books that is in the "paid by the word" style of writing and so has a great deal of filler. The story that is in here is interesting and Becky Sharpe is a fantastic and fun character but there are places where one has to push through the excessive descriptions to get to the story. It's a style of storytelling that I don't actively dislike but that I have to be in the right mood to enjoy.

81. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
Rating 9/10
While this book is pegged as being Meyer's first for adults rather than for the teen market her caliber of writing really doesn't change. She still writes at a very young level BUT the stories she tells are great ones and so once I push through the writing and start reading through the story quickly I find that I can get sucked into the story and start disregarding the writing style. I think the draw for this story is that of course we all figure that at the end of humanity if there were a few people able to hold out against the enemy we'd be one of those few. The idea of humanity being a culture of the masses and anything other being against the norm is one that is not comfortable and so we ignore all reason to that. I liked that this book made me explore that and how replaceable humans are and then how individual we all are in different ways as well. It really was an interesting look at humanity. Not a particularly unique one I'm sure but Meyer is a good storyteller even if her grammar and sentence structure leave much to be desired. This makes the stories she's telling very pleasurable reads. They grab you at the beginning and there's a push to not stop reading until everything is resolved. This particular book started off a little slow but it felt like the story she wanted to tell didn't start 'til about 100 pages in so the set up before that was just her filler, there needed to be a beginning but it's good that the story takes off very quickly once she got going.

82. Stormwarning by Monica Hughes
Rating: 6.5/10
Totally not up to Hughes' usual standard of writing at all. It's a different genre than I'm used to reading from her. This is a simple teen thriller. For about 3/4 of the book we have no idea what the mystery is that the protagonist is trying to solve which sort of works as a literary device but there aren't even really good hints that all click together when things are revealed. Much of the story felt rushed, I didn't buy into the time lines at all, I could not believe that people are just dropping their kids off to spend 10 days with strangers (even if that was in the plan) and I couldn't believe that a family would randomly let one of their kids friends, who they just met that very day, come stay for that same 10 days. There was just too much that had to conveniently happen in order for her to make the story work. This might have worked if there was more time to expand the story but the book was too short to do any sort of justice to this plot idea.

83. Sorceress by Celia Rees
Rating 7/10
I went to research how much of this book was fiction and how much was based on historical accounts. The book pretends there were historical accounts that back up the roots of the story and I wanted to believe that was true. From the author's comments on the website for the first book here it appears that the entire thing including the "research" was fictional. I was sort of irritated because I couldn't really tell if the entire thing was fiction and it pretends to be based on some real accounts and the story loses a lot of it's charm when that's taken away. I did like the story that was told and I did like the way that Mary's story continued here. I just wish it could have been done without the trick that this is a true story laid on top of it. This story stands alone as a work of fiction just fine, it didn't need the extra bit to it.

August

84. Once Upon A Curse by E.D. Baker
Rating 8/10
This book is adorable but not so sugary adorable as I thought it would be from the cover (insert adage about not judging a book by the cover here.) It's charming and a lot more adult than I though it would be. I thought this was a straight up kids book and it's more the teen market, younger teen probably but still it was written for an older audience than I expected. I like the many different fairytale elements that were used in this book. I've not read the earlier ones in this series and now I've been pretty throughly spoiled for them but I think they might still be fun to read if I ever come across them.

85. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
Rating 8/10
I’ll have a full spoilery review of this one (see my LJ on Aug. 7th) because I have a lot to say about this book. In short I loved it, I really like the stories that Meyer tells. I do not love the fact she writes down to her audience. Having now read ‘The Host’ I know she’s capable of stepping it up a bit and ‘The Host’ is far from being at the “adult” reading level that it claims to be at just as these books are marketed as being for the teen market but really the language sits around the upper elementary school level. With this one I wish it wasn’t all so happily ever after but I can appreciate that she wants to be done with these books and loose ends would leave the fan base asking for more. I also sort of liked that she jumped the proverbial shark in the first little bit of the book… twice actually, and somehow managed to pull off a fun story that was entertaining to read. A few times I caught myself rolling my eyes but mostly the book kept up with the other three. I actually had to slow myself down while reading this one to make it last longer since it’s the end and I didn’t want the books to be over so quickly.

86. The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory
Rating 8.5/10
I am enjoying Gregory's historical fiction but I keep getting stuck not enjoying her characterization of Elizabeth. For one thing it's not consistent. In this book (which is the second of the trilogy, I read them out of order) we get a much stronger and cunning Elizabeth (which I like better) but in the next book she is out of control and lost without a man for much of the time and I do not like that and do not see the reason for the change. I also find that she often makes Elizabeth seem like the villain and often prefaces her plots for the crown by making her into a slut who likes to sleep with (or at least greatly tease) married men thus demeaning any of her actual scheming and making it more about the men than the crown. It seems Gregory is determined to give the flip side of History, taking what has long been believed to be the truth and then writing the story from a different viewpoint so that previously unsympathetic people are the heroes and the ones who are generally praised in History are cast down somewhat. Being that I actually like Queen Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn this rubs me somewhat the wrong way as I read about them. I did like how in this book the main character was not a real historical personage but instead was invented. Hannah Green was a fantastic character and I loved seeing her story unfold in the midst of the various royal dramas.

87. Double Spell by Janet Lunn
Rating 9/10
I think this one was read to our class in grade 4 and I just adored it then and still love it now. Firstly there's a character named Elizabeth and she's not the boring studious one (perhaps Sweet Valley books gave me a complex in elementary school lol.) Secondly this was a neat twist of a ghost story and is just charming from beginning to end. Lunn has a knack for throwing in lots of good random details about her secondary characters to make them distinct and interesting and she really captured the vibe of a family with this one. The story is a little rushed there was definitely room to make the haunting last a little longer but it still is a fun read and it had been long enough since I last read the book for me to have forgotten most of the twists.

88. The Devil's Labyrinth by John Saul
Rating 5.5/10
Wow was I ever unimpressed with this one. The plot was all over the place, it became very much anti-Muslim instead of staying a scary story, and the climax of the book was really nothing impressive. I saw this one in the drugstore. From the back of it it sounded fairly interesting and like it might be building on some of his ideas from 'Punish The Sinners' with the Catholic church and everything but not so much. The back of the book seems like it was composed after a first draft of the story and then the terrorist angle was added and the whole thing fell apart. Not impressed at all. The ending wasn't even one of those fun "dun dun DUN" endings. It was an attempt at a happily ever after with the religious twist being thrown in for good measure. Meh.

89. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Rating 9/10
I know and enjoy Eugenides's writing style from 'The Virgin Suicides' which was my primary reason for picking up this book. I loved how it spanned three generations for the story and the science of the story. I don't know much about hermaphrodites and wasn't sure if I'd appreciate that story angle because I wasn't sure how comfortable I'd be with it honestly. But, it was such a well told story that it was just interesting to see the whole thing unfold.

90. The Life and Times of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum
Rating 10/10
The only fault I can find here is that I wanted it to be longer! This is a fantastic book about - well the life and times of Santa Claus. It goes from his birth to his old age. Very sweet. Very much a fairytale such as only Baum can write. He had such a great sense of what types of stories would make children happy. This is another classic.

91. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Rating 9/10
As I'm a reader the idea of this book just gave me chills. Also this man was so ahead of his time because I see more and more apathy towards reading every year. The idea that reading could one day be obsolete is a scary one for me and it's a small step from something being obsolete to being outlawed. I never had this book in school so this was the first time I read it even though I've been meaning to for years. It's a great one to keep in the back of my mind for teaching high school classes when I have kids who don't want to read, what a way to show the consequence of giving up something we take for granted.

92. Eva by Peter Dickinson
Rating 8/10
I really like the issues that are raised in this book and while there is a fairly one sided argument made for animal rights in this book there is enough of the scientific side there to present a pretty interesting debate. There are a lot of moral and ethical questions that are raised in the story and while some are resolved there is a lot that the reader has to decide for themselves. This is not always a comfortable book to read but it's a fantastic idea and is well explored.

To be continued in this entry.