Books

Book 33: The Eternity Code (Artemis Fowl, Book 3) – Eoin Colfer

So how should I begin this review? I’m already another book past this review (as I said in the last one) and I’ve managed to stay mostly off topic for the last reviews and I will do so again at least for the first part of this review.

What I don’t understand is why the publishers feel they have to take a perfectly good (and interesting and simple) book cover and ‘spice it up’ for the mass-market paperback release? The book cover to the right (and all of the book covers for this series) are the original hardback covers. After the jump (if you’re reading on the main page or in the email) at the end of the blog you can see the American and British paperback version of this book. I understand you want people to buy the book once it comes out, but why the need to spice it up especially if it’s later in the series?

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Books

Book 32: The Arctic Incident (Artemis Fowl, Book 2) – Eoin Colfer

I struggled to limit my non-‘review’ commentary on the last book and luckily this is a pretty long series so I get to stretch it out over quite a few books.

I really want to say that I wish they make this series into films, however I don’t want them to ruin the series. It took me until the fifth Harry Potter movie to just let go of the fact that they were never going to stay true to the books. it was at that point that I realized they’d made a great first and fifth movies adaptation, and that the others were quite crap. Another example is Eragon, what is probably a mediocre novel, but the fact that it was written by a 16-year-old and it is a fascinating story, with two (and a third on the way) follow up novels in the cycle, they could’ve waited and made an amazing film, ESPECIALLY with John Malkovich signed on to play the bad guy!

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Books

Book 31: Artemis Fowl – Eoin Colfer

Although I’ve read this before I’m still counting it as a book I’ve read this year. I should probably only count it as a half, because it is a young adult novel and I should be challenging myself, but that would be completely undermining some of the brilliant Young Adult fiction that is currently out there. Although a lot of times the novels are formulaic and sometimes tedious in their making sure the reader understands the plot lines and characters, I just have to remind myself they’re written for a younger audience.

Now I always debate with myself on whether I should count books I re-read for this blog. I think I’ve settled on the criteria that as long as I have not previously reviewed them here I’m going to count them. There are some books I re-read pretty frequently (At Swim Two Boys, the Inheritance Cycle, The Harry Potter books, etc.) so this will allow me to ‘review’ them, but only count them once in my various yearly goals.

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Books

Book 30: The Cider House Rules – John Irving

It took me entirely way to long to read this book. I would go so far as saying that this is a fascinating fictional case study of an orphan and the doctor who raised him in New England. We spend the entire novel following the orphan Homer Wells and Doctor Wilbur Larch. It’s a rather plain and simple story, but the details and the little twists and turns throughout the novel create the oxymoron of an intricately simple love story. From the love of a ‘father’ to a non-nuclear family’s love for each other and the unrequited love of a childhood friend overall this is a love story and a story about the various types of love you experience through life.

Although Homer and Larch are the clear protagonists, it’s clearly a story of relationships and interactions and the various relationships love has to and within each interaction. If you ever wanted to catalogue the types of love this would be a great novel to read because I’m fairly certain they are all here, from convenience and unrequited to lust and familial. It’s hard to pinpoint which type of love Irving wants the reader to focus on, gut instinct would be either the fatherly love of Larch for Homer, or the love between Wally, Candy and Homer or even Melony’s strange interpretation of love for Homer, but I would say it was the smaller loves that truly made the novel. The unwavering love of Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela for their charges, especially Homer, and for Larch, or even Olive and Ray Kendall’s love for Wally, Homer and Candy even though they know the confusion they’re facing.

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Books

Book 25: The Last Olympian – Rick Riordan

In this final installment of the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, the battle truly rages for New York, for Mount Olympus, and for the world. Titans are now fully reforming and the demigods/Heroes/half-bloods must fight to save everything. It is incredibly difficult as the gods of Olympus are facing attacks on multiple fronts from the Titans Oceanus and Typhon.

The book starts out with a covert attack on Luke and Kronos’ supposed command ship Princess Andromeda. This ends with Percy marooned on Calypso’s magical island Ogygia in order to recuperate. When he returns to camp, all hell breaks loose as they are facing a spy, an increasing number of opponents, and greater losses of life. Nico, son of Hades, made a suggestion to Percy of taking on Achilles curse, dipped in the River Styx and becoming invincible, to which Percy finally agrees.

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