Books

Book 525: Origin (Robert Langdon #5) – Dan Brown

I’m not sure if this has pulled me out of my reading slump, but I did read it. When I got the notification from the library for this I was surprised. I had completely forgotten that I’d requested this.

I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to read this, but I figured why not? Brown might not be the most high brow of authors, but the man knows how to write a page turner (mostly). I still remember reading The Da Vinci Code it’s year of publication and quickly seeking out Angels and Demons and Deception Point. Ever since then I’ve made a habit of reading his books as they’re released. I enjoyed both The Lost Symbol and Inferno, and this one probably falls somewhere with those two. The wonder and awe as the action in Da Vinci Code unfolded just wasn’t there in the follow ups.

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Books

Book 524: The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet – Kate Rorick and Rachel Kiley

Like the Damon Suede book I just finished, when I finished finally reading The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, I went to my local library to see if they had this. I didn’t necessarily want to read it, but the completionist in me was like there are only two books in the series so why not. So here I am almost two months later finally writing my response.

Let’s start with the bad: I honestly don’t think Austen would’ve wanted Lydia to be this likable or this redeemable. I get that Rorick and Kiley, and the writers of The Secret Diaries of Lizzie Bennet web series made creative choices, but Austen very rarely wrote redeemable characters unless they were the stars of her novels (i.e. Elizabeth and Darcy). Lydia’s comeuppance  was to spend her life with Wickham basically exiled from her family. That doesn’t happen in The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet and this isn’t a bad thing as it definitely makes this a lot more readable, it’s just not the same to me.

Now on to what worked great!

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Books

Book 523: Lickety Split – Damon Suede

I hadn’t planned to read more than one of these, but when you’re caught up in the moment you can’t really control what comes through on your kindle (or you buy at a bookstore, get from the library, or… well you know what I mean). After finishing Hot Head, I checked to see if this was available at the library and it was, so of course I checked i tout and blazed through it.

Lickety Split, is sort of the opposite of Hot Head in that it’s set in super rural Texas and you’ve got small town life versus big city living. There are still some family hiccups in this one as there were in the first. I guess Suede writes what he knows with a big impact either way. He grew up in small town Texas (surprise, surprise) and fled for the big city at the first opportunity he could.

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Books

Book 522: Hot Head – Damon Suede

I decided to read this after attending the panel at the BPL way back in September and I’m just now getting around to writing this post at the end of November. It’s just been one of those stretches where I didn’t have the time (or desire) to blog. The break was a needed refresher and now I’m making my way through a backlog of posts.

Hot Head tells the story of Griff, a buff red-headed (probably Irish) NYC fireman, and his best friend Dante, a smaller but still buff Italian American fireman. They grew up together, survived 9/11 and are now facing the aftermath of everything that happened. Long story short Griff has realized he is gay and has started to fall for Dante.

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Books

Book 519: Claudia Must Die – T.B. Markinson

I’ve had a copy of this on my Kindle since February of 2015. I’m not sure why it took me this long to read it, but who knows with me. TBM was one of the first blogging buddies I made when I started to blog all those years ago.

One of the things we connected about was Boston. She’d recently left Boston and I’d recently moved to Boston. Little did I know that almost seven years later I’d read a book that was set on the same street where I work! Seriously, a good portion of this book takes place on the street and the block where I sat on a deck reading this during my lunch break.

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