Books

Book 312: The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien

As a lead up to my long over-due re-read of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I decided to read The Hobbit again. This was my third time reading the novel and I last read it in December 2012 just before the films began (I needed a refresher). I will say re-reading this book along with following Eric’s Sweating to Mordor over the past few months has seriously gotten me excited for my re-read as part of my 30 x 30.

If possible I enjoyed it even more this time. However, I became even MORE frustrated with the film adaptations. Similar to my issues with HBOs Game of Thrones series, I realized rather quickly how fast I read and how slow the adaptations proceed. My friend Peter did point out that there is a lot of additional information included in the films, but it’s still like WHOA. The entire third film, The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies will encompass what takes place in less than the last 30-40 pages of the book! So there will probably be a lot of additional stuff added. But enough about them, back to the book!

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Books

Book 238: The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4) – Rick Riordan

In this, the penultimate novel of The Heroes of Olympus, Rick Riordan sets the scene for a HUGE finale in the last and final book. I’ve had my name on the wait list for this book since I finished The Mark of Athena back in February or whenever the library first let me add my name to the list and I will do the same thing with the final installment, The Blood of Olympus.

This book picks up right where The Mark of Athena left off and keeps filling up details and providing more and more tension before everything snaps between Gaea and the demigods and gods. To be fair the series could end with this book and I wouldn’t be mad as there was a pretty succinct ending to this novel versus many of the other cliff hangers I’ve read before like that at the end of the last novel. This one although much sadder, the characters and readers of the series are growing up, was much more encapsulated.

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Books

Book 181: The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus #3) – Rick Riordan

I can’t wait for the next in this series to come out!

When it does, I’m going to re-read the first three all over again because there were so many details I only vaguely recalled AND their just fun reads! (Although this might not happen as The House of Hades‘ scheduled publication is August 2013, but I hope to get the chance!)

From what I do recall from the first two books, this is definitely more action packed and definitely not lacking. However, in the end it was just as much a tease as the others. For the entire book I held out hope that some of the major plot lines of the series would be wrapped up, but only one of them was (which was definitely nice). I was, however, very glad that the seven demigods from the prophecy were finally together and the teen angst in the book definitely added to the plot (although I’ve yet to read an author who does teen angst as well as J.K. Rowling).

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Books

Book 161: The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien

[Check out my 2014 updated review when I re-read it as part of my 30×30 project.]

What is there to say about this wonderful book that hasn’t already been said in some way or some form? Not much honestly, so this isn’t much of a review. It’s more a response/regurgitation of my immediate thoughts having finished reading it Wednesday evening.

I’m glad I squeezed in a re-read of The Hobbit this year for a couple of reasons: it’s the 75th anniversary of its original publication; I haven’t re-read it since high school; the first of the films comes out this year; and there was an awesome panel at the 2012 Boston Book Festival about the book, the movie, the previous adaptations and the associated artwork.

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ARC, Books

Book 137: Seraphina – Rachel Hartman

I decided to read Seraphina after seeing Grace’s review of the galley over at Books Without Any Pictures, and I am very glad I did. Of all the dragon novels I’ve read in the past few years, and I’ve read quite a few, this one is probably the most unusual.

I mean I LOVE dragon fiction. Dragons even have their own tag on my blog. I might not read as much fantasy as I used to, but some of my all time favorite books feature dragons!

I’m not sure if it has been done before, I vaguely recall perhaps Irene Radford having done it, and I know Christopher Paolini has one character that is somewhat of a dragon/human, but having the dragons transform into humans was definitely interesting. And then narrowing the focus even more was beyond incredible.

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