Tag: NYC

Books

Book 344: The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #1) – Anne Rice

Geoff W

23 days! 23 DAYS! That is how long it took me to read this book and it really shouldn’t have.

Sure it was over 1,000 pages and it took almost 200 pages to hit the “OMG I have to finish reading this” point, but it definitely shouldn’t have taken this long. It was very well written and the story was fascinating. Unfortunately, due to work and trying to edit my podcast it just took me forever.

You might be wondering why I didn’t just give up? Well, that’s complicated you see. A certain someone, who recommended Last Summer and The Bitterweed Path, also recommended this and I promised I would read at least one book every other month that he recommended. And like I said above, it wasn’t a bad book, it probably just wasn’t the best time for me to read this particular book. I’m definitely glad I read it and will read the sequels to complete the series and find out WTF happened!

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Books

Book 329: A Jane Austen Education – William Deresiewicz

Geoff W

Warning: Goodreads rant – skip to second paragraph. I’m not sure what jumped up everyone’s butts on Goodreads (I shouldn’t really be surprised), but this book doesn’t deserve as much vitriol as it has received on the site. So many people trashed it without even finishing the book, many obviously had read the synopsis and yet were shocked at what they read.

The book definitely deserves a lot of the criticism, but it doesn’t deserve the pure vitriol that Goodreads reviewers thew at it. Sure, I wanted to smack Deresiewicz for being an insufferable grad student, but it’s very clear in the synopsis that the book was going to be full of naval gazing. He made a couple of questionable sexist and classist comments and he may have reduced a lot of Austen’s genius down to basics, but it would definitely work for people who are not familiar with Austen. Seriously, if you can’t find the good in a book, why bother finishing and trashing it? Just move on to the next book.

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Books

Book 326: Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn

Geoff W

I finally got around to reading this after winning a copy back in December of 2012 from Rebecca at Love at First Book. And my first response is WOW. I don’t know how I do it, but somehow I managed to avoid all spoilers about this book and as just as shocked/pissed/angry as I would’ve been two years ago if I read it when I first won a copy. In an attempt to not reveal any spoilers, this will be a very short and very vague response to the novel.

If there is one thing I dislike about many books, it is unreliable narrators, when you added in that this book has two unreliable narrators that seriously like to mess with each other mentally I’m surprised I made it through the novel. It is definitely a page turner and as you get further into the mental mire that is Nick and Amy’s relationship, you can’t get out as easily. When I turned the page to “Part Two: Boy Meets Girl,” I swore out loud and my sister thought I had finally lost it, but I was just that mad at the book.

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2014 Challenges, Books

Book 318: Boy Meets Boy – David Levithan

Geoff W

I was not as enamored with Boy Meets Boy as I was with Levithan’s other books. It was just as humorous as Will Grayson, Will Grayson but it wasn’t as beautiful as portions of it, nor as incredibly moving as Two Boys Kissing, but I am glad I read it.

From the cross dressing quarterback to the school’s bookie, Levithan definitely writes personable characters, but I just couldn’t get drawn in like I have with his other novels. I’m still debating on if it had to do with the “magical” aspects of “everything is perfect in Paul’s world” and all of his dramas seem self-created. But it could also have been that when I’ve loved Levithan in the past it has been when he wrote stories and characters that were so far above and beyond emotional comprehension.

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Books

Book 314: The Blood of Olympus (The Heroes of Olympus #5) – Rick Riordan

Geoff W

This is one of those books that I probably should’ve re-read the entire series before reading. So much has happened in the novels, especially if you go all the way back to the first Percy Jackson book, but even just within the five books of this series it’s been a long journey.

As much as I want to say this was the best book in the series, I honestly think The House of Hades was better. And this is for a couple of reasons. If possible The Blood of Olympus had TOO much action. I get that this is the end of a series which is a spin-off/second half of another series, but this book just didn’t stop with the epic battles. Sure they’re facing the end of the world and Riordan said it best,

“Today, one way or another, their journey would end.” (378)

But honestly, the book left me exhausted and not in a good way. It felt like there was so much that happened off the page that I couldn’t keep track of who was where and what was happening. There are spoilers to the series and this book so don’t read past here if you’re planning to read it.

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