Book Review: Recent Reads #3

Title: Seeing Me Naked
Author: Liza Palmer
Genre: Chick Lit

Why I Picked It Up: Meg Cabot liked it. I picked it up in the bookstore and it didn't look shitty.

Context: I haven't really been into chick lit in a while. I pretty much got sick of the vapid twenty-something bimbo heroines who don't manage to get their shit together till the end of the novel once I started reading awesome romance novels about strong thirty-something women who find nice men and have fun adventures (and sex).

Basic Plot: Elizabeth is a somewhat trendy pastry chef with a father and brother (who is awesomely named Rascal and who looks and acts exactly like Jeremy Darling from Dirty Sexy Money inside my head) who are famous authors. She's a workaholic, has a some-what dysfunctional long-term on-again-off-again relationship with a globe-trotting journalist, and is starting to think about making serious changes to her life.

Review: I liked it. And I really didn't think I was going to.

I liked the heroine. I especially liked the complicated interactions she had with her family members (especially Rascal). And I liked sitting around watching her think things through and figure her life and promising new relationship with a cute basketball coach.

It was a nice, sweet book and it made me smile.


Superficial Assessments:
Title: Terrible. And really not very appropriate. I can see how it's connected and all... but no. Bad title.
Cover: So-so. I like the color. I especially like that it's not pink and doesn't have shoes on it (If the damn book's not about shoes... I don't want to see shoes on the damn cover!). The picture is unique and kind of interesting, but also kind of strange and odd.

Book Review: Recent Reads #2

Title: Thief of Time
Author: Terry Pratchett

Context: Thief of Time is my thirteenth venture into Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels. I've read all of the "Watch" series, all of the Tiffany Aching books (Wee Free Men... etc), one of the Witches books, and Going Postal. So, you could say I've hopped around a bit. I tend to prefer Pratchett's later work, and the later three "Watch" books in particular.

Why I Picked it Up: This particular title wasn't recommended especially to me by anyone, but Jennifer Crusie loves Susan Sto-Helit, Dee Dee loves Death, Laura and Carrie love The Hogfather, and I loved Lu Tze and the History Monks in Night Watch. So, I picked it up on a whim.

Basic Plot: The Auditors (previous villains in the Death books who keep trying to destroy the world in order to clean it up and make it all neat and orderly) are trying to end everything by stopping time. The History Monks, a young-yet-promising apprentice, an old Sweeper, Death, and Death's reluctant adoptive grand-daughter Susan are thrown in the mix. Well the monks are investigating and Susan isn't thrown as much as "poked a little." And Death is busy attempting to rally the reluctant horseman of the apocalypse for a ride.

Random Thoughts:
(Yeah, Discworld books are really difficult for me to review, so I'm basically going to just stand over here and jump up and down and point excitedly at particular bits I liked.)

Hee. Fun. Very fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

"Dojo! What is rule one?!"
"Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man!"

Hee, excellent rule.

Death is kinda cool, Susan's pretty kick-ass but a little dull (even if she looks exactly like Dee in my brain), I liked the horsemen of the apocalypse, and death by chocolate is a great way to go.

Lu-Tze is awesome! I love that little bald man!

Also, yetis are really fucking cool.


Last thoughts: I really am going to read The Hogfather. I swear.

Moive Review: CLoverfield (Sorta... Not Really, No)

Public Service Announcement: Watching Cloverfield may cause nausea, dizziness, and vomiting...

Or not. It wasn't necessarily the movie's entire fault. I had just finished a ridiculously stressful work shift, am suffering from "improper draining of fluid" in my right ear along with my own personal upper respiratory infection, and had managed to drink an entire soda and consume half a box of Buncha-Crunch during the previews.

And it really was my own fault for not glancing at a single review for the film. I mean, I would have seen "Blair Witch" comparisons, gone "Shaky Cam! Fuck no!" and ran the other way.

But I didn't.

So Coverfield wins the honor of being the very first film I ever walked out on in a theatre. With walking of course being a euphemism for stumbling away hunched over and trying not to vomit till I could reach the bathroom. Yeah, I made it ten minutes or so into the film before having to rush out in a fit of dizziness and nausea and I then managed to make it a whole five minutes or so through before making my sister and her boyfriend take me home.

Luckily, my sister and I have been getting along fantastically lately (surprising no one more than the two of us), and her man Greg was totally fine with leaving. He was even all "I feel you, Tab, I was getting dizzy too. I think you need to be a teeny-bopper like Vicki to be able to follow that shit." To which my sister responded with a glare that he met with "What? You know you love Tiger Beat!"

So, not so terrible times. Except for the vomit.

So, here's a quick recount of the 80 books I can actually remember reading last year:

Series:
Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries (7 books)
Meg Cabot's Mediator Series (6 books)
Meg Cabot's Heather Wells Mysteries (3 books)
Susan Elizabeth Phillips' Chicago Stars Series (7 books)
Jim Butcher's Dresden Files (9 books)
Terry Pratchett's Discworld (10 books)
Shanna Swendson's Katie Chandler books (3 books)

I also read 16 other assorted romance novels, 9 sci-fi/fantasy, 4 chick lit, 5 Meg Cabot books not already categorized, and Sherman Alexie's Flight.

Yeah, that last one's pretty much an oddball. I really jumped hard on the romance/YA band wagon last year. Man.

I don't expect to read nearly as many novels in this new year. Mostly because I got lucky last year and stumbled head-first into a number of awesome previously-established series with a backlog of stuff for me to get acquainted with.

Irregardless, I'm going to try and post reviews and "series overviews" for the stuff I read last year in addition to every book I read this ¥ear (which I've already started with the previous Big Boned entry). The rationale behind all the book posts is that I'd like to have a record somewhere of my initial take and that I suck at reviews in general and need to practice. Ah, discipline. Bring it on, bitches.

Book Review: Recent Reads #1

Title: Big Boned
Author: Meg Cabot


Context: It's the third entry in Cabot's "Heather Wells Mysteries" series about a moderately chubby former pop star who works at a NY dorm with an alarmingly high death rate.


Review: Meh. I really wanted to like it. I mean, Heather Wells is easily my favorite of Meg Cabot's many heroines. She's grounded and funny and kicks ass.

This novel? Didn't kick enough ass.

It was boring in a lot of places, the central murder mystery was ridiculously unengaging, the resolution was predictable and (again) boring, Heathers graduate student was a gigantic pain-in-the ass, and the ridiculous amounts of coupledom were annoying (saved at one point by Heather hilariously commenting on it... but only to a point).

Overall, it just seemed like Cabot ran out of steam and got on board the derivative train. That sometimes happens with later entries in a Cabot series, though. She's said she recently thought up a plot for a fourth book (after previously stating that this would be the last one because she'd run out of Heather Wells story ideas) so hopefully she's thought up something new.

Worth Reading? Once, yes. As a library rental. Because Heather Wells is still awesome. Either way, I'd definitely recommend the first two novels ("Size 12 is Not Fat" and "Size 14 is Not Fat Either), because they fucking rock. Even though they have ridiculously stupid titles (and really fugly covers).