Back in May, I put the Throne of Glass series on hold at the library; it took until July for the books to start becoming available, but shortly after that book became available, Crown of Midnight was ready to read. I had to start reading it right away, and I think I liked it better than Throne of Glass. Since this is the second book in a series, this review may contain spoilers for the first book.
As we begin this novel, our heroine, Celaena Sardothien, is now the king’s champion. The king has been asking her to kill enemies of the realm for a while now. Not too far into the book, however, you realize that Celaena is keeping a secret about these assassinations…
Meanwhile, Celaena is getting closer to Chaol. At the end of the last book, Celaena decided to break things off with Prince Dorian, giving the excuse that she didn’t think it was appropriate for the king’s assassin to be dating the crown prince. While reading the first book, I didn’t get the impression that Celaena was that into Chaol, but in this book things dramatically shift.
But not all will remain rainbows and lollipops for the king’s assassin. There are forces at work in the kingdom that were hinted at in the first book, and we find out more about them here. Celaena’s most recent assassination assignment leads her to a group that may be trying to overthrow the kingdom… but are they on her side? Well, let’s just say that you don’t want to piss the king’s assassin off. In this book, you get to see quite a bit of Celaena’s badassery.
Even though magic was supposedly banned in the kingdom years ago, we learn in this book that plenty of magic remains. Crown of Midnight reveals more magical secrets, both of the world, and of some of our main characters. Because the king has banned magic, these secrets can be very dangerous.
This series is like an onion: the farther you get into the book, the more is revealed about the characters and the storyline that you need to find out answers to. Throughout this story, we find out more about Celaena’s past. The king’s assassin definitely has some secrets that she wouldn’t want to have exposed.
The book concludes with a nice set-up for the next story. There are no nail-biting cliffhangers, but you’ll want to find out what happens next to these characters. I’m looking forward to Heir of Fire becoming available at my local library!
It’s Tuesday again, and you know what that means! Another Top Ten Tuesday post. This week, we’re going to be talking about Hidden Gems. I’m guessing that this is the opposite of the Hyped Up Books topic that we did at the end of July. So today I’m writing about some books that I liked, that don’t get talked about a lot. Since I’ve only been book blogging for about four months, I apologize in advance if I include a book that was once really popular but I haven’t heard much about.
I’m only including books that have already been released.
So before I dig around into the Goodreads vault to find some books that I liked that I read a long time ago, I’ll start with some YA books. One recent book that I really liked was Echoes, by Alice Reeds. I couldn’t put it down, and ended up reading it in one day.
Not that reading a book in more than one day means that I didn’t like the book (it took me a few days to read King’s Cage and I thought that was great), but in the absence of having to go to work and reading a book that is über-long, it usually takes me a day to read a really good book like this.
Another story that I read this year that I thought was pretty good was My Real Name is Hanna, which is a story about a Jewish girl who struggled to survive in the Ukraine during World War II. I haven’t heard a lot about this story, which is pretty sad, because the story was enjoyable.
From here we go back in time, although The Weight of Feathers was released in 2015, so it wasn’t that long ago. I read it this April, however. This book is a little like Romeo and Juliet, in that it is about two teens from feuding families that end up falling in love. It has a different sort of ending, however. It won some awards, and I found out about it because my library posted a link on Facebook about it.
I don’t know if you’d really consider The Book of Lies to be a hidden gem, because I first heard about it on television, but this book has been around for a while (it came out in 2008) and I’m sure it doesn’t have many people talking about it any more. I only remember bits and pieces of this story, but I remember I liked it quite a lot, and I ended up staying up late to finish it. Did you know that Superman has something to do with the Bible? The answer to that connection lies in this book.
The Heavenly Man is definitely a hidden gem. I first heard about it in church, LOL. I really loved this story, and I’ve heard from a few people that read it later, and they really enjoyed it as well. It made me rethink the concept of miracles. We seem to think of them as things that no longer exist today, but I think that maybe we rarely see miracles because we don’t need them that much.
At this point in my list, I think I’m running out of truly hidden gems; maybe if they ever decide to do this list at some point in the future, I’ll have more for you. Prior to book blogging, I heard of most books on TV, so they can’t really be that hidden, can they? But I’m sure that the rest of these books won’t be on very many Top Ten Tuesday lists this year anyway. One of those books that I really liked was 1421: The Year China Discovered America. I thought that this was a really interesting idea, and China did have quite a fleet at the time that Menzies thinks that China might have sailed to America, so who knows? It is an interesting idea.
Again, I doubt that we could call Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature to be a hidden gem, because I heard about it on the radio several times before I finally got around to putting it on hold at the library, but I also doubt that it’s going to make too many Top Ten Tuesday lists any time soon.
This book made my list of top books that I read in 2017. I found it to be really interesting. We always think of our own times as violent, but when compared to the past, it’s actually not. If you’ve ever wondered where the phrase “cut off their nose to spite their face” comes from, or have ever pondered whether medieval torture techniques would fly today, this might be an interesting nonfiction read.
I thought Defying Hitler was a great book, even though it’s unfinished. And yes, I first heard about this book on television. In my German class way back in middle school, I remember hearing about Germans who had to bring wheelbarrow loads full of cash to buy a loaf of bread. This is the story of someone who actually lived through it, all the way to after Hitler started to come into power, and people had to go to indoctrination camps. It was an interesting true story.
In the Garden of Beasts is another one of those World War II books that is quite eerie. This is the story of an ambassador and his family that came to Germany right about the time that Hitler came to power. Also probably not hidden, but as this book’s been out for a while now, I doubt it gets talked about as much as it used to.
Never Stop Walking is a book that I reviewed earlier this year, and you still don’t hear a lot about. Christina Rickardsson grew up in caves and then in the slums of Brazil. For those of us who grew up living in homes and never really had to seriously worry about our friends getting killed by the police or having to kill someone in order to get something to eat, this story is a journey into a life that we don’t hear a lot about. This book still remains fairly hidden.
So those are some hidden gems for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday. Next week I’ll talk about books that I hope to read this fall.
I recently finished reading Batman: Nightwalker by Marie Lu. When I first heard about the book, I wasn’t planning on reading it; I am so not a superhero person. My husband drug me to see a couple Spiderman movies a while back, and I’ve seen the Superman movies and some others… but it’s definitely not my genre. That being said, I loved Brad Meltzer’s Book of Lies, which has something to with Superman, that I read several years ago.
Anyway, I had started saying that Marie Lu could write about the alphabet and make it interesting. If I really believed that, then I should read her Batman book to see if it’s true. It actually was good, so that theory still holds. It’s probably my least favorite book that she’s done (but she set the bar really high with her other seven books), and it’s not going to make my top 10 books of 2018 list (which is okay because she might have two books on that list anyway), but I definitely enjoyed it.
The story follows Bruce Wayne right after he turns 18, about the time that he’s graduating from high school. He’s already fabulously wealthy, and is already realizing that there are some people that just care about him because of his influence. He’s ready to spend his last summer before college with his two best friends… until he happens to run across a crime scene.
He has a cool car that can chase down the bad guy, so he does — and gets in trouble with the police as a result. He is sentenced to community service at the local insane asylum. There, he discovers a little more about the string of crimes happening in the area, committed by a group called the Nightwalkers. He ends up bending the rules a little bit, but in the process ends up saving the day. Oh, and he also develops a thing for a criminal that may not be as bad as she initially seems to be.
One of the things that I love about this book (and pretty much all Marie Lu books in general, I’ve come to realize) is that it shows compassion for people that many would otherwise dismiss. People sometimes can be condemning of people because they happen to be the wrong race, or had to make difficult choices because they were poor, or did something stupid in their past. Our villain, Madeleine, might be a criminal, but there were forces that drove her there. I love how the book delves into the reasons why she chose the path that she did rather than just writing her off as a bad person. This book also deals briefly with sexual harassment, which is very timely in the #metoo era.
Batman: Nightwalker introduces us to Bruce Wayne discovering some of the cool Batman toys that he’ll later use as Batman. I thought it was also cool how the book goes a little bit into his interest with bats.
I thought that Batman: Nightwalker was a good story worth reading. My daughter is reading it now and also likes it; she enjoys superhero movies in general. Although this book isn’t in a genre that I routinely read, I did find it interesting.
It’s Tuesday again, and you know what that means… another Top Ten Tuesday post. Today’s Topic is supposed to be “Bingeworthy TV Shows/Movies”, but I’ll be doing a post on “Books That Were Made into Movies: Which Was Better?” Because I’m sure that you’re not interested in this:
Or this:
And since I usually only watch TV shows during my Russian meetup group, I think I’ll stick to books (the last one, Red Queen, has nothing to do with the Aveyard books). These are in no particular order.
How could I write a Top Ten Tuesday post about movies without including Divergent? Divergent was the movie that got me into reading YA. I actually saw the movie trailer before I read the book, and I read the book before I saw the movie. Despite the fact that I own all the movies in this series and have seen them several times (mostly in Spanish to practice my language skills), I actually don’t think the movie was all that great. I don’t think Shailene Woodley did an outstanding acting job here, and although Theo James is kinda hot, his acting was just okay as well. Plus, they get the stupidest details wrong in these movies (eye color, tattoos, location of the safe house in book 1…). I understand that they changed some of the details for artistic license, but these movies could have been a lot more faithful to the books. Maybe I’m bothered by it because of the hours and hours and hours of Divergent trivia that I’ve played on QuizUp.
Verdict: Books were better.
The Hunger Games is another book series that I loved that was made into movies. I think I watched the first movie before I read the books, but I read the rest of the books before I saw the movies. This was a series that I read in both English and in Spanish.
I think that they did a great job on the movies here. They seemed to stay fairly faithful to the books, and the acting was decent as well. I would have liked the movies even if I hadn’t read the books.
Verdict: Both the books and movies were good.
The Little House on the Prairie books are classic books. I don’t know how many times I read the set when I was a kid. The television show that ran in the 1980s was fairly popular as well. When my kids were younger, we’d watch the TV show with them, and it’s still pretty good.
However, even though the television show was pretty good, I still think that the books were better. The TV series had a feel-good message and moral lessons, but it wasn’t enough to beat the books.
Verdict: Books were better.
Anne of Green Gables is another series that I’ve read that they made into movies. I haven’t watched the Netflix series based on this show, but I did see some movies that they did of this show years ago. I wasn’t really that impressed (I think that I’ve seen two different versions of this book to screen adaptation). Even if the movies had been good, they didn’t cover the entire series, and Rilla of Ingleside is actually my favorite book of the entire series, I think.
Verdict: Books were better.
Forrest Gump is one of my all-time favorite movies. I just love the story, and the music is wonderful as well. I’ve seen this movie quite a few times.
The book, on the other hand (pictured here), is not quite as good. I don’t remember it all that well, but I do remember that it was just okay. I think I found it on sale, along with its sequel, Gump & Co. Forrest is not the same guy in the book as he is in the movie, and he’s not as likeable. Not by a long shot.
Verdict: Movie was better.
Like Divergent, I had never heard of The 5th Wave until I had seen the movie trailer. I went ahead and read the book before I saw the movie though. I thought the book was fantastic, and I flew right through it. This book made my top ten list of favorite books for the year that I read it in (the other books in the trilogy were not as good and didn’t make my favorite books list, however).
I thought the movie was pretty good, however, it really paled in comparison to the book.
Verdict: Book was better.
I was so excited when I heard that they were going to make Dragons of Autumn Twilight into a movie. After all, I named my kids after characters in these books! Alas, instead of making a really cool live-action film like The Lord of the Rings, they ended up making a really terrible cartoon instead. We were really disappointed.
I’m sure that you’ve heard to never judge a book by its movie, and that is doubly true for this book. The book series is fantastic! Unfortunately, I think that the movie that goes along with this book is the worst on the list.
Verdict: Book was WAY better.
The Lord of the Rings is a classic book series. I read it a long time ago, and I don’t remember much about it because I had aspartame poisoning at the time (it really killed my memory), but I remember liking the books.
Of course, I’ve seen all of the movies as well, and they were also great. They did a wonderful job making these movies, and I wish that they had done such an amazing job on Dragons of Autumn Twilight as they did on these movies. Before these movies came out, I was never really impressed by fantasy books that had been turned into movies. But these showed me that they could be done well.
Verdict: Both the books and movies were good.
Ender’s Game is another book that I was really excited to see turned into a movie. I read three of the books in this series in high school and I thought that they were really good, so I had to go see the movie when it came out.
While I thought the movie was good, I thought that there was a lot that was in the book that they ended up having to leave out for the movie. I know that they have to edit movies for time and all, but I think that all that ended up getting cut out made the movie inferior to the book.
Verdict: Book was better.
Unbroken was a great movie. It had a wonderful message, and it left me crying at the end. I think I saw the movie on Christmas day, and my dh gave me a copy of the book as a present on the same day, so I saw the movie first.
Even though I thought the movie was really good, there is only so much you can put in a movie. The guy spent a long time on a life raft, and then he went to a prisoner of war camp. Then when he went home he had to recover. It’s difficult to pack into a short movie
Verdict: Book was better.
So that was this week’s Top Ten Tuesday Topic. Come back next week where I talk about Hidden Gems: books that were really great, but not everybody knows about yet.
I recently finished reading Cassandra Clare’s second book in the Mortal Instruments series, City of Ashes. I thought it was great. You may recall that I read City of Bones a few months ago and I said that it was just good, but I expected better from books after that, since that was an early book of hers.
As this review is the second book in a series, it may contain spoilers for City of Bones.
I was correct in thinking that, because I thought that this was a great book. My problems with City of Bones was that there were a few occasions of infodumping, and I found the reaction of the characters to some of the situations they were facing to be unrealistic. I didn’t see those problems here. I did see one paragraph that seemed like a little infodump, but it didn’t affect my thoughts of the book at all.
As City of Ashes begins, the character’s lives have been upended. Clary and Jace seem to have feelings for each other but are evidently siblings, their mom is in a coma in the hospital, and their father, Valentine, is causing trouble.
Jace’s adoptive mother is having trouble believing all that happened in the first book, and calls upon the Inquisitor to find out the truth. The Clave can use the Mortal Sword to force him to tell the truth. But… dun dun dun! Valentine seems to have stolen it. Will he cause even more problems?
The Inquisitor seems to have a thing against Jace from the moment she sees him, and tries to make things difficult for him. Unfortunately, Jace and his friends are also the only people that see what’s going on, and they have to overcome both Valentine’s forces and the Clave’s representative in order to put things right, or at least as right as they can be.
Meanwhile, Jace and Clary still obviously have non-brotherly/sisterly feelings for each other. Clary reacts to this by forming a love relationship with Simon. I personally didn’t like them together. They didn’t seem to have more than friends chemistry.
I love the characters and the world in this book, and although I can’t keep all the different types of demons and blades straight, I doubt that there will be a quiz on it later. I definitely think that City of Ashes was a great second installment to the Mortal Instruments series, and I’m looking forward to reading the next book.
So it’s time for the kids to go back to school. My daughter started public school for the first time about two weeks ago, my boy started his homeschool coop last week, and our “Lastname Christian Academy” officially starts the Monday after Labor Day. For today’s Top Ten Tuesday Topic (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) we are doing a back to school edition. This week, I will be posting some of my favorite nonfiction books. They’re in no particular order.
The Fourth Turning has got to be one of my favorite nonfiction books. It was my favorite book that I read for the first time in 2016. It came out in 2007, but it’s very relevant today. I just love how this book describes how history runs in cycles, and it is so amazing how this book is laid out. If you like this book, Pendulum is also a good book with the same idea, but I liked this one immensely better, even though this one is older.
I first read The Discoverers by Daniel J. Boorstin in college, and not for an assignment; it just looked interesting. The book details the history of discovery, from things as simple as the clock and the calendar to more modern inventions, like navigation. I’ve read this book twice, but it’s been a while since I’ve read it last. I’ve also read a few of his other books; they’re also outstanding. A couple of years ago I was able to find a copy of The Creators in hardback at a library book sale and I had to get that one too, even though I had already read it.
If you are a homeschooler, then you are probably familiar with Susan Wise Bauer’s Story of the World series (they’re very popular). She also has written a set of history books for adults: The History of the _______ World (she has books for the Ancient World, Medieval World, and Renaissance World). They’re all great. If you think you know history because you studied it in high school, you probably are missing a lot. Some of the stories in these books are quite brutal, and I don’t think that they’d get taught in high school just for the brutality factor alone (history can be pretty nasty at times). These are really thick books, and you probably won’t finish it in a day or two like you can with most novels, but you can learn a lot from them.
One of my favorite history books is A History of Modern Europe by John Merriman. I bought the third edition (pictured in the photo here) because if you buy the brand new edition, it’s really expensive. There’s over 1400 pages of text here, so you won’t get this one read in one sitting either, but the book is very readable.
After the Flood by Bill Cooper is a lot shorter and a lot less academic, but I found it to be really interesting nonetheless. I think it’s fairly typical for people living today to think of the ancient world being full of unintelligent people who didn’t know much, but I’m pretty sure that was not the case. This book talks about some of the ancient records that shows that more than likely, ancient people in places like modern-day Britain already had knowledge of the Judeo-Christian God before the arrival of the Roman missionaries that started showing up there after the time of Jesus. I found the ancient geneological records to be fascinating.
I read The History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours in college, but I also reread it once after that. The stories here are pretty fascinating. It’s hard to tell at times what in this book is real and what was exaggeration. Whether some of the tales are made up or not, what is apparent is that there was corruption in the early medieval period just as much as there is now.
If you’re looking for a reading challenge, then you might want to try tackling Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unabridged edition). My Kindle says that I still have about 75 hours left in this book, and I’m 2 % of the way through (probably part of that is chapter indexes though). I read the abridged edition years ago, but I’d like to one day read the entire thing, because there’s some fairly interesting stories here (although the reading is not the easiest).
There are several different Kindle editions of this book floating around, some free, some you have to pay for, but I’ve found that this particular edition is the best, because 1) the footnotes are all there and linked, and 2) all six volumes of this book are all together. I’ve downloaded a few copies of this book and have decided on reading this particular edition because it seems to have the best formatting.
I love 1421: The Year China Discovered America, because there is so much about the ancient and even medieval world that we don’t understand. If you like the History Channel shows where they go look at unexplained evidence and try to figure out what it all means, then you might be interested in reading this book too. I’ve always wanted to read his other book, 1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance, but I could never remember the title, but I finally found it. Now that it’s on my Goodreads TBR, I’m more likely to read it.
So far, all the books I’ve put on this list have been history books, which is most of the nonfiction that I read (well, that and political fiction) but I do read whatever nonfiction looks interesting. Freakonomics is a thought-provoking non-history nonfiction book. It explores the economic factors behind things like drug dealing, danger, abortion, and other subjects, but not in a boring way. I haven’t read this book in a long time, but now that I’m talking about it here, I want to read it again.
Wildcard seems to be one of the most anticipated books of the year, and if you’ve read Warcross already, then you probably remember that there’s a place that Emika goes to that is the dark side of Warcross. It’s actually based on a real thing called The Dark Net. While I was reading Warcross, I was reminded about the things that I read about in this book, including the Assassination Market (which is a real thing). If you find those sorts of dark things interesting, you might be curious to read this book. It’s a fairly easy and enjoyable read.
So that’s this week’s Back to School edition of Top Ten Tuesday. Stay tuned for next week where I talk about books that that were made into movies, and which one was better (because I don’t really watch too many movies or TV shows and I’m certain that most of you aren’t interested in watching something like Кухня, so I’m straying off topic a little).
I was recently given the opportunity to read Give the Dark My Love by Beth Revis. I received it through Penguin’s First to Read program. It was a good book, although I can’t say that it was my favorite.
Nedra is a 17 year old girl who grew up in a poor village. She doesn’t have many prospects in life… until she gets a scholarship to a prestigious school, where she plans to train to become a medical alchemist. While she doesn’t feel quite like she fits in, she develops a friendship with another student there, Grey, that seems to be developing into more than friendship.
There’s a plague crossing the land, and Nedra wants to stop it, or even try to find a cure. As the story progresses, she ends up discovering that there may be necromancy involved. Necromancy is illegal. Grey is not too excited about this. At the end, there are some twists and turns, and Nedra seems to be sliding into the dark side. Will she be a villain in book 2? I hope to find out.
The Good
There are a lot of good things about Give the Dark My Love. I liked the characters and the family relationships that Nedra had. There’s some political intrigue, and it speaks a little bit about class and privilege. The magical system is well thought out (except in this world, it’s not magic, it’s science). I liked the plot twist at the end of the story as well.
The Not as Good
Overall, I enjoyed the book. I would have liked to have seen more of the relationship between Nedra and Grey, and there was a lot that went on between Nedra and her professor that wasn’t shown either. The writing style didn’t draw me in as much as some of the other books that I’ve read recently have, but it was still quite good.
Conclusion
Give the Dark My Love has at least two books to it, and I would like to continue with the series (although I’ll probably try to obtain an ARC or check it out from the library). For me, I don’t think that this book has endless rereadability, but it I did like it.
This book is expected to go on sale on September 25th, but you can pre-order it now.
Welcome to the exciting world of Caraval! That is what my library could have told me when I found out it was available for download after a short time on the waiting list. Caraval is a book full of magic, mystery, danger, and love (mostly between sisters).
Scarlett had always wanted to experience the magic that was Caraval. From the age of ten, she wrote to Legend, the Master of Caraval, hoping to get tickets for her and her sister Donatella (Tella). Her grandmother had told her stories and made it seem wonderful. It seemed like a wonderful dream, while in her own life…
Her father was abusive, he wouldn’t let them leave the island that they lived on, and she decided to get married to someone that she had never met just to escape. One day, she finally gets tickets to Caraval, after she had given up. She no longer wants to go, thinking that her marriage will save her from her toxic life.
She ends up going anyway; you’ll just have to read the book to find out how. After she gets there, she discovers that it’s not quite what she was expecting. It seems to be a magical, more dangerous version of Las Vegas, where everything that happens in Caraval is supposed to stay there. We find out that not everything stays there, however. Scarlett’s sister is kidnapped, and she has to find her before it is too late.
She ends up partnering up with Julian, a brash sailor who is definitely not Scarlett’s type, although deep down inside, she finds him to be devastatingly handsome. Over the course of the search, Scarlett grows as a person, and comes to the realization that maybe she’s putting her hopes into the wrong things.
In the end, we find out the truth about what went on in Caraval. Maybe… Scarlett wasn’t actually saving Tella after all. Perhaps Tella was saving her. Maybe Julian isn’t actually a sailor. Again, you’ll have to read to find out.
What I Liked
I enjoyed this book. The characters were likeable, and they grew as people as they struggled through the book. Scarlett is very practical (maybe a little too much so) and protective of her impulsive sister. Tella is a little too impulsive. The love between these sisters is what drives the story, which I found to be a really sweet underlying theme.
There was a lot of mystery to this book, and as I read, I couldn’t help but to wonder what was really going on. In Caraval, nothing is exactly as it seems. The book reveals much of its mysteries by the end of the book… but then we realize that there is one more mystery to be solved. Now I can’t wait to read the next book, which I’m on the waiting list to read at the library.
Anything I Didn’t Like?
I can’t think of anything that I didn’t like about this book. Maybe at the beginning of the book, Scarlett seems a little hopeless and clueless, but as she grows throughout the book, she becomes a strong person in her own right.
I enjoyed Caraval quite a lot and am looking forward to reading the next book, Legendary, as it becomes available. If you haven’t read it yet and choose to check it out, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
The other day I was at the library and I found Dan Brown’s book Origin on the shelf. When it came out last year, I thought it sounded interesting, so I decided to pick it up. I really enjoyed the puzzles in his book The Lost Symbol, and I was hoping for a book that had a similar feel to it. Sadly, I was disappointed in this book.
Our main protagonist, Robert Langdon, is a professor who was invited to an event by a former student and friend of his, Edmund Kirsch, who promises to unveil earth-shattering news that would destroy religion forever. Unfortunately, the event ends with a horrific crime, before the earth-shattering news could be delivered. Professor Langdon and the future queen of Spain, Ambra Vidal, need to find out a way to release this information to the world… before it is too late.
I didn’t feel the whole sense of puzzle-solving and excitement in this book that I thought I would. There was some symbology and some poetry to decipher, but there wasn’t as much in this book as I would have hoped. There were some drawings in this book, but the symbols printed weren’t really critical to solving the character’s problems.
The future queen, Ambra Vidal, didn’t really seem to be that interesting of a character, I thought. I just didn’t connect with her. When they finally are able to make the big reveal about the origin of life that was supposed to be so earth-shattering? That was a little disappointing as well. Rather than being an amazing discovery, it seemed to be something that futurists have been talking about for years… and as part of the presentation, the author made jabs at more conservative religious people, which I found to be unnecessary.
At the end, we find out who the criminal was that orchestrated the crime, and while it was surprising, it wasn’t incredibly shocking.
I did like some things about this novel. Since the novel is set in Spain, I like the liberal use of Spanish throughout the novel. It’s used in such a way that even if you don’t know Spanish, you can still figure out what is going on. I enjoyed translating it. If you’re an art lover, there is plenty of art talk. I found the buildings, description of architecture, and some of the concepts in here that are real (like the inclusion of the Palmarian church, for example) to be interesting as well. Even though the overall plot didn’t grab me, there were some elements that I found to be intriguing.
Although Origin wasn’t my favorite Dan Brown book, I think that there are people that will like it. It just wasn’t my favorite.
Today’s Top Ten Tuesday Topic (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is Books to Get You Out of a Reading Slump. I don’t know if I’m the best person to write about this topic, since I don’t really think that I experience reading slumps, but I’ll try to take on this topic anyway. More than specific books, I’ll recommend some ways to get out of reading slumps.
Listen to an audiobook: most of your favorite books have been made into audiobooks, and a lot of them are available at your library (okay available might not be the right word for it, because there’s usually a waiting list for most popular YA books at my library, but you know what I mean). Caraval is available in audiobook, as an example.
I’m not big into audiobooks myself, but I was thinking about checking one out from my library to listen to while I’m at the gym… but then I realized that there’s a waiting list for almost all the books, so maybe not today, at least. Maybe in six months.
Read a graphic novel. I’m not really a graphic novel person either, but if you’re in a reading slump, then maybe a graphic novel might help. Doesn’t this Legend graphic novel look cute? And can you believe that I don’t have these yet? I might have to go out and buy them now… or maybe I’ll just ask for these as a Christmas present. Otherwise they might have to excommunicate me from the Marie Lu fan club.
Read a magazine. One magazine article might only take a few minutes to read, and doesn’t take a ton of your attention span. There are tons of good magazines; Wired is one of the magazines I subscribe to via Zinio.
Read Short Stories. So I realize that summer is quickly fading away (where I am it feels like it’s been fall for weeks already) but I haven’t read too many short story books, so Summer Days and Summer Nights it is. At least if you want a short story recommendation from me. Short stories might be able to break you out of a reading slump because you don’t have to get too invested in any one particular storyline.
Read Something Useful. Maybe you’re in a reading slump because you’ve just gotten bored by stories that are meant to entertain. Perhaps you can read something useful instead. A book like Friction can help you learn more about attracting customers (which is useful if you have a blog, run a small business, or are in some sort of management position). If, perhaps, you don’t have a business, surely there’s something else you can learn that would be useful to your life. You can keep on reading, yet not feel the expectation of being entertained.
Read Something Light. A few months ago, I had just finished reading the first three books of the Ember Quartet, then I read a book about the Holocaust. Those definitely weren’t light reads! Plus, none of the couples were together at the end of the book! So I needed to read something a little lighter. That’s why I downloaded The Kiss Quotient. So if you’re in a situation where everybody that you’re reading about seems to be dying or getting injured, perhaps you might want to try something a little lighter.
Take a Short Break. Maybe you just need a break from reading in general. It’s okay to take a short break, for an hour or two, at least. I mean, let’s not go crazy and leave our collection of books at home when we go on vacation (or to the doctor’s office, or to work) or anything silly like that, but the books will still be there when you’re done taking a break. Sometimes you need to do something other than reading for a while, right?
Learn Something New. Maybe you’re just bored with fiction in general for the moment. If you still want to read, you could always learn something new. Like why the Apple logo was designed the way that it was. Or what was Thomas Edison like? Dreamers and Deceivers was a pretty interesting book that talks a little bit about those two subjects and more (I particularly found the story about Alan Turing to be interesting, but maybe that’s because I majored in computer science and love my Apple products).
Read Something Popular. A few weeks ago, we had a Top Ten Tuesday post about books that were hyped up a lot. I wrote about Popular YA Books That I Loved instead. I found out that week that some people are afraid to read popular books because they’re afraid that they might not be as good as some people say they are. A lot of times though, books might be popular because they’re good. If you’ve been afraid of reading a popular book and you’re in a reading slump, maybe you should try one out instead. The Red Queen series is pretty popular.
Try a New Genre. Maybe you just need to read something completely different for a change. If you’re always reading young adult, or fantasy, or whatever you normally read, maybe you just need to try something different. I really liked the story of Louie Zamporini, Unbroken. Maybe I’m just biased because he went to the University of Southern California (I don’t think so, but I do like the fact that he’s a Trojan like I am) but this is a really good story about a runner who was captured during World War II and eventually ended up forgiving his captors that tormented him.
So these are my ten ideas of how you might break out of a reading slump. Do you get into reading slumps? What are your ideas of how to get out of them? Next week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is “Back to School”, so I’ll be posting ten of my favorite nonfiction books.
Back in May, I put the Throne of Glass series on hold at the library; it took until July for the books to start becoming available, but shortly after that book became available, Crown of Midnight was ready to read. I had to start reading it right away, and I think I liked it better than Throne of Glass. Since this is the second book in a series, this review may contain spoilers for the first book.
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