Pay The Devil

Oh, Jack Higgins, you’re back. And yes, this is the same cover as yesterday’s post. Two books in one and according to the price tag on the back my mom paid $4 for the book. Great deal!

Pay the Devil is not a Sean Dillon book. It was written by Higgins under the pen name Harry Patterson in 1962 and in 1999 parts of it were rewritten and it was published under Higgins’ name. While the story is not a Dillon story, it is definitely a Higgins’ story – an American civil war vet heads to a family property in Ireland and discovers a land in upheaval. He ends being a sort of modern-day Robin Hood and then fleeing Ireland for America. It was good. It was fast – I read it in an afternoon.

The Edge of Danger

Jack Higgins. One of my guilty reading pleasures. Sean Dillon is my favourite. Especially because he’s perpetually in his late 40s but if you follow Jack Higgins’ timeline, he should be 80 or something by the time Higgins writes the last Dillon book…

This book takes place between London, Ireland and the Middle East and it’s a typical Higgins thriller. I read it in less than a day and could have kept reading. As always, Dillon gets his man…

The Stranger

I did it! With this book, I reached my goal!!! This is book 52 for 2012 and I did it with 2 months and 3 weeks left in the year…I’m super curious to see how many books I end the year with!

I am really enjoying the Camilla Läckberg books and The Stranger was no exception. I like the characters at the police station: I’m finding the personal storylines of Erika and Patrick and their lives intriguing and I can’t wait to read more. But I will have to wait. Either for the library or for my parents to finish the next two books and then come to visit.

We were in Kelowna for a few days in October and I read this book in about 24 hours. I wondered from the very beginning about a new character Läckberg introduced and while I was right to be suspicious, the reasons I was suspicious were so far off base it’s amazing!

Patrick investigates a bizarre car accident that seems to be a drunk driver on the surface, but as the layers get pulled away in the investigation, the story gets more and more bizarre. The connections that Patrick makes are interesting and the story veers off in directions I never would have anticipated more than once! Erika was less involved in this investigation, but her experience as a stay-at-home and dealing with her sister was prominent. I’m looking forward to the next few books as I think she is soon back to work after her maternity leave and I’d like to see Erika and Patrick working together again.

Teaser Tuesday - The Casual Vacancy

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
  
• Open to a random page
  
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
  
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

It finally came in at the library…I’m not so much of a J.K. Rowling fan that I need to buy her book without reading it first (now, if it was another Harry Potter, you bet I’d be there the day it was released. I even bought book seven before it was released). Anyway, Alex picked it up for me on Saturday and I’ve been plugging away at it…verdict coming once I’m done reading…but for now, here’s my teaser:

The pall bearers were almost comically mismatched: Barry’s brothers were both five foot six, and Colin Wall, at the rear, six food two, so that the back end of the coffin was considerably higher than the front. The coffin itself was not made of polished mahogany, but of wickerwork.

The Casual Vacany, J.K. Rowling, page 159

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT at Should Be Reading with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

The Heroes of Olympus: The Son of Neptune

I’m waiting somewhat impatiently for my name to come up on the list for The Mark of Athena, but I’ve got a few weeks at least ahead of me…this book followed a similar format to The Lost Hero except this time it was Percy Jackson who had no idea where he was or why. I’m super excited to see Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter join forces in the next book. And I’m super excited that Michelle is also all over these books so I have someone to discuss them with. She’s a little peeved that the third book is Athena and not Minerva, but I think there’s a reason for that…I don’t think that the son of Neptune referred to in the title was Percy Jackson…

And with that, we're finally into October...I'm so far behind, it's unbelievable, but I'm blaming it on the six weeks in trimester number one where the guy who got up at 3:30 am every morning, the preschooler and the pregnant lady were in a competition to see who could go to bed first and our house was usually silent at sleeping by 8:30 pm at the LATEST!

Monday Mourning

This was an unintentional reread…I have read a bunch of Kathy Reichs and I was in the mood to read some more. I picked this up at the library and as I didn’t recognize the summary, I figured I hadn’t read it…I didn’t really remember the case – it was more the little, non-case related details, like Ryan’s daughter and her friend Anne’s problems, that kept twigging my memory. And then, by the end, I remembered what was happening, but it took a while! The book was first published in 2004 and there’s a good chance I read it close to when it was released – I’m pretty sure I read the book that comes after this one, Cross Bones, when I was recovering from my back injury.

Even though it was a reread, I enjoyed it…mostly because I couldn’t remember the details! I like Kathy Reichs books – the formula is a bit predictable although not so predictable that you know what’s going to happen in the first few chapters, but the stories are interesting and there are always some good twists! I’m not sure I would have enjoyed the reread if I had a better memory of this particular story though…

Beautiful Ruins

My friend Michelle recommended this book to me this summer, partly because she had read it and enjoyed it and partly because she thought the cover was beautiful!

It starts in 1962 when mysterious dying woman arrives at Pasquale’s family’s hotel in a remote little village that’s not quite in Cinque Terre. Pasquale falls in love with her and well, it’s not meant to be. Fast forward to a world dominated by reality tv shows and an elderly Italian man shows up at a studio lot trying to find the woman from his past.

I really enjoyed the book – I liked the overlapping stories and going back and forth between the 60s and the present as well as the absurdity of the story that made it even more believable – all those famous people behaving badly!

I started reading it thinking it was a chick-lit book, but sort of high level, and something just didn’t work when I was reading it. Well…that’s likely because it most certainly isn’t chick-lit and oh, the author is man. Which I discovered when I was done reading it.

I think I need to read it again…I read it pretty quickly and I’d like to go back and reread some of it!

The Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero

Yay...more Percy Jackson, except Percy Jackson is missing and all of a sudden there are Roman demigods running around with the Greek demigods. I really liked this book and how Rick Riordan meshed Greek and Roman mythologies. I really appreciated the glossary at the end that explained who the various gods where and what their Greek equivalent was. I was super impatient to read the next installment...and I have now...so in a few days, that will be up too...

Alys, Always

The reviews I read before I read Alys, Always were good enough to convince me I should read the book. Frances happens upon a car accident and the driver, Alys, dies from her injuries before help arrives. Somehow Frances ends up befriending Alys' family and things go from there...If Harriet Lane was trying to create a character who was creepy, she certainly succeeded. I liked Frances at the beginning of the book, but by the end I was thoroughly creeped out by the whole thing...Apparently Frances is very Rebecca-like. I've never actually made it past the first chapter in Daphne du Maurier's book, but after reading Alys, Always, I might just have to go try it again.

This was a quick read - I think there's maybe 200 pages in the book - but it was good...it had me turning the pages because I wasn't sure if I was reading things into it or if Frances really was THAT manipulative.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Last Olympian

And the series ends...I liked this one...and I wasn't too happy that the series was over, but then I discovered that The Heroes of Olympus has the same characters in it! And to me that's a sign that a book or a series is good - if I'm sad there isn't more, I've probably enjoyed it, but if I'm annoyed there isn't more, the story was probably missing something. (This was sad, for sure!)

Teaser Tuesday - Wolf Hall

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I just started a new book from a pile of birthday and Christmas gifts that goes back at least three years...Today's my teaser is:

He smiles at the thought of the Cromwells having a family name. Or any reputation to defend.

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel, page 141

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT at Should Be Reading with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

The Chaperone

For some reason Laura Moriarty's name seemed so familiar to me, but it wasn't until after I'd finished The Chaperone that I realized it was because I'd read The Center of Everything a long time ago...

I started out enjoying The Chaperone. Cora Carlisle, a house wife from Wichita, Kansas, accompanies Louise Brooks to New York City so that Louise can audition with a dance company. I didn't realize until after I'd read the book that it was based on the real Louise Brooks. The story of Cora (based on Alice Mills) is Laura Moriarty's creation and it's quite interesting.

The tension between Cora and her husband was obvious from the first time she describes them together, but the source of the tension was definitely not what I expected it to. Cora's life story has so many twists and the twist that is the last part of the book really surprised me.

Louise Brooks drove me nuts and her mother made me tear my hair out, but when I read some actual accounts of Louise Brooks' life, it was a lot easier to understand.

I actually quite enjoyed the booked even if some of the twists in Cora's life seemed a bit far fetched.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Wooohoooo...I remember! This is the one that takes place underground...a lot...and has Daedalus in it! I devoured these books the end of the summer - I think I read 2, 3 and 4 in about five days. Real comments coming soon...really...

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Titan’s Curse

More Percy Jackson! And maybe when I move away from Percy Jackson, these posts will become more interesting...this was the book that had Artemis' hunters in it and I liked it, but that's about all I can remember (I've read 8 Rick Riordan books in the last little while and I can't keep them straight...)

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Sea of Monsters

Okay, here we go...I finished this book at the end of August and now with pregnant brain, remembering that far back is like asking me what I had for breakfast on July 27, 1989.

The Sea of Monsters is the second of five books in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series and I inhaled it in two days. Again, I was reminded that my knowledge of mythology sucks...maybe once I get through the back log of the sixteen books I need to write about, I can choose a book on mythology as my next book...I liked it enough to read the next three...let's leave it at that...

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

This book was on my 2011 Christmas list. This is noteable because I don't know the last time I read a Christmas or birthday book so quickly. Probably Christmas 2008. Baby J gave me The Hour I First Believed and we were in Kelowna and so I read it. But I have an entire shelf in our bookcase dedicated to birthday and Christmas books, many of which I asked for, that I haven't time to read yet.

But back to Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. It took me a few attempts to get into the first chapter and then I was hooked. Monsters, mystery, time travel, old photographs, and it is even sort of set in World War II...what more could I ask for? Oh yeah, a great plot and awesome writing. And this book had it all. I should have written this six weeks (ish) ago when I finished the book so that my thoughts were fresh, but unfortunately life had other plans for me.

I am planning on rereading this one - it was definitely that good and I feel like I was so excited about it, I may have read it too quickly and missed something! Not bad for a book I put on my Christmas list just because it was on some "Books to Buy for Christmas" list and the old photographs intrigued me. Sometimes maybe it is okay to judge a book by its cover!

The Book Thief

Where do I start?

My mom brought this book back from Australia with her in 2008 and has been telling me I should read it ever since. It lived in the bookcase beside the bed in the room I slept in when I visited my parents. I'd see it there, but for whatever reason I'd never pick it up and start it. I finally packed it up last summer and brought it home with me. And it proceeded to sit on my bedside table, untouched, until last week.

And then I couldn't put it down. I read it in snatches while J was having a bath. I read it while dinner was cooking. I stayed up late reading it, but not too late because I didn't just want to read the story, I need to savour every word.

The Book Thief is set on a poor street in Molching, a village outside of Munich, during World War II. Yes. Another WWII novel. It is narrated by Death and it follows Liesel, a young German girl, as she adjusts to life with a poor foster family and all of the additional challenges the war brings.

The cast of characters in this book is amazing - besides Liesel and Death there is her foster mother whose language would make a sailor blush, but who loves Liesel even through all her fierceness, there's Papa, the gentle foster father with his silver eyes and his accordion, there's Rudy, the boy next door with the lemon coloured hairwho dreams of being Jesse Owens, there's Max, there's Frau Diller and Frau Holtzapfel, there are so many wonderful characters.

It's a book full of colour and full of emotion. Death associates each dead person with a colour and throughout the book colour is emphasized - hair colour, eye colour, the colour, or lack thereof, of some minor, inconsequential detail. And there are emotions. Many emotions. There's fear and anger. There's joy and sorrow. It's all there. And the reader feels it too. I had tears in my eyes a few times - just like Jessica G. in the comments on this post when Rosa held the accordion and when the eyes turned to rust and when Max left, not once, but twice and when he came back and over and over in the last 50 or so pages. I finished this book on my break at work and I'm sure they thought I was going crazy (I am temporarily helping a department that is not my own on a project that is super stressful, and don't know any of them very well, so I'm sure they thought my red-rimmed eyes were work, not book related!)

I've written before (I think over there, I thought maybe when I wrote about Suite Française, but apparently it was some other book) about being sad a book ended and wanting it to keep going, well this was one of those books. I wanted to know what happened, beyond the small snippets that Death gave us. I know why the book had to end there, Death explained it, but I want to know what happened in the years between where we leave Liesel in 1943 and where Death picks up the story again in the Epilogue. How do you think she got were she ended up? I have a bunch of theories and no answers. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be, but I want more!

Oh, and a quick quibble about the Young Adult genre. I don't get it. Apparently it's a relatively new genre. Books like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women were written for adults, with teenagers caught up in that age groups. I have a hard time distinguishing between YA for older teens and adult fiction, especially if its well written. I think this book could fall into either category. I dunno...YA is a difficult genre to define!

I'd love to hear what other thought of the book...this book really makes me wish I still had a book club because I really, really, really want to talk about it!

Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

So my thought that I would stop reading kids/young adults fantasy series and concentrate on some of the books piling up in my house? Yeah, it's just not happening. For ages I've wanted to read the Percy Jackson books, but I didn't want to buy them and because my library browsing tends to be anything adjacent to the small kids section of the library, I never picked them up. And then this book made it into one of the turning racks within easy reach of the picture books.

I read it in a day, but that's not surprising since it's geared towards the under-12 crowd. I liked it...it was slightly predictable (I guessed who the bad guy was almost right away), but it was good. Again it was a great reminder to me that I need to brush up on my Greek mythology. The Google machine? It was my friend again. I went to the library last week to pick up the four books I had on hold (which is another reason books are piling up in my house. I need to stop putting holds on things and instead just adding to the massively huge list of books I'd like to read someday) and managed to come home with two more from this series. Maybe by the time I finish the Percy Jackson books I will have a better grasp on Greek mythology. And maybe (but not likely) I won't be drawn into Rick Riordan's world of mythology. Yeah. Fat chance. I'm already hooked.

Dear George Clooney: Please Marry My Mom

Hmmm. What can I say? I picked this book up because the author, Susin Nielsen, is Canadian and she wrote some Degrassi episodes. As in old Degrassi. From when I was a kid.

It's one of those funny in-between books - Violet, the protagonist is 12, so is it kidlit or YA fiction?

Violet is an angry and upset young lady - her father, a director, ran off to California with his star, married her, and had twins. Violet lives in Vancouver with her mom and her five year old sister. Her sister's reaction to the divorce is slightly less angry than Violet's - Rosie has taken to wetting the bed and biting a girl at the daycare.

I was on the fence with this book. I loved how Violet and her friend Phoebe take control of what they think is an out-of-control situation, Violet's mom's love life, and send George Clooney a long letter detailing why he should marry Violet's mom. I love the everyday 12 year old-ness of the book - the cute guy from Winnipeg who calls Violet Pamplemousse, Violet's proclamations that she's not into boys, she'll never be into boys, look at all the guys her mom has dated that didn't work out so all boys are gross and her simultaneous (and somewhat confusing to her) crush on aforementioned cute guy from Winnipeg, the mean girl, the influence of social media on her life (I am oh so glad there was no social media when I was 12. Life was interesting enough as it was!), the Magic 8 ball conversation with her father.

Overall I liked this book for what it was - a book for a pre-teen/young teenager. I loved all of the Vancouver references. I even liked the cute ending. The only thing that drove me nuts was that the boring, dorky man Violet's mom ended up with (who isn't actually boring or dorky) was the white knight who rode in and fixed all the things wrong with their home and car - bannisters secured, old furniture removed, mufflers fixed, etc.

Teaser Tuesday: The Book Thief

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My mom loaned me this book ages ago and I finally got around to starting it last week. Now I can't put it down (it's probably a good thing I'm almost done it!) More about it later this week, but for now I will say that it is beautifully and poignantly written.

The examination was completed and he managed to perform his first nude Heil Hitler. In a perverse kind of way, he conceded that it didn't feel half-bad.

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak, page 440

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT at Should Be Reading with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!