Lyssa's Reading *What* in 2012??

[Lyssa]

#52 Storm Front I've known about this series for a while, but hadn't read any. Decided to try on a whim, and not disappointed. Not a hardcore mystery or anything, and that's ok - after work, brain fluff is welcome. Action, magicky stuff, and a quick read. 3.5/5

[Lyssa]

#53 Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything Interesting, and thankfully doesn't read like a textbook. 3/5

[Lyssa]

#54 Fool Moon 3/5

[Lyssa]

#55 Grave Peril Seeing a trend here: these are fun, but the occurrences of spelling errors and some repetitiveness are keeping the star level in the middle. 3/5

[Lyssa]

#56 Objects of My Affection: A Novel I'm glad this was an easy read, cos Lucy frustrated me. Mostly because the way she dealt with her son made me want to bang my head against the wall, but also because as an 'expert' in organizing she seemed too unsure. I did like Marva and was sorry to see Heather practically disappear in the second half. 3/5

[Lyssa]

#57 The Submission Really good "what if" book covering the aftermath of a 9/11 memorial design created by a Muslim. There were lots of times, however, that I just felt I was reading a rehash of things that happened after 9/11 rather than getting to know the characters. 3.5/5

[Lyssa]

#58 A Good American A really sweet book about a husband and wife who immigrate from Germany and the next three generations of their family. Births, deaths, marriages, betrayals - it's all in here, but to me, nothing seemed overly dramatic. 4/5

[Lyssa]

#59 Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection I'm glad there are people out there willing try all this stuff, cos there's no way I could have done this for two years like Jacobs did. Of course, he did finish a triathlon while I have yet to even consider entering one, so maybe something worked? 3.5/5

[Lyssa]

#59 Summer Knight Hmm, maybe I'm faerie-centric? More fae, less vampire and the rating goes up.... 4/5

[Lyssa]

#60 Death Masks Yep, this series is starting to grow on me. Anyone who can make snarky jokes while facing "imminent" death is a keeper in my book. This one expands a little more on the way Harry has to work in a world that's shades of grey (No, not *those* shades of grey....:P) 4/5

[Lyssa]

#61 Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain Like a B movie in a book! Space aliens! Time travel! Lasers! Invincible centipedes! I felt like I should be a 9 year old boy to read this. A silly, fun read. 3/5

[Rooks]

Lyssa wrote: "#53 Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything"

I seriously just bought this book; we have to stop meeting like this. :)

[Lyssa]

#62 The Red House: A Novel I do like this book. After reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time I was interested to see what came next. Haddon can write the family idiosyncracies, and he doesn't wrap everything up in a nice, neat bow at the end which I like. But the writing style... it's all internal thought and switches from one person to the next between paragraphs. I don't enjoy having to re-read just to figure out who I'm reading about. Would have rated better if not for the writing style. 3/5

[Lyssa]

#63 Blood Rites More of the action and adventure. And this time there's flaming demon monkey poo being flung as a weapon against Harry. No, really. Amid the action the story moves forward with Harry's relationships. I'm kinda liking this series - too bad there are only 12 books or so. 4/5

[Lyssa]

#64 Ready Player One Honestly, I was avoiding this book before because of all the hype (a policy that generally serves me well) until I hit the library and they were down to some pretty slim pickings. I figured that I'd at least enjoy the 80's references. Although I'm not giving up on my policy just yet, I really enjoyed this book. Yep, lovin' the 80's name-dropping, and the story kept me engaged even tho' I've never been much of a gamer. 4/5

[Lyssa]

#65 Dead Beat I had a good giggle at the climactic battle in this book - even had to share it with the bf. I do like how Butcher had characters take turns helping Harry so that they each get their few minutes in the limelight. 4/5

[Lyssa]

#67 The Beginner's Goodbye Short book at less than 200 pages which is not a problem in itself. I was expecting a different book based on the cover blurb. ("Frequent visits"? Hah!) And Aaron is just a jerk. 2/5

[Lyssa]

#68 Proven Guilty Not sure why, but this one didn't strike the same "Woo-hoo" nerve as the last few. 3.5/5

[Lyssa]

#69 The Safety Expert Not believable, and just long. It could have lost a good 75 pages or so. 2/5

[Lyssa]

#70 White Night Back to some more action and mystery. Wooo-oooo. :) I did find myself skimming some parts where Harry starts waxing philosophical about some of the same topics that were waxed in previous books. 4/5

#71 Southern Fried Rice: Life in a Chinese Laundry in the Deep South Not a very long book, but readable. To me it read like one of those memoirs you write for family. I didn't ever feel engaged, but being interested in the topic kept me reading. 2.5/ 5

[Lyssa]

#72 Talulla Rising This is the sequel to The Last Werewolf and is written with the same graphic style (werewolf sex and feeding) so still not even for the YA set I'd say. Where book 1 was about death (Jake was really wanting to die), this book is about life and Talulla's struggle with how much she's willing to open herself up to it. Duncan has an amazing way with words - lush and descriptive, but (usually) not so hard to work thru so that the flow of the story is lost. 4/5

[Lyssa]

#73 Small Favor Oh no! I'm getting close to finishing the series! Good thing there's a tv show to watch after this. :) More fairies, more Thomas and more Denarians. The guy needs to quit getting beat up, tho. 4/5

[Lyssa]

#74 Summer Rental Went into this with no expectations as it's chick lit fluff, right? Well of course it is! Saw the ending coming from a mile away, everybody solves their man problems and we all live happily ever after. Good for a lazy day when you don't want to use your brain too much. 2/5

[Lyssa]

#75 Turn Coat
Harry expands and fine tunes his abilities and some relationships change - some changes don't make me happy. :( Not really happy how Butcher didn't even follow up on some of the happenings from the last book. I wanna know what happened!! Usually he's good about continuity, so I'm hoping it's addressed in the next book. 4/5

[Lyssa]

#76 My Year of Living Fearlessly How someone so phobic can function is beyond me. She even has a fear of therapists,so counts it as a task done when she sees a therapist about her fear of flying. Cooking a turkey is not fearless. Camping in your parent's backyard (after spending most of the evening in their house) does not count. Originally a blog, and probably better read in that format. The spelling errors really got to me after a while, especially with a book that supposedly has an editor. 2/5

[Lyssa]

#77 What Would Satan Do? Smooshing a bunch of funny sentences together does not a funny book make. Found myself giggling at some of the descriptions and asides, but overall just a 'meh' sort of feeling. Also suffers from my pet peeve of the really abrupt ending - I was reading right along looking forward to the next twisty turn and poof! Done. 2.5/5

[Lyssa]

#78 Changes Aaaarrrggghh! I just want to pick him up and shake him!! Bad Harry, bad! And then I just want to give him a hug and tell him everything will be alright. But can I? Of course not! Curse you Jim Butcher! 4/5

[Lyssa]

#79 Tune in Tokyo: The Gaijin Diaries If he could just figure out the subject of this memoir, it would be so much better. The blurb says experiences teaching English in Japan, and that's *sort of* there. There's also anecdotes about the very cool weirdness that is Japan and a whole bunch of "I'm gay and I'm in Japan!" If he'd just focused on one of these.... 2.5/5

[Lyssa]

#80 Ghost Story Harry, Harry, Harry.... I've mulled over how to describe my feelings about this book without giving away spoilers, and I can't. Instead, I shall just sit here and shake my head (oh, and rail in frustration that this is the last of the series and now I'll just have to wait for the next book like everyone else! Agh!) 4/5

[Lyssa]

#81 Side Jobs: Stories From the Dresden Files This is a great collection of stories from Dresden's world. Butcher even puts in time references so that you can read the stories in between the books if you want to. A few of the stories are written from the perspective of other characters and were fun reads. **DON'T read the last story (Aftermath) before reading Changes as it will spoil the book. 4/5

[Lyssa]

#82 Yes China! An English Teacher's Love-Hate Relationship with a Foreign Country Like it says, a book about teaching in China over the course of a few visits. Chinese classrooms are definitely run differently than Stateside classes and it seems most of his time is spent frustrated. He does throw in a few "Aww, this is why I do it" moments, but not nearly enough to make me believe it. 3/5

[Lyssa]

#83 Ape House Liked the premise for the book - really wondered why some of the characters were even mentioned. The whole storyline between John and his wife seemed pointless to the main arc of the bonobos. It *did* make me look up some of the projects dedicated to language development in apes so extra points for that. 2.5/5

[Lyssa]

#84 Love At Absolute Zero Another example of blurbs gone wrong. A cute book, but scattered, and I never really got into the main character so it was hard to empathize with his "quest."
2.5/5

[Lyssa]

#85 Dragonsong (Pern, #3)

#86 Dragonsinger (Pern, #4)

These seemed much longer when I read them as a child. :) Re-read them in a moment of nostalgia today and they're still as good as I remembered. Both get 5/5.

[Lyssa]

#87 Naked in Death After watching Rooks and Tiennie barreling thru these, I figured "Eh, what could it hurt?" Sigh. I'm never gonna learn. 30-some books? Crap. I'd figured 20 which wasn't so much more than the 13 in the Dresden series. I'm not a big mystery person, but I'm a sucker for the tough gal trope, especially when she gets a hottie like Roarke. :) 3/5

[Lyssa]

Holy shiznit, Batman... I'm 18th in line for Gone Girl at my library. At two weeks per checkout (not counting folk who keep it past the due date), I'm not going to see the book for another 6 months! It seriously better be worth it.

[Lyssa]

#88 Hex Appeal Not a bad batch of stories, tho I couldn't get thru one- just had to skip it. Think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if the stories were standalones and not parts of existing series. It seemed I needed to know the history of the characters to really enjoy the stories, and I don't. 3/5

[Lyssa]

#89 The Lifeboat Interesting premise and a good read until the last 60-75 pages when I felt the story just started going nowhere fast. Found myself skimming pages (which I rarely do) just to see if anything would happen. For the 200 pages before that point, a 3/5.

[Lyssa]

Up too late last night finishing one book, and got engrossed enough in the next that I finished just now after reading thru all my breaks at work and instead of paying bills tonight. :) Gee, just guess which one it is.....#90 Glory in Death The library only has audio format for book 3, so that will go a little slower. For kicking ass in a cocktail dress and making me want my own private lagoon, 3.5/5.

[Lyssa]

#91 77 Shadow Street Haven't read any Koontz in a while, and I'm not sure I like it. Some of the descriptions started reminding me of King and Dreamcatcher which isn't bad, but some of the other paragraphs started running so long, I was skimming. 2/5

[Lyssa]

No internet connection for just over a week so of course, much catching up to do.....

#92 Shadow of Night Benefited from some editing the first one didn't have. 3.5/5

#93 Kiss the Dead Actually got away from the non-stop ardeur on this one, but still felt like there were only three sections that dealt with her working. The rest of it was relationship drama. 2.5/5

#94 Immortal in Death Roarke. Need I say more? :) 3.5/5

#95 Rapture in Death Boy, do I love my hour-long lunch... lots of reading time. :) 3.5/5

#96 Dare Me A wannabe "Heathers" only with cheerleaders. The blurb was intriguing, the book not so much. 1.5/5

#97 The Hypnotist's Love Story How would you deal with your boyfriend's stalker? Told from the girlfriend's and the stalker's POV. A wee bit on the unbelievable side (would you take the stalker to the hospital?) and too-tidy wrap up, but I enjoyed it. 3/5

#98 Divergent Finally got this from the library. A different take on the teenage dystopia. I'm not sure what I think of Tris... a few things didn't make sense to me. 3/5

#99 Holiday in Death I like watching Dallas get closer to the people that matter cos she's still fighting it as much as possible. Better than if she suddenly went all sappy on everyone. What happened to the book?!?! Argh! Loose ends!

Hopefully, I'll go back to a more normal pace now that I have the internet back to distract me... :)

[Lyssa]

#100 Vengeance in Death Crap! Read them out of order... oh well. Not my favorite of the bunch. The whole "uh oh, Roarke's involved" is starting to wear thin. 3/5

[Lyssa]

#101 A Dog's Journey I *knew* this was going to turn me into a blubbery mess and made sure to read it at home. Somewhat predictable as it follows the same format as the first book, but still good. Have the tissue box ready. 3/5

[Lyssa]

#102 Conspiracy in Death Same story, different characters. 3/5

And a quiet w00t to myself for hitting the 102 mark. See, I knew giving up the satellite service would be good for something. :)

[Lyssa]

#103 Arranged Ah, chick lit, my ever faithful standby. Girl does wacky things to find guy; love ensues; oh no! peril!; haha, just kidding... true love saves the day. 3/5

[Lyssa]

#104 Loyalty in Death 3/5

[Lyssa]

#105 Insurgent Really not sure what I think of this series. Tris just isn't believable to me for some reason, tho the things that happen around her are more so. 3/5

[Lyssa]

#106 Come Back: A Mother and Daughter's Journey Through Hell and Back While I don't want to belittle what Claire and Mia went thru, it just seemed that Claire's solution was to throw money at it - money she was fortunate enough to have. Not everyone can afford the treatments she was able to find for her daughter. And knowing this kept me that little bit disengaged from the story since it really isn't about the Everyman, but a special case. 3/5 (mostly for Mia's part)

[Lyssa]

#107 Witness in Death 3/5

[Lyssa]

#108 Judgment in Death 3.5/5