Bunnicula (and some sequels) by James Howe

Bunnicula was one of the books that I loved reading as a kid.  It had some mystery and interesting characters, but was just this side of ridiculous (I mean, come on, a vampire bunny who sucks the juice out of all the veggies?)  I like the dynamic between all of the characters, how one dog was simultaneously smart (he's writing books after all!) and yet didn't really like to concern himself with much more than sleeping and eating.

I like how the Bunnicula never talks, even though all the other animals are very verbose, but yet we always seem to know what he's feeling.  He has a very prominent role for a character that never talks.

Inevitably, the books end up being more about Chester (the cat) and Harold (the dog) then Bunnicula, so Bunnicula Strikes Again was a nice change because it focused on the bunny and his past a little more than we had seen before.  But, inevitably, it was the same animals up to the same antics.

#9books9days

If you've been following our twitter (or our Facebook page), you might have noticed that I took a little trip!  And since I had nine relaxing days away from work, I decided to read nine books while I was away.

I'm only going to review seven of them today (you're going to have to wait until the end of the week when Alex and I do Bunnicula books), but I'm going to review the rest of them right here, right now, including TWO books that aren't out yet!!

Zeroes by Scott Westerfeld (Release date 9/29/15)

Really, did you expect a Westerfeld book to be bad?  Well, if you're waiting for one, this isn't it.  You have dynamic characters, who grow not only in their characters but in their powers too.  And you know what?  They pushed the envelope on what we think super heroes are.  We think of people with powers as either good or evil, but these kids?  They could really go either way.  And that's kind of what I love about this book.  At the end of the day, they're still just people.

Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman

This is one of Shusterman's earlier ones and, honestly, I was a little weary.  I had read Downsiders and had been a little disappointed, so I wasn't sure how I would feel.  the Unwind distology is a high bar to set, and some of his other writings hasn't met it.  However, Full Tilt isn't in that category.  It was gritty and in your face and really made you think about life.  It was this nice middle ground between Goosebumps and Fear Street.  Scary, but not so scary you had to put the book down.

The Lightning Thief Graphic Novel (Percy Jackson #1) by Rick Riordan

What is there to say about Percy Jackson that hasn't already been said?  Do I love him?  Of course I do.  Percy Jackson is one of my go to book series.  And, if your kid isn't big on the reading, I might direct you towards the Percy Jackson GNs.  Graphic Novels are great things, and I think they fill a certain niche.  But at the end of the day, this just doesn't even hold a candle to how good the first book was.

Poison by Sarah Pinborough

This one was the only real wildcard in my books this month.  All the other books were either ones I'd read before or by authors I adore.  Pinborough was the only author I knew nothing about, and really didn't know much about her books other than they were retellings of fairy tales.  But I like fairtale redos and the covers on her books look beautiful if nothing else (plus, I got them fairly cheap during employee appreciation.)

However, it was the biggest disappointment this week.  Really, Poison just ended up being the same old Snow White story we always knew, with a twist ending.  The only problem was that twist, wasn't really good enough to make up for the rest of the book.  Her writing was mediocre so, really, the book ends up just being something to look pretty on my shelf.

Sold by Patricia McCormack

I have found I have a love hate relationship with McCormack's book.  Some are AMAZING, some are... eh.  Some I think the topics are important, I think the execution just is a little wanky.  Sold I think falls into the last category.  It most definitely gets better as it goes along, but the beginning of it was just really slow and hard to get through (and not in the 'this is so terrible it's hard to read' kind of way.  In the 'this is kind of boring; please get to the story' kind of way.)  But once our main character had entered the brothel and we saw her deal with her life, her reality, and learn to make friends and negotiate her situation, I think that's where the real story came out.  So, good book, but one that you had to stick with to get there.

Rumble by Ellen Hopkins

I actually expected more out of this book.  That's not to say that I didn't like it, because I did.  I think I've just gotten used to the shock factor in her books and this wasn't one of those books.  BUT I will say that I really did like her approach to the ideas of religion and there being a God.  The main character of our book is an atheist, and there are varying degrees of religious belief all around him, from his overtly christian girlfriend, to his mildly religious aunt, who believes in a creator, but doesn't push it.  As usual, Hopkins hits those topics that people are afraid to talk about, like the idea of a creator, and how people believe, and THAT is what I liked about this book.

Another Day by David Levithan ( Release Date 8/25/15)

When I saw this sitting on the break room table just two days after David Levithan had posted a picture of the cover, words can not describe the excitement I felt.  Seriously, I was jumping up and down in our break room, I was so stoked (we hardly ever get ARCs that I TRULY want to read.)  And this book was every word as good as I thought that it would be.

Levithan really pushes the bounds of sexuality for us, really making us rethink what is male and female, gay, straight, does it even matter, if we're in love?  And I like that it's not a straight forward answer either.  A has been like that his whole life, but it's much harder for Rhiannon to get past the conventions.  Either way, Levithan construction a most wonderful love story that pulls at our heart strings.  I've been waiting for this book for years, and I was not disappointed for a moment.

Review me Twice - Butter by Erin Jade Lange

To be honest with you, I thought this book was going to be about anorexia, not about an overweight kid, but that's just because I didn't read the blurb on the back (I hardly ever do the weeks that Alex picks.  I like to be surprised.)

But to be honest, I think obesity, and how it effects the KID, should be addressed.  We're so concerned with kids and their weight and the health issues associated with it, we're not thinking about the kid, and what's going on with them, and how their being treated and if they're depressed and that maybe, just maybe, their obesity isn't just because they like to eat.

I think Lange does a good job of addressing the issue and really making a point, showing you the problems obese kids face, and showing you that they are people, just like everyone else.  Like most problem novels, she shows us something that we've known all along; kids are cruel.  Fall in with the wrong set of them, and they're only going to make your life worse.

I like the ending because while it does have a little bit of the "everything wrapped in a neat bow" ending, it also has a log of the "things are really still screwed up and not fixed."

Review Me Twice: Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor

It took me ages to finally pick up this book. (And that, combined with the fact that I left it in my office overnight too many times, is why I didn't QUITE finish it on time, so I can't speak to the ending of the book.) But I'm glad I finally did start it, because it was a lot better than I expected.

I expected your average silly teenage girl who is entirely focused on the little things at school but then realizes there's something "so much bigger" out there, and she's required to be "the one" to fix it. What I got was a girl who already knew about the "so much bigger" (although not all of it) and plays a very delicate balancing game in order to maintain both a "normal" life where she gets to think about grades and boys, and her supernaturally-related life where she has obligations and real consequences. Then everything gets turned upside down and she chooses to do something about it.

Although I do have to admit... when the seraph gets involved, she turns into a simpering, lovesick girl (even when she thinks she hates him, so I'm not even spoiling anything for you... right off the bat, it's like "oh you're so my enemy but damn you fine").

That doesn't bother me too much, but the really heavily laid-on-thick "who are you" question bothers me quite a bit. From the very beginning, Karou's origins and history are an enormous mystery. You can't just have a new character announce in the middle of the book that he figured out the secret and then lead me on for at least several more chapters (I haven't gotten to where - if anywhere - in this book he tells the big secret). Yes, I like mystery and secrets that don't get revealed for a long time, but not if you draw that much attention to them. It's too blatant.

Beyond that, though, this is a very well-written book, and I would recommend it to most.

This book was recommended to me by my YA bookclub librarian... about four times.  And then I FINALLY picked the first one up and read it.

Really, I had put it off too long.  Karou is a very independent, do what she will, refuses to just take her punches and lie down kind of girl.  Even though she loves her adopted family to death, and knows nothing about her past, and has been told to just stop asking so many damned questions.... she never stops asking questions.

Ultimately, it gets her in some trouble, as questions are wont to do, but she doesn't even let THAT stop her.  She seeks out solutions, answers, is determined to know what is going on and WHY it's going on, and won't let creepy old guys or dangerous situations stand in her way.

I will give you that the romance is a little... OF COURSE she falls in love with the super hot guy, but to her credit, she did beat the crap out of the super hot guy first, so there's that.  Karou is incredibly loyal and I like that about her.

I like that the mystery of her past was drawn out and I like that the book was left at a cliff hanger, (much in the same way that Ashes by Ilsa Black was).  It makes you want to read the next one.

Review Me Twice: Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman

For the first 1/6 or so of this book, I was really interested, totally on board, ready to hear more. For the next 4/6 (or 2/3 if you prefer), I was irritated with Piper for being... I'm not entirely sure what. She didn't seem to be connecting with her situation very well. Granted, she admits that she was very lucky to have high-end legal representation, and people on the outside with far more resources than the loved ones her fellow prisoners had outside, but it doesn't really seem to sink in for her. Until, of course, the last 1/6, where I felt like some kind of redemption happened. She really got it.

I think that maybe if this had been written during Piper's time in prison, instead of after it, the whole book would have a very different tone. She was lucky; she didn't experience any immense hardships or abuse during her year in prison.

Certainly, I learned things from this book. I would love it if more prisoners wrote similar memoirs about their time inside, to present a wide spectrum of experiences and viewpoints. I also appreciated the list of organizations and contacts at the end of the book that address different ways of helping prisoners and their families (my favorite is "Book 'Em," which is Pennsylvania-based and provides books to prisoners and prison libraries).

I wouldn't run around telling everyone I see to read this book, but it is quite good, and if someone asked me about it, I'd say that yes, they should read it.

For a book that's as famous as this one is, and that's been a bestseller for as long as this one has (seriously forever.  It's still sitting on the bestseller list.  I'd say it's been at least a year.) I was expecting a little more out of it.

It took me awhile to get into the book, and then it took even longer to figure out why she had written it.  Thank goodness it's not that long of a book.

However, I admit I grew very attached to the characters, to these women that she spent a year plus with, that she shared some of her most intimate experiances with.  You found yourself rooting for these women in a way you never really thought pssibly and seeing these "criminals" in a whole new light.  Have they done things wrong in their lives, sure, but about half of them would be better suited to a true rehabilitation program.  Or better yet, a program that helps them get jobs and housing and gives them ways to stay off the streets so they didn't have to sell drugs and land themselves there in the first place.

I will admit that the book sheds a harsh light on the growing problem of our prison system.  Kerman's prison had a litany of its own problems and, compared to what she had to deal with when she went to high security prisons in Oklahoma and Chicago, it really wasn't bad in comparisson.  The book showed how much money is wasted on prisons instead of maybe putting it toards our school.  That we incarcerating instead of teaching.

It was an enjoyable book, that I'm glad I read, mainly because I think it's a good idea to read the books that everyone has read, be they good or bad.  But it has been added to my "to be donated" pile.

Review Me Twice - The Man Who Couldn't Stop: OCD and the True Story of a Life Lost in Thought by David Adam

One of the best things about this blog, I think, is that it has expanded my non-fiction horizons SO MUCH.  As in, I used to never read non-fiction and now I pick up a lot of it.  OCD is one of those things that, in reality, I don't know a lot about.  There are a lot of stereotypes surrounding it, one being that OCD means insane cleaning.

But I think the best thing about Adam's book is that he showed his reader that OCD isn't about being clean.  It's about something small, something negligent in our lives, becoming something all-consuming in his.  For him it was AIDS.  He would obsess about ways that he might contract the AIDS virus, and the ways he thought he could were insane, but that didn't stop him from thinking about it over and over, from it stopping him from living his life.

I like the fact that it was written more like a biography than like a "let me tell you about OCD" book.  I mean, he did tell me about OCD, but by telling HIS story, Adam's made it so much easier to really learn about the disease, to get that it's not just this weird things where you wash your hands to much, and I think that was really great.  If you're making a list of non-fiction this year, pick this one up.

Review Me Twice: Hack by Melissa Plaut

I really enjoyed this book. I like autobiographies and memoirs because it's like having someone tell you stories over drinks (if it's written well). I can picture Melissa Plaut sitting at a table with me, starting each chapter of this book with, "Oh that reminds me of the time..." or "You wouldn't believe this one thing that happened..."

To be entirely honest, I never thought much about what it's like to be a New York cab driver, because I've only ever met two of them (LaGuardia to my hotel and the return trip when I went to New York Comic Con last October). They were both really nice and I made sure to tip well, and the guy who took me back to the airport showed me the UN building on the way... beyond that, it's not something I've ever dealt with. So not only was this book interesting and funny, but it showed me something new that I hadn't thought about before.

I also feel very much like Melissa Plaut is a real person. You know how sometimes, someone writes from their own point of view and you can just tell that they're molding the story to make themselves sound a certain way (be it more moral or smarter or in the right all the time)? I didn't get that from this book. Even in stories where Plaut clearly feels that she was right, she seems to realize that the reader may disagree. It's like having a friend tell you about a traffic incident they were in, and you may know they did something stupid, but it doesn't matter. I hope that makes sense.

One thing I really didn't expect from this book was to feel emotional connections with some of the other people (it feels weird to refer to them as "characters" because they're real people out in the world somewhere). I want to give meet Helen and give her a hug. I want to hear some of Allie's stories about her own job and life. I want to avoid some of the guys from the garage, or hang out with some of the others.

I picked this book up at this huge discount bookfair that I go to about once a year.  It's about an hour and a half from my house, but I never walk out with less than like four books (and usually more towards ten), and it's always worth it.

I paid a big four dollars for Hack, picked up on the recommendation of a friend.  And oh, what a great one it was.  Hack is surprising for a number of reasons.  One, you wouldn't think driving a taxi would be all that entertaining, but the amount of people that you meet doing the job is unprecedented.

Two, I LOVE the picture that it paints of NYC.  NYC is one that, sometimes, gets such a bad rap, when really, it's such an amazing city.  And I love that there were so many stories, so many experiences in her book that show what a GREAT place it is.  At one point, she talked about the Public Transit strike and this mood the city got, this comradery, that you can only get in NYC, but when you get it (and it's rare), man is it unlike anything you've ever felt.  There are some experiences, I feel that can only happen in New York City.

The part that surprised me the most those was the kind of stress this job takes on you.  I mean, she got to the point that she was angry ALL THE TIME.  It would seep into her very bones, into her being, and the hair trigger of her job was seeping into her very life.  Cabbies are the bottom of the barrel, the lowest of the low in NYC, for no real reason.  So they get hassled the most, and targeted by cops the most, and looked down on by customers the most and really just take the most amount of crap.  Eventually, it all just kind of builds up and explodes.

It's a great memoir and really well written and one you can breeze through pretty easily.  It's really a lesser known book, so I really like to let people know about it as much as possible when I can.

Don't forget to enter our contest!!!

Also, just for clarification, if you don't enter through the rafflecopter widget below, you're not actually entered.  It's the only way we can keep track!  (rafflecopter is telling me no one has entered and I know this is, in fact, not true, so I just want to let you guys know.  If you HAVE in fact been doing this all week through rafflecopter and it just hasn't been working, PLEASE EMAIL US with the amount of entries you should be credited at reviewmetwice [at] gmail [dot] com.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review Me Twice - 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke

When I was listening to the introduction of this book, Clarke said that he wanted to write a book that would still be plausible when 2001 came around.  He didn't want the book to seem dated as the years went on.  And, other than the fact that he was referring to Russia as the USSR (and really, who could have predicted that), I'd have to say he did a pretty good job of that.

There's a lot in the book that is futuristic, but no so out there that it's unfamiliar to me as a reader.  Sure, we haven't been to Saturn, but the fact that they're getting there by rocket power makes it seem like it's something that we COULD do soon.

However, you know I'm all about endings and I felt this book left more questions unanswered than it answered them.  The book just kind of... ended in a way that made me feel like it was ending mid sentence.  I realize that there are sequels to the book, and maybe I need those to get some sort of satisfaction, but usually even when it's a series, there's SOME sort of ending to the book, and I just didn't feel like this had it.  I didn't feel that by picking up the next book, I was going to get the answers I was looking for.

In terms of the sci-fi books this month, I'd say this was the biggest disappointment.

I didn't like the movie, but I recognized that Kubrick tends to have a... let's call it a "unique interpretation." (I haven't read all of The Shining but I know it's different from the movie.) So I knew I should read the book separately.

I didn't like the book either. I don't know if I just couldn't force my brain to forget about the movie, or if I wouldn't have liked it in the opposite order, but it just didn't grab me.

One thing I did like is the same thing Cassy mentioned: continuing plausibility. For the most part, Clarke made good predictions based on at-the-time current knowledge.

Review Me Twice - Dune by Frank Herbert

I just wanted everyone to share in the awesome

1970s cover that I was experiencing.

I'm not sure if you know this, but Dune is a freakin' long novel.  Seriously guys.  I've been hardcore reading it for two weeks now and I'm still only about a little over halfway through it, which is INSANE.

But you know what?  I'm probably going to continue to diligently read it and finish it up as soon as I can.  I want to know what happens.  I am really invested in these characters and their lives and what's going to happen to them.

Not to mention the world building in this novel is insane!  This is Tolkien level of world building, complete with its own religions and legends and languages and solar systems.  HERBERT CREATED A WHOLE NEW SOLAR SYSTEM FOR THIS FREAKIN' BOOK!  It's really impressive.

So far, it's the book I've been most impressed with during our month of sci-fi, which I wasn't so sure was going to be the case.  Dune is a classic that gets a lot of hype and, often, the books don't live up to that hype.  So far, Dune completely does.

Review me Twice - Raptor Red by Robert T. Baker

Alex always seems to pick interesting books for us, and I was excited to see what she was going to for sci-fi month.  I had never even heard of this book (though, apparently it's kind of a big deal.)  I don't read a lot of dinosaur literature because, frankly, there's just not a lot out there.  I've read Jurassic Park and The Lost World and that's pretty much where it ends.

Raptor Red is a different beast entirely.  It's very much one of those non-fiction novel type books.  The book itself is based in fact.  Bakker has done a ton of research on these animals and the book is probably a pretty accurate portrayal of what life was like for a Utahraptor.  But we can't ever actually know for sure.  It's all a big educated guess, so it sets it very firmly in the fiction section of the library.

The book was well executed and interesting to read.  I feel like I learned a lot about dinosaurs without feeling like I LEARNED, laboriously, about dinosaurs.  But, as interesting and fun as it was.... it was still a book about dinosaurs, that were meant to BE dinos, not humanized characters.  So I found myself growing kind of bored at times because I couldn't really connect with the characters.  There are parts that I should have been sad and I just kind of wasn't.

I'm glad I picked it up, but I won't ever read it again.

Everything Cassy said, exactly. I can't really identify with a dinosaur (or any character, even) whose entire purpose is surviving and mating. So while everything was interesting and informative and definitely unique - I've never read another book like this - I didn't feel very invested in the protagonist. Although, I did feel more invested than I would have been in the hands of a less skilled writer, so that's something.

I love when fiction like this is heavily anchored in fact, but there's one very easy trap to fall into. I first noticed it in the Earth's Children series by Jean M. Auel... the author seems to want to make sure they put every bit of their research to good use in the writing. So even if it doesn't really matter exactly what that plant she stepped on is good for, we're going to hear about it. Possibly for a paragraph, or a page. Bakker's execution of this seems more natural, so it's not nearly as much of a problem. For example, one chapter begins with saying the raptor doesn't want to bed down in moist earth, and no raptors do, because they evolved in a dry climate and too much moisture encourages fungal growth which is bad for them. Interesting, related to the plot in the sense that this is the reason she doesn't want to sleep in the mud, and possibly a little more info than we strictly needed, but then we move on to bigger and better things. I think the difference is probably that dinos were Bakker's first thing, then writing, whereas Auel started with writing and then started the research on primitive humans. Either way, it's not a deterrent for this book; I just thought it was interesting to note.

Review Me Twice: Stardoc by S L Viehl

At first glance, when I pulled this book off the holds shelf at my library, I thought it had to have been published in the 1970s. Back in the decade where "star-" was a prefix that magically made any topic exponentially cooler. And my copy is in pretty sorry shape... "well-loved," you might say. But actually, it was published in 2000.

It's... better than I expected. I thought it would be horribly cheesy and overwrought and medically unsound, but this is definitely an instance of a time you should not judge a book by its (1970s-sci-fi-ish) cover.

Sometimes the first-person narration sounds a little haughty... but Cherijo Grey Veil (our protagonist) has good reasons to think like a dictionary, like isolation from peers from a young age, intense academic study forced upon her by her father, etc. And I admit to thinking with a large vocabulary sometimes, so it's not like it's impossible. It just sounds a little awkward every once in a while.

The alien names and words take a little getting used to, but I think that's part of the experience. Cherijo is getting used to them too. And they're not impossible (though the charge nurse at the FreeClinic has a name I never could sort out how to pronounce in my head).

All in all, I think Stardoc was fun to read. I don't think I'll run out and grab the next book in the series, but I might go back and read them someday, if I run across them.

When I first read this series, I actually read the third one, not realizing it was the third one in the series.  Let me tell you, it's not the type of series that you can jump in at book three and know what's going on.  But I liked it enough to go back and pick up the first two books in the series and figure out what the hell was going on.

You get a strong female lead, who is just a little more genteically badass, making it her fit right into the sci-fi world she lives in.  And it's very sci-fi her world.  She is a doctor who heals aliens of every sort and travels to another wold.

I have read (almost) the whole series, and her asshole father becomes a big deal as it goes on, along with Duncan Reever (the linguist she continually runs into).  I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's an intellectually stimulating story, but it's fun with good characters and is a fast read.

Review Me Twice - A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

We always like to be brutally honest with our reviews here on Review Me Twice so here it is: I didn't finish the book.  Which is really telling unto itself because I think this is now a grand total of two books that I haven't finished in time on this blog, and the first one I had already read, I was just rereading to refresh me memory.

It's not that this book was bad or wasn't informative or even interesting.  It's just that it's not interesting enough to keep me interested.  It seemed like everything else was more interesting: My FFX game, my TV show, other books.  Things that don't usually distract me were constantly distracting me.  I just couldn't seem to buckle down and finish this one on time.

So it's definitely not one to read in a pinch.  A very meandering read, meant to be put down and picked back up and inturrupted, but definitely finished.  Just at its own pace.

Review Me Twice - What If? by Randall Munroe

Alex picked the book this week but in all honesty, I probably would have picked it up sooner rather than later.  It's been flying off the shelves at my job and has had tantalizing pictures luring me into its pages.

This book is, in the truest sense of the word, a coffee table book.  You can stick it on your coffee table or a side table and people can pick it up and read snippets of it, and then put it back down.  It's fun and it's funny and it's informative and it's a conversation piece all in one.  Considering it's a book about stick figure web comics and science, that's REALLY hard to do.

But Munroe keeps you interested and engaged and amused and not to mention makes you a little smarter by the end of the day.  Everyone should go out and buy this book.  That's right, I said BUY it.  I mean, ok, you should read it to, but go buy yourself a copy.  You'll be really happy you did.

Review Me Twice - Gulp by Mary Roach

Ok, so here is the thing about this book.  I really like Mary Roach.  I liked this book.  It was interesting and informative and it wasn't super boring.  Roach gets REALLY interested in whatever it is she's researching, and she always researches the things that no one really thinks about.  She researches and talks about the things that kind of gross people out.  Stiff was all about cadavers and how we die and what happens to our bodies.

Gulp is along the same squicky vein.  It starts out innocently enough:  it's all about taste buds and what we eat and why we eat it and where it goes and what we taste when we eat it and the nutrients we get in our mouths and what our teeth do, not to mention, she always finds the coolest stories about it.  I mean, some of the medical things that are going on are just awesome.

That being said, three fourths of this book are about poop and your butt.  I mean, I learned more about the colon than I honestly probably ever needed, or wanted to know about.  Not to say it wasn't interesting (apparently, Elvis died due to an over-sized colon and his own waste product finally exploding within him and killing him.  Not the the drug overdose as is believed), but let's face it.  It's a lot of a book about poop.

So if you don't really want to read about how we poop and how our bodies make waste... then this might not be the book for you.

I loved this book! The focus on poop and whatnot didn't really bother me, because I help my husband study for med school all the time.

My favorite parts were the chapters about taste, and how it relates to culture and personal preference and how all of that works. And, of course, every time Mary Roach said something funny, which was really often. This was a really funny book and, at the same time, a really informative one. I had a great time reading it and I'm so glad Cassy suggested it.

Review Me Twice - A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

I was actually glad that Alex picked this book.  It was a short book, so I figured I'd get through it pretty quickly, I like stars and space and astronomy, so I figured I would enjoy it, and Stephen Hawking is supposed to be pretty funny, so I thought that would translate into the book.

None of these things happened.  Yes, it was a short book, but it was so dry, that it took me way longer than it should have to finish.  I do like astronomy, but the book was filled with a lot of technical jargon, making it hard to follow.  That's not to say that I didn't learn ANYTHING from the book, I did, but it was really hard to follow SO MUCH of this book, and if you didn't understand what he was talking about, he referenced back to things a lot later in the book.  I often found him referencing things I hadn't understood earlier in the book to explain things later in the book, making me then not understand them because I had grasped the earlier concept.

He also didn't let his supposed humor really show through in this book.  I felt like it was filled with hubris more than anything else.  A Brief History of Time is supposed to be the common man's version of physics, the stupid man's physics if you will, and I had a really hard time grasping some of it, which makes me wonder what the smart version is like.

This is a book that you need to read two or three times to really get a firm grasp of what he's trying to tell you, but it's such a dense book, I'm not sure I could get through it again.

I started off really liking this book. I thought it was pretty funny, in the way British humor (which I love) is funny. Later on, it got a little denser, like Cassy said, but I still enjoyed it. It's not something I would pick up for fun usually, or read over and over, but it was still interesting.

I definitely learned things, but there were also things that went over my head, which I fully expected. It was easy to start, harder to finish, but interesting all around. I'm glad I finally read it (it has been on my "someday" list for a few years). If you like physics/cosmology, but aren't a physicist/cosmologist, I would highly recommend this book.

Review Me Twice - Dark Witch by Nora Roberts

I'm kind of glad that this was the final book we read this month.  I mean, what better way to end the month than with the queen of romance novels?  Who hasn't heard of Nora Roberts?  And while you may not have read any of her books, you sure know what's going to be in them when you pick them up.

I actually enjoyed this book WAY more than I thought I was going.  Ok, so bullet point time.  Obvious flaws of this book:

-The main characters is super all powerful special snowflake witch
-She falls in love with main character male
   *Who just happens to be super hot.
   *and constantly compared to horses which, ok, in all honesty, really doesn't have to do with    
     anything, but listening to a guy trying to me manly compared to a horse over and over in a Irish
     accent is just a little ridiculous (I had the audio book.)
-They fell in love in about a week.
-They were married in like... six months.
-I'm fairly certain they hopped into bed in under week.

So the romance half of the book... ridiculous and predictable and not how real life works at all even a little bit.  So why did I like this book?

Well, because outside of the horrible romance, there was actual plot going on.  Iona (our main character) moves to Ireland to find family, and finds two cousins with magical powers like hers, powers that have been passed down through her family for generations to fight off this witch (Cadvan) that's been trying to kill her family for a couple hundred years.

There is her coming into her powers and having a growing relationship with her family and getting friends and starting a life in Ireland.  I mean, the characters are surprisingly round and dynamic (when they're not sleeping with each other every five seconds.)  So is it a typical romance novel?  Well, yes, but I kind of liked it.  Not enough to go seek out the second book, but enough that one day I might pick it up.

I'm so glad this month is over. If I'm lucky, we'll never revisit romance here on the blog again. I figured, if I'm ever going to like a book that belongs solidly in the romance genre, it'll be one by Nora Roberts. Everyone gushes about how amazing she is; if she can't convert me to a romance reader, nobody can. Well, apparently nobody can, if that logic holds.

I just didn't care about anything in this book. I tried to. I could see why I should care. I just didn't. I do appreciate that there's something larger than the romance aspect going on - the "actual plot" Cassy mentioned above - but I didn't care about that, either.

This is definitely one of those times where I'm fully aware that this is just my personal preferences talking, though. It's a well-written book. It's just not the book for me. In library science, we have five "laws," called Ranganathan's Laws. One is "every book its reader" and another is "every reader their book." This book has the right readers, and I am not a part of that group. And there are books for me, and they don't live in the romance section. Sorry, romance; it's not you... it's me.

Review Me Twice - DarkFever by Karen Marie Moning

So the book wasn't ACTUALLY as bad as I expected.  It was the first surprise I've gotten this month (though, not the last.)  I was expecting hot and heavy sex by page three and the two main characters to be desperately in love by the end of the book.

But it's book one in a series and you can tell that Moning is in for the long haul with this book.  It's told from Mac's perspective, her future self telling the reader about her past experiences, in this case, about finding out about her powers, about her past and her heritage.

I like that Moning used this book to lay down the ground work for her novels.  She was setting up her story and her characters and really giving us a chance to get used to the world that we were being thrown into.

That being said... it's still really obvious it's being set up to be Overly Sexualized Romance Novel.  There are Fae's whose sole purpose are to make you want to have sex with them (our main character gets naked in public twice.)  It's clear that her and Barrons dislike each other so much that the only eventuality is that they are going to fall for each other.  The whole point of Faes is to steal people's beauty or lives or to sex them to death, so on that front, it's all kind of ridiculous.

But if you're looking for something fun and easy, this one has just enough substance to keep you interested but not enough to really make you think too much.

Did you know that the best way to pitch a movie in Hollywood is to describe your script as "[popular movie] but [twist]"? I feel like I'm doomed to see all paranormal romance as "Twilight but [twist]." For example, I saw Darkfever as "Twilight but Irish." It's not really anything specific about the characters' relationship or even the plot that makes me think "Twilight"; it's just that I see paranormal romance and start making connections to Twilight immediately. It could be my fault for letting Twilight be the first paranormal romance I ever read.

Otherwise, I agree with Cassy. I expected less mystery and detective work about the protagonist's sister's death and more immediate jumping into bed with the Adonis character, so that was a pleasant surprise.

I didn't really enjoy it, but this isn't my genre. I had to work really hard to push myself through it because I had to tell you guys about it. I would have put it down and walked away days ago if I could have. But like I said... this isn't my scene.

Review Me Twice: The Sheik's Accidental Pregnancy by Leslie North

I might start making my reviews just the first sentence I said out loud after I finished reading the book. This week, for instance, that would be: "Well, at least it was short."

Another sentence I said aloud while reading that serves as a pretty good review: "Ohhh, it's a Middle-East-set Fifty Shades." I mean this in the sense that a shy, awkward girl works in an inferior position to a powerful, angry guy who's very particular about how he wants others to behave, and they fall into an unhealthy, intensely love-hate relationship. No S&M, and this time there's a baby involved.

I have to admit that sex scenes are very hard to write. The ones in this book aren't bad. Although I can't let this one detail go. There are a few typos in the book, but this error I can't let slide. "He impaled himself upon her." That is... not correct. Not at all. That's the opposite of what should have been said. Sorry... it was just too funny to ignore.

All in all, I don't want to read the sequels, but I don't feel like I lost a small chunk of my life to this book. I feel like I spent half an evening reading something amusing.

When I picked out the book this week, I picked out it mostly because the title amused me, not because it was going to be a great literary masterpiece.  And, also, it was free on Amazon and fit into the "Romance Novel" theme of our month.

It was also a short novel, which was nice.  Took about an afternoon to read.  Was it a great book?  No, not particularly.  Was it the most terrible book I've ever read?  Surprisingly, no.  I mean, the characters were a little flat and the book was a really rushed.  It could do with a little more fleshing out.  And it was pretty predictable, but I think that just comes with the romance novel genre.

I'm with Alex on the "He impaled himself upon her" typo.  I did a little bit of a double take and made me really raise an eyebrow, not to mention, I couldn't really focus on the rest of the scene because I was so distracted by the fact that my main characters had just switched sexual organs.  Not the place that you want to be making typos (and I usually gloss over the typos when I'm reading, if I'm not in editing mode, so it must be REALLY bad for me to so actively catch it.)

Not the worst book this month, but we read Wuthering Heights, so I guess there was no way it could be. ;)

Review Me Twice: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I want to tell you guys really quick that Cassy got a little mad at me for picking this book. I had no idea she disliked it so much, so I'm going to go ahead and apologize for making her think about it again.

Then, I'd like to add my name to the list of people who dislike this book. It's not all that bad, I guess, but it's certainly not for me. I can't stand slogging through books where people talk like they're... characters in classic literature, I guess. Sure, I know the words; I have a great vocabulary. (Thanks, Mom, for reading with me throughout my childhood!) But it's a chore to read a conversation in a book like this.

Beyond the word choices, though, which I can easily chalk up to this being written in a different time, I just dislike these people. Every last one of them is either a spoiled brat, reacts to a normal situation in a ridiculously overblown way, or pushes their nose in where it doesn't belong. I thought I liked Nelly, the housekeeper who tells the story of most of the book, but when I realized her part in the story she's telling, I noticed that I don't really like her either.

So to sum this up: I don't like it, I'm sorry I made myself read it, and I'm sorry I made Cassy re-read it.

I hate this book.  I don't just kind of hate this book, I REALLY hate this book.  And this isn't just I read it this one time and if I give it another chance I might like it, no, this book and I have a long standing relationship of distaste.

I have read this book four times now, and I still can't stand it.  The first time I read it was in high school, then twice (IN THE SAME YEAR!) in college, and then once again now.  I'm reading this book I can't stand an awful lot.  In fact, I would probably say that this is my least favorite book of all time.

For one, everyone has the same freakin' name, and it took me three readings of the book to figure out which Catherine was which and which person was which and it was miserable and if I have to make a graph to figure out the characters of a book, you're doing it wrong.

What's more is that it's supposed to be the greatest love story of all time, such unrequited love!  But I hate Catherine the older.  She's whiny and manipulative and just a general jerk which, really, I think just makes her deserve Heathcliff who is an even BIGGER jerk and is like that nerd who never got over being bullied in high school and takes it out on everyone twenty years later.

Only he takes out on people who don't deserve it, which makes me hate him even more, and he never really redeems himself.  And since he's a little slime ball, he ends up turning all of the younger generation into spoiled, self-entitled brats I can't stand either!!

Really, the only person in the entire book who has ANY sort of redeeming qualities is Edgar Linton.  He married Catherine the older, was father to Catherine the younger, and doted on both of them like there was no tomorrow.  He was generally a forgiving man, as long as you gave him a reason to forgive.  Sure, he started out a little annoying and mean, but what teenager isn't?

Review Me Twice - Where She Went by Gayle Forman

I don't know if it's because I listened to the audiobook of this or if it's because I just don't REMEMBER that much of If I Stay (it was almost three years ago, after all) or if the writing just genuinely wasn't as good, but I really didn't enjoy Where She Went.

It was really obvious to me where the book was going to end up from page one, which was fine, because it's a teen romance novel, not a big deal, it's not like it takes a huge leap of the imagination to figure out what's going to happen.  But Adam is in this ridiculously depressive state, but it's not even a depression you can necessarily relate to.  You just kind of feel like he's whining and being emo.

And the writing just felt really cliche a lot of the time.  I felt like there were a lot of bad similes and metaphors throughout the entire book.  Jarringly bad ones, that would throw me out of the book.  It really felt more like she was trying to recreate If I Stay, which I remember having a little bit of magic, so maybe I forgave terrible metaphors a little more?  But it didn't have the same sort of feel to it.  It was just a rock star being sad because he lost his girlfriend three years ago.

I didn't listen to the audiobook like Cassy did, but I can only imagine it sounded like one long "Wahhhhhhh." Because oh my goodness can this narrator whine.

While I understand and empathize with real-life people who suffer from depression or are even just getting over a bad breakup, these are not the kinds of traits I want to see in a protagonist for an entire book. It can be part of the book... the journey to overcome depression makes a great story, but that's not what Adam is doing here. He's wallowing. Nobody wants 200+ pages of wallowing.

And the primary problem with If I Stay, which was that everyone's life (pre-car-accident, anyway) was so unbearably perfect, is still the case here. He's an overnight rock sensation with more money than you can shake a stick at (which is a weird thing to do to money, I think) and enough raw talent to fill several arenas. She's a cello prodigy who graduated early from Julliard and is embarking on her world tour of genius.