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Rate the last thing you read


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Stayed up until an ungodly hour finishing "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. There's a book that just grabs you and doesn't let you go. It's set in 1960's Mississippi, at the heart of the civil rights movement. A white woman decides to write a book about being a black maid from the maids' point of view. At first, they are hesitant to help her, but eventually, at great risk to themselves, they do. Amazing 10/10

Yep yep yep 10/10 from me too. I read it a year ago. I can't believe it's still on the bestseller's list.

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Finished it last night (finally!) Shortly after I wrote that post, the book took a turn for the worst. :mad: It got somehow very tedious. Like Wilde knew exactly what he wanted to write in the beginning, started telling a great and engaging story, then suddenly didn't know how to continue. So he fast-forwarded through everything else and took a very heavy hand to bring the reader up to date and end the thing.

What started out as a 10/10 dropped to a 5/10 in a single chapter.

Still, a lot of very quotable stuff, like Rocky said.

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Finished reading Graceling by Kristin Cashore. Easy read and quite interesting (although it grinds my gears when everything is now being called "young adult" and hoping to tap into the Twilight fans).

Why is it young adult and not for just anyone? What makes it young adult? Can we just drop the YA tag and just market a book as a book... grrr :beady:

Now I've hopped on to The theory of everything (Stephen Hawking) which always makes for good commuting reading.

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Finished it last night (finally!) Shortly after I wrote that post, the book took a turn for the worst. :mad: It got somehow very tedious. Like Wilde knew exactly what he wanted to write in the beginning, started telling a great and engaging story, then suddenly didn't know how to continue. So he fast-forwarded through everything else and took a very heavy hand to bring the reader up to date and end the thing.

What started out as a 10/10 dropped to a 5/10 in a single chapter.

Still, a lot of very quotable stuff, like Rocky said.

I remember reading this back in high school and thought it was a great book. However, I hadn't read too many things up to then, so I didn't see the storytelling flaws you pointed out. Alls I know is that I decided to buy a book collecting his faerie tales and plays. You peeps should read "The Happy Prince."

All of Oscar Wilde's works are quotable. The guy was the definition of "witticism" :beatnik:

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Finished reading Graceling by Kristin Cashore. Easy read and quite interesting (although it grinds my gears when everything is now being called "young adult" and hoping to tap into the Twilight fans).

Why is it young adult and not for just anyone? What makes it young adult? Can we just drop the YA tag and just market a book as a book... grrr :beady:

I think it's mainly to do with subject matter and the type of words being used (i.e., how easy to read is it?). I used to read all those S.E. Hinton books (The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Tex) and they'd usually be filed in the Young Adult sections of the libraries and book stores - very easy reads and kept my attention. Some of these are also books teachers have middle schoolers read (6-8th grades), which would include works by Jack London and J.R. Tolkien.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just finished "The Dive Off Clausen's Pier". A girl who is tired of her boring life in Madison, Wisconsin, wants to break up with her fiance. Over Memorial Day weekend, he dives off Clausen's Pier into shallow water and breaks his neck. Now, she has to decide whether to stay and "do what's right" or follow her heart.

Sounds simple, but the book is very engaging and the character of Carrie is so well written, so human. Sometimes you want to cry with her, other times you want to kick her in the butt. 7/10.

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  • 1 month later...

I'm reading a random book called "Alice I Have Been." I got it on sale with no clue what it was, I just liked the title.

It's about the real-life relationship between the author of and the 10-year-old girl who inspired "Alice in Wonderland," or "Alice's Adventures Underground" originally.

Beautifully written (it's historical fiction, meaning it reads like a novel, but is based on historical fact), and the relationship isn't what I expected. It's more than a little creepy. Since I only get to read in the evening right before bed, I'm anxiously awaiting the end to find out what her final thoughts were about the whole thing and if she ever uncovered the mystery that haunted her about the whole affair for so many years. Very intriguing.

9/10 - definitely a chick book. Men would be too creeped out and probably more than a little bored with it. :crazy:

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Finished two book recently:

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke: Great book, ending was a little weird but I was able to understand it. I've made a point of not watching the movie because I wanted to read the book first.

Animal Farm by George Orwell: Very good book, very easy to read, I loved it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Before leaving on vacation, I read "The Notebook". I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. It was a really sweet book and I am a sucker for love stories, but this didn't move me much. Don't know why. 6/10.

I read "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins, and now I'm working on "Catching Fire". At first I felt stupid to buy into all the hype, but I was curious. Both books are very engaging, and I've been doing a lot of heavy reading, and these are fun..."THG" gets 7.5/10 and so far "Catching Fire gets 8/10.

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  • 1 month later...

I read "White Oleander" a couple of weeks ago. It's the story of a girl whose mother murders her boyfriend, so the girl goes off to foster care at age 12. Over the next 6 years, she has good and bad experiences at foster homes and has to comes to terms with what her mother did. 8/10.

Oh, and yes, I finished the Hunger Games Trilogy, and that gets a 8/10 overall. I haven't read many books since, mostly magazines, but I will get on the ball soon.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just finished "Room" by Emma Donoghue. It's told in the voice of a 5 year old boy whose whole life has been spent in one room with his mother. As the book progresses, he finds out his mother has been held captive in that room 7 years and now that he is old enough to understand, she wants to escape. It is so riveting...you cannot put this book down. I was reading it at the bus stop and when my daughter got off the bus and asked for an impromptu playdate, I said yes just so I could finish the book. 10/10

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I've discovered apps on my phone. Bummer. It's so distracting! I used up over half of my 2 GB of Internet and it's only halfway through the month. :mad:

I discovered an app for downloading books. Danger. Danger. They charge you through iTunes. So maybe I'll make "Room" the first book I download. It sounds amazing.

Right now I'm reading (in hardback form) "First Wives Club." I'm reading it because I remembered the movie with Goldie Hawn, Bette Midler and Diane Keaton, which was funny, engaging, and very entertaining. All things the book is not. The book isn't even funny, it's long, it's wordy, it's sort of boring. But I'm so damn stubborn and obsessive/compulsive about books that I feel like if I start it, I have to finish it. So I'm slogging through it.

I did also read, in between, Dave Barry's "I'll Mature When I'm Dead," which is a compilation of humorous essays he's written over the years that were too long to publish in his newspaper column. They were so hilarious I laughed all the way through it, and gave it to my dad, who laughed all the way through it, who passed it along to my mom, who laughed all the way through it. Then I read a couple of the essays to my sister as she was in writhing pain in her hospital bed after major surgery, and she laughed. But it hurt. :crazy:

Point: It's funny. Get a copy. Read it.

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That Dave Barry book sounds great.

Thanks for the tip on the "First Wives Club". It's on my reading list, but I many take it off if it's boring. I feel the same way about books, if I start it, I have to finish it. It took me forever to get through a third of a Jonathan Franzen book (not his latest, the one before that). It had gotten such rave reviews that I thought there was something wrong with me for finding it boring. Finally, I convinced myself to just stop reading it and even donated it to the local library to get over my guilt for not slogging through it.

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  • 1 year later...

I just finished "Sharp Objects" by Gillian Flynn. She was the "it" girl last year for her book "Gone Girl" (which is on my list), but I figured I'd start with her first book.

I started reading it at about 10:30 last night, couldn't fall asleep, picked it back up around midnight and didn't put it down until I was done. The story of a damaged woman who's a reporter for a third-rate paper in Chicago and is sent back to her hometown of Missouri to get the scoop on two recent child murders. Sounds formulaic, but it ropes you in quickly.

In short, read it!

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well, then. Gillian Flynn just went on my list of "to-read" books. :) I have a handy notepad on my phone so every time I hear about a book I want to remember, I put it there.

I have recently become addicted to Philippa Gregory's Cousins War series... and all the rest of her books. I read "The Red Queen," "Lady of the Rivers," and now to round out the Cousins War saga, I have "The White Queen" and "The Kingslayer's Daughter."

But then I went on ebay and bought all the rest of them for under $20. Amazing. So I've got a stack of 8 Philippa Gregory books now in my pile. And each and every one of them I'm looking forward to.

Gregory, BTW, is behind the book/movie "The Other Boleyn Girl," and the book/Starz TV show "The White Queen." Good stuff. She writes about the women - who wielded the true power - behind the men who were the kings and warriors of the land. Turns out these women all had their own constant game of thrones.

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  • 3 months later...

I was reluctant to pick up "Gone Girl" knowing how addictive the last book was, but I did it, and WOW....a book about a marriage gone really sour and two very f-ed up people.

I give it a 10....I wish I could write half this good.

I also read all 7 Harry Potter books...thought I'd enjoy them with my daughter, but she's not a reader like I am :( Anyway, they were very good, engrossing and moving. 9/10 overall.

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I haven't read more than three books in the last year. Not only lack of time, also an issue with my sight so until I see my doctor next month, I'll read very little. I used to read every day and every night.

Yet I could finish my Ayn Rand novel... "We the Living"...

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Jenny and Shawna, Flynn's most recent book Dark Places is also great. About the lone survivor in the murder of her family when she was a child. It really does go to some dark places, but is completely absorbing just like the other two books.

I read Gone Girl immediately when it came out, and have been sold on her ever since. I was drawn in to that book even more because the setting is my area of Missouri, and she had her locations down to a T, they were very recognizable in some cases - which made it all the more fascinating for me. Gone Girl will soon be a film, Dark places is already slated as well. I read Charlize Theron will star.

Has anyone read Wool? It's Amazon Kindle's best selling self published book of last year. It's a futuristic saga, with several parts. Really really good.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I just finished reading "Innocence" by Dean Koontz. Most of my favourite authors are mystery writers, but Koontz is one of the exceptions.

The main characters in "Innocence" are interesting and like most of Kooontz' protagonists, are people for whom you can have a lot of empathy.

The ending was very good although not at all what I expected.

A thoroughly entertaining read. 8.5/10

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I just finished "The Dante Club" by Matthew Pearl. It's set I Boston after the Civil War, when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was translating Dante's Divine Comedy into English. He had a club that included Oliver Wendell Holmes and a Harvard publisher, J.T. Fields.

Well, this puts a twist on that reality by inserting a serial killer who uses the punishments in Dante's inferno to kill. 8/10

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