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Athena's Reading List 2013


Athena

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Yeah, that's pretty cool :).

 

I just finished reading Jodi Picoult - Lone Wolf, a great book!

 

It's about a man, Luke Warren, who has, among other things, lived among wolves for two years, who gets into a car accident with his daughter Cara. Luke is in a coma and the doctors think it's unlikely he'll ever wake up. He also has a son, Edward. Luke is divorced of his (ex)wife Georgie, and she lives with her new husband and twins in a new place. The book is about the two siblings (Cara and Edward) both wanting to be the legal guardian of Luke, both wanting different things for their father to happen.

 

The book is told from viewpoints of several characters, as with most of Jodi Picoult's books. It also has a legal/court element to it (I think this is the case for most of her books). I liked it a lot. It was an emotional read, you really feel for the characters. It's a tough situation the family finds themselves in and it makes you think. It reminded me a little bit of The Descendants but only because that also features a character who gets in an accident and into a coma (this happens in the beginning of the book).

 

Either way, I really liked this book. It really made me want to keep on reading, especially in the second half of the book.

 

***** (5/5)

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I've just got a message that I've won The Stag and the Hen Weekend by Mike Gayle in a giveaway (from http://debrasbookcafe.blogspot.com/) !! I don't normally enter giveaways, this is pretty awesome :D.

 

I'm currently over halfway in Penny Vincenzi - Forbidden Places and a few chapters into Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games 2: Catching Fire. Both are pretty good so far, I look forward to read more later today.


EDIT: Now that I look at it, I'm about two thirds into Forbidden Places.

Edited by Athena
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I haven't heard of Shuler before, the synopsis of She Who Remembers sounds really interesting though! Unfortunately the book doesn't seem to be available brandnew much, I'll wishlist it anyway though (could buy it second hand), thanks :).

 

Yeah, it's an old novel and unfortunately I'm not surprised that there aren't any new copies available. I've never read Auel but I think Shuler could be just as great as I think Auel probably is, so I wonder why Auel is so widely read and well known, whereas Shuler is someone nobody seems to know about. It's a shame really.

 

 

I haven't read any of his books yet, though one of them my parents own (they bought it for me I think, to read for school but I didn't get around to it) and I did plan on reading it someday.. I'm not sure where in the house it is atm though (will have to search for it, it might be in my room, you never know XD I just know I haven't seen it in ages). I've heard he's a good writer though my parents haven't read much of his work, that I remember, so I can't give you any recommendation personally. Let me know how you get on though (if you want) :).

 

My mind's blanking out completely at the moment, I can't remember who just read the book and said it wasn't that good and was mostly about critique on the restaurant and not the actual topic that was supposed to be dealt with according to the blurb. I started reading the book but couldn't get into it, and after that review by some member on here I just gave up on the book :(

 

 

I've finished reading Tom Raabe - Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction.

 

This book is kind of a spoof on self help books with some actual tips in it. A lot of it is written tongue-in-cheek, taking the mickey out of things. There's two tests, to see how 'bad' your biblioholism has gotten. I was disappointed by the amount of actual tips in there, there weren't a lot, not as much as I expected to see. It's a great book to read though for anyone who loves books and buying/owning books. I own the 10th anniversary edition, this has an afterword concerning e-books (the rest of the book was written before the e-books' time, and even then the afterword was clearly written before e-books were as popular as they are these days). One of the sections I liked the best, was about the history of the written book, but it's not a true history, more of a made up one. I found it entertaining.

 

Rating: **** (4/5)

 

 

This sounds interesting, just the type of book I'd go for! Thanks for the review, I'll keep an eye out for it :)

 

 

 

 

Next up I'll probably read Diane Chamberlain - Breaking The Silence (@bobblybear, thanks :), I look forward to reading it).

 

Are the Diane Chamberlain books you guys talk about a series or stand alone novels? I'm intrigued. If I wanted to try one of her novels, which one would you recommend?

 

 

I've just got a message that I've won The Stag and the Hen Weekend by Mike Gayle in a giveaway (from http://debrasbookcafe.blogspot.com/) !! I don't normally enter giveaways, this is pretty awesome :D.

 

 

Great news! :D It's wonderful to win something, especially a book! I hope you enjoy it :)

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Are the Diane Chamberlain books you guys talk about a series or stand alone novels? I'm intrigued. If I wanted to try one of her novels, which one would you recommend?

Most of her books are standalone novels. According to GoodReads there's two series: Before the Storm (including Before The Storm and Secrets She Left Behind, and Kiss River (including Keeper Of The Light, Kiss River and Her Mother's Shadow). I haven't read any of those yet, but when I read the synopsis of Secrets She Left Behind, the names don't match the synopsis of Before The Storm, so I don't know if it's correct or not. I own Keeper Of The Light but not Kiss River (Her Mother's Shadow isn't out yet in paperback as far as I know). I do know that that's a series, because in an interview the author mentioned this.

 

I've only read four of her books, I found The Midwife's Confession and Breaking The Silence the best, so I would start with one of those (out of those I've read). I'd go for The Midwife's Confession, maybe I'm biased since that was my first book by her, but I really love it. There were so many plot twists I didn't see coming, Breaking The Silence has of course plot twists too but I could predict a few of them.

 

P.S. How do you put "enter's / new lines" after a quote? What I used to do (pressing enter), doesn't seem to work anymore.

 

 

Great news! :D It's wonderful to win something, especially a book! I hope you enjoy it :)

Thanks! :) I haven't won any fiction books before (well, I've never entered a giveaway that had one as a prize), so this is pretty exciting. I have won cookbooks before (I was pretty surprised I won there, too!), they're great though I need more time/energy to really make some recipes etc.
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Most of her books are standalone novels. According to GoodReads there's two series: Before the Storm (including Before The Storm and Secrets She Left Behind, and Kiss River (including Keeper Of The Light, Kiss River and Her Mother's Shadow). I haven't read any of those yet, but when I read the synopsis of Secrets She Left Behind, the names don't match the synopsis of Before The Storm, so I don't know if it's correct or not. I own Keeper Of The Light but not Kiss River (Her Mother's Shadow isn't out yet in paperback as far as I know). I do know that that's a series, because in an interview the author mentioned this.

 

I've only read four of her books, I found The Midwife's Confession and Breaking The Silence the best, so I would start with one of those (out of those I've read). I'd go for The Midwife's Confession, maybe I'm biased since that was my first book by her, but I really love it. There were so many plot twists I didn't see coming, Breaking The Silence has of course plot twists too but I could predict a few of them.

 

 

Thanks for the info!  :) I think I might go with The Midwife's Confession first, then. I have a feeling other people on here have raved about the novel in the past... I'm also wondering if there's a TV series on it, because I caught something that fits the bill on TV the other day. Who knows.

 

 

P.S. How do you put "enter's / new lines" after a quote? What I used to do (pressing enter), doesn't seem to work anymore.

 

 

Just click a few extra times on the enter, that does it for me :) I sometimes forget to do so with the new system and my reply's right under the quote, it's a bit annoying.

 

Edit: Or do you mean that when you press 'enter', it goes on the next line but not to the very beginning of the line but in line with 'Athena, on 19 Feb...'?  That happens to me. What I do is when that happens is put the cursor again right after what I want to quote and do extra 'enters' again and then it somehow manages to go to the far left :) If that makes any sense!

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Athena, the space thing was driving me nuts too until today. I found that you have to add a space (i.e. press the space bar) to the line that you want to be blank. Does that make any sense?

I think so, let's see if it works.

 

EDIT: Thanks, that's fixed it!

 

@ frankie

Thanks to you too :).

 

EDIT2:

Hmm but then I edited the post and the enters disappeared ><.

Edited by Athena
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P.S. How do you put "enter's / new lines" after a quote? What I used to do (pressing enter), doesn't seem to work anymore.

 

 

Athena,

 

Click on the first toggle button (it says "BBCode Mode").

You can press enter here, and start typing, and revert to the normal mode again, by pressing the button again.

A little round-about, but seems to work.

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Are the Diane Chamberlain books you guys talk about a series or stand alone novels? I'm intrigued. If I wanted to try one of her novels, which one would you recommend?

 

I've only read Breaking The Silence and I loved it so that's the one I'd recommend. :smile: It's a stand-alone novel; not sure if any of her other books are part of a series.

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I finished reading Forbidden Places by Penny Vincenzi.

 

Penny Vincenzi - Forbidden Places

 

I thought about posting Amazon's synopsis, but in my opinion it kind of spoils some of the book, so I won't. The back of the book doesn't spoil anything, it's much more vague.

 

Anyway, the book is about three women. Most of the book takes place before, during World War II and just after, in various places in Great Britain. The three main characters are all married but aren't completely happy in their marriage.

 

I liked this book, but I had a few issues with it.

 

Firstly, I'm not too keen about reading about war. This however turned out to not be a big problem, the book was well written in this respect and I could somewhat imagine what the people were going through. There were no brutal, grotesque paragraphs about what people looked like dead or something. Of course things happened in the war, Britain got bombed etc., but it was written in a good way, not a cringing way. So this issue kind of resolved itself.

 

Secondly, towards the end of the book, from the second half on perhaps, I was a bit disappointed in one of the main characters (the main one, really). I wish she was stronger, that she stood up to people more. She says sorry a lot and blames herself for things, while it's clear other people are to blame. I do understand, I mean, back in those days, the men were considered much more important than the women, they were considered the boss, but I would've liked to see her be a bit stronger, not going along with everything men say just because they are men. If that makes sense? Sometimes I can stand this kind of behaviour better than other times, perhaps I was just tired while I read the second half of the book, I don't know. I'm all for equality, in the sense that I don't believe men are better than women, in this case.

 

Thirdly (this is minor), the beginning of the book started with a scene with all three women, in their older age, meeting. After that everything takes place before or during, or just after World War II. I was expecting the book to go back to the first scene at the end, but that didn't happen.

 

So the second thing was my main issue with the second half of the book. It was also a little bit predictable at times (not the plot twists, they weren't, but how certain characters would respond to a situation), also because I've read other books by Penny Vincenzi and there seem to be certain recurrent themes throughout her books. That's one of the reasons why I like (so far) An Absolute Scandal and The Best of Times the best (out of her books), because they also had more other things going on. I'm looking forward to read her trilogy, though I might save it for last, because it's considered the best. Is that weird XD?

 

Rating: **** (4/5)

 

I'm still reading Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins and I may start Marley and Me by John Grogan soon. Several people on this forum have recently read it so thought it might be a good time for me to read it too.

Edited by Athena
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I've finished reading Catching Fire, the second book in The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Wow, what a read!

 

This book had several plot twists that were really unexpected for me. I hadn't heard much about what'd happen in the second book, didn't have it spoiled for me, so when I started reading it I only knew what it says on the back of the book (which isn't much). It was a really good read!

 

Some thoughts:

 

 

When Katniss talks about running away, I expected her to run away with some people, into the woods, trying to find District 13 (she talked about it with some people). But then she hears that she has to enter the Hunger Games again. And at the very end, she somehow escapes with some other people. I'm really unsure what's going to happen next!

 

 

***** (5/5)

 

I'm doubting if I should start Mockingjay straight away or whether I'm going to read John Grogan - Marley & Me first. Maybe I'll start both XD. Last time when I started two books, I found it to be quite doable.

 

In other news, my Kindle has arrived!

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I got the Kindle Paperweight. I figured I might as well pay a bit extra for more functionality. The reviews for this one were mainly positive. The only negative thing people said was about the light, I thought, if it turns out to be bad I could just have the light turned off just like on a normal Kindle. I haven't used the Kindle much yet (I'm reading the Kindle User Guide atm), but so far I'm really pleased with it :)! The light looks good, and the device looks good also with the light turned off (I haven't actually seen a Kindle in use before I got my one). I can see what some people mean about the light not being evenly spread, but so far on mine it's quite good, it's very very readable. This is also my first device with touchscreen functionality, so it's a new thing for me but so far it's going well (on my parents' iPad I sometimes press wrong, I guess it might take some getting used to for that). I'm excited and pleased with the Kindle so far, now I'll have to see how I can organise books etc. I have the Kindle program for the PC and books are into categories there. Well I'm only on page 2 of the user guide, I decided to post on this forum instead XD.

 

It's currently charging through the PC, I'm not sure how long it will take to charge or how full the battery is, will have to see how quickly or slowly it drains. Exciting times! :)

Edited by Athena
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Athena, are you still having problems with the line spacing? If so, do ask in using the forum section, someone ought to be able to help you out :)

 

I've only read Breaking The Silence and I loved it so that's the one I'd recommend. :smile: It's a stand-alone novel; not sure if any of her other books are part of a series.

 

Thanks bobbly for that, I'll keep an eye open for that one, too! :)

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