Athena

I agree with Noll, that sounds like an interesting read. I'm glad you enjoyed it .

I hope you enjoy all your new books! I loved Dune, the three doorstoppers are on my TBR too. Of those, I'd particularly like to read War and Peace but we'll have to see how I get on. It's such a daunting book!

Why should you be reading faster? It should be a pastime you enjoy, not something to rush through. In my opinion . Or do you mean you want to spend more time reading?

Are there many reviews left to write?

x Thanks, that's good to keep in mind! I look forward to see how I'll get on when I start the series (now that I finished WoT I can start a new fantasy series..). I hope you enjoy The Secret History all the way through .

It sounds pretty interesting! I'm glad you enjoyed re-reading it . What time does the book take place in (ie. the college part)?

x It sounds like fun, shame about the rain though. x x I hope you feel better soon, Noll ! x x I hope you enjoy yourselves ! My foot (after stepping into a sharp pin) isn't hurting much anymore. The wound is still there but it's healing up, gladly. I can walk normally now . My laptop's new charger is working (yay ) so I can go browse the forum now (not so easy on a phone really). Today we're celebrating my mum's birthday with the wider family so there's a few people coming over later. It'll be nice to talk with people but I'm not really looking forward to the busyness, it's just too tiring. So I plan to hide in my room now and then and maybe do some reading or browse the forum. My brother is back from Chile and so I'm still getting used to him being here again. I haven't really talked much with him yet (I prefer to do so with not many other people around, since that's less tiring for me.). Yesterday I went into town and bought some stuff. I also had a nice long bath and we had a great dinner for my mum's birthday. Traditionally each of us gets to pick one dinner (what to eat) some time around our birthday. We wanted to wait for my brother to be back so he could be a part of it. The plan for the next few days is to rest a bit from all the input from today and the past few days.

Great reviews . I'm glad you liked Coraline! I love the film too, the book is on my wishlist.

Holly Smale - Geek Girl 1: Geek Girl Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Young-Adult Format: Paperback Pages: 378 Synopsis (back of the book):Harriet Manners knows a lot of things. - Cats have 32 muscles in each ear - Bluebirds can't see the colour blue - The average person laughs 15 times per day - Peanuts are an ingredient of dynamite But she doesn't know why nobody at school seems to like her. So when she's offered the chance to reinvent herself, Harriet grabs it. Can she trransform from geek to chic? My thoughts: I recently bought this book and wanted to read it pretty soon. I chose to start an 'easier' book while I was reading Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson - Wheel of Time 14: A Memory of Light. This book has a similar font to Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which I loved so this evoked memories of that. Other than the font though and a few similarities between the main characters, the stories are very different. I quite liked this book. I loved Harriet's character, in particular her geeky facts and the way her mind works. The other characters were good too, though. This is a book for young-adults, and after reading the 'adult' Wheel of Time book, I can certainly see the difference. The book is written in an easier way, it reads easily. Sometimes I felt a bit more depth would have been nice (but then, I do prefer adult books over young-adult). The story was quite nice, though it reminded me of a story I once read when I was a teenager. It was also a young-adult book but I don't remember the title or the author. That book was about a girl who wanted to be a model (so unlike Harriet in this book) and then found out how the modelling world works. This is why some things in this book didn't come as a surprise for me, I was expecting some of them to happen (though perhaps not in the way that they did). There were other plot twists though that I didn't see coming at all. Overall I quite enjoyed reading this book, particularly the more geeky parts of it. I'm a geek too, though in a different way. I could identify with Harriet. I'm glad I read the book. It's part one of a series though the story has a ending which is good in my opinion. I'd like to read the other two books in the series (when out in paperback etc.), because I liked this book a lot. Rating: **** (8/10)

I'm sorry to hear you didn't like The Uncommon Reader more than you did. I hope I'll like it more, though we'll have to wait and see.

I hope you like it !

Hey Claire, welcome to the forum ! What kind of books do you like to read?

I'm glad you enjoyed Best Served Cold, great review ! Some of Joe Abercombie's books are on my wishlist.

I plan to read The Uncommon Reader next month during the read-a-thon, I hope you enjoy it, Kylie .

Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson - Wheel of Time 14: A Memory of Light Genre: Fantasy Format: Paperback Pages: 1007 Synopsis: (no synopsis, last book in a series) My thoughts: I've been looking forward to this book for so long that I pre-ordered it and started it pretty much just after I received it. I love the Wheel of Time series and so I was really excited to see how it would end. On the other hand I would be sad to see it all finished, but I'm also looking forward to be able to start a new series. This book was epic. It took me a little bit of time to get into it, since it had been a while since I read the previous book in the series. As the story went on though it all came back to me. I didn't want to stop reading the book! However, since it's quite big (just over 1000 pages), I couldn't finish it any time soon. It doesn't happen that often, that a book pulls me in that much. It was a tense book, in the sense that I wanted to keep on reading and find out what would happen. It even made me feel a bit tense, I was so involved with the characters that I was worried what would happen, if that makes sense. I have this now and then, I don't always like the feeling but it means something's touched me in a way. I have it sometimes with films or TV series as well, or video games (when I still played quite a few of them). There was a lot of battling going on, considering it's the last book this made sense, but every once in a while all the formations and battle information dazzled me a bit, particularly when I was tired in the beginning. After a while though I really wanted to find out what would happen and this didn't bother me any more, I just wanted more of it and was rooting for the Light side (the 'good' side if you will) and the characters. The book managed to surprise me. I was expecting certain things to happen, but instead there were many plot twists I didn't see coming. The book has many important characters, some are main characters but even the side characters play an important role. It's certainly not a book to read when you're very tired, and I don't recommend starting the series with the last book, you should definitely start at the beginning if you're interested even if the first book isn't perhaps as engrossing as the last one. I quite liked a lot of the characters. One of my favourite aspects of the series is the 'magic' in it and the way it works. I love reading about it and the characters that use it. I love reading in particular about the battles where there's 'magic' involved. But also the sword play and other types of battle are very interesting to read about. Each chapter has a little illustration before it and all have the same illustration at the end of the chapter. The book contains two maps, one of the world and one detailed one of a specific place. I love the font and style and also the cover. This book was epic. I can ramble on here about how much I loved it but I think you get the point. The Wheel of Time is one of my favourite fantasy series, and for good reason. I love the detailed description of things such as clothing and people, though I wouldn't want it in all the books I read. I can imagine that this is what puts some people off, personally I love it in this series, it makes things come more alive for me (so to speak). I'm still a bit stunned as for the book, it was just so epic. Overall I really liked this book. I like all the books in the series though I like some more than others. In the middle there were a couple of books I didn't enjoy as much as the rest of them. This one I really enjoyed and is a great conclusion to the series. Rating: ***** (10/10)

I hope you enjoy your new books !

Good luck !

Great review, Kay ! I have this book on my TBR. My parents have read it in Dutch and liked it too. I bought myself an English copy a while ago, but I haven't read it yet.

I've only been to an impressive concert about once in my life, because with my disability I don't do well at all with crowds or loud music. Our concert was by Within Temptation (one of my favourite bands) and we had chairs to sit on (a must really, I couldn't do it with crowds). The concert was in the next town over, so quite close by. I enjoyed it and was glad we went there. The music wasn't overly loud and because of the chairs I could sit for most of the time which was good.

I quite like the sword/snowflake, that looks pretty awesome.

To a minor scale you have this with any translated book, of course for older books like classics doubly so. Personally I always prefer to read the original (either English or Dutch) but for ie. French books I read them in English. I've read the same books in both Dutch and English and found that in most cases the translation was pretty well done and conveyed the tone and style of the writing. It can really depend on the translator though, sometimes they make the title into something different and you don't quite get why it was done. I haven't read any old classics in both languages though, so I can't comment on that. If given the choice between an original English copy or a Dutch translated version I will go for the original, because I prefer to read in English and because you get the full experience then. But when the original is Dutch, I prefer to read the Dutch version. If the original is any other language I prefer to read it in English. Some of the writing style might be lost then, but I can't understand other languages very well (though I know a bit of French and some German) but I think it's better to have read the classic as a translation than not at all. It's good to read diversely from different kinds of authors from different nationalities and not just English-speaking ones, imo.

Good luck with your study stuff, Brian. I hope you get more time to read later on. I don't know Hot Cross Buns but I haven't seen any easter things for sale yet. Usually that takes a bit longer here I think, after Valentine's Day maybe? My brother is coming back from Chile tomorrow and we're celebrating my mum's birthday this weekend so it'll be a bit of a busy weekend I think. I hope to spend some time in my room and read.

Is it a classic or historical fiction?

Personally I usually get on just as well with longer books as with shorter, though I do find bigger books daunting sometimes. But on the other hand I also like them, because you get a lot of content for your money and, hopefully, a lot of great story.