My only books were women's looks

Colby and his best friend Bev have just graduated high school and in a week, they'll be leaving for the year-long trip to Europe that they've been planning for the past four years. But first, Colby is going to accompany Bev and her band, The Disenchantments on a tour through the West Coast. But no sooner are they on the road then Bev tells him that she's not going to Europe with him, she's going to college. Through the various towns the band plays and the people they meet, Colby has to figure out just why Bev lied to him and what he's going to do now that his post-high school plan, and the girl he's in love with have fallen through...This was another Book Club read. I don't usually read contemporary, so I probably wouldn't have picked this up, but I enjoyed it. Even the parts of the set up that initially irritated me (the Disenchantments being a horrible band with the one saving grace being how hot they are, Bev's attitude before we find out her reasons behind it, etc etc.)I liked the things it had to say about growing up with people, and the way that people change, and the way that you can think that you know everything about someone and in the end, not really know them at all. The way that our decisions and the things that happen to us shape us, about finding our own paths, and finding what is right for us. About all the ways of hurting someone and all the ways of loving someone, and how sometimes they are one and the same.

A history of the English public school (what, in the US, we would call a 'private school'), charting the institution and culture of the schools from the 15th century until the 1970s, when the book was written.What a fascinating book. Very dense - both in content (hundreds of years are covered) and information (most of it was almost entirely new to me.) But it was fascinating. The history of the English public school is one of surprising violence (even as late as the 1950s, corporal punishment not the main method of discipline, it was the ONLY one, and beatings were often carried out by prefects. And then there was the bullying) and passion (many boys had intense crushes on boys in their class, and there were periods of rampant sexual activity, often spurred on by the ridiculous paranoia of the headmasters.)The author also traces many of the stereotypical 'upper-class' characteristics as well as several ones we think of as stereotypically British, to the 'total societies' the public schools formed, and the particular environment British upper and middle class boys spent the ages of 8 - 18. In fact, the experience was so intense and so formative that many public school boys became Old Boys when they grew up, unable to leave behind their school days, eternally trapped in a kind of agonized nostalgia.Despite how dense this book was, I really loved the writing style. The author links together evidence from dozens of 'public school genre' novels and autobiographies, as well as correspondence with hundreds of Old Boys from dozens of schools, with a confiding and honest tone.

I loved this book - I was hooked on Ismae's journey from the very start. It was dark, and atmospheric, that kind of dense world you can just get lost in, an assassin sired by Death himself, courtly political intrigue, and a sexy slow-burn romance. The author did a wonderful job of melding mythology - the nine gods/saints, including the god of Death, St. Mortain, with the history of Brittany, so that it felt as thought either the mythology was real, or Brittany itself a myth. I loved the various relations between the characters, especially Ismae and Duval.

If the book club I belong to hadn't chosen this book as their next book, I wouldn't have read it, but I'm so very glad they did.I would never have picked it up otherwise, and to be honest for the first few chapters I was wondering how I would make myself finish it. But I kept reading and somewhere along the way I realized that I loved it. I was completely entranced in the world of Thisby and the quiet power of the water horses and the quiet power of Kate 'Puck' Connely and Sean Kendrick and I liked them so much that I kept changing my mind about which one was my favorite every other chapter. This book was so well written, but I can't really descibe how the atmosphere and the prose worked so perfectly together. The feeling of the place and the people of Thisby were in every word of odd descriptions and folk sayings, in the strange rightness and deeper meaning of the slight quaintness to the dialogue and the characters thoughts. Everything happened for a reason and everything had that quiet, deep resonance of a timeless myth or an old folk story.Suffice to say that I started the book unsure if I would be able to get through it, and I ended up finishing it that evening.

I picked this up without realizing that it was the second book in the Lady Emily series, but it provided enough explanation of what went on in the first book that it didn't matter much.I don't really read mysteries (I can probably count the mysteries I've read on one hand) but I love the Edwardian period, so I thought I'd give it a chance. I certainly didn't guess either of the mysteries in the book, but I have to say that more than the desire to see who dunnit, I kept reading because I thoroughly enjoyed Emily as a heroine and Colin as her romantic hero.Aside from a few bits of dialogue that seemed a bit modern to me, the author seemed ot have a very good grasp on society and fashion etc of the period. More importantly (since this is the part that a lot of writers of historical fiction neglect) I thought she also did a very good job of staying true to the tone and mores of the times. Like most heroines in historical fiction, Emily has some 'unlady-like' hobbies (the study of Greek) but what I liked about this book is that it actually showed how these hobbies would reflect on her character to the rest of society. In fact, a good deal of the plot turns on how her unconventional hobbies (including sleuthing), desire for independence and lack of desire to get married to Colin, despite how much she love (and is attracted) to him all combine to give her a pretty scandalous reputation, which she shes repercussions for. I also like how the author managed to portray some really nice UST between Emily and Colin while staying true to the conventions of the times. (Colin decides that he shouldn't kiss her (any more) until she's agreed to be his wife, for example.)I would definitely pick up the next volume of the series.Also, I want to say how much I LOVE the cover of the book. It fits perfectly, and kept me wanting to pick it up again.

17 year old Lola Nolan is a budding costume designer who lives in San Francisco with her gay dads who make her hot 22 year old rock star boyfriend Max come to brunch every Sunday so they can check up on him. Her life is pretty perfect though. Or at least, it would be if her next door neighbor and first love Cricket Bell hadn't moved back moved back into the neighborhood.I don't usually go for contemporary romantic comedies like this, but I really enjoyed it.This book was a adorable. I had just the right amount of romance, angst and sexual tension, and I thought it handled the gradually evolving love triangle really well. There were certain aspects of Lola I found a little wish-fufilly (like the way she where a different costume and wig every day) at the beginning but I liked the way the author turned it into character development at the end. I actually felt that Lola was such an authentic teenager that some of her behavior annoyed me, or seemed overdramatic until I realized that I probably would have reacted the same way when I was 16 or 17.

So, the Wolf Gift.What can I say? It could only have been written by Anne Rice. I’m actually stumped as to how someone who hasn’t read any of Anne Rice’s books before would feel about this novel.I get the feeling that the world of Anne Rice’s books and the actual world have grown farther and farther apart as the years go by. No one dresses the way they do in her books. No one speaks the way they do in her books. Certainly she had no concept of age – The hero, Reuben already has his Masters at 23, for example. I feel like she writes her historical books and her contemporary books in much the same way. But her writing works for historical fiction, or for example, for the vampires who were mostly born in another time, who often act older than they look. It sounds natural when Lestat says, “My god!”, but not so much when a 16 year old boy from California says it.However, her writing has a rhythm to it, the essence hasn’t changed at all. It’s her language, her themes, her character types, her dialogue, the catchphrases I recognize from so many other books (‘Dear God’, ‘Lord God’, ‘For the love of hell’, etc. ‘Powerfully excited’ was used at least ten times.) If you had told me that this was a lost manuscript from the 80s, I would have believed you, if not for the fact that everyone had an iPhone.In that way, although I’d never read the book before, the reading experience was almost similar to that of reading a comfort read for me. And I found the characters likable enough, because none of them were the old characters I loved being rendered utterly unrecognizable, as happened with the last books in the Vampire Chronicles. So I enjoyed it, It wasn't a hard read at all for me. I read it in a day. I reminded me a lot of The Mummy, for example. The only two aspects of this book that I felt set it apart from her earlier writing was: 1) It was much more Catholic. That aspect was much more overt. 2) It was less gay, or should I say, less bi-sexual. There was a gay character, but he was very clearly marked as such, unlike the general love and affection between men in her earlier book where every male character including the hero fell in love with another man or mentioned having been in love with another man despite never being identified as gay or bisexual.Also, I can only end with 3 points.1. The phrase ‘Man Wolf’ never stopped being funny.2. There was WAY too much werewolf/human sex.3. The most hilarious line in the book: “Well, you’re one splendid boy wolf I’ll tell you that.”

So, I may be one of the last people in the country to read this book. But I wanted to read it before I see the movie.I just finished it a few minutes ago, and I'm still processing it. For some reason the ending really irritated me. By the ending, I mean the last 5 pages or so. It felt...anticlimatic, or too climatic to just cut off so abruptly. I guess I'm annoyed because I hate that kind of development and they left it to be resolved in the next book? I never would have picked this up if not for how popular it's become.This is a part of popular culture that just doesn't really resonate with me much. I mean, dystopian societies have never really been my thing, and there's a reason I've never watched Battle Royale. Survival narratives have never really interested me, and I did think that the book dragged at times during the Games, particularly at the beginning of them. I don't really understand how this series became the Next Big Thing. I certainly didn't like it as much as Divergent. That said, I did really like a lot of aspects of it. I liked the worldbuilding, and the characters. I liked the politics. I really liked the lead up to the Games, and I liked the ending ceremonies and all of that. I like Katniss and Peeta. I think I like Peeta more than Katniss at the moment, but that's just because I'm surprisingly annoyed at her right now. So, in conclusion...I realize my review sounds sort of negative, but I did like the book. I just didn't LOVE it.

I read this book through someone who loves YA, but I actually felt like this transcends the genre. Yes, it's a world like our own, only with magic. Yes, there's a human girl as the heroine. (Speaking of the heroine, I loved Karou, even after the first few pages.)Yes, she falls for a supernatural hero. But the strange lyricism of the prose, and the uniqueness of the world set it apart. Some of the sentences were just beautiful in their imagery. The supernatural world is so weird and mythic and the writing fits it perfectly.ETA: Apparently Universal bought the film right. I'm very nervous about that because I think that it would require a huge amount of CGI for one thing, and for another, the writing has such an atmosphere and I'm worried they won't be able to translate that to film.

In what used to be known as Chicago, society is now dived into five factions based on one ruling personality trait: Abnegation, Erudite, Candor, Amity and Dauntless. At the age of 16 all members of society must take an aptitude test to determine which faction they are most suited for. They can then chose to stay in the faction they were raised in, or chose to leave that faction - and their family - and join another faction. Beatrice was raised in Abnegation, where self-denial is the ruling characteristic, but she has never felt selfless enough for it. The day of the aptitude test, she finds out that she is a Divergent - someone who can test into more than one faction - but that she must hide this fact from everyone. She chooses to join Dauntless, the faction that values courage above all else.This was a great book. In a way it reminded me a lot of Holly Black's Ironside books. Not plot-wise, or even thematically per se, just in the grittiness and violence of the world depicted, and heroine who must define for herself what real courage is. It was also just as compulsively readable.I really loved the depth of the characters and their development, and how all the pieces came together. The plotting was really excellent. And I feel like the book also had the first romance that really got me excited in a very long time. I was really rooting for the couple, and their relationship didn't seem forced at all, like it often does in recent YA. I will definitely be picking up the next book.

When Jane Moore takes a job at Thornfield Park nannying for the young daughter of bad boy rock star Nico Rathburn she expects it to be an interesting job. But Rathburn -and his secrets- are nothing like she'd expected.A modern re-telling of Jane Eyre.According to the afterword, this book was born from the author's love of Jane Eyre, and it really shows. I've always loved Jane Eyre myself, and I think this re-telling did the original justice. I really enjoyed this. Lindner was able to walk that fine line between staying as true as she could to the original story -a lot of the important dialogue is modern paraphrasing the original - while making it plausible in modern setting. The only thing that I didn't think carried over very well is that I don't see a modern 19 year old being in such a rush to get married.

Russian in the late 19th century...the land of the Romanovs, the Winter Palace, Faberge...not to mention vampires, faeries and necromancers. 16 year old Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg isn't interested in balls or making a marriage to a handsome, rich Royal - she wants to become a doctor, despite the fact that the old-fashioned Tsar does not allow women to enter medical school. But Katerina has a bigger problem than finding out how to follow her chosen career path: she is a necromancer, with the power to bring the dead to life. She's tried to keep her ability - for which she could be exiled or even sentenced to death - a secret, but two people know about it. George Alexandrovich, the middle son of the Tsar, who doesn't approve of Katerina, and the sinister and bewitching Crown Prince Danilo of Montenegro, who wants to make Katerina his bride and use her powers for his own gain. There were some small plot points I had issues with, mostly the normal YA paranormal issues, but all in all I felt the romance was well developed despite a quick start. I wished Katerina had stayed bit more in thrall of Danilo, because that's more fun, but on the other hand, I was annoyed when she first dismissed the warnings about him so easily, so I guess this way was fine, after all. The bookish heroine who hates balls, dresses, etc is a trope I don't really like, but I ended up liking Katerina a lot.I really liked the atmosphere, and the setting, and the book was very compulsively readable - I finished it in a day!I'll definitely be picking up the sequel!

What a treat this book was. It had such a unique voice.

I thumbed through this book at the bookstore, and was instantly charmed. Subtitled, 'a novel in pictures' , each page is a collage of vintage material - advertisements, illustrations, catalogue and magazine pages, telegrams, valetine's cards etc - and the type written text of the novel. The words and 'pictures' the story of Frances 'Frankie' Pratt, following her from her high school graduation in 1920 in a tiny town in Maine through her years at Vassar to Greenwich Village and Paris.I thought this book was really cute, and I loved all the vintage clippings. This must have been so much fun to write/make.

I was really excited to read this book, when I found out that someone had finally written a paranormal romance with a gay romance. It's about time, right? That said, this book didn't wow me.

Side note: I was almost named Aurora (and would have been called Rory), just like this heroine.I liked this book. It took me a while to get into, but that's just because I started it on a recommendation, and somehow was under the mistaken impression that it took place in the early 20th century, and not current times. But once a made that adjustment, I liked it. In many ways it reminded me of White Cat, because it follows that typical YA paranormal templet: a protagonist arriving at a boarding school and trying to fit in and make friends, with added paranormal things going on. That said, this was one of the YA novels that did a good job of that familiar setup and turning it into something that kept me interested. The first half was very heavy on the day to day life at boarding school aspect, but then once the paranormal stuff started to happen, things really picked up. I found all the characters likable, which is important, especially when you're dealing with YA. The mythology was well done I thought, and the author did a good job of building the suspense, etc.It's very obvious that this is a series, as are most YA novels today. I would have been fine if this book had just ended things, but I wouldn't mind reading more about this world either. However, my one complaint is that last 2 pages of the book were pretty heavy handed about setting up the sequel. I felt like it ruined the flow and turned what I had until then felt was a satisfying ended into something that felt very abrupt.