The Adoration of Jenna Fox

by Mary E. Pearson

Grade: Good
Story: Jenna wakes up after having been in a terrible accident, with all her memory gone.

Quite a lot to think about in this one. I'll have to get Daddy to read it, and then discuss it with him. Especially  questions such as these:

--What about souls? She definitely seemed to have one.
--i.e. Was it a mercy-killing to kill her friends?
--And what about her backup? Was that murder too? Does that even work?

It was very nice to a Catholic character who was sympathetic. Not perfect, but not perfect in a very real way, instead of the religious-bigot not-perfect people whom you often get. And in fact, she was perhaps my favourite character.

The Kneebone Boy

by Ellen Potter

Grade: To Own
Story: There are three strange children. And a cat. And a viking.

Oh, the cover! Oh, oh, oh! I love it so very much.

And of course, being written by the amazing Ellen Potter means that the inside is just as good. Wow.

And it makes me want to own a nice set of all her books (namely, Slob and Pish Posh).

I think Max was my favourite character. But the others were awesome.

I like the fact that the oldest never did talk in the end. I was worried he would. And I liked the end. I guessed bits of it, but the whole thing was quite surprising.

The Magicians

by Lev Grossman

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 210.

It was getting depressing. Very well written, I thought. But Quentin was quite unlikeable, as everyone seems to be saying. Plus there was lots of swearing and it was getting annoying.

Lips Touch, Three Times

by Laini Taylor

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 27.

The illustrations are GORGEOUS!!!!! (By Jim Di Bartolo, by the way.)
I stopped because of the sexy boy love interest. Who, it turns out, was bad and evil and a goblin, I think. But I'd already stopped by that time. Plus, by the cover, you could guess there'd be a lot of kissing. So I don't mind to much that I stopped. But boy! were those pictures beautiful.

Shades of Milk and Honey

by Mary Robinette Kowal

Grade: Good
Story: Jane is ugly but talented in glamour, her sister Melody is beautiful of face, but not talented. Then Austen-y type plot stuff happens.

Lovely book, and I gobbled it up super fast. As I mentioned, the plot was quite Austen-y, complete with love-interest who turns out to be a philandering scoundrel, and sister who is too romantic to be sensible. But it wasn't so similar as to be distracting.

Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception

by Maggie Stiefvater

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 10.

Ok. "He had one of those soft voices that oozed self-control, ... It was, even in the context of a barf-filled bathroom, amazingly sexy."
"Lean as a wolf, with pale blond hair and eyes even paler. And sexy."

Ok! Enough with the sexy! It totally puts me off a book when the male lead is immediately described as sexy or handsome or whatever. It seems to be his only attribute.

So I quit.

Slob

by Ellen Potter

Grade: Good
Story: Owen is fat. And smart.

Really, really great author. I'm hugely looking forward to Kneebone Boy, or whatever it's called.
Anyway, back to this one.
The characters! Owen, Jeremy, Zelda (was that their mother's name?), Nima, Mason. They were all great and completely themselves.
It's too bad her books are so small and a bit too light-weight. They're almost in my tiny-cute-light-favourite-books-of-all-time books. But not, I'm not totally sure why. Too light-weight, as I said? But her themes are not light-weight at all. So no, I don't know why.

A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories

by Robin McKinley

Grade: All right

Not my favourite selection of Robin McKinley.

"The Healer": Good enough, I guess. Not much to say about this one.

"The Stagman": Perhaps my least favourite. In the end, the woman leaves her wife and children for a half-stag man.

"Touk's House": Didn't do anything particularly for me.

"Buttercups": My favourite. The image of the buttercups was cool, and I liked the unusual love story.

"A Knot in the Grain": Good enough. I didn't quite get what happened at the end. Probably because I wasn't really bothering to pay attention. However, it was good. I did like it. So I shouldn't be too crabby.

Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh

Grade: Good

I FINALLY read this book. And yes, it was worth it in the end, although hard to get through.

"Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn't a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to hate Him and His saints they have to find something like themselves and pretend it's God and hate that." Pg. 221

"Sometimes I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all." Pg. 279
(I know the feeling.)

"Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; a hill of many invisible crests; doors that open as in a dream to reveal only a further stretch of carpet and another door; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us."

Snow White and Rose Red

by Patricia C. Wrede

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To somewhere near the beginning. I forget where exactly.

I found their old-fashioned English a little distracting and hard to read. This is rather unusual for me, which causes me to think that it was simply not written terribly well.