Durarara!!

by Ryohgo Narita

Story summary: Last unfinished book I read, I used the Goodreads description because I hadn't finished the book and so couldn't actually summarize it. This time I don't have that excuse, because I know the story in fairly good detail, having devoured the anime and manga versions. But I like the Goodreads summary and I'm behind on reviews and I'm super lazy, so here goes:

"The Ikebukuro district in Tokyo is full of interesting people. A boy longing for the extraordinary. A hotheaded punk. An airheaded pseudo stalker. An information broker who works for kicks. An underground doctor who specializes in truly desperate patients. A high school student infatuated with a monster. And a headless rider on a pitch-black motorcycle. Their story may not be a heartwarming one, but as it turns out, even weirdos like these sometimes fall in love.
There's no shortage of bizarre characters in Ikebukuro--read the light novel series that started the anime and manga phenomenon!"

Capt. Hook

by J. V. Hart

Story summary: I only read a few chapters of this one before deciding I was going to leave it unfinished (at least for now), so I don't feel like I can properly summarize it. Goodreads it is:

"With his long black curls, a shadowy family tree, and an affinity for pet spiders, James Matthew bears little resemblance to his starched-collar, blue-blooded peers at Eton. Dubbed King Jas., he stops at nothing to become the most notorious underclassman in the prestigious school's history. For James, sword fighting, falling in love with an Ottoman Sultana, and challenging the Queen of England are all in a day's skullduggery. But when he sets sail on a ship with a mysterious mission, King Jas.' dream of discovering a magical island quickly turns into an unimaginable nightmare.
Screenwriter J. V. Hart traces the evolution of J. M. Barrie's classic villain from an eccentric outcast to the scourge of Neverland."

Shatter Me

by Tahereh Mafi

Grade: Unfinished
Read: The first bunch, and then scatterings throughout the rest. (I know, I know. Terribly unspecific. I have this section so I can remember exactly where I stopped reading, to either pick it up again if I decide to in the future, or reminisce about which page was the one that broke the camel's back, so to speak. But this time I couldn't remember the exact page, so unspecific it's going to have to be.)

Thoughts: I only read this because a review talked about an awesome anit-hero, and I will read a whole book or series purely for the sake of an awesome anti-hero, villain, sidekick, or secondary character. So I wasn't expecting too much. But there are some things which are simply too much for me:

1. There were three men (three!) who were described as well-muscled, with amazing eyes. Light emerald, deep blue pools...

2. It was extremely stylized, especially at the beginning. Not only was there this weird thing where words and sentences were crossed out every once in a while ("No more daydreams."), but the metaphors were just overwhelming. "His eyes scan the silhouette of my structure and the slow motion makes my heart race. I catch the rose petals as they fall from my cheeks, as they float around the frame of my body, as they cover me in something that feels like the absence of courage." It reminded me of The Book Thief in a way. Most people seemed to love The Book Thief, partly because of the stylized writing. But it really didn't do anything for me.

3. The aforementioned awesome anti-hero? Not half as awesome as I was hoping. True, he was a evil young psycho, which I tend to have a certain fondness for. But he was also one of the well-muscled guys with amazing, light emerald eyes. And he was always doing things like taking the heroine's breath away, because he was so beautiful and sexy and all that. And he was 19. I'm more than fine with young evil geniuses, but there has to be some sort of explanation, justification, something. People don't just become 19-year-old leaders of men. And Warner seemed like he should be at least 25 or so.

Ripper

by Stefan Petrucha

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To Chapter 18, page 90.

Thoughts: One of those books that just seem a little too young for me. This one wasn't so bad, and I still might finish it someday. But for the time being, it was due at the library. And it wasn't going into as much depth as I'd like. Maybe I'm just spoiled by my favourite child genius books. I thought the main boy (I can't remember his name...) would be just that much more clever, and that much more agonized by his past. I also expected a little more depth of character for some of the side characters (though Hawking was pretty awesome), but maybe that was coming and I just didn't read far enough? It didn't seem like it, but as I mentioned above, I still might give it another go someday.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

by Charles Yu

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 30.

Thoughts: I'm not totally sure why I couldn't finish this one. It may just have been my current mood. Certain books are very hard to finish when school is extremely busy. Perhaps it just isn't my kind of book, though. It certainly is strange. I originally ordered it from the library because it sounded extremely meta and self-referential, which usually is to my taste. And it was extremely self-referential, but also very confusing and slow-moving. Again, this might be because the present busyness of school makes it rather difficult to concentrate on anything else too intellectual. I'll probably try it again some day and see how it goes.

The Girl of Fire and Thorns

by Rae Carson

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 318.

Thoughts: I'm really disappointed about not finishing this one. It started out really awesome, with a heroine who was actually really overweight, and some fascinating relationships: mostly between Elisa and her sister, and Elisa and her husband. There was some weird stuff, but it wasn't quite enough to stop me reading. (The weirdest was the religion of this fictional land, which was almost Christianity, but not quite. Some of the prayers and quotes from their scripture were almost exactly the same. On page 85, there's a prayer that's pretty much a weird translation of the Magnificat.)

But then Elisa started falling for this other guy, Humberto. At first I thought it might be a bit like Wolf Star by Tanith Lee, where the heroine is away from her husband for a long time, and so starts to notice this other guy. But then she does the right thing, and everything is all right in the end. But in this book, Elisa kept on getting more and more interested in Humberto until they actually kissed. And that didn't even stop her from hanging around him all the time. So finally I checked the end to see if everything was all right in the end, but it wasn't really. So I stopped.

King of Ithaka

by Tracy Barrett

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 31 (Chapter 4).

I don't think I was really fair to this book. I didn't give it a chance to prove itself. It started off good enough, but then I read through a bit of the end. I know I shouldn't, but sometimes if I'm worried about a book, I want to make sure reading it won't all be for nothing.

SPOILERS from here on out.

And in this case, I was worried about Odysseus and his marriage to Penelope. I always like Odysseus. Of all the Greek heroes, he was my favourite, I think. And I like marriage. I like marriage that stays together particularly. And in this case, what I read of the end seemed to indicate that Odysseus was rather a jerk, and he left his wife alone on Ithaka to go have adventures, or something.
Anyway, I didn't like it, so I stopped.

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters

by Natalie Standiford

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 154.

Reveiw: To page 154, because that's where she began to diss Catholic theology. There would be two excuses for this scene here:
1. Standiford is a non-Catholic who thinks she knows what Catholicism is from the media or something. In which case, I stopped reading because the thought of how ignorant people are of Catholicism drives me crazy and I don't need to feel crazy right now.
2. Standiford went to Catholic school herself, and this is based off her experience. In which case, no WONDER there are troubles in the Church. Those nuns were totally ignorant of anything. I mean, the questions Jane asks them are questions that any Catholic should be able to immediately answer off the top of their head. Grrrrrr. And the way they just cut her off and refused to even attempt to answer? "Catholic theology is very complicated", my foot.

(Also, Jane was talking about the Eucharist in a way that made me slightly uncomfortable. I don't know if it was bad, but I didn't feel like reading it. So I didn't.)

The Throne of Fire

by Rick Riordan

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 304.

Review: I tried. I tried and tried. Hey, I got to page 304! But I couldn't quite finish. Ah well. Son of Neptune was excellent, so I know I still like Riordan.

Haunting Violet

by Alyxandra Harvey

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 50.

Review: Still planning to finish this one. I was really not in the mood for it while I was working in the summer, which is when I started it. Plus the love interest was obvious, which always seems to put me off. However, there was some promising stuff with her best friend. I always like friends in books. So, as I said, still planning to finish this one.

The Snow-Walker's Son

by Catherine Fisher

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 44, Chapter 7.

Review: Catherine Fisher can often be hard to start, but once I get into it, I love it. This one never seemed to get to that point. I hate books like that. I always have the feeling that just around the corner, there's that magical point when I'll suddenly start loving it. Anyway, hopefully I'll try again someday and find that point.

Anna and the French Kiss

by Stephanie Perkins

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 16.

Review: Summary of Rachel's reading for far too many books:
--Rachel has pleasant expectant feel. Book looks good, cover is nice, maybe she won't mind the romance this time! Maybe she'll even like it!
--Rachel begins reading. Good start so far! Book is funny, intriguing, etc.
--Book introduces main male character. Main male character is described as beautiful and/or sexy and/or terribly attractive.
--Rachel stops reading.
--Rachel berates herself for her stupidity in not being able to read awesome books simply because the main male character is beautiful. She should like it! It's supposed to make the book yet more awesome!

Enthusiasm

by Polly Shulman

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 45, plus scattered pages around the end.

I'm sorry, it was the description of snugly fitting trousers, close-fitting white jacket (smooth across the chest!), and powerful thighs. So I read a bunch of the end, and decided it wasn't quite my type of book. Ah well.

Airborn

by Kenneth Oppel

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To some page that I've forgotten because I just lost the book.

Review: This seemed very much like a standard boy adventure story, and I don't feel like reading a standard boy adventure story right now. Good thing I do sometimes or I'd miss awesome books like Airman by Eoin Colfer. So maybe I'll go back to this one someday, in case it's awesome.

Quo Vadis

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 321 (chapter 45)

Ack! I meant to finish this! It was awesome! And I still will, really. But it got busy right in the middle of it, so I slowed down, and once I slow down a book, it's really hard to get back too it again, even if it's marvellous.

Rosemary and Rue

by Seanan McGuire

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 25.

So. Back to my old issue. I am so definitely over that lovely phase when I enjoyed almost every romance I read, and am back to the really annoying stage when I dislike almost every one of them. So I got to the sentence about the attractiveness of Tybalt, and I couldn't read any further. Grrrrr. Why can't I just get over it?
Otherwise, it was a pretty cool book. I liked the writing style and the main character and the world. So what more can you ask?

A Stranger to Command

by Sherwood Smith

Grade: Unfinished
Read: Practically none of it. The first two pages, maybe?

Coming soon to a blog near you: RED herself reads all of A Stranger to Command! Yes, I really am going to read it. I am DETERMINED. Note the capital letters. Just...not yet. Once C.H. gets a better looking copy, because BOY I hate this cover.

Song of the Sparrow

by Lisa Ann Sandell

Grade: Unfinished
Read: Bits of all of it, but not enough to say that I've actually read it.

So...why did I get a book about Elaine? I knew I didn't like her much, and I like the love-of-her-life Sir Lancelot even less.

(Now, SPOILERS! But it turns out that she falls for Sir Tristan at the end of this one. I like Sir Tristan well enough, but I found this slightly weird.)

Plus--it's in verse! I'm not a huge poetry reader anyway, but the poetry I do like is either rambunctious and exhilarating, like Chesterton and Belloc, or strange and subtle, like Eliot and that whatever-his-name-was Da Todi guy that B. P. L. showed me recently. And not ... this.

So I decided I must have got it from the library anyway in the faint, faint hope that Sir Gawain and his family would be mentioned in a semi-positive manner. And they were! Well, semi-positive. Still not exactly bright, but it's better than their portrayal in many a Arthurian retelling.

Stranger Things Happen

by Kelly D. Link

Grade: Unfinished
Read: Part way through the first story.

There was something in the first story that disturbed me. I was going to read through some of the rest anyway, but I ran out of time and energy, and it was overdue at the library.

I Shall Wear Midnight

by Terry Pratchett

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To page 68.

I really wanted to finish this one. I loved the title and the poem it was based on. Plus, it's the new Terry Pratchett, and he might not live for much longer. But for some reason, I can never get into his Tiffany Aching books. Maybe they're too serious--yet I love the serious bits that come up in his other Discworld novels. So I don't know. I guess I'll try again some other time, when I have more time. Perhaps it was mostly the studying for exams that made me unable to concentrate on this book.