Poison

by Chris Wooding

Grade: Good

Some interesting metaphysical stuff here. The end was one of the coolest parts.

But it wasn't gripping at all times. I'm not sure why. If there was a sequal, I probably wouldn't read it unless I heard something really interesting about it.

Ender's Game

by Orson Scott Card

Grade: Good

Absolutely, totally, and utterly fantastic. In every way. One of the best books I've read in a long, long time.

Yeah, so, that pretty much sums it up.

Tales from Watership Down

by Richard Adams

Grade: Unfinished
Read: All of the third part and bits of the first part.

I didn't really feel like reading the stories about El-ahrairah. But the stories about the Watership rabbits themselves were awesome. Now I have to read Watership Down all over again (though I've read it at least five times, I'm sure). This was a good find. I'm surprised I'd never heard of it before.

Alex and the Ironic Gentleman

by Adrienne Kress

Grade: Good

Quite a lot like Lemony Snicket. It was weird, in other words. It started out brilliant, but it was a little too disconnected in the middle. And then the end was cool again.

I loved Mr. Underwood. Nice teacher with argyle sweater? Yeah, I liked him. And actually, I liked Captain Steele a lot too, which was slightly unexpected, her being female and a bit feminist and all that.

Ella Minnow Pea

by Mark Dunn

Grade: To Own

Delightful little book. I love language, and I dearly wish I could write better.

It made me very highly aware of the letter "d". It's like the feeling one gets after playing spoons.


Interesting words I looked up because of this book:
aposiopesis: breaking off in the middle of a sentence. I do it in the Note below.
anserous: resembling a goose; silly.
deracinating: mvoing (people) forcibly from their homeland into a new and foreign environment.

Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.


Note: I would like to own it, but it isn't the very highest on my list. Thus the Grade. It would fit nicely with books like--oh, what's it called? Spellbound, maybe? I'll probably change it officially to "To Own" in a bit, once I've had time to realize how much I liked it. Or, I'll drop the "To Own" altogether.

The Ragwitch

by Garth Nix

Grade: Unfinished
Read: To the middle of the beginning.

The ragwitch was decidedly creepy, but I don't think that was what put me off. I think it may have been simply not being interested at all in the characters. Julia was annoying and Paul was boring.

Millicent Min, Girl Genius

by Lisa Yee

Grade: Good

The Cadel books are way better, but this was still interesting. I actually liked the characters much more than I thought I would--Stanford, Emily, and Maddie. And even the progressive Alice was interesting. However, the tone of the book was much younger than Cadel, which I think is why I didn't like it quite so much. This was written in first person, from an 11-year-old's point of view. True, she was a genius 11-year-old, but still...

I think I will always like books about child geniuses, so long as they are fairly well written.

Liar

by Justine Larbalestier

Grade: All right

There was stuff. And it was all modern young adulty. And it talked about hair. A lot. Too much for my tastes.
So. Bleh.

The Dawkins Delusion?

by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath

Grade: Good

I did see some holes in his arguments. He was also coming at it from what I believe was a Protestant point of view, which I actually believe has less arguments for this sort of thing than Catholicism.

However, he made some good points, the most basic of which was that Dawkins doesn't make good points. HOWEVER. I haven't read Dawkins's book, so I'm not really able to judge much.