Cannonball Read V: Book #8/52
Published: 2009
Pages: 311
Genre: Thriller
2 stars: Meh. Struggled to get through it/wasn't for me.
J.A. Konrath has written some of my favorite thrillers (Endurance, Trapped, Serial with Blake Crouch), but I've come to the conclusion that I only like his novels that he's written under his pseudonym Jack Kilborn (the above three mentioned books were all written under the pseudonym).
The List starts out with a promising plot: There are ten people who have mysterious numbers tattooed on the bottom of their feet. They've always had them, but none have any clue why or what they mean. When one of the men (Tom) is investigating a murder that involves a man with one of the tattoos, he begins to wonder more about his own. He starts to track down the rest of ten people with tattoos and learn what they mean and who put them there.
The plot sounded awesome! But we figure out who these people are really early on on the novel, so that kind of kills all of the suspense. Not to mention the reason isn't even that good. I won't spoil it, but I'll just say that it wasn't anything I would have guessed and I didn't care to continue reading once I found out. But I have a hard time putting down a book I've already started, so I toughed it out. There were a few more twists and turns throughout the novel, but everything kept getting more and more ridiculous (grated, the reasoning for the tattoos was pretty ridiculous as well).
I'm just glad I got this book when it was free on Amazon the other day instead of actually paying for it. It was a huge letdown for what I was expecting. Don't go into this thinking it's going to be like a Jack Kilborn novel.
Cannonball Read V: Book #7/52
Published: 2006
Pages: 362
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
4 stars: Very good. Would recommend.
I wasn't sure how I was going to like this book. It sounded interesting, but I was afraid it was going to be more of a romance than I care for. I am SO happy to say that I was totally wrong. It was mostly about the circus with some romance thrown in, but not overtaking the story.
I loved the circus as a kid and remember the excitement when they started setting up the tent in the field next to the elementary school. We'd all stand and watch them during our recess. I even got to ride an elephant once! So that's what drew me to this book.
The book starts with an old man named Jacob who is at a nursing home. A circus is setting up down the street and Jacob starts to reminisce about the summer of 1931 when he worked at the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. He was just about to graduate with his veterinary degree from Cornell when he finds out his parents were killed in a car accident. He walks out of his exams and hops a train that happens to house the Benzini Brothers circus.
The back side of the circus industry back then was pretty dark. Animal abuse ran rampant and Jacob does his best to help once he his hired to be the circus veterinarian. The treatment of the employees was probably even worse than the animals because the animals brought in money. The gritty circus underworld and all of the circus characters were really interesting.
Then we have Marlena. If this romance was more front and center in the novel, I would have probably hated it. Marlena was pretty bland. She's married to the ringleader, August, and he's pretty much batshit crazy. Of course Jacob falls in love with her, blah, blah. It was a little eye-rolling at times, but didn't really detract from the rest of the story too much.
Overall, I can see why this book was a bestseller and how it would appeal to a pretty broad audience.
Cannonball Read V: Book #6/52
Published: 2002
Pages: 208
Genre: Young Adult
3 stars: Good, but I probably wouldn't read again.
This was a random find at my library's bookstore. The title sounded familiar, so I figured I'd pick it up since it was only 50 cents (LOVE the library bookstore!).
The Torn Skirt is about a Sara who was "born with a fever" (the book is full of this type of writing. Some of it is pretty eye-rolling, but you get used to it quickly). Basically, Sara is a teenager. Every teenager thinks their angst is special, but really it's not. Whatever. Anyways, Sara grew up in a cult until she and her Dad ran away to Canada. She's getting tired of her loser stoner friends and after he Dad leaves for a while she goes on a wild spree across her town searching for a mysterious girl in a torn skirt named Justine.
Sara was hard to like. She had a rough upbringing, but she's self-aware enough to know her actions, rather than her circumstances, are the cause of her trouble. She seeks out bad people and bad places. She purposefully decides to screw things up and it's hard to root for a character like that. I wanted to strangle her when she is laying in bed whining about her non-existant "fever" to the cops instead of actually realizing or caring what she was in trouble for.
The Torn Skirt is well-written and I did enjoy it, although I think teenage me would have enjoyed it more (notice I keep saying that lately? I'm getting old, I guess). The older I get, the less "deep" and the more annoying teenage angst gets.
Cannonball Read V: Book #5/52
Published: 1813
Pages: 279
Genre: Classic
3 stars: Good, but I probably wouldn't read again.
This book is part of my project to try and read more classics. So far, all it's doing is reminding me why I never read classics. However, Pride and Prejudice is one of those books that is a struggle to get through but you end up liking AFTER you read it.
I knew the basic storyline because I have seen the movie with Kiera Knightley in it. I liked the movie, so I figured I might like the book even though I rarely read (or like) romance novels. Basically it's about a girl named Elizabeth and her 700 sisters (seriously, it seems like that many) and their mother who is trying to marry them off to rich guys. Their family lives out in the country in England and everyone goes wild when some new rich guy comes into town. The rich guy (Mr. Bingsley) throws a ball and ends up falling for Elizabeth's older sister. Mr. Bingsley has an even richer friend named Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy is kind of an ass.
The rest of the book is about Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy alternating between hating and loving one another. Normally I would find that sort of tiresome, but I did like Elizabeth. She wasn't swooning all over Mr. Darcy because of his money and even when she found out he was interested in her, she still didn't like him. She's stubborn and outspoken and I loved her for that. I liked the the romance developed fairly naturally. Most romance movies/books these days have the main characters madly in love after a single glance. Ugh.
Like I said, this book was much better after I finished it and had some time to digest it. It's not that long of a book but some parts felt really drawn out and unnecessary to the actual plot, so maybe that's why I didn't enjoy it as much while I was actually reading it.
Cannonball Read V: Book #4/52
Published: 2012
Pages: 192
Genre: Young Adult/Alien
I've been trying to track this book down for a while now but I think the first edition went out of print or something so it was really hard to find for a few years. Then I realized that one of the local libraries had it and I could get it via ILL! Finally!
POD is a Young Adult book about an alien invasion. Not much is known about the invasion except that a bunch of mysterious pods showed up hoving over the earth and is zapping anyone who steps outside. So now everyone is trapped inside of their house or whatever other building they may have been in at the time of the Pod's arrival.
There are two main stories that the book switches between. The first is 12-year-old Megs (ugh...hate that name...why not just Meg?) who is left inside a Los Angeles hotel parking garage while her mother goes on a "job interview" (she's actually going to a man's house for money). Megs and her mom just left her abusive step-dad, so they are living in their car for the time being. She stays in the car as long as possible, but has to leave and scrounge for food in the other cars. Meanwhile, a couple of men are terrorizing all of the other people stuck in the hotel and start looking for Megs when they find out she's hiding in the garage.
The second story follows 16-year-old Josh and his father who are trapped inside their house in Washington. They slowly run out of food and water and end up having to contemplate on what they should do about it.
I thought this book was great. It was interesting and moved quickly. The story with Megs was a little over the top at times (she refers to herself as a pirate and leaves notes around as she evades the "bad guys"). But then again, she is only twelve. Josh's story was very, very grim. I was shocked at how much so considering my library labeled this book as for "younger teens". This book has everything from eating pets for dinner to suicide and cannibalism. It's not super graphic, but probably too much for some people.
Cannonball Read V: Book #3/52
Published: 1999
Pages: 213
Genre: Young Adult
I've had this book on my to-read list for a long time. I'd heard it was good, but the plot seemed somewhat boring and I was slightly turned off by the fact that MTV published it (MTV publishes books?). However, after being bombarded with previews for the movie version, I decided it didn't look too bad and I always prefer to read the book before I see the movie.
So, The Perks of Being a Wallflower follows a "wallflower" named Charlie who is just starting high school after his best friend committed suicide the previous year. Then he meets a pair of senior step-siblings (Sam and Patrick) who sort of take Charlie under their wing. The story unfolds through letters that Charlie writes to an anonymous penpal.
I could relate a lot to Charlie in the beginning because my best friend died (although not via suicide) when I was 12 and just entering high school (we didn't have a middle school - high school was 7-12th grade). I was already very introverted and was very much a wallflower. However, I did not have "cool" senior friends to help bring me back out of my shell. I think I would have loved this book when I was in high school.
Although I liked it overall, some of it was kind of over the top. Like Charlie's crying. My god, that kid cried every other page. He's not 10 - he's 15! I'm not saying that boys shouldn't cry or anything, but NO ONE should cry as much as that poor kid. Also, the ending was really, really unexpected and I didn't think it really fit with the rest of the book.
I'm looking forward to seeing the movie adaptation now.
Cannonball Read V: Book #2/52
Published: 1980
Pages: 402
Genre: Fiction/Thriller
I've read just about every Stephen King book that he's written, so now I'm reading some of the few that I never managed to pick up. Which means these are the ones I found least interesting when I read the blurbs on the back. The plot of The Dead Zone never really jumped out at me. It follows a man named John Smith (creative, huh?) as a 20-something with a nice girlfriend who gets into a bad car accident and ends up in a coma. He surprises everyone when he wakes up almost five years later. Of course by then everyone else has moved on. His girlfriend is now married to someone else and his mom lost it and started getting into some weird religious cults.
Johnny's changed too. He gets flashes of the future sometimes when he touches people or objects. Eventually the press hears about it and makes a huge deal and then eventually prints that he's a fraud. He tries to live a quiet life but he keeps freaking people out when he tries to help them after seeing a flash. He even helps solve a serial killer case that the police are baffled by.
I thought the serial killer part would be more central to the story than it was. It was a fairly small part while most of the book was centered around a politician that Johnny shook hands with once and saw a flash of a future war. Sigh. I seem to be picking all the political books this month for some reason.
This definitely wasn't my favorite King book. It was okay (and probably good for people who like King's novels that are less "horror"), but pretty forgettable.
