480 pages read … “If I Stay”

2,079 pages over 15K … 15 books reviewed

I have been waiting to write this post/putting off posting the books I’ve been reading because I lost. Well, not against the goal. I have completed 10,000 pages this year, but I didn’t do it before my fiancé. Yeah, so rather bittersweet breaking that mark. But the good news is that we are still competing to see which one of us reads that most pages for the entire year. I have two months to kick his butt!

For sake of time (and the fact that forgot enough about most of these books to not be able to do a complete review), I will now do a recap post of books to catch you up to where I am. Here we go!

 

“Bright Lights, Big Ass” by Jennifer Lancaster (400 pages)
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Notes: Not her best book, but still really funny.

 

“Mockingjay” by Suzanne Collins (400 pages)
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Notes: Excellent ending. LOVED IT. Go read this series right now!

 

“Such A Pretty Fat” by Jennifer Lancaster (400 pages)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Notes: I still thought it was hilarious, but the second half was all about her trying to lose weight.
It reads: GYM, GYM, I’M HUNGRY, GYM, GYM.
She just kept talking about how much more she likes her body now — which is like every other “fat” book.
Just read her first ones and then skip this one.

 

“Ghost” by Piers Anthony (279 pages)
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Notes: Worst Piers Anthony book I have ever read. SUPER SCIENCE!!!!

 

“Wake” by Lisa McMann (224 pages)
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Notes: Interesting idea. Quick read.

 

“Hold Still” by Nina LaCour (304 pages)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Notes: Apparently not that memorable …

 

“Deadly Little Lies” by Nina LaCour (304 pages)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Notes: Really enjoyed the first book in this series, but Book 2 wasn’t as good.
It seemed to be pretty much more of the same. Don’t know if I will continue with this series

 

“Along for the Ride” by Sarah Dessen (400 pages)
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Notes: Another great Sarah Dessen book! Doesn’t disappoint.

 

“Waiting for You” by Susane Colasanti (322 pages)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Notes: Your standard high school love story.

 

“The Luxe” by Anna Godbersen  (433 pages)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Notes: Completely predictable, but still intriguing.
A super quick read. I will probably try the next one.

 

“Fade” by Lisa McMann  (248 pages)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Notes: Just more of the same out of this series.

 

“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” by Stieg Larsson  (563 pages)
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Notes: A fitting ending.

 

“Paper Towns” by John Green  (305 pages)
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Notes: Good but I was a bit disappointed by the ending.

 

“The Stonekeeper’s Curse: Amulet Book 2” by Kazu Kibuishi
(224 pages, 112 pages counted)
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Notes: Still a really interesting series.

 

“You Better Not Cry” by Augusten Burroughs  (206 pages)
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Notes: Hilarious! Makes me want to read his other books.
It gets rather sappy at the end, but worth the read.

2,821 pages to go … “Bitter is the New Black”

I’ve had a couple of Jan Lancaster’s books sitting on my shelf for quite a while. When I got chosen for jury duty, I decided that I would probably need some humor and figured “Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office” (416 pages) would be light enough that the story wouldn’t be affected by stopping and starting all the time.

I was not disappointed, Lancaster is great. She has a great way of putting things that makes me laugh out loud.

She is hilarious, fat and proud. She doesn’t take shit from anyone. And unlike other memoirs centered around fat people, she doesn’t think she is ugly or beneath anyone or anything. Instead, she has more confidence than anyone I know.

She is a refreshing look how women can be fat AND proud!

Back of the book:

“Jen Lancaster was living the sweet life-until real life kicked her to the curb. She had the perfect man, the perfect job-hell, she had the perfect life-and there was no reason to think it wouldn’t last. Or maybe there was, but Jen Lancaster was too busy being manicured, pedicured, highlighted, and generally adored to notice. This is the smart-mouthed, soul-searching story of a woman trying to figure out what happens next when she’s gone from six figures to unemployment checks and she stops to reconsider some of the less-than-rosy attitudes and values she thought she’d never have to answer for when times were good. Filled with caustic wit and unusual insight, it’s a rollicking read as speedy and unpredictable as the trajectory of a burst balloon.”

3,237 pages to go … “Coyote Blue”

Continuing with Christopher Moore, “Coyote Blue” (320 pages) was good. It was funny, interesting, and quite an improvement from “Demonkeeping.” It was pretty good for a sophomore attempt and I have high hopes that the books are going to keep getting better.

Back of the book:

“As a boy, he was Samson Hunts Alone — until a deadly misunderstanding with the law forced him to flee the Crow reservation at age fifteen. Today he is Samuel Hunter, a successful Santa Barbara insurance salesman with a Mercedes, a condo, and a hollow, invented life. Then one day, destiny offers him the dangerous gift of love — in the exquisite form of Calliope Kincaid — and a curse in the unheralded appearance of an ancient god by the name of Coyote. Coyote, the trickster, has arrived to reawaken the mystical storyteller within Sam…and to seriously screw up his existence in the process.”

3,557 pages to go … “Practical Demonkeeping”

Since I loved “Island of the Sequined Love Nun” so much, I decided to start at the beginning and read Christopher Moore’s debut novel “Practical Demonkeeping” (243 pages). “Demonkeeping” was just OK.

It still had funny parts, but it just didn’t capture my interest like the others. It was good for a debut attempt, but I think Moore’s later books are much better.

Back of the book:

“Travis O’Hearn is one hundred years old but still looks twenty. His traveling companion is a green demon with a nasty habit of eating people. When they arrive at the bohemian resort town of Pine Cove, California, all hell breaks loose.”

4,136 pages to go … “Infected”

A friend recommended “Infected” by Scott Sigler (352 pages), and as you know I have to read things that people recommend for Project 15K.

As I was handed the novel, I couldn’t help but judge the book by its cover. As I flipped it over, I said, ‘You bought a book written by a novel podcaster? Really?” Needless to say, I didn’t have any faith in this book.

I, however, have to say that I enjoyed it. Not all of it, but some of it. It was a quick-paced book with short choppy chapters (which I happen to enjoy).

The science is terrible, the writing is Fail (with a capital F), but I kept reading it. It has an amazing story idea. The plot was interesting. The attempts at character development were a joke though. The author was always taking the reader on tangents that weren’t important to the main story and really didn’t add anything.

So, I’m just reading along willing to overlook the horrible writing for the sake of a good story, and BAM! I am hit upside the head with an ending that comes OUT OF NOWHERE!

What the hell was Sigler thinking? Why did he have to go there? It totally took me out of the story and tore down anything sort of good storyline that he had built up. Smashed it to a million unrecognizable pieces.

And when I turned over the last page, all I could think was, ‘What do you mean this is part of a trilogy?’ Am I intrigued by the other books? Sure. Do I plan to read them any time soon? Hell no.

Back of the book:

Across America a mysterious disease is turning ordinary people into raving, paranoid murderers who inflict brutal horrors on strangers, themselves, and even their own families.

Working under the government’s shroud of secrecy, CIA operative Dew Phillips crisscrosses the country trying in vain to capture a live victim. With only decomposing corpses for clues, CDC epidemiologist Margaret Montoya races to analyze the science behind this deadly contagion. She discovers that these killers all have one thing in common – they’ve been contaminated by a bioengineered parasite, shaped by a complexity far beyond the limits of known science.

Meanwhile Perry Dawsey – a hulking former football star now resigned to life as a cubicle-bound desk jockey – awakens one morning to find several mysterious welts growing on his body. Soon Perry finds himself acting and thinking strangely, hearing voices . . . he is infected.

The fate of the human race may well depend on the bloody war Perry must wage with his own body, because the parasites want something from him, something that goes beyond mere murder.

4,488 pages to go … “Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen”

I love “Hell’s Kitchen” and Gordan Ramsey so when my boyfriend picked up his book, “Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen: Temper Tantrums, F Words, and the Pursuit of Perfection” (288 pages), I just had to read it …

… And I wasn’t disappointed.

It was a fun, quick read. You learn a lot about Ramsey, his troubling upbringing, his battle to fame, etc. It’s a very interesting ride, and he really puts it all out there.

The novel stops right when Hell’s Kitchen is really picking up so I can’t wait for his next book. I wanted to read about the time right after that — through all the seasons of the U.S. Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares, etc.

I like to look at this book as the first on his life, and I can’t wait for the next one.

Back of the book:

Everyone thinks they know the real Gordon Ramsay: rude, loud, pathologically driven, stubborn as hell

For the first time, Ramsay tells the full inside story of his life and how he became the world’s most famous and infamous chef: his difficult childhood, his brother’s heroin addiction, his failed first career as a soccer player, his fanatical pursuit of gastronomic perfection and his TV persona – all of the things that made him the celebrated culinary talent and media powerhouse that he is today.

In Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen Ramsay talks frankly about his tough and emotional childhood, including his father’s alcoholism and violence and their effect on his relationships with his mother and siblings. His rootless upbringing saw him moving from house to house and town to town followed by the authorities and debtors as his father lurched from one failed job to another.

He recounts his short-circuited career as a soccer player, when he was signed by Scotland’s premier club at the age of fifteen but then, just two years later, dropped out when injury dashed his hopes. Ramsay searched for another vocation and, much to his father’s disgust, went into catering, which his father felt was meant for “poofs.”

He trained under some of the most famous and talented chefs in Europe, working to exacting standards and under extreme conditions that would sometimes erupt in physical violence. But he thrived, with his exquisite palate, incredible vision and relentless work ethic. Dish by dish, restaurant by restaurant, he gradually built a Michelin-starred empire.

A candid, eye-opening look into the extraordinary life and mind of an elite and unique restaurateur and chef, Roasting in Hell’s Kitchen will change your perception not only of Gordon Ramsay but of the world of cuisine.

4,776 pages to go … “I Am Charlotte Simmons”

“I Am Charlotte Simmons” by Tom Wolfe (688 pages) was my first Wolfe novel.

I really loved it. I loved his writing. I loved how he would describe things — even though it could be quite lengthy at times. I loved how he wouldn’t dance around big issues.

I loved all these things, but the end of the book was a letdown. A BIG letdown. Wolfe spends more than 600 pages building everything up and then like 50 tying everything together. He should have taken a little more time and finished it right.

I really began to hate the main character, too.

I think I should started with some of his earlier stuff, because from what people have told me this book is nowhere near his other novels.

Back of the book:

Dupont University–the Olympian halls of learning housing the cream of America’s youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition . . . Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from North Carolina. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that for the uppercrust coeds of Dupont, sex, Cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.

As Charlotte encounters Dupont’s privileged elite–her roommate, Beverly, a Groton-educated Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jojo Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont’s godlike basketball team, whose position is threatened by a hotshot black freshman from the projects; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose heady sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Geller, one of the Millennial Mutants who run the university’s “independent” newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavor on the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed campus — she gains a new, revelatory sense of her own power, that of her difference and of her very innocence, but little does she realize that she will act as a catalyst in all of their lives.

5,464 pages to go … “Resolution”

I really need to catch up on my posting, so the next few are going to be short and to the point.

“Resolution” by Robert B. Parker (292 pages) was a very quick read. I don’t usually read westerns, but I have read some Parker in the past and enjoyed it.

He does a really good job with dialogue — which is actually what most of the book is. You’ll love the main character. but I felt the book was too short. It is really predictable, but still a fun ride.

I didn’t know this at the time but these are characters that Parker is revisiting from a previous book. I think perhaps if I had read the first one, I would have gotten more out of this one.

Final decision: Read only if you love Robert B. Parker.

Back of the book:

I had an eight-gauge shotgun that I’d taken with me when I left Wells Fargo. It didn’t take too long for things to develop. I sat in the tall lookout chair in the back of the saloon with the shotgun in my lap for two peaceful nights. On my third night it was different. I could almost smell trouble beginning to cook.

After the bloody confrontation in Appaloosa, Everett Hitch heads into the afternoon sun and ends up in Resolution, an Old West town so new the dust has yet to settle. It’s the kind of town that doesn’t have much in the way of commerce, except for a handful of saloons and some houses of ill repute.  Hitch takes a job as a lookout at Amos Wolfson’s Blackfoot Saloon and quickly establishes his position as protector of the ladies who work the back rooms–as well as a man unafraid to stand up to the enforcer sent down from the O’Malley copper mine.

Though Hitch makes short work of hired gun Koy Wickman, tensions continue to mount, so that even the self-assured Hitch is relieved by the arrival in town of his friend Virgil Cole. When greedy mine owner Eamon O’Malley threatens the loose coalition of local ranchers and starts buying up Resolution’s few businesses, Hitch and Cole find themselves in the middle of a makeshift war between O’Malley’s men and the ranchers. In a place where law and order don’t exist, Hitch and Cole must make their own, guided by their sense of duty, honor, and friendship.

5,756 pages to go … “Hunger Games” & “Catching Fire”

“Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins (374 pages) was a great surprise! It’s a fast-paced, intriguing page-turner and “Catching Fire” (391 pages), the sequel to “Hunger,” is just as good.

When I first heard the plot, I thought ,”Well, it’s already been done. It’s called ‘Battle Royale.'” But it actually turned out to be so much more.

The protagonist is actually likable and her romantic interests are actually likable. This is the first book in a while that I haven’t hated everyone I wasn’t supposed to. It was refreshing to finally hate the bad guys and like the good guys.

Oh, and the twists that I didn’t see coming. (That doesn’t happen very often.)

Be prepared for cliff-hangers for endings though. Collins does pick up right where she left, so at least you don’t have to slog through a ton of recapping. If you find that you are enjoying the first one, go ahead and buy the second one. I didn’t and as soon as I finished the first one I had to spend precious time looking for the second one! Don’t wait like I did. You’ll thank yourself later.

Go read these now! Or wait until Aug. 24 when the third book of the trilogy, “Mockingjay” will be out, because … well, take my word for it, it will just be better that way.

Back of “Hunger Games”:

Twenty-four are forced to enter. Only the winner survives.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Each year, the districts are forced by the Capitol to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal and terrifying fight to the death – televised for all of Panem to see.

Survival is second nature for sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who struggles to feed her mother and younger sister by secretly hunting and gathering beyond the fences of District 12. When Katniss steps in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, she knows it may be her death sentence. If she is to survive, she must weigh survival against humanity and life against love.