All the Books.

"A truly memorable, poignant picture painted of how it feels to be the outsider in a small town and how scary and exhilarating it can be to simply let yourself live your life without knowing what will be around the next bend." 5 Stars Pros:  Mary, is someone we can all relate to and the feeling of being trapped in a small town is all too familiar Cons: Near the end, it became just a "little" predictable but at the same time, it wasn't a bad thing. It left the ending open to so many possibilities that the touch of melodrama was necessary. Full Review:  Petroleum, Montana, is a dead town. It died the day, start Athlete, Edward Golden, was killed in an accident at the Grain elevator. The train that delivered the grain stopped coming and everything else eventually followed. Those who live in Petroleum are as ghostly and insubstantial as their once vibrant community. And one girl, Mary Crampton, feels just as insignificant and invisible as everyone else....

"A mildly amusing collection of satirical stories, some non-fiction, others fiction, wherein Sedaris lets the reader see what it is he thinks the Holidays are all about." 2 Stars Pros:  Quick read and some genuinely amusing stories Cons: I understand that the author is a satirist and so none of the stories should be taken seriously but, to be honest, I felt like he was condescending to me. It was a weird feeling to get it from a book and I just felt like I was too immature to "get" the humor. Full Review: A quick and mildly entertaining read from one of, if not, the, most well known satirists, David Sedaris. Holidays on Ice is part memoir and part fiction to create an odd but interesting concept of what the Holiday spirit really means. Some stories, like SantaLand Diaries, Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol and Jesus Shaves had some genuinely entertaining and amusing parts. Sedaris' re-telling of his time working as an Elf in a Departmen...

"A unique take on young adult science fiction that introduces a more metaphysical atmosphere into the whole, female heroine, only one strong enough to save the day, same old story. It was enjoyable but not a page turner." 3 Stars Pros: An interesting take on space travel/How the houses we're born into, our Astrological signs deem how we act, where we live etc/Hysan Dax was a likable character but at the same time, I'm not sure I can trust him. Cons: The love triangle/Rho being the only person powerful enough to fight Ochus/The constant disbelief of all the houses until finally they believe her/Female heroine blah, blah, blah, I think it reminded me too much of the "Divergent" Series by Veronica Roth and Tris was the most annoying heroine I've come across in a long, long time, so Rho's similarities, definitely got to me. Full Review:  Rhoma (Rho) Grace, a native of the planet of Cancer, is an acolyte training to become a Zodai, the royal gua...

"A brutally honest re-telling of the Holocaust and how amidst all the suffering, love was still possible." 3 Stars Pros: Based on true life events Cons: There way the story was told didn't convey what the characters were feeling, I felt it was too factual. Full Review:  Lale is a young, charming, successful man with his entire life ahead of him, that is, until he volunteers to be shipped off to Auschwitz in order to keep his family safe. His sacrifice his noble enough and as he begins to learn what life is like at the most infamous Concentration Camp, he is at least glad that he could spare his family this horror, or so he hopes. He is quickly sought out and given the assignment as the Tattoowierer, or the Tattooist, the man who tattoos the numbers onto the incoming prisoners. And though he hates it, hates inflicting pain on anyone, he dose what he must in order to survive. His days are cruel, laborious, gut wrenching and when he isn't forcing numbers into p...

"A brutal and unflinching look at what it means to be "different" and how sometimes, those who are oppressed will rise up and get their justice." 5 Stars Pros: The similarities between the segregation of the South in the 60s is strongly mirrored/All the main characters, plague generation or human, have their flaws but also their strengths and DiLouie does a good job of making them believable. The light parts are truly light while the dark parts are truly, truly dark. Cons: The dialect took some getting used to with the "you might could" and all that but other than that, there were no real cons. It was a great read. Full Review:  Set in the deep South in a small county in Georgia, right from the start, you can tell this book is different. Dog, a boy who more or less has the features of a Dog, is brought into the Principal's office at the "Home" where he lives (a place where others of his kind are kept) and is met with an Agent Shacklet...

"A suspenseful, visceral read that leaves the reader wondering, long after the book has ended, if what actually happened was the truth or just an extremely well fabricated lie.." 3 Stars Pros: An interesting premise, that the "four horsemen" of the apocalypse have chosen this "unique" family as a means to save the world. Cons: The way the characters spoke, their dialogue was just atrocious, so many "ums" and "yeahs" it just became infuriating. Full Review The book begin with Wen sitting in the front yard of a small cabin that she and her two Fathers (Erin and Andrew) own. She's catching grasshoppers and when a large man named Leonard comes and helps her catch some grasshoppers, they begin a conversation. But it soon turns dark, very, very dark as Leonard explains that she's going to have to go inside now, she's going to have to tell her Fathers that they will have to let Leonard and his friends in and that nothing th...

"Grotesque and gory, Tyson holds nothing back when recounting the many adventures of Alhazred that will become the Necronomicon. By the end of it though, everything is so typical and expected that it's a disappointment overall." 2 Stars Pros: Each page is rife with the atmosphere of  Lovecraftian Mythos. Though it's set in the desert, the reader can't help but feel the chill of the underwater city of R'yleh where Ctthullhu lies dreaming and other nightmarish places. Cons: This book is visceral and gruesome and pulls absolutely no punches. In the first two chapters Alhazred is tortured/disfigured and forced to do terrible things that I'm hesitant to mention in a review to the public; it was that gruesome. Full Review Abdullah, a beloved poet of the king of Yemen is cast out when his love affair with the princess is discovered after she suffers a miscarriage. Tortured and disfigured, kept prisoner and then banished, Abdullah is left to die in the des...