Introverted Reader

Nightshade by Andrea Cremer: Book Review

Calla Tor is the alpha of her teen Guardian (werewolf) pack. She knows the rules and she enforces them. So why does she break them multiple times in one day by saving a normal teenage boy and letting him see her shift? And why are her masters, the Keepers, so interested in this same guy? Oh, I'm torn on rating this one! On the one hand, I tore through it, eagerly waiting to see what was going to happen with Calla, Shay, and Ren. On the other hand, I'm tired of teenage love triangles, and I'm really, really sick of cliffhangers. I liked Calla as a protagonist, but I can't say that I bought her as an alpha personality. We're told that she's an alpha, but we only see her at a time when she's starting to question everything she knows about her life. That leaves her a little insecure. Maybe I'm just thinking that alpha=bitch (Hee hee! It should in a werewolf!), but she doesn't seem to have a whole lot of control over her pack. She's pretty clueless about what they get up to. Her younger brother knows more about their lives than she does. That's not the sign of a great leader. Shay and Ren were great, but they were almost interchangeable to me. Calla lusted after them both, they both lusted after her, they both constantly challenged her, but I didn't see her offering a whole lot of challenge in return. They were both able to convince her to do what they wanted pretty easily. I liked them both, so I can't come out as Team Ren or Team Shay. I'm kind of left thinking that if she feels so similarly about both of them, neither of them should be the guy for her. I got…

Juliet by Anne Fortier: Book Review

Julie Jacobs is stunned the day she finds out that her great-aunt Rose, who raised her and her twin sister Janice, has died. She's even more surprised when she finds out at the funeral that her real name is Giulietta Tolomei and Rose wanted her to go back to Siena, where she was born, and find a treasure that her mother left for her in a safety deposit box. Of course things are never that easy in real life or in fiction. Julie is soon in the middle of a treasure hunt, being pursued by ruthless treasure hunters, and wrapped up in the long ago story of Romeo and Juliet. Overall, I just loved this. It was full of excitement and suspense and romance and Italian scenery and Siena and gelato, and just so much Italian life. What's not to love? There are two different storylines, that of Julie in the present and Romeo and Juliet in 1340. Shakespeare got the bare bones right, but the details are quite a bit different, let me tell you. The biggest change is that their story takes place in Siena rather than Verona. I loved the descriptions of the city, and I especially loved that the author worked in il palio, a famous, highly-competitive horse race Romeo rides in. Just so much excitement! He's a hero to win any girl's heart! Julie in her own past was very irritating. Her sole purpose in life was to be the exact opposite of her twin, even if she managed to hurt herself in the process. She comes into her own in Italy though, and starts to finally get over it. There, I mostly liked her. She's developing a spine and she's not too guilty of being the stupid girl who does everything wrong. I was…

Introverted Reader Features

Robert Neville: Character Connection

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday. Vincent Price in the 1964 movie adaptation I Am Legend by Richard Matheson is a classic of the horror genre for a reason. For me, that reason is Robert Neville. He is the last real man living in a world that has been decimated by a disease that turns everyone into a vampire. Even animals have been hit by the disease. I'm going to cheat a little here and paste my review. Robert Neville is this novella for me, and my entire review is about his character. I would definitely call I Am Legend a horror book, but not exactly for the reason that I expected. There are the vampires, and there are a couple of intense scenes with them, but that wasn't what made the book scary to me. It was more about the absolute aloneness that Neville experiences. He truly is the last man in the world. How would you deal with that? Would you…

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October 14, 2010

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson: Book Review

In the interest of avoiding spoilers for the second book, I'll just say that this picks up immediately after that awful cliffhanger of an ending in The Girl Who Played With Fire. So much has been said that I don't feel like I have a whole lot more to contribute. I (mostly) raced through the book, frantic to find out how big this conspiracy was, how far they would go, whether or not they would finally get caught, and how it would all go down. Salander wasn't quite as large a figure in this one, for obvious reasons if you've been reading the trilogy, so I missed her. She was still the same old inscrutable, fascinating Salander in the parts she was in. She's growing though. I wish Larsson had been able to write more books about her so we could see how she ultimately turns out. Three things bothered me. One was the setup of Salander's initial location. Vague enough? That would never happen here in the US. Not where I work anyway. Can you say armed guards (at the least) and different floors? So I'm left wondering if Larsson took an easy way out to steer the book where he wanted it to go or if Sweden is that different. Surely not. At the very beginning, there's a whole lot of telling and not much showing. We're told what Blomqvist and the police got up to in the few hours immediately after the end of the second book. Why not just write that part as actual scenes happening in real time? It probably wouldn't have taken up much more space and there was certainly enough happening to have kept my attention. I have had a problem with the amount of detail Larsson includes throughout the entire series. This…

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly: Book Review

Andi has pretty much hit rock bottom and kept falling. She's a gifted musician and student, but her younger brother's death has sent her into a destructive downward spiral. When her mostly-absent father finds out that she's in danger of flunking out of school, he hauls her off to Paris with him for winter break, in order to monitor her progress on her all-important senior thesis. When Andi finds Alexandrine's diary, she feels an instant connection to this young woman from another time. Alexandrine was a born player, or actress, living during the French Revolution. Will Alexandrine's diary help Andi with her own problems or will they make them worse? The biggest thing that stands out to me is the one drawback I found in the novel. The set-up showing exactly how bad Andi's life has gotten lasted about twice as long as I had the patience for. That's an entirely personal thing, so don't let me dissuade you from reading this book based on that alone. I have a low tolerance for "the earth is a black pit of despair" attitudes and that's where Andi is at the beginning and periodically throughout the book. I won't deny that she had ample reason to feel that way, I'll even admit that I would probably feel the same, but as a reader, it just went on too long for me. On to the good stuff. I just love Donnelly's writing. I read A Northern Light last summer and it immediately became one of my favorite books. There's just an unnameable beauty or grace to it that shines through, even when she's describing this dark, dark period of Andi's life. There's a lot going on in this story. There's guilt, grief, family problems, mental illness, following your dreams and not selling out,…

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz: Book Review

Oscar Wao is a loser. There's really no kind way to put it. But it might not be entirely his fault. His family is from the Dominican Republic, where the evil dictator Trujillo held sway for an unbelievable amount of time. Oscar's family fell into Trujillo's bad graces way back in the day and they haven't really been happy since. Everyone believes Trujillo laid a fukú, or curse, on the family forever. Everybody knows at least one Oscar. You know the type. The geek/nerd who loves all things sci-fi/fantasy. The one who's desperate to fit in. The one who doesn't understand why he doesn't fit in. The one who breaks your heart as you watch him trying to fit in by doing all those things that keep him from fitting in in the first place. Yeah, you know exactly who I'm talking about. How many faces just flashed through your mind? Oscar was a heart-breaker when he was seven but he lost his mojo. Now he breaks the reader's heart. I wanted so badly for just one thing to go Oscar's way. Everybody deserves a break, right? Well, this is the real world, and sometimes it just doesn't happen. But Oscar does learn some things on his brief, wondrous journey, and while I might not applaud his choices, I can understand them. The story was a little hard to get through. We dip into Oscar's life, his sister's life, his mother's life, and his grandfather's life. The parts in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo were pretty brutal, but necessary to understand where this family was coming from. The narrator is Oscar's college roommate. He's a fast-talking, wise-cracking, womanizing smartass. I loved him. It read like he was telling me the story instead of having me read it. He's funny, he's…

Introverted Reader Features

Victor Frankenstein: Character Connection

Don’t you just love larger-than-life characters? The ones who jump off the page and grab you? Whether you love them or hate them, you can't be indifferent to them. I would love to know about the characters who just won’t leave you! Most of you will probably post about how much you love (or loathe) each character, but this is a great place for the more creative ones among you to let go and have fun! Write yourself into a scene with Anne and Diana. Write a love poem in elvish for Aragorn. Draw a picture of Harry obliterating Voldemort. The possibilities are endless. Be sure to post the book's title and author, and be very careful not to give away spoilers while talking about how much you love your characters. Mr. Linky will be posted here on The Introverted Reader every Thursday. It's the first Thursday in October and I am excited! I don't know why; I don't deal well with intense horror. Oh, I can read me some Stephen King and Dean Koontz and (mostly) sleep well afterward, but you won't catch me watching any Saw movies. *shudder* I don't know if I would ever sleep again after watching one of those. Anyway, I'm excited to bring you a character from a classic horror novel! Victor Frankenstein. Oh my gosh, I loathed him. From my review (which I am inordinately fond of): "A more self-absorbed, self-indulgent, self-explicatory character I hope to never meet." Start spouting excuses for your bad behavior and you have lost me completely. And Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one long excuse, from both the creator and the monster. Victor is super-intelligent, but he gets crazy-obsessed with life and death. So he decides to combat death. And he wins. Nowhere along the way does he stop…

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October 7, 2010

The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez: Book Review

Lucía Álvarez is your typical teenage girl. She has a crush on cute Manuel, she and her best friend Ivette are interested in all the latest fashions and movies, and she's trying to fit in at school. So when Fidel Castro cancels classes, her only thought is enjoying her unexpected freedom. She slowly realizes how dangerous things are becoming in her country. Finally, her parents break the news that Lucía and her younger brother Frankie are being sent to America, where they don't know anyone, all alone. My father-in-law is Cuban and he was about Lucía's age when he left Cuba on one of the so-called Pedro Pan flights. He was fortunate to have family waiting for him in America. Because of him, I am fascinated by this country's history. To think that my father-in-law lived through a revolution and is part of a community that still in large part considers themselves to be exiles 50 years later. It just blows my mind. So when I came across this book, I knew I had to read it. I loved it. It works precisely because Lucía is the girl next door. There's nothing that really stands out about her, and I don't mean that in a bad way at all. She's a nice girl just trying to grow up and worrying about her first dance. Most of us can probably relate. As the revolution insidiously intrudes on her life, she is horrified and terrified. She sees things that no 14-year-old girl should see. And then she's in America alone with her seven-year-old brother. She speaks very little English and doesn't know anyone. So now there's the immigrant experience as she learns about a new culture and new people and tries her best to fit in at a new school. And she's…

The Titan’s Curse by Rick Riordan: Book Review

Annabeth and the goddess Artemis are missing. Percy, Thalia, and Grover embark on a quest to find them before the winter solstice, just a few days away. Artemis is needed to vote at a meeting of the gods about the Titan issue. And well, Annabeth is Annabeth, and her friends are worried about her. I've waited too long to write this review! I hate it when that happens! This is another page turner in the Percy Jackson series, and it took lots of twists and turns that I did not see coming. I loved getting to know Thalia better. I had figured out some basic things about her, just knowing her background, but getting to see her in action was great! She and Percy are a little too much alike to click together well, but they're still friends and they still look out for each other. Annabeth was largely absent though, and I did miss her a lot. There is some setup for the rest of the series, and I am curious to see where all this is going. Oh, and the monster everyone is worried about? What a shocker that was! Highly recommended for fans of the series, and everyone should be a fan of this series!

Bookish Miscellany

“Mom Let Me Decide For Myself”: Banned Books Week Guest Post

Today wraps up Banned Books Week. I have to admit that I was a little stumped for something to write. I feel like I've said everything I wanted to say with my opinion piece last week. I didn't want to post more reviews. Staring at my computer screen and the cursor blinking insistently back at me from an empty text box, I remembered that my 12-year-old cousin had contacted me about that post. She agreed with it wholeheartedly. (Thanks again, Em!) Anyway, I thought she might want to have her own say about the banning of books. So often the innocence of the children is used as an excuse for book banning, I thought one of those children pre-teens (Where does the time go?) might welcome the chance to speak for herself. And then I thought her mom might want to say something too. I asked them and they very graciously agreed to save my skin write a little something for us. So, please welcome Emily and Donna to my blog! I love what they had to say! 12-Year-Old Emily's Post: At school we've been going to the library to study banned books week and some of the books that had been challenged from our library, and there was at least 50 of them. At least half of them I had either heard of or read, and most of them were very good books. I don't get why people want to ban books, but I know it's just because they're afraid. Afraid to go out and explore the world and find out what's really there- including death. They're fooling themselves by saying “oh, the world is just rainbows and blue sky all the time. Why would I want to read a book where somebody dies? Why would anyone? In fact,…

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October 2, 2010