book 15

charity girl, michael lowenthal
rating:


okay, i lied. i had a flu relapse last night, which meant that i couldn't go see music & lyrics as planned (hey, i like hugh grant, okay?). so instead, i read this book, which i saw at barnes & noble a few weeks ago and found intriguing. my library got a copy the other day, so i checked it out. basically it's about frieda mintz, who has a one-day fling with a solider (it's 1917 or 18) who might be about to ship out to europe. from their encounter, she contracts a few "social diseases" and is essentially placed in this detention center with a bunch of other girls, in the name of keeping the soldiers protected from VD. lots of interesting historical details, and apparently this sort of thing actually happened, so that's educational. but it started out a bit on the slow side for me. still, overall i thought it was a good read.

okay, now i REALLY have to buckle down.

books 13 & 14

infernal devices, philip reeve
rating:


i feel like i can't really describe this without giving away plot points from the preceding books in the series. now having read the entire series, i think that this, the third book, is the best.

a darkling plain, philip reeve
rating:


the finale. very intense. also, very long. and good.


i'm getting over a nasty flu and i'm about to hunker down and finish a lot of neglected schoolwork. i've got a big fat stack of appealing-looking books to read, but sadly, i think they'll mostly have to wait. at least until i have secured gainful employment. which will hopefully happen at some point between now and graduation.

books 11 & 12

predator's gold, philip reeve
rating:


second in the series. more crazy future adventure. more hungry cities and a wunderklammer. i'd hate to say more and spoil anything.

about alice, calvin trillin
rating:


i debated with myself about counting this as a book. it's hard to know, really, because it's only 80 pages, but it packs a big punch. if you're not familiar with calvin trillin, he's a super great writer who has done lots of different kinds of essay writing. prominently featured in my of his books is his wife, alice, who died in 2001. the first book he published after her death had the best love-related book dedication i've ever read -- "I wrote this for Alice. Actually, I wrote everything for Alice." so this is a little slip of a book that's sort of a memoir of their relationship, and it's really well done. i read several chapters more than once (one way i'm justifying counting it as a full book) and i laughed AND cried. it's really a lovely tribute. if you've got a free hour, you might want to pick this up.

book 10

mortal engines, philip reeve
rating:


this is the first of four books in reeve's hungry city chronicles series. matt's been trying to get me to read these for months, and i've been resistant, but i finally decided to give it a try. and i'm glad i did, because this book is phenomenal. i've been trying to play it cool at home so that matt won't know how much i liked it, but here i can gush. so, it's pretty much about a time way in the future, when things have gone to municipal darwinism. i.e., towns and cities are on wheels and they eat each other. seriously. my favorite repeated line in this book is "it's a town eat town world." anyway. tom is a third class apprentice in london who gets his mind TOTALLY BLOWN and finds out that things aren't quite what they seem when he meets hester, a girl about his age who is horribly disfigured facewise as a result of a run-in with valentine, london's golden boy and tom's hero. the story starts in london but tom and hester travel all over the place. excellent book. i'm on the second in the series now.

jackie asked me to include genres in my reviews, so this one is a young adult sci-fi/fantasy type of thing.

i've let myself go: books 7, 8, 9

popco, scarlett thomas
rating:


i actually finished this over a week ago so i don't have a lot to say about it now. alice is a creative for a british toy company called popco, and she suddenly starts receiving encoded messages while at a business retreat. i should say that she's really into codes and things... her grandfather was a big cryptanalyst. anyway, very entertaining, though i wasn't a big fan of the end and it also took me forever to read it.

londonstani, gautam malkani
rating:
ABSOLUTELY ZERO ROBOTS.

i am so angry about this book that i can't even really talk about it.

let the northern lights erase your name, vendela vida
rating:


this was a nice, quick read. it helped cleanse my palate a bit after my HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE WITH LONDONSTANI. anyway. clarissa's dad dies, and she finds out that he wasn't her dad after all. uh oh. she decides to find her real father (her mother disappeared when she was a teenager), so she travels to an extra cold region of scandinavia, and things get even more confusing (but there's an ice hotel, so it's all okay). i didn't particularly like or dislike the main character, but i found myself somewhat surprised by the ending, which was pretty refreshing.