I finally did it. I finally read something all my customers were reading. I haven’t read Harry Potter (yet, it’s next on my list finally), I won’t waste brain cells on Twilight, and I’m just not into The Hunger Games (though I did see the movie and it was decently good).
Fifty Shades of Grey was the adult ‘everyone has to read this book’. The plot intrigued me, so I decided to give it a shot. I’ve heard mixed reviews. People saying it’s crap give one opinion, the 100+ copies my store has sold and its spot on the bestseller lists gives another.
I myself was very pleasantly surprised. It will never be the next Great American Novel or still be hot in five years (I give it time for the movies to come out aka Hunger Games). But it was fun. For getting its start as Twilight fanfiction, it far surpassed its predecessor in quality.
First of all, I can’t see Christian Grey as Edward at all. He is jealous, domineering, and won’t take no for an answer, but above all is sensible and independent. He wouldn’t go get himself killed because he believed Anastasia had died. Granted, he would go into some kind of rage.
I really liked the characters and how they were written. Anastasia was believable in my opinion. Yes, her ‘inner goddess’ and her ‘conscience’ got a little tiring after a while, but in her situation, I don’t know if anyone would act differently. She came across realistic, innocent and confused and intrigued, as anyone in her situation would be when confronted with one such as Christian Grey.
The book isn’t for everyone. I’m not a huge fan of the hot romance genre, and this book was very descriptive. It’s been interesting for a book of that genre to become as popular as it’s become. The open ending made it impossible to stop reading at book 1 and I’ll be reading the second one as soon as possible.
A writer, Carrie McClelland, moves to Scotland to revive her manuscript and finds more than she ever imagined. Her novel on the Jacobite Rebellion of 1708 has a mainly male cast so her agent suggests adding a woman into the mix. Carrie grabs her ancestor, Sophia, and throws her into the plot. Then Sophia starts speaking.
At first Carrie is delighted that her writing is going so well, until she realizes that Sophia is telling her things that she couldn’t know with just her research. The story takes on a life of its own as Carrie’s own love life gets a jolt by two brothers competing for her attention.
Carrie finds out more about her own ancestry as her book gets underway, and Sophia gets an ending no one would expect.
This is the most beautiful book written recently that I’ve ever read. It took my breath away with some of its passages and how the author seamlessly wove in the two strands of Carrie and Sophia. After reading some of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series before this one, it has made me long to visit Scotland and see its beauty myself. If you’re looking for beauty and escapism or just a plain good story, look no further. I found this for a bargain on my Nook but I plan to buy a paper copy as soon as possible.
There are girls you’ll find in your sociology class, with Abercrombie shirts and flat iron hair and a lot of mascara. There are girls who wear sweatpants and uggs, on their way to field hockey practice or who can tell you who won the world cup last summer. There are…
It’s been a while since I reviewed anything but I’ve been reading a ton. Working in a bookstore, I keep up with what is new and coming soon. I saw this book online and had to order it for my store so I could get my hands on it. I was not disappointed.
Del is your typical seventeen-year-old boy. Except the fact that he won’t be accepted to any college he applies to. Or the fact that his closest friend is a female parrot named Fred. Or the fact that he digs graves for a job. He doesn’t have a cell phone and can’t go online. He also has to register as a sex offender. But he didn’t do anything wrong…or did he?
At fourteen, his only crime was loving a thirteen-year-old. They didn’t want sex, weren’t that interested in hooking up. Only…curious. She sent him a picture and he sent one in return. After a teacher confiscated his phone, his life was changed forever. Because she was a few months younger, he was charged with rape of a minor for only touching and possession of child pornography.
Now, Del is not far from eighteen, when his record gets sealed and he’s off probation. He has a good job, nice boss, understanding parents, and a new girlfriend, who doesn’t know what happened to him. He’s legally obligated to tell her before anything happens.
He’s just trying to exist and get through life but trouble follows him. In my opinion, Del is a sympathetic character. You feel sorry for his lot in life for doing things a lot of teenagers do. He just happened to get caught. The ending was pretty unexpected but you feel like he’s going to be okay. He gets by.
There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again; and blessed are they above mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that dear country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.
You guys know about vampires? … You know, vampires have no reflections in a mirror? There’s this idea that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. And what I’ve always thought isn’t that monsters don’t have reflections in a mirror. It’s that if you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves. And growing up, I felt like a monster in some ways. I didn’t see myself reflected at all. I was like, “Yo, is something wrong with me? That the whole society seems to think that people like me don’t exist? And part of what inspired me, was this deep desire that before I died, I would make a couple of mirrors. That I would make some mirrors so that kids like me might seem themselves reflected back and might not feel so monstrous for it.
