Tuesday, March 25, 2014

A Feast for Crows, by George R. R. Martin

I couldn't help myself. I had to read ahead. "Game of Thrones" Season 4 premieres in 12 days and I just couldn't wait any longer to see what the future holds for the denizens of Westeros. I'm trying to enjoy the HBO series and the books on their own merits. I'm having my cake and eating it, too.

The war is (mostly) over and our favorite characters have gone off in all directions. So many directions, in fact, that "A Feast for Crows" follows only a few of them: Arya, Jaime, Brienne, Sansa, Cersei, Sam, and puts us on more intimate terms with the inhabitants of Dorne and the Iron Islands. There is an author's foreword that explains why we're hearing only half the story, and promising the second half within a year or so. Instead, it was six years before the next book in the series, "A Dance with Dragons," was released.

I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in the GoT world with this book. My only complaint is that it ended too soon, even at 784 Kindle pages.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Divergent, by Veronica Roth

So it's after 2 a.m. and I just swiped past the last page of this book on my Kindle. It's been awhile since I stayed up to finish a book, but how can one go to sleep when the fate of a fictional free world is at stake? For the most part, I enjoyed reading "Divergent." There were times in the very beginning and the very end when the writing style seemed a little clunky, but the middle was pretty solid and that made me forgive (if not forget) the shaky parts. I know just enough about Chicago to "know" most of the landmarks and buildings in Tris' world, so that was a nice bonus for me. I'm looking forward to seeing the movie, whose trailers have matched my imagination so far, and to reading the next book in the series.

Monday, March 10, 2014

If Love Be Blind, by Emma Goldrick

If Love Be BlindWhat a gem. My sister recently came across this oldie but goodie in her "Harlequins-that-I-might-want-to-read-again" cache from the 1980s. She and a friend have been talking about its "so-bad-it's-good" qualities for so long I felt I had to read it. If this is what the ideal romance was supposed to be like in 1987, I am glad times have changed. There were definite jaw-dropping I-can't-believe-these-characters and THIS-was-romance-in-the-1980s??? moments, but in the end, I would rather have read the story of Penn's snow blindness than Philomena's humiliating journey from head of the typing pool to wife of the boss.