I failed as a goodreads reviewer on this one. I read Captain Marvel, Volume 2: Down, but I failed to write a review. I remember the story and the art from the issue but for whatever reason, I did not write a review of this comic. I’ve been a fan of Captain Marvel for years. She is very straightforward and wants to do the right thing. She doesn’t seem to have an evil streak or anything sinisterly wrong with her like some other comic book heroes.
This comic had an interesting story where Captain Marvel meets with someone from her past and manages to get them fired up again. I think it also has a positive effect on the Captain as well. The artwork is perhaps the best of the Captain Marvels that I have read.
The Divide by Matt Taibbi will make you think. It will humble you. It will open your eyes to the other side of America. The side most of us hardly ever see and also the side that many of us won’t want to acknowledge. Reading The Divide lead me to read other books like it that depict the other side of America. Those people truly struggling to make ends meet every week. The Divide made me feel lucky to have the life that was given to me. My family had the money to give me an education and that education has to lead to a safe and happy life for myself and my family.
This book made me appreciate the things I have. It also made me realize a lot of the things I have I don’t need, much like The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
After reading Tidying Up, I made some changes. The Divide has helped me see that many of the changes I made could be much more profound. I can give up a lot more than what I have. In other words, I can do a lot more than re-organizing my shirt drawer. I gave this book three stars because I think the point could have been driven home in a much shorter way.
This review may suffer from my delay in writing it. I know what this sounds like but this is another 5-star book. Alight is the follow up of Alive by Scott Sigler. I can’t say enough about this book series. As I write this I’m checking goodreads to see when I read the third novel. I can’t believe I haven’t read the third book yet! This is frustrating because I had my next book to read already lined up, but I loved the first two books in the series SO much.
The storyline is original. Right there is something that is far too rare now. You are immediately invested in the characters. This is YA and I do find myself really enjoying these novels as a whole. I’m not aiming to find them or anything. They seem to find me and on the whole, I really enjoy them. The story in Alight is fast paced and keeps you coming back for more. When you have to put this book down it is disappointing and you can’t wait to come back to it. The story has twist and turns. There are love triangles. There are baddies that are mysterious. So far its kind of like reading a LOST series.
Alight is 448 pages, but it moves incredibly fast. If you liked the first book, Alive, you will love the follow-up. If you haven’t read Alive yet, go back and read my review of that and then go read the book!
I’ve seen some of what the author, Felicia Day has done as far as the creation of content on the Internet and I’ve seen her featured as a guest on a lot of Internet shows like Twit and the like, but I never really knew her. She seems to be pretty similar to me. She seems pretty geeky. After reading You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) I can vouch for her geekiness! Actually, I think she has much more geek credibility than myself. She wrote a very entertaining biography. If you are a geek I think you will enjoy this book, she is also very funny!
I enjoyed listening to this book on audio from Overdrive a service that my local public library pays for. And one that I enthusiastically take advantage of. Ms. Day reads this audiobook herself. Which I love. Not many authors do this anymore. I feel as though you really get the whole idea of what the author is meant to be getting across to you. It is read as it should be in otherworldly because the author is reading it. No room for misinterpretation. I gave this audiobook 4 out of 5 stars. A very high rating for me. Almost nothing I read gets 5 starts. Maybe 2 or 3 books a year maximum will get a 5-star rating from me.
I never need an excuse to read a Star Wars novel! Reading Tarkin by James Luceno was interesting because I learned more about the Star Wars universe as Disney sees it. I always enjoy learning more about the characters that we have all learned to love and grown close too since the first movies came out when I was a child. It was a good enough story, but it centered wholly on a character that I never really cared for. Not that they sold it as anything else since I mean the title is pretty explicit, it’s just that I don’t think anyone really cared too much about this character but here is a whole novel about him. I’m a little lost on what within this novel helped tell the story of the Star Wars universe. It is not a poorly written book, just a book that was written without anyone asking for it. I can’t recommend it but judged solely on it writing it is a good story if you care to read it. I gave this book three out of five stars, but I’m not sure it deserved it.
Cecilia Lyra published an interesting article on Book Riot yesterday. Many of you may have read it since it is making the rounds in book circles. The article, The Perilous Process of Rating Books on Goodreads, talks about the difficulties of rating books that you don’t finish. Are you allowed? What does the rest of the Goodreads community have to say about this? She doesn’t rate all the books that she reads.
I mark the books that I did not enjoy as Read without rating them
I take issue with this. This is the exact reason that goodreads exist, to rate books. If you don’t like it and you belong to the community you should rate it. But what about books that you really didn’t like. I mean so much that you didn’t even finish it. You didn’t read the whole thing so, should you rate it?
A book is meant to be judged in its entirety. It isn’t fair to read part of it and give it one star (or five). An argument can be easily made that it is a disservice to the Goodreads community to have overall ratings be compromised by readers who only partially read a given book. What if the book has a very satisfying ending?
So says “Charlie” a member of Cecilia’s book club when posed the question above. I can see where Charlie is coming from, but I would argue that if the book is so bad in the beginning that you just can’t bring yourself to finish it, then that is deserving of a rating. If I already know that this book has put a bad taste in my mouth after only say 50 pages, then why should I have to suffer through the rest. It’s going to put me off reading for a while. I’ll be afraid to pick up another bomb like that book.
We already know we didn’t like it: after all, we did give up on it. Besides, Goodreads may be an online community, but it provides its users with customized recommendations. And when we give a book a one-star rating, we are sending the Goodreads algorithm a clear message: this book was awful. Brutal, but also useful.
I agree with “Jenny” who says the above, she is also in Cecilia’s book club. Plus as Cecilia mentions in the full posting, then I won’t get other books like this recommended to me.
Abandoned Books
I don’t give up on many books, but it does happen. My solution for this is to create a custom bookshelf called “abandoned”. This is my compromise. I get to rank a book I could not finish, but I will let you know that I didn’t complete the book by putting it on this shelf. This shelf is the worst of the worst. Marked read, given 1 star and put on the abandon self. Done and done.
Do you rate the books you don’t finish? Let me know below in the comments.
Yes, I’m a fan of Rick Riordan. Yes, I love YA novels and The Son of Neptune is no different. They are entertaining and I like to read them. Reading my short Goodreads review of this book reminds me of how much I love these novels. Lots of times I will listen to them on audio. They are fantastic and I love to be reminded of how much I enjoy them and that I need to get back to reading the series again. I believe this is as far as I am in this series. One book a year from the series is I guess what I average.
The last four chapters of this book are riveting and some truly great action-adventure writing. I still don’t know if this series is as strong as the first, but it is very good reading!
I hardly remember The Grownup by Gillian Flynn. It was a very short book, 64 pages. Amazon sells it as a Kindle Single. That’s not to say that it is not a good book. Some of the best books I’ve ever read are very short. This is a very good book and I can guarantee you will be riveted to it for the duration.
The short spoiler-free synopsis is a con artist meets her match and you get to know that character and the others in just 64 pages. Some authors have a whole book and still can’t get that done. For $2.99 as a Kindle Single, you really can’t go wrong with this. It made me want to further explore this author’s longer works. I received this book for free as part of my regular Book of the Month monthly delivery.
I really need to keep up this blog better. I hope to have more time to write this holiday break. I hope you and your family are having a wonderful holiday, however, you celebrate it (or don’t).
What can I say about this book? I picked up Wine Folly on a visit to my local library. They had it out on a random table display with other wine books. This one looked pretty good, so I grabbed it on an impulse borrow. I am glad I did. This is a kind of coffee table book or reference book at most. There is no story or narrative. There are a bunch of beautiful graphs and visualizations in this book. It goes over what the tastes for different wines are. It doesn’t compare them per se, but it does a good job getting a novice aquatinted with wines and the way they taste for all the different ones. It covers the most popular ones but doesn’t have everything. This would be best suited for those that are just starting out with wine and not something for someone who already knows a lot.
I’ve started to use this app called serial reader to help me tackle the very large War and Peace. So far it is helping a lot. It has broken up the tome into 235 segments. Each segment is about 10 to 15 minutes in reading time. If I can stick with it, I will be done with the book in less than a year at this rate. I’m currently around 62 segments read. That means that I am about 27% complete with the tome.
This new way of attacking the book seems to be working for me and I’m looking forward to checking it off my list and moving onto the next large tome.
