Books of substance? Step aside!

It's obvious to me that I have no interest in books with any sort of body to them lately.  Let's just call it a phase, ok?  I recently jumped on the lady-porn bandwagon and read the 50 Shades series by E.L.James.  I would like to write a critique of these books, but, to be utterly honest, I don't know how.  I didn't like them...but I somewhat enjoyed them.  Ahem.  The first was probably my favorite (though "favorite" seems a bit strong).  The second was terribly vapid, and the third was a skim up until the final quarter which actually became interesting.  A friend of mine was reading them as well and made comment about how many times Ms. James used the word "murmur".  I (foolishly) made a bet that "growl" was more frequent.  Sadly I lost BIG time.  I used my handy-dandy e-reader to do a search on both words in books 1 and 2.  Fifty Shades of Grey had 21instances of "growl" and 196 instances of "murmur".  Damn.  Book 2, Fifty Shades Darker had a mere 13 "growls" and a whopping 279 "murmurs".  At times the word "murmur" showed up 3 times on a page!  We collectively decided the author used "murmur" and "said" interchangeably.  I was going to count them up in book 3, Fifty Shades Freed, but I got bored.  Anyway, they're descriptive, moderately pornographic, and basically a ramped-up Harlequin.  What I found interesting about these books is that they were written as a form of fan-fiction for the Twilight books.  I guess, had there been vampires, they would have been an adult version of what might have happened... but there were quite a lot of similarities in the main characters and their utterly unhealthy relationships.  Anyway...take it for what it is...lady-porn. 
After that I was attempting to read something with more substance, but apparently I had unhealthy relationships and Twilight on the brain, so I downloaded a pdf of Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyer.  This volume is unpublished and unfinished.  Ms Meyer was working on it and it was leaked, so she quit writing.  Apparently there were a number of different copies floating around, so she released one in pdf format on her webpage so that there was at least some consistency.  It's the story from the first Twilight novel, but told from Edward's perspective.  I don't really have anything to say about it other than it was very much in keeping with the others and probably would have sold like hotcakes had she finished it and published it.  Not that it was particularly good, but the twi-hards would have gone absolutely nuts for another volume. 
Somewhere in there I also took an afternoon to read Christopher Moore's The Griff, a graphic novel.  A little known fact about me: I like comics and I especially like graphic novels.  They're dandy.  I had been meaning to read this one for a while but had to order it from chapters as it is a touch too obscure to be readily available in store.  So, when it came in I spent the afternoon sitting on the deck reading.  It's a story of an alien invasion of winged lizard type creatures.  They come to earth, destroy just about everyone and everyone and a group of survivors have to manage to...well...survive.   It was a decent storyline and the artwork was well done.  Plus, it was peppered with the fun dialogue that Christopher Moore is known for.
What am I going to read next?  Hard to say...I have a number of great books at my disposal, and a number of books that I'm really interested to read...I just don't know if I'm over my "nothing but fluff" phase.

Back to Reading like a Fiend

After finishing the Hunger Games trilogy I swooped onto J. Maarten Troost's second book Getting Stoned with Savages.  I was hoping for some more laugh-out-loud writing...like Sex Lives but, well, MORE.  I was, sadly, disappointed. Getting Stoned was funny, and Troost's writing had the same tongue-in-cheek-sort-of-ironic tone that I so enjoyed, but the stories just didn't strike me in the same way.  I don't know that I would recommend it, either.  I tried his third book, Lost on Planet China and I remain halfway through.  I'm not sure that I will get past the halfway through marker.Once I finished Getting Stoned  and gave up on Planet China, I picked up a much anticipated book.  Jenny Lawson's (aka, the Bloggess) Let's Pretend this Never Happened.  This book was literally the funniest book I've read in...well....a really really long time.  I haven't laughed out loud that hard and long since reading Sh*t My Dad Says,  and, frankly, I think Let's Pretend is funnier.  I tried reading some of it to Brad and found myself laughing so hard I couldn't finish the sentences.  Her outlook on life is so amazingly offbeat and her writing style make me want to be her best friend.  (seriously, Jenny, if you read this, call me!). 
I was sad to finish Let's Pretend, so I moved on to some teen fiction.  I started Maggie Steifvater's Lament on Wednesday, Finished it on Friday, started the sequel Ballad on Friday and finished it today (Sunday). 
These stories, about musical genius teens who are able to see and interact with the Faerie world.  Obviously, the fey are troublesome and manipulative and the teens have to be brave and save themselves while getting really tangled in love affairs with members of the faerie community.  Granted, this is definitely teen fiction, but I've really enjoyed the stories.
Finally I read The Giver by Lois Lowry.  This is actually a book I read in grade 9 (yikes) but my friends and I were talking about books we liked in highschool and I remembered enjoying it but I couldn't remember much about it, so I took it out from the library online and read it today.  Still just as good as I remembered.   The book is about a 12 year old in a futuristic world who is given his "assignment" for the rest of his life to be the "receiver" of the memories of all of the world so the society doesn't need to know or deal with them. 
Moving on...well, I'm not sure what I'll move on to next!  Thinking maybe the fifty Shades of Grey series.

Catching Up on my Books

Blogger was giving me troubles before Christmas so I put the updates on my book blog on hold (and fought it out with my personal blog to get some minor updates posted).  Now that it seems to be working fine again, I can finally catch up on my book review blogging.  The only problem is that I can't recall which order I read these books in!  So, I guess I'll just throw them out there with the thoughts I remember.
The Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowpa was a well written story.  It follows the story of an adopted Indian girl, the family that adopts her and the family that gave her up.  Definitely emotional, and I was fascinated by the culture and that the timeline was current.  While I know many cultures still value male children over females, it's still somewhat shocking to read about that scenario in a
present-day story.
I also picked up The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.  I have read a couple of Dan Brown's books and have been happy with them.  I didn't care for Angels and Demons though (and didn't finish it, to be honest), so I wasn't entirely sure about trying a third Robert Langdon book, but this was very good.  I enjoyed it as much as the Da Vinci Code.  Several times I found myself sitting up late at night just trying to find a place that wasn't gripping so I could put it down and go to bed.  Gripping and very interesting.  Excellent story telling, thrilling plot, exciting conclusion and fascinating topic.
The last of the three books i read in 2011 (though not necessarily in that order) was the Family Fang by Kevin Wilson.  This is the story of the two grown children of a pair of performance artists who stage events that send those around them into chaos.  The two kids, often referred to as Child A and Child B are (obviously) dysfunctional and the story centers around the two trying to figure out their parents' mysterious disappearance.  Each chapter ends with a description of event that the group has done in the past.  It was very very odd, but I entirely enjoyed it.
I attempted to read the Scottish Prisoner by Diana Gabaldon; the latest of the Lord John Grey books...but to be honest,  I lost interest and just don't care.  I want her to finish the Outlander series.  Then write more Lord John books, if she must, but let's finish one thing at a time.
This year on vacation I ripped through three books.
My reading started with a recommendation from a friend of mine; The Sex Lives of Cannibals I  by J. Maarten Troost.  Absolutely the funniest book I've read in a long time.  The story is based on a portion of the author's life in which he moves wit hhis girlfriend to Kiribati, a small atoll in the equatorial Pacific.  The culture shock (the locals love the Macarena), environmental shock ("did I mention it's hot?"), and societal shock are written in such a fantastically entertaining way, I repeatedly was reading out loud to Brad - without asking if he was actually interested in me reading to him, but he seemed entertained, so that's always a good sign, right?  Absolutely a recommend for me1
I moved on to the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  In case you have been living under a rock with your fingers in your ears, humming to yourself, you have probably heard about the Hunger Games.  The trilogy takes place in a post apocalyptic country where the Capitol (read: evil dictatorship) punishes the people of the 12 Districts for their uprising 74 years ago by sending 24 teens to an arena once a year to fight to the death.  Pretty gruesome topic for teen literature, if you ask me.  I did enjoy the first one and read it in about a day.  The second book, Catching Fire follows the main characters as the districts start to revolt against the Capitol, and the third, Mockingjay, finishes off the revolution.  While it only took me a day to finish, I found book 2 to be fairly predictable and somewhat contrived.  The third book was just plain old boring for the first two thirds and took me just about a week to read.  The final third, however, became so utterly exciting though that I stayed up until 1 in the morning finishing it; literally huddled under the covers with a book light so that Brad, who was sleeping, wouldn't wake up, look at the clock and tell me to go to sleep (party pooper).  I found a lot of the imagery to be disturbing, though this could be because I have a pretty decent imagination.  I'm actually on the fence about whether i would recommend these books or not. I  think because they;re such an easy read, I would say yes.  Also, because the movies are coming out and I have a feeling that those who saw the first one without reading the book missed out on a lot of the subtler details and things that just couldn't be included.  But I suppose that's basically always the case with a book-to-movie transition.
Next on the list is another book by J. Maarten Troost, Getting Stoned with Savages.  VERY excited!!