Book Review Time

Alright. In March I finally finished Towers of Midnight of The Wheel of Time. As I have said previously, I was really excited to finish the series because I was really excited about reading something else. Anything else. This is what I have done so far.

Hunger Games Trilogy
I didn't realize the first time through the first two books, but Katniss was pretty whiny. Then again, her life really sucked and I would be much whinier. As I remember the books, though, I just remember the story being really exciting and fun to read. All in all, B+.

House of Leaves
Wow. I will do an entire post about this one, that way this post doesn't drag too long.

The Road
The Road was very sad and intense which is to be expected when you read a post-apocalyptic story. The father and son relationship was very touching. It was a fast read, although, still, it was well written. I normally don't enjoy a sad book - actually, I'm not sure if that is true; I will think about it and get back on that - but I did enjoy this one. McCormack used the text to help the story, too. Not in that he just wrote the text, but visually, he used the text to help convey the broken world. No chapters, short segments in the story, some rules of grammar did not apply. I liked that a lot. A-.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
It was called a thriller, but I found that to not be true. It wasn't fast paced like a thriller, but it wasn't slow and didn't drag. It felt evenly paced, like a nice walk, for more than half of it and then it picked up a bit and about a hundred and fifty or so pages from the end, it flew. For about fifty pages. Then there was around a hundred pages of wrapping up. Which was pretty slow. I guess that's nice since the fast paced part was intense and ugly.
It dealt with a lot of ugly, actually. Sexual violence and the like. Not everyone will enjoy reading this book. But I liked it okay. I liked the Scandy feel to it, throughout, though. Which is why I read the next one, too.

The Girl Who Played with Fire
I enjoyed this one much more. I always like when the sequel improves on the first one. It dealt with more ugly   things, the sex trade, but not in the detail that the first one dealt with the ugly which I definitely appreciated. Never did the reader have a first hand experience with the drugging, prostitution, or rape; the story just formed around people involved with the trade and the journalists writing about it. It was also very smart. I am often pretty good at making calls in thrillers - admittedly, better at movies than books, but what are you gonna do - but I did not see how these pieces all fit together. I was very surprised which I loved. Shock. Quite satisfying.
I wish I could recommend to just read the second one, skipping the first, but I just ethically cannot do it. But almost.

Yesterday I started Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane, author of Shutter Island (which I also loved, although my timing on reading it could not have been worse). I'm only twenty-something pages in it, so I can't say much about it, but here's hoping.

Hope you are all enjoying what you are reading. I am quickly marking things off my list, so leave me suggestions.

Not I am going to go eat something. I'm hungry.