20 May 2012

Bout of Books v4.0: Recap and Review

Bout of Books Read-a-Thon

This week has been a lot of fun! My original goal was to read the following five books:

  • What the Dickens
  • Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
  • The September Society
  • Fleet Street Murders
  • The Night Circus
I managed to read 2 of them from the original list as well as 2 that weren't on the list. And even though I didn't read 5 books this week (I am blaming it on a spring cold that I seem to have developed---not fun) I'm totally happy with the progress I made. 1046 pages read in a week. I'm calling that a win!

Plus, this project totally helped to kick start my reading again! I am totally back on track to meeting my yearly goal AND I have a whole slew of new books to add to my TBR (to be read) list thanks to a all the tweets and blog posts about what everyone else participating in the read-a-thon are/were reading. 

I still have to work on the whole "review" thing though, so you'll have to excuse the slightly scattered and really random reviews below. That'll eventually come with time and practice though.

I am absolutely looking forward to the next installment of Bout-of-Books, whenever that may be and to checking out all of the new blogs I've discovered this past week.

For now though, I'm going to set the books aside for the rest of the weekend and watch a movie.


The books:
What the Dickens by Gregory Maguire: This was a pretty quick read-even though it was just a little more than 300 pages I finished it in a few hours. I liked the way Maguire retold the story of "tooth fairies". It was a nice twist to the traditional story even if it was a bit darker than I had originally expected. I also really like the way he wove the telling of the tale within the 2nd story of the book. It was an interesting take on re-telling a fairy tale.



Declaring Spinsterhood by Jamie Lynn Braziel: Right.....maybe it wasn't my cup of tea, but this book was pretty awful. It seemed like every character was an over-exaggerated archetype of the role they played in Emma (the main characters) life. An overbearing mother who is obsessed with getting Emma "married off" (honesty, how kicks their daughter out of the family for declaring she has decided to remain single!?). Then there is an ex-boyfriend who after cheating on her seems to have all of a sudden decided he can't live without her. And her best friend (whom she only met 6 months prior to the beginning of this tale when me moved in next door to her) whom, of course, she falls in love with. It's a pretty cliche telling of the same chick lit story I have read over and over again, but reads like a chopped up version of a teenage diary.



The Uncommon Ready by Alan Bennett: For the most part I found this one to be a bit dull. Even though it was only 120 pages which puts it firmly in the category of novella, parts of it just seemed to drag on and didn't really go anywhere. I did however like that it reminded me why I love reading so much-- "You don't put your life into your books. You find it there.



Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith: I really, really liked this book. This was a really great mash-up of history and fiction. There were a few parts that seemed just plausible enough to make me have to think twice about what I already knew about Lincoln's life.

3 comments:

  1. It looks like you read some good stuff during the readathon! I didn't make my goals for this readathon either, so don't worry about that. ;) But over 1,000 pages is a pretty awesome total, especially because you were sick! I hope you end up joining the next readathon!

    -Aneeqah @ My Not So Real Life
    My Wrap-up Post

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  2. Great reads! I really need to check out the Abraham Lincoln book. It looks good ;) Hope you get to join us in August!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm glad you enjoyed Abe, I'm 70+ish pages into it and I'm really enjoying it. Congrats on reading over 1,000 pages.

    Here is my progress post.
    Lauren at Northern Plundder

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Thanks for reading!

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