Book: The Colorado Kid

 Book: The Colorado Kid

Author: Stephen King

Pages: 208

This is my 55th book for the year

What Amazon Says:

On an island off the coast of Maine, a mna is found dead.  There's no identification on the body.  Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspaperment and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues, and it's more than a year before the man is identified.  And that's just the beginning of the mystery.  Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand.  Was it an impossible crime?  Or something stranger still?

This one was okay.  I listened to it, which was probably a mistake.  I didn't like the narrator - his voice was a bit distracting, so this one would probably have been better as a straight read.  It is a short book/audio.  Feels more like a short story, and plays out like one as well.  Ending wasn't great - it just kind of ends.  I liked the characters, but I was left wanting more.

Stars: 3

Book: Happiness for Beginners

 Book: Happiness for Beginners

Author: Katherine Center

Pages: 322

This is my 54th book for the year

What Amazon says:

Helen Carpenter can't quite seem to bounce back.  Newly divorced at 32, her life ha fallen apart beyond her ability to put it together again.  So when her annoying younger brother, Duncan, convinces her to sign up for a hardcore wilderness survival course in the backwoods of Wyoming - she hopes it'll be exactly what she needs.  Instead, it's a disater.  It's nothing like she wants, or expects, or anticipates.  She doesn't anticipate the surprise summer blizzard, for example -or the blisters, or the rutting elk, or the mean pack of sorority girls.  And she especially doesn't anticipate that her annoying brother's even more annoying best friend, Jake, will show up for the exact same coure - and distract her.  It gurns out sometimes disaster can teach you exactly the things you need to learn.  Like how to keep ging, even when you think you can't.  How being scared can make you brave.  And how sometimes getting really, really lost is your only hope of getting found.  This is a story that looks at houw our struggles lead us to our strengths.  How love is always worth it.  And how the more good things we look for, the more we find.

This books wasn't great.  I did see the movie and enjoyed it, but the book just didn't capture my attention.  It was a bit boring and predictable.  A large section of the book takes place before they even get camping, which I felt was unnecessary.  It did have some interesting parts when they were in the wilderness, but the ending was super cheesy.  

Stars: 2.5

Book: The Art Thief

 Book: The Art Thief

Author: Michael Finkel

Pages: 240

This is my 53rd read for the year

What Amazon says:

Stephane Breitwieser is the most prolific art thief of all time.  He pulled off more tha 200 heists, often in crowded museums in broad daylight.  His girlfriend served as his accomplice.  His colletion was worth an estimated $2 billion.  He never sold a piece, displaying his stolen art in his attic bedroom.  He felt like a king.  Until everything came to a shocking end.

This was a very interesting book.  I did not know the story of this art thief, and that he actually stole a few pieces from various museums in Basel, Switzerland where we used to live.  It was fascinating how he stole the pieces and got away with stealing so much over the course of 10 years.  It is well written and well researched.  The author spoke to the art thief to gain the insight of the story and then built on that.  It is a page turner for sure to find out if he was going to get caught and how.  Glad I read this one.

Stars: 5

Book: A Study in Drowning

 Book: A Study in Drowning

Author: Ava Reid

Pages: 384

This is my 52nd read for the year

What Amazon Says:

Effy Sayre has always believed in fairy tales.  She's had no choice.  Since childhood, she's been haunted by visions of the Fairy King.  She's found solace only in the pages of Angharad - author Emrys Myrddin's beloved epic about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King and then destroys him.  Effy's tattered, dog-eared copy is all that's keeping her afloat at Llyr's prestigious architecture college.  So when Myrddin's family announces a contest to redesign the late author's estate, Effy feels certain this is her destiny.  But Hiraeth Manor is an impossible task: a musty, decrepit house on the brink of crumbling into a hungry sea.  And when Effy arrives, someone else has already made a temporary home there.  Preston Heloury, a stodgy young literature scholar, is studying Myrddin's papers and is determined to prove her favorite author is a fraud.  As the two rivals piece together clues about the reclusiv author's legacy, dark forces, both mortal and magical, conspire against them - and the truth may bring them both to ruin.

This book wasn't good.  I know it is YA, but I was hoping from reading the premise that I was going to like it.  And it is a beautiful book on the outside - gorgeous cover and binding.  But that is where the beauty ends.  The writing is terrible.  The story was so choppy, I should have quit reading it.  It has moments where I thought it might redeem itself - the story IDEA is a good one.  But it never did because the writing did not improve.  The main character is very weak and I did not ever feel connected to the characters or the story.

Stars: 2

Book: Not Without Hope

 Book: Not Without Hope

Author: Nick Schuyler

Pages: 272

This is my 51st read for the year

Amazon says:

This is the true story of the headline-making tragedy that took the lives of three football players: NFL stars Marquis Cooper and Corey Smith, and Will Bleakly from the University of South Florida.  Told by the sole survivor of the ill-fated fishing trip, Nick.  It is an inspiring and unforgettable story of courage and strength, friendship and loss and, most importantly, hope.

This is hard to judge because this is a terrible tragedy and a terrible thing that happened to all 4 of these young men.  But the writing is terrible.  The story is poorly written and there is a lot of time spent on nonsense in the beginning of this very short book that could have been left out, or just done better.  A lot of repetitive text.  I read it for a reading challenge for a category of a book that is becoming a movie/tv show (Which this is this year), but I would not recommend it.

Stars: 2

Book: The Dark Mirror

 Book: The Dark Mirro

Author: Samantha Shannon

Pages: 576

This is my 50th read for the year

What Amazon says:

Everything is about to change.  Paige Mahoney is outside the Republic of Scion for the first time in more than a decade-but she has no idea how she got to the free world.  Half a year has been wiped from her memory.  Her journey back to the revolution soon takes her to Venice, where the Domino Programme has uncovered evidence of a secret Scion plan. Before Paige can return to London, she must help the network unravel the sinister Operation Ventriloquist, which threatens to bring Europe to its knees in weeks.  And it soon becomes clear that the one person who could recover her memories-Arcturus Mesarthim- might also hold the key to thwarting Scion, allowing the revolution to strike an unprecedented blow.

This is my most anticipated book for this year.  I am a Samantha Shannon fan - first reading the Priory of the Orange Tree series, and then going back and starting The Bone Season series - which now has 5 books.  There has been a long lull between book 4 and 5, but I was not aware of it until I read the author's note because I just started reading her books about 2 years ago.  Hopefully that is the end of the lull because this book's end showed that it is not a finished series and there are more to come.   Anyway!  The book was good.  The story flows well, and there is good character devleopment.  Paige and Arcturus further their relationshop and - side note - what I like about Shannon is that she doesn't make their relationship the center of her stories.  This would not fit well in a Romantasy category and I am glad and probably why I like her fantasy novels.  The story is pushed a long nicely making strides to what we readers believe is the ultimate goal.  What knocked this book for me one star was that I still feel that Paige is written a little too weak.  She is supposed to be the Underqueen of the whole criminal underworld, and yet she constantly need a nap.  It just seemed to be a little overdone.  Not enough for me to not want to keep reading the storyline.

Stars: 4

Book: Born on a Blue Day

 Book: Born On A Blue Day

Author: Daniel Tammet

Pages: 258

This is my 49th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

Daniel Tammet is virtually unique among people who have severe autistic disorders in that he is capable of living a fully independent life and able to explain what is happening inside his head.  He sees numbers as shapes, colors, and textures, and he can perform extraordinary calculations in his head.  He can learn to speak new languages fluently, from scratch, in a week.  In 2004, he memorized and recited more than 22,000 digits of pi, setting a record.  HE has savant syndrome, an extremely rare condition that gives him the most unimaginable mental powers, much like those portrayed by Dustin Hoffman in the film Rain Man.  This book explores what it's like to be special and gives us an insight into what makes us all human - our minds.

This book was okay. It has been on my shelf forever - I inherited it from a friend's book haul years ago.  I liked a lot of parts of it - when Daniel really delve into his life story.  But a large part of this book is just factual information which distracted from the overall picture you try to form of what it is like for people like Daniel.  It was like he was trying to tell two different stories and it just didn't flow well.  

Stars: 3