Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan and a Giveaway

Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse is the third book in this very entertaining series. I liked it just as much as the first two - it's light and fluffy with lots of cool adventures and obviously loads of mythological references. Most of which I probably don't get, but ok. Some of the dialogue has been pissing me off for sounding slightly unnatural, but I've been trying not to focus on that. It's totally worth reading for the entertainment value. I have one (or two, can't remember) left in this series, but apparently Rick Riordan has another one based on Egyptian Gods and if that's true then I will definitely be getting that next.

_____________________________

Darlene from Peeking Between the Pages is giving away Take a Chance On Me by Jill Mansell and it's open worldwide! I am most certainly partial to good chick lit and this books sounds perfect for a cold evening in. Maybe you want to try your luck too? Head on over to Darlene's!

Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

The second book in this fun series was just as satisfying as the first one. Percy's adventures are extremely entertaining. I had a few 'isn't this just like Harry Potter' moments (like the trying to recreate a dangerous monster from his remains thing, what's up with that?), but mostly the story is very original. Or as original as you can get when all the adventures are pretty much based on Greek mythology. :-)

In any case, when I read this series I feel like I'm inhaling the story - seriously, these books finish so fast for me, a day or two and they're over! This is strange only because I no longer have that much reading time. Must mean that they're good reads then. And that I have the same taste in books as 9-year-old boys. Ha. :-)

Anyway, these are great fanntasy stories and if you loved Harry Potter then this should definitely be your next stop. Larissa, if you still read this blog, this means you. :-)

Challenges: 2010 Countdown Challenge, What's in a Name?

The Piano Teacher by Janice.Y.K. Lee

Beautiful. I really enjoyed this book. It was the first regular novel I've read in a while, and I was totally lost in the story. I liked the writing, the characters, the storyline, pretty much everything.

The Piano Teacher takes place in Hong Kong, going back and forth between the Second World War and the Japanese occupation and the 1950s and British rule. The part set during the war tells the story of Will, a young Brit who ends up in Hong Kong right before war erupts. There he meets Trudy, a Eurasian beauty with a dynamite character and a survival instinct. Their story is one of wartime reality that I hope neither I nor my children ever have to experience.

The part set in the 1950s is about Claire, an English woman who follows her husband to Hong Kong and who ends up finding herself there. She meets Will too and becomes parts of the post-war relationships and vendettas that form in the community there.

I think part of the reason I liked this book so much is that I've never read anything set in Hong Kong and certainly didn't know anything about what happened there during the war. I found that side of it fascinating, the Japanese occupation and the Westerners living in Hong Kong during that time simply never entered my thoughts before. There is so much fascinating history there.

But aside from that, I thought that the author did a great job describing the realities of war - how some people change and how some just show their true colors. The fact that we're all the same no matter what time period we belong to is so apparent, it seems so simple.

My edition had a short interview with the author at the end and I found that really interesting. Lee is Korean but grew up in Hong Kong so she has a different perspective on the place. My favorite part of the interview was when she said that the book took her 5 years to write and by the time it was finished she had 4 kids! How you can write something so good with 4 kids in the house is beyond me. I'm impressed! :-)

Challenges: Orbis Terrarum, 2010 Countdown Challenge, What's in a Name 3

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

I loved, loved, loved this book! I'm very happy indeed that it's the first in a series of many and that I get to spend quite a bit of time with Percy Jackson.

Percy appears to be a normal boy, he goes to a regular school (although he gets kicked out a lot), he plays basketball, he loves his Mom. He accidentaly vaporises his math teacher and it becomes obvious to everyone that he's more than just a boy. In this first book, Zeus, God of the Sky, thinks that Percy stole his lightning bolt. Great stuff. I can't wait to read the next one in the series, it's on it's way already.

If you like Harry Potter, Neil Gaiman and myths and legends, you'll love this! And The Sunday Times apparently said 'It's Buffy meets Artemis Fowl'. How can you lose with that?

Challenges: 2010 Countdown Challenge

Two graphic novels

I've been missing in action again, dealing with personal stuff and another period of pregnancy exhaustion. I've also developed pregnancy related carpel tunnel syndrome, just to add to my list of woes, so sitting at the computer is not my favorite thing to do... I apologise, as I know I've been a terrible blogger and haven't visited anyone in ages. I shudder to think how many unread posts my reader has! I promise to catch up a bit in the next few days though.

I have been reading some, although not as much as I'd have liked to. Graphic novels have been somewhat easier to manage and I have now added an extra two to my list.

The first, The Plain Janes by Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg, was about a girl named Jane, whose family moves from a big city to suburbia following a terrorist attack. Jane misses the city though and finds it hard to adjust to her new life, with its limitations imposed by her terrified and paranoid mother. She makes some friends at school and as a group they start using art to pass on express themselves - which is seen as beautiful by some and as defacing public property by others. I liked the art and the message of The Plain Janes and can certainly recommend it.

Challenges: 2010 Countdown Challenge

The second graphic novel I recently read was American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. Now this one I absolutely loved. It consists of three seemingly separate stories that come together nicely in the end and is about Chinese young people growing up in the US and trying to fit into the American way of life. It's about identity and roots and how hard it is to come to terms with some of the labels that define you. A beautifully illustrated book with a very smart message, this will end up on my list of favorites for the year, I think.

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, 2010 Countdown Challenge, Graphic Novels Challenge

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Wow. What a book. I certainly wasn't expecting Rebecca Miller's The Private Lives of Pippa Lee to be a page turner, but it was. Joseph O'Connor, whose Star of the Sea was one my favorite reads last year, says it's a page-turner on the front cover - who knew that you could sometimes trust these testimonials?

We first meet Pippa when she's in her 50s, living in a retirement community with her much-older husband. She basically starts wondering how she ended up where she was and we start getting glimpses from her past. She is certainly not the woman you'd think she is - she not 'just' a wife, mother, neighbour etc. She had a colorful, wild life and she misses it. Her past is told in the first person, while her present is told in the third person. That sure says a lot.

The book says so much about identity. About living your life how you want to live it, about being true to yourself, but also about how important security turns out to be. I guess that most of us struggle with these questions sometimes, we think about trade-offs in life. So most of us will find a piece of ourselves in Pippa Lee.

The author's style is brilliant - the simple and effective writing kind of reminded me of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. Although this isn't a graphic novel, the writing is so vivid that I could see everything anyway.

One not to be missed.

Challenges: 999 Challenge, Countdown Challenge, New Authors, Support Your Local Library, Themed Reading Challenge

Pawing through the past

I didn't read the back of Pawing through the Past by Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown carefully enough or I would have noticed that Sneaky Pie Brown is a cat. And that cats are central to solving the mystery. Hmm, not usually my sort of thing, but since I was moving house (this is why I was missing in action for a week or so) I wanted something REALLY simple yet engaging to read in between packing and cleaning.

I must say that I was pleasantly surprised about how the whole cat angle was handled. The animals communicated with each other and understood what the humans were saying, but the humans didn't understand the animals. Interesting. It was actulally quite cute and cleverly managed and whereas I won't be rushing out to get more in the series, I'd be happy to read another one if I happen upon it somewhere.

A short review only as my time is still limited! I don't know how much reading I'll manage to get done till the end of the month, but I don't think it will be a lot! So many boxes to unpack!!!

Challenges: What an animal, Suspense and Thriller, Genre Challenge

The Complete Persepolis

Wow. It's really original of Marjane Satrapi to choose to write her memoir as a graphic novel. It really worked. I'm glad I liked it so much, because it's my first 'real' graphic novel. I read the first Buffy Season 8 ones earlier this year, but that was an easy way to get started since I'm such a huge Buffy fan. I consider Persepolis the real deal.

So, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's memoir about growing up in revolutionary Iran - war, revolution, repression, persecution... what can these do to a willful teenager? I thought it was fascinating on so many levels. The coming-of-age storyline is one I usually like. I didn't know anything (and I mean anything) about Iran and learned so much. I want to read more about this interesting country.

I didn't know details of the fundamentalist repression either. I just can't imagine it, to be living like a 'normal' teenager and for everything to be taken away. All her dreams - of being free, of going to university, of going to the US - everything was taken away. I suppose that's when we find out what we're really made of but still.

It was strange to read about all the horrors in comic strip format. I somehow thought it would be lighter, even though that doesn't really make sense since I knew it would be about Iran. We're so used to graphic descriptions in books and we're so used to violent films and even cartoons, but we know that they're not real. It's strange when you look at the pictures, in the same format as Superman, and know that they are real. Does that make any sense? The simplicity reinforces the message, I know, but it was still weird to me.

I thought her story was beautiful and inspirational. To survive so much and to tell the world about it in such a meaningful way is amazing. I could empathise with her when she moved to Vienna - I know what it's like to be on your own when you're too young to be on your own, to be foreign, to miss that understanding from others of the same background.

And I loved the art. I loved that it wad black and white and simple. The emotions kind of jumped out at you. The hopeless romantic in me loved the page about how she and Reza are total opposites but they complete each other. Still makes me smile when I think about it.

This is certainly going to be on my list of favorites this year. If you haven't yet, you should definitely get this one.

Challenges: A-Z, 999, Countdown, Graphic Novels, In Their Shoes, Lost in Translation, My Year of Reading Dangerously, New Authors, Well-Seasoned Reader, World Citizen, Dewey Decimal

My holiday reading

I'm back! Boston was amazing, I loved it! I bought loads of books of course, a post just on that is coming up. For now I just wanted to get a couple of reviews in. I didn't get to do a lot of reading, which is good because it means I was actually doing Boston-stuff. I thought I'd read a lot on the plane, but with the personalised entertainment that they have now being pretty cool, I watched movies instead. :-)

I read two girly books during my trip - Shopaholic and Sister by Sophie Kinsella and The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot. I'm also about a quarter into On Beauty by Zadie Smith. I'm not sure I like it yet... so far I seem to be avoiding it, which is why it didn't get read on holiday.

Shopaholic and Sister by Sophie Kinsella was fun. Becky is now married to Luke and trying to get used to post-honeymoon married life. Which is nothing like what she thought it would be. When she finds out she has a long-lost sister, she's determined to become best friends with her. Only it turns out that her sister is nothing like her and getting along is very difficult.

I really like the Shopaholic series. It's fun but not brainless. I love Becky - perhaps because I'm kind of like her. But with less money. :-) She makes me cringe sometimes, also because I'm kind of like her. Especially her logic resembles mine, it's funny. Some of her thought processes are exactly like mine, which is pretty scary since she's a character created to make people laugh. :-)

Challenges: A-Z, Chick Lit 2, What's in a Name 2

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot was also really fun. I've been wanting to read it since I saw the movie, which I really liked. Plus I bought parts 2 and 3 in by mistake when I was in Dublin in November, so when I saw the first part in a great bookstore in Salem, I had to take it! I think most of you know the story so I won't repeat it. If you like girly YA fiction then this one's for you! It was perfect for airports, because it didn't reaquire much thinking or concentration...

Challenges: A-Z, Young Adult Challenge, 999 Challenge, 1st in a series, 2nds Challenge




And here's a photo of the boookstore in Salem I mentioned. Heaven.

P.S. I Love You

Cecilia Ahern's P.S. I Love You was better than your average chicklit novel. At least I thought it was. I wanted to read it because I thought that the idea was an original one - a woman's husband dies and leaves her an envelope per month to open, with notes from him, kind of instructions to do one brave thing per month.

Even though I knew what it was about I still wasn't prepared for how teary I'd get reading it. People on the metro into work must have thought I was mad, so close to crying all the time. :-) But I enjoyed it nonetheless and I'm happy I picked it up.

What made it better than other chicklit novels I've read is its realism. The situations in the books were hard and they weren't made any easier or laughed off as nothing. Plus the small twist at the end was very realistic too - made everything much more believable.

Cecilia Ahern writes with typical Irish humor too, which most of you know I enjoy. Plus the book is set in Dublin and it was nice to read about the city!

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, Lit Flicks, Naming Conventions, Genre Challenge, Unread Authors

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

I just finished Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - an engaging quick read. The story is about Miss Jean Brodie, teacher at an all-girls' school in the 1930s. Miss Brodie pays special attention to a few of the girls and tries her best to give them an ecucation that's beyond math and history. She tells them about her own life and her own ideas about life. Under Miss Brodie's influence, the girls begin to stand out from the rest of the Junior School and continue do be on the sidelines in Senior School. There is always something different about them.

The character of Miss Brodie is interesting and bizarre, worth meeting I think. The book was turned into a stage play and a film, so others must have seen something different in the story too!

4 stars - it's quick and fun, I'd recommend it.

Oh and this is my 4th book for the Novella Challenge.