Book 16

Title: Fearless Fourteen
Author: Janet Evanovich
Pages: 310
Setting: Trenton, NJ

Book 15

Title: McSweeney's Quarterly Concern Issue #30
Author: Various
Pages: 197

I would recommend this book. All McSweeney's are great but I think this is the best one that has been put out in a few years. I liked every story.

Favorite Stories: Pfaff II by Bill Cotter, Madness by Matei Visniec and Foothill Boulevard by Catherine Bussinger

Favorite Character: Carroll Silver in Pinecone by Michael Cera

Best First Line: "In 1991, I went to jail for canning goods without a license." The Beginning of a Plan by Shelley Oria

Favorite Quotes: "There was something unnerving about the place, like you'd recognized it from a dream." Diamond Aces by Carson Mell
"He was thinner than when I'd last seen him, and the orbits of his eyes were dark, kind of buttholish with exhaustion." Retreat by Wells Tower

Misc: Michael Cera, one of my favorite actors, had a story in this issue and it was awesome. He is in several of my favorite movies (Superbad, Juno, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) and the vastly underrated TV show Arrested Development. I hope he starts writing more because it seems he has a talent for it.

Book 14

Title: Digging to America
Author: Anne Tyler
Pages: 277
Setting: Maryland

Synopsis: The story of an American family and an Iranian family both raising children they adopted from Korea.

Favorite quote: "September brought its smell of dry leaves that could so easily be mistaken for the smell of freshly sharpened pencils..."

Most irritating quote: "Brad worried vaccinations were dangerous." I hate it when people would rather leave their kid open to polio or the measles because of the chance of some mild side effects.

Most irritating part: One of the main character's names is Bitsy.

I would not recommend this book. I feel like nothing really happened in it. There was no climax to it. I could not get into the characters lives and did not care what happened to them. The ending was also a severe disappointment.

Book 13

Title: Rabbit, Run
Author: John Updike
Pages: 255
Setting: a fictional city in the suburbs of Philadelphia (approx. 30 minutes from where i live)

I would recommend this book to anyone. It is amazing.

Favorite Quotes: "God's name makes them feel guilty."
"The growing complexity of lights threatens him. He is being drawn into Philadelphia. He hates Philadelphia. Dirtiest City in the world they live on poisoned water."
"Everybody who tells you how to act has whisky on their breath."
"Give the boys the will to achieve. I've always liked that better than the will to win, for there can be achievement even in defeat."
"His German accent makes his words seem stones, set angrily one on top of another."

Misc: It says in the book that Rabbit married late at the age of 24. HA.

Book 12

Title: Tree of Smoke
Author: Denis Johnson
Pages: 702

Settings: Vietnam, The Philippines, Malaysia

Favorite Character: Tie. Dr. Mahathir: He was a entomologist that lived in the back woods of Malaysia and kept giant insects in jars of formaldehyde in his house. He was only featured in the last 50 pages of the book. Charles Blackman: He was one of the soldiers that fought in the Tet offensive with one of the main characters. He had a lot of spirit and funny things to say.

Favorite Reference: My birthday. The letter on page 495 is dated 1/30.

Favorite Quotes: "'We were just walking around. I had no idea he was gonna kill someone.' 'What'd you do?' 'Just about filled my britches with poop.'"
"He strolled into the red-light district - Angeles consisted of little else - the slop, the lurid stink, the thirsty, flatly human, open-mouthed stares of the women as he passed dank shacks beating with rock 'n' roll music, as hot and rich with corruption as vampire mausoleums."
"He would never top this feeling, he was sure of it: scared, proud, lost, hidden, alive."
"The colonel was part joke, part sinister mystery."
"'I'm a coward Pere Patrice.' 'Good. You'll live longer.'"

Recommend? For such a long book, it's somewhat hard to build a relationship with the characters. I would only recommend this book for someone who wants to learn more about Asian culture during the Vietnam War.

Misc: It told the myth of the aswang which is a vampire legend in the Philippines.

Book 11

Title: The Last Summer (of You & Me)
Author: Ann Brashares
Pages: 306
Setting: Long Island, New York
Recommend: No. I would only recommend this for someone who wants some really shallow reading. It did not grab me emotionally and I didn't care about the characters.

Redeeming Quality: It talks about how amazing the ocean is at night. (my favorite time and place in the world.)

Favorite Quotes: "Everything beautiful is fragile."
"Riley yearned for the ocean because it was wild."
"'I missed you.' Oh, the things he found himself saying. He used to imagine that people made themselves say these kinds of things when they were in love so as to demonstrate their status. He didn't realize they would just come out of you without you even being able to stop them."

Misc: The main characters named the beaches just like my sister and I named areas of the creek in our backyard when we were little.

Book 10

Title: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Author: Junot Diaz
Pages: 335
Settings: New Jersey/Dominican Republic
Would I recommend this book? Yes, especially to anyone involved in the nerd subculture or Latin American subculture.

Synopsis: The story of a very nerdy kid and the curse that is on his family.

Favorite References: The Simpsons, The Watchmen, Fat Cats, Lord of the Rings, Hit Points, Magic the Gathering

Favorite Quotes: "Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber or a Lensman her lens. Couldn't have passed for normal if he'd wanted to."
"Before he even realized what had happened he had buried himself in what amounted to the college version of what he'd majored in all throughout high school: getting no ass."
"The dictatingest dictator who ever dictated."
"It was the Gotterdammerung of beatdowns, a beatdown so cruel and relentless that even Camden, the City of the Ultimate Beatdown, would have been proud."

The Part that Freaked me Out: One of the characters in the book commits suicide by standing in front of a truck and being run over and dragged. A couple hours before I read this part I saw a story on the news about someone in New York City being hit by a car and dragged to death. It was a weird coincidence.

Misc: I enjoyed the use of footnotes in this book. There were a lot of nerd references, a lot of which I understood, but there were also a lot of Spanish words and phrases, too many to look up, so I feel like I missed a little bit.

Book 9

Title: Wicked
Author: Gregory Maguire
Pages: 519
Setting: The land of Oz

Synopsis: The story of the Wicked Witch of the West from birth through when Dorothy kills her.

Favorite Quotes: "The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments."
"Her gas was apparent from more than a few feet away and Frex moved, as discreetly as possible, to be upwind."
"You can protect me when I go out of here with my Grimmerie, my book of magicks, my Malleus Maleficarum, my mesmerizing incunabulum, my codex of scarabee, fylfot and gammadion, my text thaumaturgical."

Thought-provoking: The underlying story of the Animals fighting for their rights and freedom makes you think about human rights struggles happening around the world. There are also many discussions about religion, as the wicked witch's father is a minister and she does not believe in the soul.

Misc: I don't know if you can see in the picture but the pages of the edition I was reading are green. It was a nice touch.

Recommendation: I would recommend this book to people who enjoy fantasy, but wizard of oz fans may find it slightly disappointing because it strays so far from the original story.

Book 8

Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Pages: 550

This book is beautiful and devastating. One of the best books I've ever read.

Synopsis: Death narrates the story of a young girl growing up in Germany during World War II. The girl is sent to live with a foster family and learns to love words and reading.

Favorite Character: Rudy Steiner

Favorite Quotes: "A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship." "When Liesel left that day, she said something with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words were struggled with, carried on her shoulder, and dropped as a bungling pair at Ilsa Hermann's feet. They fell off sideways as the girl veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat on the floor, large and loud and clumsy." "She was suddenly aware of how empty her feet felt inside her shoes."

Favorite Parts: Max painting over every page of Mein Kampf to make a new beautiful book to give to Liesel. Liesel running into the street to be with Max when he is marching.

Misc: I unintentionally read books about WWI and WWII in a row. I like how that worked out.

Book 7

Title: Birds Without Wings
Author: Louis De Bernieres
Pages: 554

Favorite Vocab Words: Mommixity and Foofaraw

Favorite Part: When Leyla cooks a romantic dinner for Rustem Bey and puts candles on the backs of turtles so they wander around the yard while they are eating.

Favorite Quote: "When he tells her that she's lazy, she adopts an arch expression, laughs, and says, 'Me? I'm not lazy, I'm just passionate about leisure.'"

Favorite Character: Karatavuk

Thought-provoking part: There is a religious ceremony where they dig up the bones of their relatives after 5 years. If they are completely decomposed it means the earth has received them and therefore they lived an innocent life. If they have not decomposed it means they were sinful.

Favorite list: (Listing the different types of people he found in a town.) "Here there were pimps and whores, card-sharps, confidence tricksters, counterfeiters, cutpurses and pickpockets, one-legged blind alcoholics, opium addicts, unemployable sailors, abortionists, charlatans, fortune tellers, sexual deviants, poison-makers, false prophets, beggars with sham disabilities, prodigal sons and dissolute daughters, deserters, contract murderers, illegal distillers, foul-mouthed sluts, footpads, procurers, tax officials and thieves."

Misc: This book helped me understand and learn a lot about World War I.

Book 6

Title: Plum Lucky
Author: Janet Evanovich

Synopsis: Stephanie Plum's grandma steals money from a guy who thinks he's a leprechaun who stole the money from a mobster. Her and her crew all have to go to Atlantic City to get the money back so they can save a horse and her kidnapped grandma from getting killed.

Setting: Trenton, New Jersey

Favorite Character: Snuggy

Least Favorite Character: Deisel. Not nearly as awesome as Ranger.

Favorite Part: When Lula spilled the bucket of nickels to distract the casino employees.

Misc: This series is one of my guilty pleasures.

Book 5

Title: McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #29
Author: Various
Pages: 178

Best Part: All of the pictures from matchbooks, especially the animal ones.

Favorite Story: It's Nice When Someone is Excited to Hear From You by Brian Baise. I feel like I can identify with Roger's brand of insanity.

Favorite Character: The Loris (in Augury by J. Erin Sweeney)

Misc: Dave Eggers is my hero.

Book 4

Title: Midnight Sun
Author: Stephanie Meyer

Background: I don't have a picture for this one because according to Stephanie Meyer's website it is never going to be published. Someone leaked it online after it was only about halfway done and she has since decided not to finish it. She posted the unfinished draft on her website so I decided to read it (even though I felt guilty doing it.) I really wish she would reconsider and finish.

Synopsis:It is the same story told by the book Twilight written from Edward's perspective.

Setting: Forks, Washington

Favorite Part: I loved hearing the story through Edward's thoughts and feelings. It brought a whole new meaning to a lot of the small occurrences and seemed to complete the story rather than just add to it.

Misc: I know I'm way too old to be reading and loving Twilight, but whatever.

Book 3

Title: Mr. Emerson's Wife
Author: Amy Belding Brown

Synopsis: Ralph Waldo Emerson marries a woman and moves her out to the country where they start a family. Later on, she has a mostly emotional affair with Henry David Thoreau.

Reedeming Quality: It involves a lot of authors and philosophers.

Misc: I wanted to punch all of the characters at least once during the course of the book because of the way the talk about, treat or think about women.

Book 2

Title: For Whom The Bell Tolls
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Pages: 471

Favorite Character: Anselmo

Misc: It is tragic, of course, but that should be expected. The Sun Also Rises is still my favorite Hemingway book.

Book 1

Title: Griffin and Sabine
Author:Nick Bantock

Synopsis: A mysterious correspondence between an artist and a woman who can see his artwork in her head as he is drawing it.

Favorite Part: The wonderful images on the postcards and the letters that can be removed to be read.

Misc: This book reminded me a lot of a McSweeney's.