Book 46: City of Bones

I'll admit to having a weakness for the occassional teen paranormal romance (that's actually a section at Borders).  So, after hearing about  Cassandra Clare and her regurgitation of some Harry Potter fan fiction that was going to become the next huge teen movie series, I figured I'd burn through City of Bones.  First, the writing is fairly weak.  It's just a plot driven book with some twists that are fairly obvious to anyone even just scanning the book.  But somehow, I still kinda liked it, but it's really forgettable.  I can see how it got made into a movie I suppose (god love the teenage dollar), but it's hard to hate it and impossible to like.  It screams mediocrity on a lot of levels, but its success is undeniable.  I have the second one and I'm not sure I'm even going to bother reading it.

Book 45: Heroes Die

I fish for new books quite a bit at Goodreads, jumping from review to review of people who seem to have a similar taste.  I stumbled across Heroes Die from one reviewers list of "Epic Bad-Ass" which seemed right in my tastes given my man crush on Logen Ninefingers.  Unfortunately, Caine really isn't quite bad ass enough to carry the book.  He's certainly got some bad ass elements, but he's a bit whiny, seriously pussy whipped, and not that clever.  He actually doesn't do a whole lot.  There's a lot of good fighting with excellent detailing, but despite his professed love of combat, he's really more sad about it, which is kinda sad.  The book itself creates an interesting world with some clever premises, but the book was about 100 pages too long with some seriously boring parts. 

Book 44: Ready Player One

I liked this a lot more while reading it than I do know.  Essentially a take-off on the old text adventure games, replete with references to said games, Ernest Cline's Ready Player One grabbed me from the beginning and never let go.  It's a pretty straightforward story without any real depth, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

Books 39 Through 43: Wool Omnibus

Okay, so a little cheating on the number of books, but each "chapter" in the Omnibus was published as a novella and it's my thing anyway so screw you. 

Wool by Hugh Howey is fantastic.  It shares a lot with the back half of "The Passage" by Justin Cronin by bringing to life a very dystopian future where post apocalyptic survivors huddle together in limited space.  This time, it's in an underground Silo stretching over 140 feet into the earth.  It's a great page turning read that feels ludcrous at first, but as Howey reveals more about the environment and how it got that way, it starts to become frighteningly real. 

Book 38: The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

In keeping with a mini theme of reading books by sci fi masters, this was discounted at Green Apple on Clement so I picked it up.  I saw the movie like 30 years ago and could only remember bald  Rod Steiger's tattooed torso, bleeding from the head, chasing the protaganist.  I didn't realize it was basically 18 short stories only thematically related (future is scary).  Some the shorties were outstanding.  Others were really lame.  Read more like a treatment for the first season of the twilight zone.  Very similar.  Fortunately, it was bit easier to understand in terms of it's time (late fifties, I think) when rocket ships, martian colonization and the great wide open of space still seemed attainable all permeated Bradbury's fiction.  Much better than Simulacra and some truly spooky moments.

Books 37: Simulacra by Philip K Dick

I think I'm a fan of PKD, but haven't read enough to say for sure.  So I picked up a discounted Simulacra at Dog Eared Books on Valencia a few months back and finally got it started.  In a word BORING.  Really, quite lame.  I suppose when it came out in the sixties, it might have provided some sort of parable to cold war, big business, etc.  But now, it's unfocused, too many characters, and just no one interesting enough to care for.  Not one of his best.

Books 35 and 36: Golden Compass and Sublte Knife

So, I nabbed the "His Dark Materials" trilogy in a single book for a song at a used bookstore.  It's been sitting on my shelf for awhile, so I cracked it open.  The first book was amazing.  Great new world, very unpredictable, and setting the tables for some great sequels.  Sure, it was pretty dark for a kids book, but I have this theory that kids are much better at kids being in jeapardy than adults as they seem them as peers rather than the hope that adults view them.  So, the first one ends a bit jarringly, but I race into the second one.  The Sublte Knife is very dark and often quite difficult.  It's focus on children in some really trying situations left me exhausted.  Still, it verges on brilliant, but I've put off the third book for a bit.  Not sure I'm ready to see what happens as it sets up to be even darker than the first two.