Book Review: Starters - Lissa Price

Starters - Lissa Price

HER WORLD IS CHANGED FOREVER

Callie lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty.  She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie.  Callie's only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man.

He hires teens to rent their bodies to Enders--seniors who want to be young again.  Callie, desperate for the money that will keep her, Tyler, and Michael alive, agrees to be a donor.  But the neurochip they place in Callie's head malfunctions and she wakes up in the life of her renter, living in her mansion, driving her cars, and going out with a senator's grandson.  It feels almost like a fairy tale, until Callie discovers that her renter intends to do more than party--and that Prime Destinations' plans are more evil than Callie could ever have imagined...

3/5 stars (liked it)
At first I didn't care too much for Callie but as the book progressed I grew to like her.  I love the mystery behind the Old Man and how he doesn't really have a name or face.  I wish the book alternated between Michael and Callie.  Michael seems like he would also have a good story to tell.  I started the second book as soon as I finished this one.

Book Review: Tales of the Peculiar - Ransom Riggs

Tales of the Peculiar - Ransom Riggs

Before Miss Peregrine gave them a home, the story of peculiars was written in the Tales.

Wealthy cannibals who dine on the discarded limbs of peculiars.  A fork-tongued princess.  These are but a few of the truly brilliant stories in Tales of the Peculiar the collection of fairy tales known to hide information about the peculiar world, including clues to the locations of time loops first introduced by Ransom Riggs in his #1 bestselling Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Series.

Riggs now invites you to share his secrets of peculiar history, with a collection of original stories in this deluxe audio volume of Tales of the Peculiar, as collected and annotated by Millard Nullings, ward of Miss Peregrine and scholar of all things peculiar.  

4/5 stars (really liked it)

These stories were great and I love how we learn about the world of Peculiars.  I especially like how time loops were created and how peculiars were a long time ago.  Some of these stories were very interesting and I wanted to learn more.

Book Review: Bossypants - Tina Fey

Bossypants - Tina Fey

In her acceptance speech for Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Tina Fey announced that she was proud to make her home in "the 'not-real America'."  It is perhaps that healthy sense of incongruity that makes the head writer, executive producer and star of NBC's Emmy Award-winning 30 Rock such a cogent observer of the contemporary scene.  Bossypants, her entertaining new memoir, shows that strangeness has been her constant companion.  Fey's stories about her childhood in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania are only appetizers for LOL forays into her college disasters, honeymoon catastrophes, and Saturday Night Live shenanigans.  Most funny read of the month; the best possible weekend update.

4/5 stars (really liked it)

I love Tina Fey.  I loved her on SNL, as a writer and in the show.  I also loved 30 Rock.  It was great to hear how she got to where was is today.  I loved hearing about her early jobs, her honeymoon and her husband's fear of flying.  I would definitely get another memoir of hers.

Book Review: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms - George R.R. Martin

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms - George R.R. Martin

Taking place nearly a century before the events of A Game of Thrones,  A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms compiles the first three official prequel novellas to George R.R. Martin's ongoing masterwork, A Song of Ice and Fire. These never-before-collected adventures recount an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living consciousness.

3/5 stars (liked it)

This book contains three short stories dealing with a Hedge Knight named Ser Duncan and a small boy named Egg (Aegon Targaryen).  My favorite story is the first one where these two meet. The second story is okay but the third one is good.  I loved the illustrations in this book almost as much as the book itself.

Book Review: The Magicians - Lev Grossman

The Magicians - Lev Grossman

Like everyone else, precocious high school senior Quentin Coldwater assumes that magic isn't real, until he finds himself admitted to a very secretive and exclusive college of magic in upstate New York.  There he indulges in joys of college-friendship, love, sex, and booze -- and receives a rigorous education in modern sorcery.  But magic doesn't bring the happiness and adventure Quentin thought it would.  After graduation, he and his friends stumble upon a secret that sets them on a remarkable journey that may just fulfill Quentin's yearning.  But their journey turns out to be darker and more dangerous than they'd imagined.

3/5 stars (liked it)

I didn't really like Quentin, I thought he was a bit dull, whinny and mopey.  I did like the other characters though.  This book spans his whole college education.  While most of his college times are fairly normal and boring it isn't until he graduates and is living in the real world that things pick up.  There we meet an old character Penny.  He brings them an adventure to the land of Fillory, which is a place that is in a book series.  Quentin has been obsessed with the books.  I almost think this book could have just started after Quentin and the others graduated and they spend more time on their adventure.