Confessions of a Shopaholic

After the deepness of Gone Girl, I needed to read something that wasn't as intense. What better to transition back into serious reading than a chick lit series? Confessions of a Shopaholic was just plain fun!

Rebecca Bloomwood works in financial journalism. This fact is extremely humorous as her financial standing is revealed. Because Rebecca is a shopaholic. She loves to shop, and as a result, she has a lot of debt. She has no handle on her finances because she has to buy a new pair of shoes, has to buy this, has to buy that. She spends all her money and then some.

As her debts start coming back to haunt her - Visa and the bank both after her to pay back what she has spent, Becky goes into hiding, only then discovering a story that means a lot to her.

Everything that happens in this book is really kind of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Gone Girl

I don't think I have ever detested two characters more than I detest Nick and Amy in Gone Girl. They are horrible excuses for human beings.

That being said, I actually enjoyed this book. I'm not entirely sure why I enjoyed it, but I definitely did.

Maybe it was the fact that, for a while there, I wasn't entirely sure if Nick was involved in his wife's disappearance. Amy goes missing on the day of their fifth wedding anniversary. Nick is naturally a suspect.

But Amy's has secrets of her own. Secrets that, when they are revealed, show her character in ways that it hadn't been revealed before.

Of course, as the book goes on, these two characters become more and more detestable. I know I keep using that word, but that's really how I feel about them. Great book, horrible characters.

Things We Set On Fire

I got this book through Amazon's new Kindle First program, where they release four books a month before their release date for Amazon Prime members. This was the book that looked the most interesting to me.

When I started reading, I had this immediate dislike of Vivvie, who is the mother of the story. She does something that was just horrible in the prologue.

As the book progresses, little bits of Vivvie's story are revealed, while she and her daughters, Elin and Kate, work to mend something that has been broken for decades. In the middle of this are two very confused little girls - Kate's daughters.

It's very much a book about second chances. I really enjoyed it, so I was glad I chose to read it. I recommend it, with the suggestion that you read it with a box of tissues - you'll probably need them.

Deadly Decisions

**Book 1 * Book 2**

I totally enjoyed this book more than the first two. I think because it had less of the things I didn't enjoy - like excessive amounts of French - and more of the things I did - like Tempe.

It followed much the same pattern though. Tempe has a case. She works alongside a Quebec cop. Someone near and dear to her gets involved, and to some extent, in trouble. She does something stupid to put her life in danger. Things get resolved, mostly in a positive light.

The case? Quebec outlaw motorcycle clubs causing violence and murder between themselves, causing a nine year old girl to be killed in the crossfire. Tempe is determined to see the biker who caused her death behind bars. And naturally, she has to work with Claudel, who goes between respecting her as a professional, and treating her like a moron.

During this case, Tempe's nephew Kit visits. He has a fascination for the bikes, and it gets him into trouble. A lot of trouble.

People are killed left and right. Tempe's lover, Andrew Ryan, is busted dealing drugs (but there is something strange about what's going on with him). Each step of the way, some new clue is revealed to help bring Tempe closer to solving the murder of this nine year old girl, as well as a handful of other murders that are somehow linked to that shooting.

The Odyssey

I liked this better than the Iliad. Maybe it was the translator, but who knows. Either way, this was much more exciting and engaging for me to read. Of course, I've also seen the miniseries that was based on this, so I understood what was happening a little better.

But really, let's be honest. The story of the Odyssey is just so much better than the Iliad. The Iliad was war and battle and the same stuff just different page. The Odyssey was an adventure.

Ulysses is forced to remain away from his home. After the war in Troy was finished (which was 10 years in and of itself), Ulysses spends 10 years just trying to return home to his wife, his son, and his people. He encounters goddesses who want him for themselves, gods are angry with him, he loses his ship and his entire crew after they eat the sun-god's cattle.

While he's working to get home, his wife is being wooed by men who eat his sheep, goats, and pigs, who fraternize with the women servants, and just overall behave badly in Ulysses' house. But Ulysses gets his revenge in the end.

I really did just fully enjoy this book.

The Silver Chair

**Book 1 * Book 2 * Book 3 * Book 4 * Book 5**

This book did not hold my attention the way the other books have. I liked it well enough, but maybe it was the characters that were the problem.

Eustace enters Narnia again with a girl from his school named Jill. Eustace wasn't my favorite character from the last book and he still isn't all that interesting. Jill isn't much better. They enter Narnia with the mission of rescuing Caspian's son Rillian. They have a guide for this journey, a Marsh-wiggle by the name of Puddleglum. He might have been the most interesting character in the book. If Eustace and Jill had been as interesting, this would have been a different book.

Anyway, they go on this adventure to find the prince and get into all sorts of trouble, including ending up in an underground world.

So, while I didn't love the book, I still enjoyed it and its bittersweet ending.

The Iliad

I had sort of a love-hate relationship with this book. I loved the story. I've always been a bit of a fan of Greek mythology, and this is Greek mythology to the max. You've got gods interfering in war, the famous Trojan War, and the dispute between Achilles and Hector. But I think I hated the particular translation of Homer's epic poem that I read.

Once I got past the language that was just really difficult for me to understand sometimes (I used my Nook's dictionary a lot while reading, simply so I could understand words that I didn't know), I enjoyed the story. A lot of battle. Actually, it's all battle. There's very few interludes where the story visits the Trojan wives and the gods on Olympus, but really it covers the battles. I didn't always love the overly descriptive parts of the book - essentially metaphors and similes just kept being used to describe one thing. It got a little much.

Now, I need to go read the Odyssey.