Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I feel like each book of this series is my favorite book in the series. This is no exception.

While these books were marketed as children's, they got progressively darker as the series evolved. This book has some heavy points where you just sit back and go "whoa".

Harry is forced to grow up by the end of the book. Everything has changed since Order of the Phoenix when Sirius died and now he has to face a prophecy that was made years ago about him defeating Voldemort (or possibly Voldemort defeating him).

Dumbledore starts giving him extra "lessons" that could help him in his eventual pursuit of killing the greatest evil the wizarding world has. At the same time, he's exponentially improved in Potions thanks to a book by someone called the "Half-Blood Prince" who wrote all manner of tricks and tips in the margins that make potion brewing a lot easier. There are even some new spells that Harry gets to try that this Half-Blood Prince invented.

There are all sorts of struggles for the characters of this book. You even start to feel something other than hatred for Malfoy. Never would have expected that.

It's got another really hard ending like Order of the Phoenix did, but it's all for a reason. At least, that's what I tell myself. Off to read Deathly Hallows now.

Eat, Pray, Love

Ok. I have to admit that I am not really a fan of non-fiction. It just doesn't draw me in like fiction and all of its sub-genres do. But, I enjoyed this memoir.

Maybe it's because I listened to it as an audiobook and that Elizabeth Gilbert was the one reading it. Somehow I just felt like I was sitting in her house, listening to her recount tales of her travels through Italy, India, and Indonesia. She made it fun for me.

I did thoroughly enjoy her story in general though. I probably would have gotten bored if it had been an actual book in my hands, but I was able to sit back and listen to all these wild and occasionally humorous tales of this journey that she had to take to find peace and balance in her life after her mess of a divorce.

It also helps that it had a very positive ending that made me think that she had finally found happiness in her life after going through so many struggles just to get to the point where she could even begin her year-long trip through these three vastly different countries.

What the Dickens

Ok. This was just a fun story. I've read other books by Gregory Maguire, and they tend to leave me feeling generally happy. I think it's because he can take stories that we all know and love and make them into something new and different.

In the case of What-the-Dickens, he has transformed the basic idea of the tooth fairy and made it into an almost empowering story of someone different thinking he needs to conform, but discovering that what makes him different is the best thing in the world.

I think I just needed something fun after a bunch of books that are heavy in nature. But What-the-Dickens has just cemented my love for Gregory Maguire's books.

The Golem and the Jinni

It took me a while to warm up to this book. I liked it from the beginning, but it really wasn't until about halfway through the book that I started to really enjoy it.

I think it took me a while because it needed the chemistry between the two disparate main characters - Chava, the Golem and Ahmad, the Jinni. They're so different, but at the same time, they have similar stories. Both of them find themselves in New York, out of their element. The Golem is a clay woman, created for a man who dies on the passage to America. The Jinni comes out of a copper flask that a metalsmith is tasked with repairing. Neither of them really belongs in New York, but both of them have to find some way to survive.

The story has some interesting plot twists and characters that are necessary for the development of Chava and Ahmad.

The Count of Monte Cristo

This is like the epitome of revenge books. I'd never really known that about the story (mostly because I'd never read any part of it or even seen any of the movies based on the book). But a huge chunk of the story is the revenge that Edmond Dantes inflicts upon the three people who condemned him to 14 years in a dungeon of an island fortress for absolutely no reason.

While it took a while for me to get through, mostly due to craziness that limited my reading for a while, it's one of those books that, if you can power through, reveals some interesting details about human life in general. It's a timeless book that I hope never fades into obscurity. It is a powerful book and I appreciate that I took the time to read the unabridged version as opposed to an abridged copy that would have eliminated some parts that may seem pointless to the story, but which, in the end, truly have a purpose in the grand scheme of the story of Edmond Dantes and his personal revenge against Villefort, Danglars, and Fernand. Along the way he makes friends, he makes enemies. But in the end, he does what he feels is right to essentially return the favor to three (even four) people who he feels wronged him and stole his life.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I still love this series, even after all these years. I love how the books themselves mature, like Harry through these years.

Order of the Phoenix is one of my favorites. You've got Harry essentially fighting a perpetual battle against Voldemort, the Ministry, even his fellow students. The story gets darker than it had been in previous books, and you can tell that the characters are dealing with things that are well beyond what their age should be putting up with.

Harry definitely has a hard time in this book, what with this mental connection with Voldemort that he has to deal with.

I'm not going to lie, I'm glad that Pottermore exists, because it gives so much more depth to a series that I loved as a teenager.

The Handmaid's Tale

I found this book confusing for a good chunk of it. It starts off (and really stays) rather disjointed. The main character/narrator, whose real name you never know and for a while you don't know is even called Offred, is obviously recounting this story. And it's a dark story.

It's dystopian in nature, since society has evolved in such a way that women are really just things. The narrator is a Handmaid, who has one main job: get pregnant. But she won't be allowed to keep whatever child she might bear. She's essentially a surrogate and her child with her Commander will belong to him and his wife.

I won't lie when I say that some of the story is disturbing. The female characters are so broken down that they've started accepting that they are nothing, even the narrator, who occasionally recounts times from "before". She remembers her husband Luke and their daughter, who remains nameless. But she is obviously becoming accustomed to her life as a Handmaid, which sort of bothers me because she seemed to be such a strong woman "before".

The book ends rather abruptly. It leaves you wondering or even making your own ending. But I think that ending is necessary to this book. It's needed from the darkness of the entirety of the story.