Moby Dick

I have to say, I did not particularly enjoy this book. In fact, the word I would use to best describe it would be tedious. I probably only really like 15% of the book total, while the other 85% could have easily been taken out to make the story actually passable.

There is so much of this book that is utterly unnecessary to the story of Ahab and Moby Dick. Heck, you don't even really have Moby Dick until the very end anyway. There is an insane amount about the anatomy of whales and the history of the whaling industry, but it really is unnecessary. It just had chapters that read very textbook to me instead of novel, to the point where I started wondering if I was going to be tested at the end about what I learned about whales and whaling.

I will always remember my experience with this book, but I am not likely to ever read it again.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

How can one not love this last book? The darkest book in the series, it also manages to clear up some burning questions from previous books. There ends up being new feelings for characters that have been known since the beginning, but who have not really been revealed as far as their true nature is concerned.

I have found myself feeling things that I often feel while I read a great book. I get connected to certain characters who don't make it to the end (not sharing who doesn't make it) and find myself crying over their loss.

I think this book shows Harry finishing the maturing process that he needed to do while finding a way to defeat Voldemort once and for all. His journey isn't easy and he has to make decisions that no 17 year old should have to make. He is essentially forced to be a man when he still very much wants to be a boy like some of his friends.

I'm sad to have finished this beloved series again, but I know that, like an old friend, it will always be waiting on the shelf for me when I need it the most.

Lost

I'm going to be honest here, this was a bit of a disappointing book. I'm a huge fan of other stories by Gregory Maguire, but this was just not up to what I expect of his writing.

I think my biggest problem with it was that it seemed like there were at least three separate story lines going on simultaneously, but none of them really meshed together. It was also really jumbled. Like you got thrust into the middle of the story and just had to figure out where you were.

The main character, Winnie, is said to be a descendant of the man who had inspired Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickins' A Christmas Carol. But her character in general bothered me. She was both a little whiny and a little scatter-brained. I wanted to like her because she obviously had a story to tell, but I think because she kept getting lost in her own head, I found that I was just annoyed with her.

Hell, none of the characters really made me feel anything but some annoyance or even disdain. Only one made me laugh - a supporting character by the name of Ritzy Ostertag, a medium who Winnie goes to regarding a ghost in her step-cousin's flat. He was the only character that I wanted to know more about.

Even finding out the back story on Winnie (which takes most of the book to really come out), I didn't feel anything for her but a mild annoyance that she couldn't get herself out of her own mind long enough to focus on what was happening.

Like I said, it was just a disappointment after the enjoyment I've found in Maguire's other books.

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.