Library Loot is hosted by Marg at Reading Adventures, and Eva at A Striped Armchair.

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

I’ve heard a lot of great things about this series, so begin it I shall!  Really looking forward to this one!

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

Love the movie, decided to (finally) read the book!

Also, not really library loot, but loot nonetheless:

Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor

I won this from LibraryThing Early Reviewers last year, and my copy finally came!  Mysteries aren’t usually my thing, but I’ll give it a try and let you know how it goes.

In a future where the Gulf Coast is characterized by its drowned cities, the divide between rich and poor is wider than ever, and a few powerful trade families control it all, Nailer is at the bottom of the totem pole.  Nailer works as a ship breaker on “light crew,” stripping grounded oil tankers for copper wiring and brass fittings, anything that will help them fill quota.  When he isn’t risking his life at work, Nailer must constantly try to keep his abusive, drug-addicted, and very dangerous father happy – not an easy task.  He knows when his dad is “sliding high,” and knows well enough to avoid him when he can.

When Nailer’s beach is pounded by a terribly powerful hurricane – what has become known as a “city killer”  – he and his friend Pima come across a grounded clipper ship, full of more wealth than they thought possible.    It’s their ticket to a better life, if only they can keep it a secret for long enough to strip the scavenge from it and claim it as their own.  But when they find it has a survivor, the wealthy and beautiful Nita, Nailer has a choice to make.  The gold rings on her fingers alone are worth more than any scavenge they could get from the ship – Pima insists that the smart thing to do would be to kill her, and Nailer knows she’s right.  Yet having had a close brush with death himself only days before, Nailer can’t bring himself to let Pima do it.  To let her live would be to risk everything – not only the scavenge, but his life as he knows it – and it’s the most important choice Nailer will ever make.

I just couldn’t put this one down.  Fast-paced and full of action, it also manages to ponder some serious issues.  To make the leap from today’s reality to the dystopian society in Ship Breaker isn’t all that difficult – in fact, it’s probably not that far off from the way thousands live in third-world countries.  To see places so familiar to us with those economic and social conditions is what makes it scary.  One thing I really liked about the world he’s created is that the scope is revealed to us bit by bit, rather than all at once.  From revealing the fate of New Orleans to showing just how disparate the distribution of wealth is, the world that Nailer inhabits is always gaining another layer.

Speaking of Nailer, he’s a great character – over the course of the book, he grapples with the meanings of family, wealth, and humanity itself, adding some real meat to the story.  It’s a bit dark, but very well written – Bacigalupi has a style that’s almost stark, and it worked very well for the book as a whole.  I enjoyed every page of this book from the time I was sucked in on the first page, and it’s one you should definitely keep on your radar!

*FTC disclosure – review copy received from the publisher.

Library Loot is hosted by Marg at Reading Adventures, and Eva at A Striped Armchair.

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

I adore Fforde’s Thursday Next series, and I’ve heard great things about this book – so naturally, I’m excited to start it!

The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe by Theodore Gray

I heard a lot about this book around Christmas, with plenty of people saying what a great gift book this is.  I’ve only flipped through it briefly, but I can tell they were right – the images are gorgeous, and some of them are just down-right awesome.  Looking forward to taking a closer look!

Other than some professional reading, that’s it for my library loot.  Also on my coffee table, though:

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

I’ve actually been working my through this one for about a month – it’s not that I’m not enjoying it, because I absolutely am.  It’s just taking me some time to get through, and I’ve been reading it bit by bit in between other books.  The goal this week is to finish it – not too much left!

Percy Parker is a young girl in Victorian London, and very unique.  Brought up in a convent, shy and timid Percy is an albino with the ability to see and communicate with ghosts.  Add in her extraordinary language abilities and the visions that come to her a night, and Percy knows she is anything but normal.

When she enrolls at Athens Academy in London, she meets the brooding and mysterious Professor Rychman.  Although she finds him intimidating, she is very much drawn to him – but he has  a secret of his own.  Since childhood, Alexi Rychman and five others have made up The Guard, a group of six who protect London from the spirits that inhabit it.  With a Prophecy that they will soon find a seventh, and Alexi’s belief that she will also be the woman he is meant to love, tensions in The Guard are high.  Percy is a great new character, and I found her very easy to relate to – maybe having always been a bit shy myself helped with that.

I loved Hieber’s style, and while cross-genre novels like this may not work for everybody, this one combined all of my favorites and it absolutely worked for me!  Victorian historical fiction with a Gothic edge, fantasy, and a romance with great characters (who also have great chemistry!) made such a great combination.  The first half was a little on the slow side, but once I hit around page 150, I was hooked and didn’t want to put it down!  I’m very much looking forward to the sequel due out in May, and I’ll be on the lookout for more from Hieber in the future.

The book itself though, not so much.  It was a relatively entertaining, quick read, but on the whole it didn’t do too much for me.  I really like the concept of fallen angels, but I feel like so much more could have been done with it.

I suppose the biggest problem I have is the characters.  The only ones who have any personality are Arriane and Penn.  None of the other characters – Luce and Daniel included – seemed remotely real.  Luce doesn’t do much besides feel sorry for herself and moan about how misunderstood she is, how she doesn’t belong in a place like Sword & Cross, etc.  She wasn’t all the bright either – I mean, you figure out that this guy you’ve been seeing is essentially a violent control freak, so when he leaves you a note telling you to get in the car and the driver will take you to him god-knows-where, you actually go?  Really? I’m pretty sure this is the type of situation my parents were referring to when they told me “Don’t get in the car – if you do, you’ll probably never be seen again.”

Ok, enough ranting about Luce.  It got better towards the end, with some surprising twists and others you saw coming – and once Luce finally figures out what’s going on, some of the fallen angel stuff gets pretty cool.  There’s enough romance in this with the same sense of mystery that Twilight has that I think it will do well – especially with all the hype, upcoming sequel, and a movie on the way already!

1) Read more non-fiction. I realized that my focus in 2009 had really only been on fiction, between the blogs I follow and the genres I enjoy. But there is a lot of great non-fic out there too, and I’d love to get back into the habit of reading it again.

2) Not be afraid to be a little bit of a book snob. I really enjoyed the post over at Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? on “reading deliberately.”  I have to say, a lot of what she says reminded me of my own reading habits this year, especially being distracted by books that had a lot of hype and wound up being not so great.  I just felt like I wanted to read everything I saw, and the good stuff that I’ve been wanting to read for a while got overshadowed and pushed to the back burner.  That’s the stuff I want to focus on reading this year.

3) Write more reviews. Now that I’m done my MLIS (woohoo!), I’ll have much more free time to not only read, but to also write about what I’ve read.  The ex-English major in me (who was – ok, is – a nerd and actually enjoyed writing papers) loves writing, and writing reviews is a fun way to get that out of my system, so I’m really excited to have more time for this.  Which translates into…

4) Focus more on the blog! Like all of my resolutions, having more free time (again, woohoo!) makes this a possibility.  I started this blog just as a place to keep all of my reviews.  Over the last year or so I’ve started following a lot more blogs, and become more and more interested in the blogging community and improving my blog.  So, I’m working on a new name and hopefully a facelift in the near future, and with the help of my other resolutions, more frequent posts!  Also, thanks to anyone and everyone who has read and commented on my blog in the past – seeing that all this posting hasn’t been just for my own amusement has been encouraging!

Exhibit A:
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
I haven’t gotten around to reading this one yet, and from reviews I’ve read it can be rather love it or hate it.  I get the impression that Patch is rather Edward-esque – he’s either the man of your dreams, or a control freak that you should stay far, far away from.  Once my copy comes in from the library, I’ll let you know my take on it.

Exhibit B:

Fallen by Lauren Kate

I first saw the cover for this over the summer, and just love it.  Gorgeous.  It just came out this week (although no libraries in my system have it yet…grrrr).  Apparently Disney has optioned film rights for it already…just one more reason to be on the lookout for more angels.

Exhibit C:

Angel Star by Jennifer Murgia

Not crazy about the cover art on this one, but I came across it on Goodreads…from the description, it seems to fit the upcoming trend nicely.

These are just the ones I’m aware of; have you come across any others??

Ok, so on to the The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein.  I love neo-Victorian novels.  And Victorian novels.  And anything to do with that era.  I really do.  So I really wanted to like this, but, well, I didn’t.

It was rather slow to start for me. That may partially be because this has been a stressful week for me, but it finally picked up about 150 pages in.

Ackroyd has a great style – I didn’t feel so much like I was reading a neo-Victorian novel as I was the real thing at times. His settings and descriptions were wonderful, and the overall atmosphere of this was great.

As far as story and plot go, however, I wasn’t all that impressed by this one. It has an interesting take on the tale, with Frankenstein being a friend of the Shelleys rather than merely the subject of Mary’s tale (which does make an appearance, by the way), but something in the execution was lacking for me. The “twist” was obvious to me well before I got to the end, so I was disappointed by that as well.

This one gets three stars from me…I considered giving it two, but it gets an extra one for style.