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| B01M10HZDM
| 3.83
| 1,820
| Nov 14, 2016
| Nov 14, 2016
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did not like it
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The only reason I'm reviewing this book is to remind future Kat not to forget she's read this and try to read it again. I was super excited about the The only reason I'm reviewing this book is to remind future Kat not to forget she's read this and try to read it again. I was super excited about the m/m aspect of the book, only to be sorely let down. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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not set
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Oct 24, 2017
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Kindle Edition
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| 0064404773
| 9780064404778
| 0064404773
| 4.05
| 80,650
| Oct 25, 1978
| Jun 30, 1993
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it was ok
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I curse this book with a thousand crotch louse. It's not I didn't like this book. At least, I like the beginning for awhile. But this book's plot was I curse this book with a thousand crotch louse. It's not I didn't like this book. At least, I like the beginning for awhile. But this book's plot was enough to drive me into a rant. Getting out of the way the fact that the characterisation is great and the setting is stunning and all that shit, let's get into possibly McKinley's only, and truly great weakness, which is plotting and pacing. The book reads at the speed of an unhurried snail. It starts a full 2.5ish years before Beauty even meets the Beast and shows no sincere interest in moving things along for the sake of actually telling the story. Beauty spends a stunningly little amount of time with the Beast and when we actually meet him, most of that time is glossed over in narrative telling rather than showing. ARE YOU TELLING ME I JUST SAT THROUGH 2.5 YEARS OF THIS GIRL'S LIFE ONLY TO HAVE FIVE MINUTES WITH THE ACTUAL GREAT ROMANCE THIS FAIRYTALE IS FAMOUS FOR?! [image] Then, right, the whole thing is wrapped up in about 20 pages. It was infuriating. I don't feel like Beauty's back story and life before the Beast helped us understand her motivations and character arc any great deal. I felt like it was cumbersome for the sake of being cumbersome and wordy and artistic. I'm so mad about this, that I'm practically hopping. I'm hopping mad, I say! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 20, 2015
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Jun 22, 2015
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Jun 20, 2015
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Paperback
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| 1442474262
| 9781442474260
| 1442474262
| 3.87
| 33,721
| Oct 07, 2014
| Oct 07, 2014
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did not like it
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read Black Ice with a lot of hopes. Hopes that Fitzpatrick was writing something brave and different, a departure from Hush, Hush which was a total a
read Black Ice with a lot of hopes. Hopes that Fitzpatrick was writing something brave and different, a departure from Hush, Hush which was a total abomination for me. Still, I was willing to give it a fair shot. Unfortunately, it seems Fitzpatrick has a formula that she refuses to veer from and that made this book every bit as painful as Hush, Hush was. And all the temptation that maybe Fitzpatrick was doing something brave and hard was washed away with every page I turned. Black Ice is the story about a girl who goes camping and gets kidnapped by criminals who force her to navigating the freezing terrain in order to help them escape. Things become complicated when she starts to develop feelings for one of her captors. Fitzpatrick set this up as a Stockholm Syndrome tale and had everything at her disposal to make it great. It to make it brave and edgy and real. Instead she bowed to whimsical fantasy and romantic notions in order to twist it into something it should never have been. A love story. [image] So let’s start with the formula that Fitzpatrick can’t seem to let go of. 1 Very Bad Boy + 1 Annoying Heroine + 1 Best friend who can die in a fire = Kat is going to kill something. Mason kidnaps her, drags her through frozen tundra, lets his friend hold a gun to her and keeps up this charade as a villain all through the novel. But because he is occasionally kind to her and hot, Britt, our leading lady, falls for him. Britt, is not quite as annoying as the heroine in Hush, Hush. She does some clever and brave things. This almost saves it for me. Almost. But her obsession over Calvin drove me mad. The story kept dropping history between her and Calvin which was quite boring and ultimately needless. She was a flawed heroine and that’s okay. She was probably the best thing about this novel, even if that’s not saying much. Korbie. Korbie, rather like Vee was the most annoying character in this book and the very fact that she wasn’t in it much was her only saving grace. One more page of her and I might have bashed this book against my head several times just to numb the pain. The ending. Let’s talk about the ending here because I know most of you aren’t planning on reading this shit, so being coy about it. Spoilers Ahead Mason’s not really the bad guy, see? He’s just pretending to be a hardened criminal so that he can find his sister’s killer. Who just happens to be Calvin, Britt’s ex boyfriend and Korbie’s brother. See? Britt really fell for a hero, not the bad guy. He was only pretending to kidnap her. So this makes everything about 100 times shittier. Instead of doing the brave thing and having Britt tragically need to hand in the man who kidnapped her and endangered her life, she turns summersaults to turn him into a hero. So that they can be together. [image] This refusal to commit to reality made the novel so much weaker and less tense. It lacked the emotional impact because it veered so far into fantasyland that I was almost ready to believe that Britt was hallucinating the end of this novel as she lay in a snowdrift dying. If you want a book that is unapologetic in its handling of Stockholm Syndrome then I honestly suggest you skip this one and try Stolen: A Letter to My Captor by Lucy Christopher. Hauntingly beautiful and emotionally charged, it will fill the hole that Black Ice leaves behind. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Mar 25, 2015
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Mar 28, 2015
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Mar 25, 2015
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Hardcover
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| 0374316414
| 9780374316419
| 0374316414
| 3.71
| 18,728
| Oct 16, 2012
| Oct 16, 2012
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did not like it
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It’s been so long since I actively disliked a book that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. The more I tried to separate my dislike for the ch
It’s been so long since I actively disliked a book that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. The more I tried to separate my dislike for the characters and storytelling and try to analyze it impartially, the more I found myself saying, “Bugger this! Drink anyone?” to the empty air around me. Crewel is a post-apocalyptic dystopian world in which women are oppressed and tightly controlled. It is a world where matter and people can be weaved and stitched through special looms that Spinsters use. This should have been right up my alley. It was definitely right up something, but it wasn’t my alley. Unfortunately, Crewel is a heavily character-based novel. I say unfortunately because there isn’t a single character with more complexity or depth than a kiddie pool and certainly none of them are even a fraction of the fun. Even the main character, whose head we live in, is so vague and two dimensional that any actions and emotions she displays felt disconnected from the reality of the novel. This story, even in its most intense moments, was emotionless and the opposite of affecting. It was like watching a play only the stage is at the bottom of the cliff and you’re at the top. So far removed that you can see what the actors are doing but engaging in them or the story is impossible. There are a number of characters the narrator expects us to care about: Elanor, Valery, Amie, Jost, Erik, Pryana. However, most of these characters barely even have a role. Most of Valery’s speaking lines come after the Great Tragedy that befalls her – and they’re still only a few lines. Elanor as well, while having a slightly bigger role, is little more than a convenient plot device and represents one of the only semi-positively written female characters. Her role is so tightly packed into being a convenient tell-machine for the narrator to pass information, and to resolve a later plot point that there is nothing else to her. The plot itself is a hot mess with no direction or focus. It flits around distractedly, trying to accomplish everything and achieving nothing. Don’t even get me started on the ending! The main selling point of this novel is the weaving – which Adelice does almost none of since she spends more time making goo goo eyes are boys than she ever does interacting with women or doing the damn thing this book was named after. This is made even worse when you consider the face that the romance in this book is justifiably scoff-worthy. There isn’t even enough material between them for one convincing romance. Since Adelice is about as interesting as wet cardboard, it’s hard to imagine anyone falling for her. Each boy barely fares better. Their personalities combined still wouldn’t save them from being inhumanely dull. They are just two more wooden puppets in a whole cast of wooden puppets. For a novel that is supposed to be about the struggles of women in a highly patriarchal world, this novel was dreadfully sexist. When I spoke to a friend about this issue, they said, “I tend to disagree with a lot of the criticism re: the book being sexist, but think you could probably make a more compelling case.” Well, buckle up your seatbelt, sunshine*! Here’s my case! *Seatbelt not actually required. Readers can and should make a deal about the slut-shaming and complete lack of positive female characters. That’s an issue all in itself. But then, I guess, one could also sweep that aside with justifications. Because there are unpleasant and horrible women out there – because women are people, and people come in a mixed bag. And a society so entirely preoccupied with purity would result in citizens slut-shaming girls for acting outside of those bounds. So there’s obviously an important discussion to be had on those topics, even though they are not definitely sexist on their own, only kind of sexist. For me, the true test came when I considered what my Southern and Imaginary mother always told me and that is, “Honey cupcake, y’all should know that actions speak louder than words.” So true, Southern and Imaginary mother. So true. So whilst this book may have given lipservice to how unfair life was for women and how that TOTALLY wasn’t right or good, what service did the narration and plot actually have to say about women? Put it this way: When comparing the relevance and representation given to male and female characters in relation to their contribution to the novel, what does it say about women? Almost every single male character we meet is important. Cormac, Jost, Erik are the three big ones. There are only a handful of other males with speaking roles in this book and they’re fairly neutral in their representation. People just doing their job. Only one male with a speaking role is depicted badly, which is a drunk, handsy official at a party – and he is still not portrayed worse than the woman trying to vie for his attention. At least, the characters narrating the situation focus on how disgusting she is, while he only gets a passing mention. I think there may be a waiter who has a speaking role for the purpose of showing how segregated and unfair they world is, but that’s it. Compare that to the novel’s complete and utter lack of focus on women – which is pretty disgraceful for a novel that’s supposed to be about women’s struggles in a patriarchal society. The only important women in this book are Adelice and the women who torment her. We are introduced to whole batches of women, who are immediately dismissed by the character and text as meaningless and valueless. The girls from Adelice’s hometown? Just simpering morons waiting to get mated. Even her own younger sister cares for little else. It seems no one is as deep and thoughtful as Adelice. Then when she enters Coventry with a large group of her peers, they are immediately shown to be jealous and power-hungry, but ultimately completely inconsequential. We don’t meet any of them ever again whilst Jost, Erik and Cormac receive the large bulk of Adelice’s, and the narrative’s attention. Because they’re what really matters, ya know? What the menfolk are doing. The only exception to this rule, because it is a pattern repeated yet again when Adelice joins the Spinsters who are also cliquey and immediately dismissed from the narrative as pointless and worthless like the literally dozens of other women we meet, is Maela and Pryana. Maela is a power-hungry psychopath and Pryana is a power-hungry, vicious, idiot. Both are stupid and extremely ineffective at what they do. Female solidarity doesn’t exist in this novel. Unless you’re referring to the convenient plot-device that is Elanor. She is the sole exception. Add to this the fact that the women in this novel all act inexplicably irrational. There is evil Cormac, and evil Maela and evil Pryana. Only one of them acts intelligently and with rationale – I’ll let you pick which one. You can depend on the evil women to be emotional, lashing out and sometimes hysterical. Behaviour that is never depicted in the men. For example, Maela asks Adelice to remove a strand from the weave. The strand is a person who doesn’t need to be removed and doing so could harm the weave, so she refuses. Maele takes her scalpel and tears into the weave out of anger. It turns out this was a school where Pryana’s sister lived. So Pryana… blames Adelice?! Because that totally makes sense. And she spends the rest of the novel irrationally tormenting Adelice. Valery, similarly blames Adelice for things that are entirely out of her control. It is so manufactured and senseless that it made the novel ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the fact that Adelice spent the novel entirely focused on boys. The plot went something like this: Adelice’s family dies Cormac meets horrible girls boy boy Cormac stuff about weaving boy boy boy boy Cormac More horrible girls boy boy boy Cormac Cormac Even Loricel, supposedly the one, decent woman in power in this book is little more than a caricature. You can’t claim a feminist text when the narration itself, despite constantly being surrounded by women, decides that all the male characters are so much more interesting and worth focusing on. When the few male characters are afforded exponentially more important roles than any of the many, many female characters – many of whom don’t even get the honour of a name or mention outside of just Horrible Female #35 who says horrible thing to Adelice. When the rate of decent male character so far outstrips the demonstration of decent female characters that there isn’t even room for comparison, you have a problem. You have a book that wants to say something about women, but ignores them in favor of focusing on men. That is really fucking sexist. So… Bugger this! Drink, anyone? ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 29, 2012
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Dec 08, 2012
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Sep 29, 2012
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0373210582
| 9780373210589
| 0373210582
| 4.03
| 44,862
| Sep 25, 2012
| Sep 25, 2012
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did not like it
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Whether or not you enjoy this book depends on what you were expecting to begin with. No Really. Look at that cover, reread the synopsis and decide
Whether or not you enjoy this book depends on what you were expecting to begin with. No Really. Look at that cover, reread the synopsis and decide right now what you’re hoping from this book. Is it: a) A dark, twisted retelling of Alice in Wonderland with zombie creatures? b) A high school melodrama about ghost/zombies with no real Alice in Wonderland connection. If you thought B then good for you. Read this book. If you thought A then back the hell off now. This is not the book for you and you will likely be disappointed. I thought A. From the title and the vague synopsis I believed that this would be an Alice going into zombieland and dealing with a dark, unsettling, gory version of Wonderland with many of the themes and symbolism from the original story modernized and reimagined in this book. I thought this was going to be a book version of American McGee’s Alice. [image] Now, just to make it clear. It’s not a book or author’s fault if that book was not what the reader imagined. But I do think the title and synopsis is misleading considering a number of people, myself included are probably a little confused about what this actually is. The synopsis is vague, mentioning only revenge and monsters and a bad boy. So let’s clear this up. This is what Alice in Zombieland is: Alice’s entire family die in a car crash. Her father, who always believed in zombies (they aren’t physical zombies. They’re incorporeal, evil spirits that attack and eat your soul) is eaten. Alice, orphaned, goes to a new school where students act strangely. In particular, a student name Cole who is all badass and secretive. Instalove, love triangles, special girl with special powers later, blah blah blah THAT is the story. In fact it felt, while reading, that the Alice in Wonderland elements were shooed in at the last minute and didn’t feel as though they were native or even relevant to the story. Certainly, whilst the author links to a couple of small, inconsequential details like the white rabbit and the Cheshire cat, none of the themes of Alice seemed touched upon or incorporated into the story as a whole. Which is a shame because the coming of age in a strange and crazy world that everyone thinks is normal theme would have worked so extremely well IN A YOUNG ADULT NOVEL ABOUT ZOMBIES! But instead of talking about what I wanted the book to be – what is the actual book like? Well, just not for me. Showalter is transitioning from adult paranormal romance to YA and I don’t think it was successful. She built Cole off the foundation of a romanticized Alpha male – if that’s your thing fine, but I think the effect is lost when the audience is reminded that this is a sixteen year old boy. Like when they’re at the club and intimidating grown men away from the girls by growling. Yeah… Alice is a reasonable character, though not one I had a great deal of interest in. She simply capitulated too much to Cole’s cavemanish tendencies to keep my interest. The general cast is alright but it is quite sizable and burdens the plot with a great deal of what felt like unnecessary posturing and conversing over things the audience already knows. I somewhat expected better from the writing considering this is far from Showalter’s debut novel. The action scenes did not feel well realized and the final battle was amazingly short and anticlimatic. There was a focus on the romance. To be fair, it’s by no means a single-minded focus, simply too much for me considering I had no investment in their relationship to begin with. Instalove is not a plot device that I like. I never felt that I championed the relationship between these two characters because it never seemed to me that they had any chemistry to begin with or even liked each other – at all. My basic advice before buying this book would be to read as many reviews of it as you can by people whose opinion you trust, decide if it is something that’s going to appeal to you and read the sample online before you purchase. Basically, would it have been too hard to have a story where Alice and the Mad Hatter throw down in a knife fight? Really, guys? REALLY?! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 11, 2012
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Aug 13, 2012
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Aug 11, 2012
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1250003326
| 9781250003324
| 1250003326
| 3.99
| 50,761
| May 22, 2012
| May 22, 2012
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did not like it
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I don’t read many books that I would rate 1 star these days. I seem to have mastered my preferences and hit a stride of excellent books – or at le
I don’t read many books that I would rate 1 star these days. I seem to have mastered my preferences and hit a stride of excellent books – or at least mostly readable books. Admittedly I only made it fifty-six pages into this book before I threw my hands up in disgust and tossed a pillow at the wall – so I suggest you take that into account when deciding whether to buy this book. Why did I stop reading? First reason: The death of a token character [image] We didn’t know her long enough, but I’m pretty sure she could play base. Right off a POC character is killed and whilst that would be annoying in its own right, since killing off POC characters is a frustrating cliche in books, TV shows and films, this was even more annoying. Firstly because her description was extremely stereotypical – to the point that she was less of a character and more of a caricature. Perhaps even worse and more degrading is that there was no real lament to her death. It was used as a story progression so that the male protagonist could wax lyrical about how beautiful and brave the female protagonist for trying to save the dying POC character. I kid you not. A girl is dying in a terrifying, violent, horrifying way and this is what he’s thinking: “It’s just that… she doesn’t look as though she needs help. Her pale face is contorted with anger. Not fear. Not distress. Just fury. Her white hair floats like an aura, jerking in delayed reaction with each of her capable movements.” [image] Like I said – a girl just died and he’s having a hard on for Emma. And even worse, we’re supposed to be having a hard on for how awesome Emma is. The text is all about Emma. In fact, Chloe’s death seems to be nothing but an agent for making us sympathetic for Emma. It felt cheap and dirty. Sure, taking on a bullshark is a seriously awesome thing to do. Almost as awesome as that time I wrestled a crocodile. But let’s not get off track here. When sitting down and planning how to make a main character rock super hard, I could think of a hundred ways that didn’t involve creating a token character, immediately killing her off and then using that death to wank about how awesome the protagonist is. I mean, first of all… gross from an imagery point of view. Second of all, holy flipping duck twat, Batman, way to be offensive! Second reason: The sexism. [image] There’s nothing wrong with creating a sexist society. However, there is some responsibility when doing so. That the writing doesn’t actually support or romanticize or give tacit approval for the sexism is a good start. Of Poseidon features a heavily misogynistic mermaid society. And as such, the male characters act like a bunch of misogynistic dicks. Once again, completely understandable. But then it’s when everyone else just kind of goes along with that and doesn’t see a problem that my eye started to twitch. And then when some pretty outright paternalistic bullcrap takes place, I started seeing red. Like when a stalker mermaid arrives for a female character, Rayna. They are mated against her will and her refusal and hatred of him is treated as a comical device in the story – just her being a fickle and childish girl – not actually a woman rebelling against a system that doesn’t allow her to choose her mate or even requires her to be present for the ceremony. She’s angry at him because they were childhood friends and he’s always known that she never wanted to mate. He went behind her back, asked her Dad and organized for them to be mated. She’s pissed at him. Naturally. Personally, I would have seduced him out onto an isolated locale and impaled him on a rock. Rayna’s anger and hatred toward him is just laughed off by everyone. Including her brother. Excuse me? EXCUSE ME!? What the ever loving fuck?! Oh, I see. Women in this world don’t know what they want until the smarter, better men come along and show them. Right. RIGHT. [image] Then there’s Gallen who is just sexist plain and simple. He dismisses his sister, does not discuss the information he’s working on with her – but will with her mate – another man. I am told that he takes over Emma’s life and treats her much like a bit of baggage in the name of taking care of her. I didn’t see any progression toward a less sexist Galen having any kind of revelation that women weren’t all a bunch of objects to be ordered around like sheep. You expect women to be unreasonable barnyard animals too busy masticating and going into heat to do any reasonable and logical thought, fine. But think like that and try to be a romantic interest in a YA novel I’m reading? No way. Sorry, Galen. You are the weakest link. Goodbye. Third reason: The writing. [image] I truly disliked the writing. Not only was it incredibly telling and flat but the story also jumped awkwardly between the first person narrative for Emma and the third person narrative for Gallen. It did not feel polished or finished at all. “Stop!” she yells. Galen stops. But Emma’s not talking to him. She’s talking to the shark. And the shark stops. Emma wraps both arms around Chloe and hugs her to her chest, leaning her friend away from the attack. “You can’t have her! Leave her alone! Leave us both alone!” The shark turns, saunters away as if sulking. SHARKS CAN SAUNTER?! AND SULK!? I know what she’s doing here and that’s being abrupt and edgy with a tense moment. But I just trip over those sentences every time I read them. And a lot of this book is like this. Part of me wants to take a red pen to it and just clean it up a bit. It’s not like Banks is necessarily a bad writer – but that her writing isn’t smooth. There’s no poetry or rhythm to it. Just these jarring, awkward sentences that hurt my brain. Fourth reason: The characterization [image] “Hi! My name is River Swan Desmonda Sparkle-Eyes!” Emma was, in my opinion, a Mary Sue – and that is a term I don’t use often. Basically, I felt she was an author insert. Rare compelling eyes, one of a kind in her species, ultra special, father AND friend died to create sympathy. Even Gallen, when not with Emma, only thinks about Emma. He can sense her on land when that’s supposed to be impossible. It’s always the same with Mary Sues. Impossibility surrounds them and they’re just so fucking SPESHAL while being the most boring, repetitive, inoffensive turds around. The problem with Mary Sues is that, if you’ve read one you’ve read them all and the only thing that separates them is the degree to exactly HOW speshul and ewnique they are. And the more Mary Suish they are, the more the other characters spend every fucking moment talking and thinking about Mary Sue – which as far as I could see, was exactly what happened in this book. The only character flaw the author has given her is that she’s clumsy. Clumsy is not a character flaw. I’m sorry, but it’s not. It’s a lazy way of trying to make a young, beautiful female character immediately adorable and relatable to an audience and writers do it all the time. Stop. Just stop it, okay? Even if the story telling explains the clumsiness (she’s not meant to be on land – she’s meant to be in the water) it still makes for a weaker character. Because if you can’t bare to give your MC a more intense flaw than ‘clumsy’ then that becomes ALL you can say about her. “What’s Emma like?” “Oh, she’s just this really clumsy, insecure teenage girl.” Clumsy and insecure? No! Never. That only marginally ties her to like 95% of the YA MC population! Basically, I can deal with bad writing – to a degree. And bad characterization – to a degree. And sexism – to a degree. But throw them all in with the death of a token character and smoosh it into a terrible mess? Then I can’t deal. Then I throw my hands up in disgust, delete the book off my ereader and try to scrub my bloody brain free. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 2012
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Aug 02, 2012
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Aug 01, 2012
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0385741960
| 9780385741965
| 0385741960
| 3.62
| 1,472
| Aug 14, 2012
| Aug 14, 2012
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did not like it
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I jumped at the thought of this ARC. A girl time traveling back to seduce Shakespeare? That’s awesome! Shakespeare! *Swoon* [image] I had full on J I jumped at the thought of this ARC. A girl time traveling back to seduce Shakespeare? That’s awesome! Shakespeare! *Swoon* [image] I had full on Joseph Fiennes from Shakespeare in Love flashbacks because, of course, I was 12 when the movie came out. Of course, as an adult I know a lot more about who Shakespeare seemed to be like from what documents we have. But still, I thought, how fascinating? How is this going to go down? But this emphasis on Stephen Langford in the synopsis? After all, the book is called Kissing Shakespeare. So… she’ll just be kissing Shakespeare, right?! There will be people who will enjoy this book, undoubtedly. But before you buy this book, allow me to give you this spoiler in case it’s important. Shakespeare is nothing more than a shadow of a character in this book. Miranda, teenage actress from Massachusetts, gets physically abducted by Stephen and dragged back to Elizabethan England for the express purpose of having to seduce Shakespeare so that he doesn’t turn to the Priesthood. So the romance, up until I read, seemed to be between Stephen and Miranda… the man who forcibly abducted a terrified girl, took her to a place where she’d be friendless and alone, and threatened her unless she seduces his friend. Please allow me a moment to react. [image] No! NOOOOO! NOOOOOO! Why?! WHY!? Why does our male protagonist have to be someone who abducted her and is literally forcing her into a form of prostitution because he thinks it doesn’t matter since women in the future are all sluts anyway. WHY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? If that were the only problem with the novel, I MAY have been able to shudder and at least finished the novel. Maybe. Unfortunately, his other reasons for abducting this one particular girl are that she is: a) an actress, b) very familiar with Shakespeare’s works and world and c) supposed to be able to pull this stupid, stupid, ridiculously dumb scheme off. The first problem is that if she is an actress then I am Imelda Marcos – and since I can’t seem to find my impressive collection of designer shoes (I looked) then this first part is rubbish. All three of these foundations have a basis in her supposed intellect which was unfortunately out for dinner throughout any of the book I read. For someone whose main asset was being steeped in Shakespearean plays and culture – she just plain SUCKED. She was mindless. She couldn’t even CURTSY! I know she was supposed to be an audience surrogate, but there’s a balance that needs to be maintained. That balance repeatedly had its feelings hurt and it eventually left to find someone who would treat it properly. Then we get to the writing which was just juvenile, which matched the plot and the characters so at least I can’t say it was inconsistent. One of the worst things about reviewing a book is to be careful not to mix up what you wanted and expected with the actual story. Sometimes that’s just impossible to do. But I don’t think it’s unrealistic to expect a book titled Kissing Shakespeare about a girl supposed to be seducing Shakespeare would actually… be about Shakespeare. And I guess it’s not unfair to expect that one of the most brilliant playwrights of all time would be a little more complex and interesting. Look, I know he wrote to make money and he wrote populist material for the time but his beautiful, beautiful prose! His sonnets! It is technically possible that he could have just been a dumb, shallow useless seventeen year old. But c’mon! [image] It is also entirely possible that he was a complicated, thoughtful and insightful human being. And if we take a quick poll of people to ask about which Shakespeare they’d rather read about, I’m pretty sure I know which option would come out on top. I certainly know which one I would have rather have read. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 14, 2012
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Jun 21, 2012
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Jun 14, 2012
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Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1595145842
| 9781595145840
| 1595145842
| 3.78
| 61,366
| Dec 11, 2012
| Dec 11, 2012
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it was ok
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I should have known there’d be trouble in paradise when I found out that Morgan Rhodes was a non de plume for Michelle Rowen, who wrote that terrible
I should have known there’d be trouble in paradise when I found out that Morgan Rhodes was a non de plume for Michelle Rowen, who wrote that terrible Dark Kiss novel that I couldn’t even finish. I buddy read Falling Kingdom with ItsJaneLindsey who was my beloved BookBuddyAthon Buddy. And I think both of us suffered greatly as we read it together. Falling Kingdoms is really Fantasy Lite with scarcely enough world building and concepts to skate by. If it asked me to witness it I’d be all like: [image] Because who hasn’t pictured me as the megalomaniac god-figure of a desert dieselpunk cult? To be honest, I was reading this book kind of like: [image] Things are happening but I do not relate… Things happened but it was hard to relate to anything through the cookie-cutter, 2 Dimensional characters and lacklustre plot. Consider for a moment that you have three supposedly very different kingdoms. Though they are situationally VERY close (I mean like, a couple of days travel, it would seem, between them) everyone seems to speak the exact same language with the same inflections and manner of speaking. Whether it be princess of Auranos or poor peasant boy of Paelsia. Consider if you will, the fabulous ‘Enry ‘Iggins of Pygmalion glory who could guess a person’s birth place and where they were raised just by listening to their accent. Now of course, you can’t add accents very well into the book, but a little diversity in how people spoke and some slang would have been nice! There’s this thing called a Cultural Iceberg. It’s a concept by Edward T Hall from all the way back in 1976, but he theorised that like an iceberg, culture has a small, visible surface, and a much larger, invisible mass, and that to truly know a culture, you have to participate in it. It’s just a theory, but I like to use models like this when I’m looking at cultural construct of fantasy novels. [image] So little of what Rhodes wrote breached the depths of the cultural iceberg in terms of character and world building these three cultures. I didn’t even walk away with a solid concept of how people on Auranus dressed or what kind of homes the people in Limeros lived in. How did they raise their children? What did they think was beautiful? What did honour look like to them? What was proper etiquette in Paelsia? What did they take for granted? How did they treat their elderly? Damn it I want to know these things! The characters were essentially very basic. One never truly got to know any of of them. The story follows the tales of Magnus, Lucia, Cleo and Jonah as they navigate this crumbling world. Ah characters of Falling Kingdoms. If only I’d given three fifths of a fuck for any of you then this book might have turned out better. In my opinion the writing was the worst culprit in this novel. Taking a cheese grater to my forehead might have been kinder. At one point, Magnus’s widdle heart turned to ice… because he was so heartbroken. It. Turned. To. Ice. The writing was enough to make purple prose embarrassed. The one okay thing about this novel was that the plotting itself was at least reasonably consistent. There was always something happening, even if that something was ridiculous. Or poorly written. I felt the novel was fairly well paced. Over all a sloppy attempt at fantasy. One that almost made me look upon The Kiss of Deception by Mary E Pearson with some measure of warmth and longing. This review can be found on my blog, ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 10, 2015
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Sep 10, 2015
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May 22, 2012
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Hardcover
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| 1466337524
| 9781466337527
| 1466337524
| 3.80
| 484
| Sep 27, 2011
| Oct 04, 2011
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did not like it
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I thought it was illegal to fail this hard without a permit. I mean, if it were possible for a book to despise humanity and turn against people in gen I thought it was illegal to fail this hard without a permit. I mean, if it were possible for a book to despise humanity and turn against people in general, this would be its first step down the path to villainy. This book is how they torture state secrets out of spies. Reading this was like using a pineapple for a prostate exam. In all honesty, it's not like there was a shortage of female protagonists who could charitably be described as useless, pathetic twats. I think Janie almost takes the cake as Queen of the Oxygen Thieves. I'd say she's more useless than someone who uses a Masterball on a Magikarp. She couldn't fight her way out of a paper bag if she had a map, GPS, and all her enemies were bunnies. Dead bunnies. If Kai wasn't there to wipe her ass for her, she stab herself with the toilet seat. Her idea of a clever plan is to check both ways before getting stabbed with a knife. I made it approximately halfway through the book in which she'd had about half a dozen fights with the supernatural. She didn't make it through a single one of them without Kai mysteriously showing up to rescue her. She's supposedly been trained since childhood for this position - presumably by the people who keep greenlighting Eddie Murphy movies, based entirely on the amount that Janie fails. I guess what I was expecting was that someone who had spent years training as a feared warrior would be... competent? Able? Spend far less time on her ass watching other people do her job? Kai was your requisite mysterious, dangerous, love interest. If you mistake him for a shadowy handpuppet reflection on your livingroom wall then you're not alone. The writing is enough to make you weep with how disjointed, poorly structured and stagnant it is. The concept is convoluted and, frankly, laughably dumb. This is the cheesiest, silliest, worst homage to Buffy I've ever read. I had to check to see if it was trying to be ironic but, sadly, this was an honest attempt at story telling. The only positive thing I have to say about this one? Still a better love story than Twilight. Then again... what the fuck isn't? [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 25, 2012
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Jan 26, 2012
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Jan 25, 2012
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Paperback
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| 0061668036
| 9780061668036
| 0061668036
| 3.76
| 81,593
| May 05, 2009
| May 05, 2009
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did not like it
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I probably shouldn't have read this. If you read the pre-read section at the bottom of the review, you'll see that I didn't even intend to order it. Y
I probably shouldn't have read this. If you read the pre-read section at the bottom of the review, you'll see that I didn't even intend to order it. Yet, since I had it, I thought I'd give it a go. I lasted 24 pages because that's all my sanity could take. Laurel is a magazine-beautiful, waif-like teenager who leaves homeschooling in grade 10 in order to begin her high school career. And that's when the story stops making sense. Not that the above makes any sense either. Models in magazines aren't even as The comment could fly past as poor characterization and sloppy writing if it didn't go hand in hand with Laurel's horrible relationship with food. In fact, a great deal of emphasis is placed on what she eats. Once again, not entirely a problem except attention is also placed on how she feels when she eats. Which is guilty and "like a battle has been lost" when she eats half a pear and half a cup of juice. [image] I know, Nickhun, I know. The writing is just terrible and the characterization can't even be mentioned because I'm pretty sure Goodread's lax profanity rules would not cover what I would end up saying. Mostly, it's all so very saccharine sweet and ickly chaste, yet oddly kinky and unbelievably tame. I feel like I'm describing Disneyland here, but if I do, that might make people think of fun. Notice I deliberately left fun off the list. But, luckily, there was comparable amounts of vomit. Spoilers below, folks. Apparently. APPARENTLY, Laurel is not actually a human, but a fairy. And the reason she is a vegan is because she is a plant. Like, as in, she is not a red blooded mammal but is an actual plant... I'm sorry, I'm going to need a judge's ruling on that. [image] Thank you. Steve Carell. I think you've said it all. Look, you just. You don't do that. You just...don't. I mean, what school of biology did you go to? The Stephanie Meyer School of Biology, that's what! I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't 8th grade biology talk a lot about how plants photosynthesize to make energy and how they do respire but at night when there's no light and about how they don't have things like digestive systems and they don't have blood but, hey they do have Chloroplasts and Chlorophylls. And how they don't digest nutrients by eating them but by absorbing them through their roots. There just doesn't seem to be a lot of thought put into this. I mean, look at organs like the brain. How does her brain work? They need A LOT Of protein. A huge amount actually. Which you can get by eating a healthy vegan diet, but she's not even doing that. Scientists don't look at an ape-like creature and have this conversation: "So, Doctor Rosenbaum, what do you think it is? Mammal? Reptile? Plant? Rock?" "I don't know. I just don't know. If only there was some way of determining these things! Look, just to be safe, put it down as a bird. Just because it doesn't fly - doesn't mean it can't!" I used to think that the old troll argument of, "You're overthinking it! Stop thinking so much and you'll enjoy it!" was full of shit. But, in this case, they're right. My highly developed mammalian brain just can not handle this level of stupidity. But even if I could somehow switch it off. Well, there enough other bad stuff in here that would spoil it anyway. _____________________________________________Pre-read comments______________________________________ I'm not entirely sure why I'm reading this. For some reason I thought there was some controversy over this author and that I'd barred it, but it's not on my Do Not Read shelf so I must have been mistaken. I went to pick up books from the library this afternoon and it was among them. I don't clearly remember ordering it so I asked for the order date and went home to Mr. Kennedy. The conversation went something like this: Me: "Hey honey, was I drinking heavily on the 15th of December?" Mr Kennedy: "Hmmm...the 15th was a Thursday. That's Corona day." Me: "Ugh. Okay, definitely drunk. That explains it." Mr Kennedy: "Let me guess, you found traffic cones and police hats again?" Me: *Thinks for a second* "That probably would have been the preferable outcome." [image] [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jan 02, 2012
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Mar 28, 2012
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Jan 02, 2012
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Hardcover
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| 1420100963
| 9781420100969
| 1420100963
| 3.89
| 32,699
| Aug 05, 2008
| Jan 01, 2008
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it was ok
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Did you hear that sound? That sound, right there? Okay, well, it's either the sound of my heart forsaking Mead for all eternity, or there's a murderer
Did you hear that sound? That sound, right there? Okay, well, it's either the sound of my heart forsaking Mead for all eternity, or there's a murderer whose broken into your house and is SNEAKING UP BEHIND YOU!!!!! [image] Look over your shoulder just to check that I'm wrong. You know you want to do it! Storm Born, the tragic tale of a woman forced by cruel fate to be hit on by ALL the men. Yes. That's what this story is about. Okay, there are fairies and she has to recover some damsel in distress but basically the novel is about Eugenie's love life. I suppose my problem with Dark Born is that all of Mead's washed up, tried and not-so-true tropes are here. Again. Strong heroine (who will undoubtedly end the series as a complete moron), sexy hero who heroine loves, though nobody really knows why. Secondary sexy love interest who is way more awesome than sexy hero and who Mead spends far more time fleshing out a real relationship with the heroine, but who is apparently not the heroine's twue loff. For reasons completely unknown. I will inevitably like this love interest far more than the banal and boring love interest Mead champions. The one thing I'll say about this novel is that Mead writes good sex. That's her one redeeming virtue. She writes gripping, interesting characters, a rich world and stories that hint at great possibilities, but Mead absolutely sucks at the follow through. The difference with this novel is that I'm not interested in following through to watch her crash and burn yet another series. This novel reminded me of a quote by Dan Hemmens from Ferretbrain. "Rape is not the occupational hazard of having a vagina." Thank you. Now I'll address the fictional critics in my head by saying that yes, Mead gave all these douches a reason to rape the protagonist that wasn't just about sex. But... well, it just doesn't count and I'll explain why. I don't know about you, but *I* am personally sick of stories that tell me that because I have a vagina, I am a walking talking victim waiting to happen. Because novel after novel tells the same story. No matter how strong, powerful or kickarse you are as a heroine, you are still a victim and will need to be rescued by a man. Possibly several times. I'm sick to death of it. Barely a page goes by in this book where rape isn't mentioned. Even if it's just to say, 'Eugenie, you're so beautiful I'd rape you and LIKE it!" This book almost treats rape like a fucking compliment. "I've had five rape attempts today, what about you?" "Oh, I've had three." "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. Don't worry, maybe tomorrow will pick up!" I have a problem with drilling into people's heads that women are victims. Always. Vulnerable, precious little petals. Don't let them out of the house or they'll trip over their puritanical vaginas and get raped. Or what about a message just as bad? Almost all men will rape if given the chance. It's the rare few who won't take the opportunity for a good ol' free for all on an unwilling woman. Now hold on for an even bigger criticism. Of all the worst things, this was the WORST. POSSIBLE. THING! [image] This book... is like Anita Blake. [image] It's got multiple love interests, fairies, bargains made, political sex, sexual awakening of formerly prudish, loner character, mystery, evil women bitches out to get you. It's all so very reminiscent. You know what? Don't read this book. Just go watch Generation 4 My Little Pony instead. I promise there's no rape there and it's about a thousand times better and more entertaining. And there is no rape. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Nov 13, 2011
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not set
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Nov 13, 2011
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 1439188238
| 9781439188231
| 1439188238
| 3.69
| 5,075
| Oct 25, 2011
| Oct 25, 2011
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did not like it
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Author blurb for Jill Myles from the author profile for Jessica Clare: After devouring hundreds of paperback romances, mythology books, and archaeologi Author blurb for Jill Myles from the author profile for Jessica Clare: After devouring hundreds of paperback romances, mythology books, and archaeological tomes, she decided to write a few books of her own - stories with a wild adventure, sharp banter, and lots of super-sexy situations. She prefers her heroes alpha and half-dressed, her heroines witty, and she loves nothing more than watching them overcome adversity to fall into bed together. If you are wondering why I'm quoting Myles' author blurb and why it exists on Jessica Clare's author profile and why it's applicable to a Jessica Sims' book then congratulations - it worked. It worked because for some reason I purchased this book and you might have too. I read the author bio for Jessica Sims which says some shit about owning cats and playing games. What it doesn't say is that Jessica Sims in a nom de plume for Jill Myles and so is Jessica Clare. I feel absolutely cheated. I'd already read Gentlemen Prefer Succubi, and disliked this author's writing intensely. I never would have bought this book if I'd known that she wrote it. I don't know why three pen names are necessary in the same genre and why two of those pen names are even in the same subgenre! It's enough to say that nothing about the writing has improved. At all. If anything, the characterization has degraded. The blurb might lead you to believe that the writing is full of intelligence and research. It might make you think that the dialogue is smart, witty and sharp. You might think that the romance heroes are sexy and the heroines are strong but funny. It's all a lie. One big fucking lie. Once again the plot was pathetically simple and juvenile. I honestly feel that the writing is cheap and sloppy as hell. And the characters. Fuck my life. There is nothing witty about them. Nothing. Bathsheba is a capitulating moron who has no sense - common or otherwise. Beau is an obsessive, controlling psychopath. From the moment he meets her he controls everything about her. Their first date is nothing but creepy, gross sexual innuendo. Just a few hours after meeting her he has drugged her and kidnapped her to his hotel (for her own safety, of course). Within days he's kidnapped her again and dragged her to a remote location where he puts her completely within his control. This doesn't stop. The entire book continues like this. I'm sure some will dismiss this as a caring man, concerned about his woman and taking care of her. My response would be to tell them to go volunteer at a woman's shelter at some point because that's exactly where Bathsheba would wind up one day. When is the picture of what's sexy and appropriate going to change? This is not sexy. Abusive isn't sexy and Beau shows ALL the signs of an abuser. Spend three months helping a woman escape her abusive, controlling husband and come back and tell me this shit is still okay. Hear her cry on the phone night after night while he's in the shower because she's terrified for her life but physically can't leave. She can't leave because he controls her money, so she has to secretly work over time and squirrel the money away. She can't just take her passport and banking stuff. No. She has to pretend to be clearing out the study and she has to secret her documents away. Spend THREE MONTHS storing things for a terrified woman who is agonizingly working, inch by inch for moving day. I can not express the amount of thought and planning that goes into those moving days. Some of them will haunt me forever. When we all have to show up but can't park in front of the house in case he drives by so we end up carrying boxes two blocks away to where our cars are. Where we have to board her cat and secretly arrange a garage for her car to stay in and keep plane tickets hidden in her name. Live those three months with the knowledge that ONE WRONG SLIP and he'll track her down and beat the shit out of her, kill her or worse - force her back to him. Something forgotten at home meaning an early return, a call to work where a careless coworker reveals she didn't come in, him accidentally stumbling on a clue to her plans beforehand. Do all this and then come back to me and tell me it's alright to write this kind of relationship. I don't think there's anything that's going to convince me that Beau's characterization was harmless and just a sexy break from reality. It's a fucking tragic reality for far too many women. And it isn't romantic. This review can also be found on my blog: [image] ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Dec 13, 2011
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Dec 15, 2011
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Nov 02, 2011
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1742141862
| 9781742141862
| 1742141862
| 3.81
| 501,138
| May 01, 2007
| Jan 01, 2009
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did not like it
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None
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Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 14, 2011
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Sep 17, 2011
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Sep 14, 2011
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Audiobook
| ||||||||||||||
| 1934384011
| 9781934384015
| 1934384011
| 3.68
| 15,943
| Feb 1993
| Aug 01, 2007
|
did not like it
|
The year was 2008. It was a fair year. The Olympics were held in Beijing and Michael Phelps became an international celebrity. The Indian Space Resear
The year was 2008. It was a fair year. The Olympics were held in Beijing and Michael Phelps became an international celebrity. The Indian Space Research Station has a win with Chandrayaan-1 whilst elephants and terrorists rampage across the country killing many hundreds of people. President Obama is elected into office. Fidel Castro resigns. Theoneste Bagosore is convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in Rowanda for genocide. Israel and Hamas fight...again... And a young, naive woman is pregnant with her first child. She is unsure, lacks confidence and wants to be certain she does the best job for her unborn child. Yet there are a great deal of books, resources and information - which ones to start with? Which ones to trust? So she turns to older, more experienced mothers who all but thrust this book into her hands and begin making the promises. Your child will sleep through the night at eight weeks if you follow this book. You won't have breastfeeding issues. Your child will be settled and happy. You will be a good mother. The book is full of advice. Not just advice, but research! Science! It must be right! It all makes sense now. Parenting will be a breeze. The book has told her everything she needs to know. Don't trust your instincts, it said. That way leads to folly, trust us instead! Your baby will cry, but mostly this will be to manipulate you. You must be firm, even if you want to give it a cuddle, this will only let the baby win. Don't give up and comfort it, stay strong and it will learn to self settle! Routine, routine, routine, that is the only way to go! Feed every four hours - hold out until then so that they're REALLY hungry and have a full feed. It makes statements like: There's no evidence to suggest that crying is bad for babies. It's actually good for babies to cry for a period of time every day - it's natural. Don't cosleep. Mother's don't get enough rest with cosleeping. Children must sleep in their own rooms. Attachment Parenting is misguided and results in exhausted/poor mothering. November arrives and her child is born. She tries. Lord knows, she tries. But he won't stop crying, screaming, with a red face and tiny little hands bawled into tiny little fists. People tell her he is hungry and should be fed. She can't see it. They must be wrong. Babywise had told her that he needed to feed every four hours. Demand feeding would destroy breastfeeding, spoil him and have him feeding from her constantly until he controlled her completely. Despite having a natural, drug-free, complication-free birth, they keep her in hospital for five days, refusing to let her go home because she is clearly depressed, not coping and struggling to care for her newborn who begins losing weight, cries inconsolably and struggles to settle. Her breastmilk doesn't come in for five days. Eventually she signs herself out of the hospital. It must be the hospital's fault. That's why the book's advice wasn't working. That's why he wants to be picked up all the time, won't sleep and won't feed properly. She'll be fine as long as she just goes home. But things don't improve. Her breastmilk supply is limited, the baby restless. She and her husband spend countless nights pacing the halls trying to settle their little boy. They hold firm and don't bring him to bed with them despite their exhaustion, try not to spoil him, pick him up too much and give into his obviously stubborn, temperamental nature. The mother slips further into depression, rarely looking into her son's face. Soon he stops looking into hers. When he's not crying, he sits cheerlessly and robotically on her lap while she ignores him. "Spare the rod, spoil the child," she keeps reminding herself. Eight weeks come and go. The baby cries all night still. The mother has failed. She is a wretched creature. A terrible mother. It was all a horrible mistake. Maybe the book is wrong? Maybe she should feed whenever he cries? Maybe he could come into her bed occasionally? Sometimes he pushes away from her, keeps his eyes averted, scrunches up his little face in anger, then he flips and clings to her, feeds constantly, wants to sleep only in her arms. The baby is so unsure in his attachment to his mother. He is a baby in distress. "Oh no! The book was right all along! Attachment parenting isn't the answer!" she thinks. As a mother, she's failed again. She's failed her son again. Now thoroughly despairing, depressed, unconnected, she begins needing just one beer to make it through lunch time. Then she needs a beer to make it through to bedtime as well. Eventually, help is sought. "Consistency," the midwife says after listening to the mother's distraught story. "You need rest. You need to refresh. He needs consistent, affectionate nurturing." The mother nods. The advice sounds good. "Stop looking to the clock to feed your baby. The clock doesn't need feeding." A loose routine is hatched out, but the baby is to be fed when hungry. The baby is to be given rest, love and attention. Slowly the months slip away. The baby learns to cuddle. The baby learns to laugh and giggle. The baby learns kisses and snuggles. The mother eventually gets better, begins enjoying parenthood. She learns to play with her child, interact with her child, enjoy her child. She can see now what this book lacks. She sees that it is so concerned about structure and discipline and not love - the greatest Christian principle of them all. It pits mother and baby against each other in a nonexistent battle for control. Between the parent's needs and the child's needs. It is parent-focused with unbalanced, incomplete data and research. It provides no unbiased advice, advocates no nurturing, divorces mother and instinct. The mother wants those first four months with her son back. She desperately wishes she could have them returned, change them, be the mother HE needed instead of the mother she was "educated" to be. She knows the Ezzos aren't entirely to blame. She's the one who chose to take their advice, to apply it, to lose faith in herself. But they are not innocent either. They have published this book. The information is careless and their opinion is raised to that of gospel. Biblical references are twisted and garbled in order to fit the Ezzo's approach. Scientific research is cherry picked, or in some cases outright misleading. At the end of the day, though, the mother has won. She gave birth to a second son. When he cries, he is comforted. When he is hungry, he is fed. He sleeps when he wants to and at night he cuddles up in his mother or father's arms, safe and sound. He looks into his mother's eyes and already tries to smile. He snuggles his head into her neck and gurgles when she presses kisses into his. She is happy. She is in love with her two boys. She is the mother she wants to be. It is nothing like what the Ezzo's wanted. She likes it that way. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 19, 2011
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Aug 19, 2011
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Aug 19, 2011
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Audio CD
| ||||||||||||||
| 0345490657
| 9780345490650
| 0345490657
| 4.02
| 59,249
| Sep 30, 2000
| Mar 28, 2006
|
it was ok
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There was a lot about this book that I didn't like, but only some of it can be legitimately complained about. I can't really complain about the amount There was a lot about this book that I didn't like, but only some of it can be legitimately complained about. I can't really complain about the amount and type of sex in this book like I could for Anita Blake because, unlike Anita Blake, this book is meant to have sex in it! It is Erotica. Sure, the silent, gaping, hole where my soul is shrieking over the tentacle sex would be fun to discuss, but I really can't. I highly doubt many people would pick this book up without knowing that it's freaky beyond all reason and probably violates the Geneva Convention at least a couple of times. Plus, I'm pretty sure 35% of it is illegal in a minimum of three American states. But luckily, LKH gives me plenty else to complain about and it just happens to be pretty much everything wrong with the later Anita Blake books too! The writing in this novel was horrible but it was actually the story telling and characterization that made it particularly difficult to wade through. The issue LKH has with taking 200 pages for all of the characters in Anita Blake to argue, discuss and consider her tampon brand is right here for easy access in MG. Aside from a short opening scene, the majority of this 400 page novel occurs within 48 hour span. Of those 48 hours, Merry is unconscious for a good 24(ish, I suppose, it's easy to lose track of time during the waffling!)of those. So basically the story revolves around Merry going back to Fairy, attending a party and heading home. Along the way she gives a sideways glance at a mystery that solves itself, has a lot of sex and relies on unpredictable, unexplainable sex/blood powers to fix all her problems and save the day. I was hoping that this book, unlike Anita Blake, would actually show Merry CHOOSING to have sex with a bunch of men, but not really. Once again circumstances and people more powerful than herself force her to do it. Really. She's just a victim here, guys. It's also a disturbing trend that LKH's female characters use their bodies/sex to heal emotional hurts in others because, despite everything healthy and normal, apparently you can do that. If you want to get laid then just give Merry/Anita a sob story about how you're so broken up inside/can't get laid/have some kind of repressed issues etc and she'll most likely sleep with you then. Because that's all you need. Her magic cooter will heal all your ills. I wonder about the message it sends when Merry/Anita has so little self esteem and values her body so little. In fact, I worry about the disconnected way that Merry/Anita use their bodies - almost as if it was just a tool to share around for the greater good. It almost makes me feel weird for only having sex with people because I WANT to have sex with them. The part where she only considers turning down a man with tentacles spewing out of his abdomen, because she won't be able to properly fake her orgasms was a little disconcerting! [image] LKH, WTF? Give us back our tentacle sex. -Japan Basically, unless you feel like reading something for ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jul 10, 2011
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Dec 07, 2011
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Jul 10, 2011
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Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1414304501
| 9781414304502
| 1414304501
| 3.92
| 7,616
| Sep 18, 2001
| Feb 22, 2005
|
did not like it
|
This book was loaned to me by a friend who had purchased it, but not read it. I only finished this book so that I could do a comparative review to Rai
This book was loaned to me by a friend who had purchased it, but not read it. I only finished this book so that I could do a comparative review to Raising Boys: Why Boys Are Different-And How to Help Them Become Happy and Well-Balanced Men but after reading it, I realized that this book is far more comparable to I Am America than any serious or informative text on raising boys. Despite the fact that Raising Boys is vague on details, out of date and amateurish in the more intimate areas of brain functioning and child development, it is still far more helpful, informative and useful than this book will ever be. You can be forgiven for assuming, as I did, that Bringing Up Boys is a book concerned with providing information for parents in understanding their boys, a variety of tips and advice on their problem behaviors and an overall plan on how to smooth the journey. Unfortunately, Dobson's only answer to all of the above is the same to any question asked in Sunday School (and here's a tip, it's ALWAYS a variation of the following three): Jesus, prayer, the Bible. Okay, you expect a book by an evangelist to run in such a theme. However, I also expected a book by a person with a doctorate is psychiatry to provide informed, balanced, professional advice based on research, statistics, studies and personal experience. No. Dobson unapologetically hates feminists, liberals and homosexuals and he makes absolutely no attempt at providing balanced information. This book is nothing more than fear-mongering propaganda. Though he uses many studies to try and validate his opinion, he out-right omits balanced data or studies that don't confirm his opinion. Some of the studies he uses are out-dated or invalidated by other studies. His statistics are used to validate his opinions in one area, then disregarded in another. For example, at one point he claims that there's no evidence for a genetic inheritance of homosexuality because twin studies show that if one twin is homosexual, then the other is statistically "only" %50 likely to be homosexual as well. Yet, later in the book he claims that our genetics are a major influence on our life and uses another twin study to validate this by stating that if one twin gets divorced then then identical twin has a %45 chance of divorcing as well! [image] Now I'm not arguing about the nature vs nurture because the bulk of recent scientific studies show that we are largely products of our genetics - in that part, he's right but there's little else in this book that I can say that for. Mostly, because this book's advice for raising boys can be summed up as: 1. JESUS! 2. Love them lots 3. Spend time with them 4. MAKE SURE THEY DON'T CATCH TEH GAY! 5. Homeschooling, yeah! [image] This book was offensive to logic, reason and most of all, humanity. Dobson hates: 1. Homosexuals 2. Women's liberation 3. Liberals 4. Namby-pamby people who let their children play with gender-neutral toys and don't provide young boys with toy guns, don't smack and practice that hippy, attachment parenting philosophy. 5. The media He is terrified of them all and this book, rather than being about Bringing Up Boys as the title suggests, is really about vilifying all of the above and scare-mongering his readers into hating and fearing them as much as he does. Every chapter went something like this: You need to spend time with your kids. I really FEEL for single mothers/homosexuals/poor people/women who don't fit my small and pathetic definition of what I think a woman should be. Unlike me, who is a disgustingly rich, upper middle class, white man, I understand that you don't have the benefits of choices about spending time with your children. Some of you have to work in order to survive. Gee, must be tough. But it's still important so if you can't spend more time with them... eh, I really feel for you. Please enjoy my heart-touching tale of how I once met a single mother/homosexual/poor person/woman that didn't fit my small and pathetic definition of what I think a woman should be and changed their life in a positive way. I'm so awesome. [image] As a woman and a feminist, I want to be mostly offended at his narrow and pathetic views on what and who I should be. However, I'm far more offended on behalf of the homosexual community who he ALMOST outright incriminates of conspiring to rape your boys. Didn't you know? All homosexual men want is to have buttsecks with little boys. All lesbians want is to groom little girls into future lesbians and - perhaps worse, feminists. I especially love how he uses the example of the LBGT community in the UK pushing for the age of consent for homosexual boys to be lowered to 16 in order to try and prove his allegations about homosexuals. Yet he conveniently neglects to mention that this was in order to equalize the age of consent because the AOC for heterosexuals was already 16! At one point he even claims that the breakdown of marriage in the US is due to the rising acceptance of same-sex relationships. Riiiiiiiiiigggghhht! Like I said, logic isn't his strong point! Similarly, women's liberation is also at fault for all the ills of society and most of all, for troubled young lads. It's too exhausting to address his many inaccuracies and prejudices toward women and since this review is long enough already, I'll just leave you to assume the worst - you'll most likely be right. I wish, instead, that he'd look at his own research. He claims again and again that fathers are essential to the raising of strong, good young men. I absolutely agree. So maybe men are to blame for the current male crisis? Just an idea? Did it ever occur to Dobson though? Nope! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Jun 04, 2011
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Jun 06, 2011
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Jun 04, 2011
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Paperback
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| 4.04
| 61,895
| Feb 07, 2006
| Feb 2006
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it was ok
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Do you know a woman who's bitchy, non-compliant and difficult? According to Cole, the answer to this is that she's just too damn empowered and has too Do you know a woman who's bitchy, non-compliant and difficult? According to Cole, the answer to this is that she's just too damn empowered and has too many rights! [image] Surely relinquishing her unappreciated freedoms and rights will make her abundantly happy... and compliant... and slutty... I hear an objection from the Kresley Cole fans and in the interest of fair media representation, I'll relay it to the rest of you. "But Kat, the novels ends with Wroth and Myst in an equal relationship where Myst has her freedom and Wroth is remorseful for his treatment of Myst." That's very true. But this happens AFTER Myst has been "tamed" and brought to heal like a bitch in heat. It also happens after Myst, who is a two-thousand year-old woman of immense power and knowledge, contemplates how happy she is now that she's no longer in charge of her own life. I am not exaggerating, either. She reminisces on how, unknowingly, she's been waiting for a man stronger than her to come along, overpower her and take away those burdensome choices. [image] Stop lying! You're just angry because you don't have a kitchen to go home to! Note to men: Despite how insanely beautiful and attractive I am, I can assure you that any attempt to kidnap or control me will not end pleasantly on your behalf. Despite my Super Slut Powers, I'm less than likely to fall to pieces at the sight of your sizable "manroot" and decide to exchange regular access to it for my freedom. I really actually enjoyed how this novel started because Myst was just so badass. She reminded me of Holo out of Spice and Wolf, which is a great anime if you're new to the genre and are looking for something to convince you that the Japanese aren't all weird and creepy perverts. My issue with Cole is that she interprets female strength, in this novel, as using your sexuality as a weapon and deceiving men with the illusion of sex. I don't think sexuality mingled with deception is women's greatest weapon or strength any more than I think a man's greatest weapon is his physical strength. In fact, Myst never even really tries to outsmart Wroth, as if it's a useless attempt. Dude, you have like 1300 years on the guy! You don't have one trick up your sleeve that doesn't involve handjobs? [image] I can think of ten better ways to get a ride out of a guy and I'm only 24, Myst. It's like you're not even trying... On the other hand, there IS something endearing about this novel. [image] I just can't quite put my finger on it though... Okay, this novel really, truly is very sexy. It is it's one redeeming feature other than the ending where I'm convinced that at least this couple has a chance of surviving a relationship together, which I can't say for most romance novels, so that's a positive. And just in case you didn't get the memo, this book is very, very sexy. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read every single thing that Kresley Cole has ever written. [image] What? Like you've never seen a hypocrite before? ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 20, 2011
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Feb 21, 2011
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Oct 19, 2010
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ebook
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| 1416975861
| 9781416975861
| 4.31
| 838,955
| Aug 31, 2010
| Aug 31, 2010
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did not like it
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**spoiler alert** A lot of Goodreads friends that I have, people I deeply respect and whose opinions I actually hold in great value gave this book lot
**spoiler alert** A lot of Goodreads friends that I have, people I deeply respect and whose opinions I actually hold in great value gave this book lots of stars and glowing reviews. Friends of mine, you know I adore you, so please don't take offense at this review. If you enjoyed this book then I’m really glad you did. It makes me happy when people enjoy literature. So you probably shouldn't read this review if you love this book. It's nice to know that even though Cassandra Clare's Draco Trilogy ended years ago, I can pick up ANY SINGLE ONE of her books that she has published and see not only Draco’s character, but all my old friends from the Harry Potter Fanon Universe with different names and physical descriptions but otherwise pretty much intact. Because seven really long books just wasn’t enough for them apparently. It's nice to know that the snappy little one-liners and cheap hijinks are being recycled because they worked so well the first AND second time she used them. I don't think I've made it any great secret that I despise the writings of Cassandra Clare - so let me get the, few, good points out of the way so I can go back to imagining a world where authors like this are forcibly chained to their desks and made to read their own stories over and over again until they’re sorry. -She stopped using so many damn similes. I no longer feel like gouging out my own eyes every single time she tries to describe something. -There is no creepy incest in this book so my husband was spared walking in on me trying to choke the life out of a paperback novel. And… that about it. I mean, let’s face it, if the only good things I can say about this book are that she’s made slight improvements so that I no longer feel the urge to commit seppuku by diving head first into a meat grinder, then it’s not high praise. So what was wrong with this novel? Well, other than the fact that the characters were almost CARBON COPIES of ones that I’d read in City of Bones, Draco Dormiens, Draco Sinister and Draco Veritas, there was just so much to hate. The character building that they actually DO have only exists because she did the work years ago (on top of another author's pre-existing characters) – otherwise they’d be little more animated than the clockwork automatons that appear in this story. Don’t get me started on how she wiki’d “Victorian Society”, copy and pasted the information into word and then randomly injected it into the story via the characters parroting the cans and can’ts of the time period. Not even going there. It’ll take too long to complain about that. How about her inability to write a storyline that is in anyway surprising? Reading one of her novels is like watching a dumbed down version of Scooby Doo. I actually liked Scooby Doo (before Scrappy-Doo came along. Whoever made that character needed to be shot, hung, kheelhauled and quartered – the whole works) but you know how they’d go somewhere and they’d be like, “Hey guys, I think something’s going to happen! Hey, look gang, a perfectly inconspicuous diving mask… I WONDER IF THIS COULD BE A CLUE *WINK**WINK**NUDGE**NUDGE* FOR ALL THE FIVE YEAR OLD KIDS PLAYING AT HOME!” In Clockwork Angel, Clare practically flags you down, makes you come look VERY hard at her clue that is painted bright, bright red and poorly hidden behind her back while she insists that it’s not actually there and giggles every time she tries to make you not look at her ENORMOUS FLIPPIN' CLUE. She insists on this behaviour until finally you pat her on the head, tell her that she ALMOST managed to colour inside all the lines. The whole concept of this book wasn’t original! It was her looking at the Internet culture going, “Huh… so people are really getting into steampunk, eh? Hmmmm… how can I cash in on this with as little effort on my behalf as possible?” She is recycling characters that she built on from the Harry Potter universe years ago. She's recycling storylines, conversations, personalities, plot-points, ideas and concepts from all around her and she recycles her own stuff (what little there is of it) just as frequently. When she was accused of plagiarism for lifting entire paragraphs of text from other authors without referencing it, she made a comment that it didn't really matter because - hey, isn't fanfiction just pastiche anyway? Well, fine. It was just fanfiction, who really cares? But I'd think after all these years she would have moved on past her pastiche style of writing to something that she could actually claim as her own. But you know what? She can't. I feel no guilt in saying that she doesn’t deserve to be published or to be earning the money that she is. I will proudly complain about her books until she actually starts to care about the fudge that she’s packing. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Sep 06, 2010
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Nov 09, 2010
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Sep 06, 2010
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Hardcover
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| 031253275X
| 9780312532758
| 031253275X
| 3.59
| 292,317
| Feb 03, 2009
| Feb 03, 2009
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did not like it
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How To Write Popular YA Supernatural Literature AND Defile Your Spirit! Based on the popular YA novel, Evermore, and aided by countless more like it, I How To Write Popular YA Supernatural Literature AND Defile Your Spirit! Based on the popular YA novel, Evermore, and aided by countless more like it, I have compiled an easy to read and follow list of rules for writing a popular series and being able to sell out your soul at the same time. Does that sound too convenient? Well, it's unbelievably easy to do if you follow my quick and easy program! 1. Create an 'Outcast' Heroine. It's important that your primarily female teenage audience can relate to your main character. So whilst you can't have your main character associate herself with being cool, it still has to be obvious to your audience that she totally is. Now, Meyer's approach of the goose-turned Swan-but was really still a goose, Bella, associated herself as 'different' and a 'loner' only to arrive at her new school and be immediately popular and accepted by almost everyone. Noel's method is different yet in a similar spirit. Her protagonist, Ever, was incredibly popular at her old school and has decided to be an outcast because she feels that she can't be accepted due to her psychic gift. She also has the ability to perceive someone's personality through the colours that define them. So instead of aligning herself with the shallow, mean and popular crowd, she aligns herself with the shallow and mean loners. It’s very important for your protagonists to be 'different' because today's youth despise the sheep mentality and so they all strive to be unique. Since they're all different in almost the exact same way, it is relatively easy to emulate this, with as little effort put into characterization as possible, in your female protagonist. [image] As long as she shows no regard for her clothing, appearance or any kind of interest in giving a shit about anyone but herself she will easily pass with young audiences. It will be her ewniqueness that eventually draws the Perfect Hero to her as opposed to any of the usual elements such as: looks, hygiene, personality or determinable interest in the world outside their own arse. Please also remember that she probably should be a reader, preferably of Wuthering Heights or Romeo and Juliet and that she should consider everyone around her to have inferior intelligence despite the fact that her reading repertoire extends to only a couple of books. A noticeably absent family is necessary and a completely dead family makes for a better story because then she actually has a perceived reason to be a moody, antisocial, self-absorbed little bitch. Do this even though, in all likelihood, she would be all of the above with a perfectly normal family. 2. Create a perfect hero. It is VERY important that your hero be perfect in almost every regard. Unlike the female protagonist who can disregard her appearance, he must not only be more attractive than a GQ model without any of the effort put into his appearance, but he must also be thoughtful, intelligent and mysterious. In no way is he to reflect almost every teenage boy to have ever existed and he must have no desire to find a partner for himself who is in anyway comparable in looks, kindness, intelligence or perfection. [image] If he is a vampire or some such immortal then he must be ridiculously wealthy. If he is a werewolf then he is allowed to be poor but must make up for it with incredible bedroom skills. He needn’t have a personality that extends beyond mysterious, sexy and in love with the female protagonist. Naturally, in this respect, Meyers, Mead, Marr and Stiefvater are something like overachievers - but if Noel, Saintcrow, Clare, Kate and Fitzpatrick are any indication, then we need know little more about the hero other than the fact that he’s gorgeous, has a secret and is in love. History, friends, likes, dislikes, family, passions, interests, hobbies and personality flaws are all negligible information that is taking up precious space in your novel. Especially when you could be injecting more drooling from the female protagonist in place of any kind of characterization for your hero. Your book will sell better if the hero stalks, follows, obsesses over and actively pursues the heroine beyond any realm of believability. You could triple your audience just by having him watch her sleep. 3. Create useless friends. It’s important to reiterate to the young adult generation that nobody other than the hero is important. Since domestic abuse begins with one partner manoeuvring the other to have limited contact with anyone else, we must strive to normalize this in literature. Thus the female protagonist shouldn’t have anyone close enough to her that she can’t break contact or eventually forget about them. It’s very important that her full focus, socialization and all of her needs are eventually devoted or met by the male protagonist. To aid this, her friends must be selfish, vain, crazy, slutty, uncaring or in other ways undeserving of the heroine’s attentions and affections. It’s very important that she never call them on their poor, damaging and graceless friendship but must lovingly worry about them for the minimal amount of time acceptable to the reader before once again completely focusing on the mysterious hero. 4. Mix in a twisted, convoluted plot designed entirely to provide dramatic and sexy subplot. It’s important that the plot, no matter how unlikely, must revolve around the hero saving the heroine. The villains do not necessarily need to have realistic or conceivable motivations for their actions. As long as the hero gets to save the day at least three or four times then your book will be profitable! Please remember that the actual plot of your story needn’t truly begin until at least 350 pages into your story. The longer you can stall any interesting event occuring, the less thinking you will actually need to do. Plus - FOR FREE - extras to help 'improve' your novel, the bottom line of your sales, and the expedient destruction of your soul. -How to create a senseless mythology. Mythology is more of a concept rather than something that needs to be respected or honoured. Vampires don’t need to refrain from daylight and angels no longer need to “fall” for good they can now be redeemed like us! The good news is that creating your own mythology, disregarding anything written before, allows you to twist and bastardize the plot beyond any recognizably interesting concept! -Explanations as to why research could actually DAMAGE your profit! Research takes time, energy and intelligence. Why do it? You’ve got ten fingers (presumably) and an attention span that extends past anything that could be compared to a gnat (even if it is only barely). Simply make it up as you go! For example: Ever is psychic. Research may tell us that this has something to do with receiving visions of the future or possibly commnicating with ghosts. Yet research is boring. Instead, she is imbued with the following powers that we guess can kind of be put under a psychic umbrella if we force enough information and logic out of our brains first: Mind reading, visions of near-present and future, personal life knowledge of any person she physically touches, seeing ghosts, seeing auras, literary osmosis from touching any written object, drawing the answers from any written question placed before her and any other supernatural abilities that seem convenient at the time. -Detailed observations on why the Deus Ex Machina rocks. Tying together a plot, even if you work to keep it as non-complicated or infantile as possible, is hard! It’s much easier to ignore tying together a number of plot points in any believable fashion and instead rely on some Deus Ex Machina to come in and take care of thoughtful planning for you! -How to expand one, nonsensical idea into a series and why this is more profitable than originality! Last, but not least! Ensure that your story is somewhat open ended so that you can create a series out of it! Research shows that people, even if they are intelligent enough to see that you’re writing is becoming progressively shittier and nonsensical, will often still purchase books in the series in order to find out what happens. So rather than creating a new story with new characters, simply beat the same old horse (it needn’t really be a horse – simply a pile of shit that’s been forced into a horse-like shape) for at least three or more books in order to squeeze every last cent out of the franchise that you can! This review can also be found on my blog, Cuddlebuggery Book Blog. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Aug 24, 2010
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Aug 25, 2010
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Aug 09, 2010
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Paperback
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| 0062002325
| 9780062002327
| 0062002325
| 3.93
| 29,931
| Feb 15, 2011
| Feb 15, 2011
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did not like it
|
I’ve thought long and hard to determine if there was a single aspect of this book that I even liked. The characters, the story-telling, the writin I’ve thought long and hard to determine if there was a single aspect of this book that I even liked. The characters, the story-telling, the writing, the themes… was there anything? No. I tried but this book was painfully bad. I am not at all exaggerating when I report that I fell asleep twice within the first twenty pages. This book was highly reminiscent of both Buffy and Bleach. So what? Pretty much half the things published in YA these days are reminiscent of Buffy. Unfortunately, you want to at least stand up a little in the comparison. This is not comparable to Buffy. This is Buffy if Buffy weren’t Buffy but Dawn was Buffy. Would you really want to watch Buffy if Dawnnwere Buffy? I would like to take this opportunity to remind people that there is nothing wrong with writing a realistic teenager. Ellie was certainly realistic – for a certain type of teenager. She was vapid, shallow, thoughtless, completely stuck in her own world and hopelessly self-centered. This is a problem for two reasons. 1. Nobody takes issue with this. Will mentions twice that she doesn’t take her duties seriously enough but this is laughed off and treated by the text as if he takes them way too seriously. 2. The fucking world relies on her and her alone. [image] Look, I don’t want to be nitpicky, but this girl has our lives in her hands. What I want to know is, is there a way that can…not be the case? She’s so boring, and the novel becomes boring because of how boring she is. This is supposed to be a book about an immortal warrior girl who fights Reapers to save humanity. It ends up being Gossip Girl with the occasional monster. What continually amazes me is that Ellie even has friends – because she has all of the wit and charm of a mouldy mop. Yet Requisite Bestfriend and Requisite Friendzone Freddie just hang off every word she says. [image] We have Will who is one of those annoying, brooding male romantic interests. There’s not much to say about him because he’s like ALL brooding male romantic interests. [image] They could have overcome the insurmountable obstacles to their love and found a way to be together but he was too busy brooding and she was too busy shopping. Also the world ended along the way. The writing is boring and the plot is painfully slow. The plot is barely there and Moulton completely fails to marry the overtly long and complicated world building with any kind of reasonable story arc. The only method she knows of conveying information is in massive info dump conversations. After you finish wading through meaningless, vapid social interaction after meaningless, vapid social interaction you discover that the few fight scenes there are in this book are painfully short and boring. How am I supposed to care about the end of the world and the possibility of a Reaper consuming my soul and condemning me to an eternity in hell when all Ellie fucking cares about is her parties and social standing? Oh, I’m sorry. She also cares about Mr Tall, dark, mysterious and broody. They spend a lot of time talking. A. Lot. of. time. It’s not like I expected her to go from 0-kickass in five seconds. But Ellie never at any point in this novel has a real revelation about the fact that she’s got a divine fucking mission here. And it’s not to attend parties. Think about it. Every time she’s going to the movies with friends or coffee, or a party, someone is out there dying. And not just dying. Their soul is going to burn in hell and suffer eternal torment and be used in Lucifer’s fight to condemn ALL the souls. Every time Ellie decides to take a break and not be so serious about her duties, which she does with alarming frequency – a child, a woman, a man, SOMEONE will suffer forever for it. Every time she needs to investigate something or train and she says, “Oh, I’m busy at the movies tonight, can we do that in two days time?” she’s personally letting people down. The horror she experiences every time she faces off against one of the Reapers (the horror for which we are meant to sympathize as one of her struggles) yeah… well, she has both Will and a couple of kick arse swords when she faces off against them. Think of the children who have had to face that horror on their own and have not survived. I have no sympathy or emotional investment in her at all. Sure, she doesn’t have her memories, but even in flashbacks she is completely disingenuous as an immortal warrior fighting for humanity. When Buffy got her mission, she woke up fairly quickly and realized that her hopes and dreams and free time were all completely inconsequential compared to her mission. Ellie did not have that realization in this entire novel. Everything took a backseat to her social life and school calendar. Everything. And this was not perceived to be a problem. Not even by the narration which gives far more time and invests far more heavily in Ellie’s star-crossed lovelife than it does in the fact that there is an apocalypse coming. There is something supremely wrong about that. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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Feb 08, 2012
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Feb 19, 2012
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Jul 10, 2010
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Hardcover
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Kat Kennedy
>
Books:
books-that-deserve-painful-death
(36)
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my rating |
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| 3.83
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did not like it
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not set
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Oct 24, 2017
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| 4.05
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it was ok
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Jun 22, 2015
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Jun 20, 2015
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| 3.87
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did not like it
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Mar 28, 2015
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Mar 25, 2015
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| 3.71
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did not like it
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Dec 08, 2012
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Sep 29, 2012
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| 4.03
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did not like it
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Aug 13, 2012
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Aug 11, 2012
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| 3.99
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did not like it
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Aug 02, 2012
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Aug 01, 2012
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| 3.62
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did not like it
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Jun 21, 2012
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Jun 14, 2012
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| 3.78
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it was ok
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Sep 10, 2015
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May 22, 2012
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| 3.80
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did not like it
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Jan 26, 2012
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Jan 25, 2012
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| 3.76
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did not like it
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Mar 28, 2012
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Jan 02, 2012
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| 3.89
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it was ok
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not set
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Nov 13, 2011
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| 3.69
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did not like it
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Dec 15, 2011
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Nov 02, 2011
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| 3.81
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did not like it
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Sep 17, 2011
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Sep 14, 2011
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| 3.68
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did not like it
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Aug 19, 2011
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Aug 19, 2011
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| 4.02
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it was ok
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Dec 07, 2011
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Jul 10, 2011
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| 3.92
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did not like it
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Jun 06, 2011
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Jun 04, 2011
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|||||
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| 4.04
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it was ok
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Feb 21, 2011
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Oct 19, 2010
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|||||
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| 4.31
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did not like it
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Nov 09, 2010
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Sep 06, 2010
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|||||
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| 3.59
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did not like it
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Aug 25, 2010
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Aug 09, 2010
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| 3.93
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did not like it
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Feb 19, 2012
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Jul 10, 2010
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