Thursday, February 18, 2010

Mini Book Reviews 2

Welcome back! Here I'm going to be writing an even longer post with even more books! Hurray!
There were 4 books from the last shelf that I left off. They were Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (companions to the Harry Potter series), another Charlie Bone book, and The Library Card, by Jerry Spinelli. Jerry Spinelli's one of my favorite authors, though his books are mostly children's. If you want to read his books, I'd recommend The Library Card, Maniac MageeReport to the Principal's Office and Who Put That Hair In My Toothbrush. The latter is one of my all-time favorites, but I believe it's out of print so it may be hard to find.
Okay. Now for the second row of books on that shelf. My mini-reviews'll never end, hahaha!
I've never read Little Women, first off. Okay, next book is just a movie novel type deal. Not really worth mentioning. Next, we have books from The Babysitters' Club. Someday the world will thank me for owning nearly all of these out-of-print books. Or probably not, because they're set in the nineties and not that good anyway. Haha :- )
The BFG is, of course, a Roald Dahl novel. Something I always think of from it is that the BFG (big friendly giant) says that giants don't kill other giants--humans are the only creatures that kill each other. Which isn't true. It's a sweet book.
True Stories is just one of those American Girl books that every American girl reads growing up.
Hatching Magic is about a girl named Theodora. She lives in Boston and is obsessed with dragons. I've never read the whole thing through, but it's okay.
Belle Teal is by the author of the Babysitters' Club series, Ann M. Martin. It's actually a very good book. It's set in the sixties
and revolves around the titular character, Belle Teal. Belle lives in a small, rural town, and a boy named Darrel starts attending her school. This wouldn't be significant, except Darrel is black, and there's a lot of prejudice towards him. At one part in the book, Belle and Darrel go to the school's Halloween party, dressed in head-to-toe costumes. They switch costumes, and people go the night thinking they're each other. It's horrible that they can accept Darrel when they think he's Belle, but not when they see him. Great read.
The last book is an interview with J.K. Rowling, who is, of course, the author of the Harry Potter series. It's okay, but it's not very long.


Okay. From the top, we have a Pokemon book, an Animal Ark book which I don't even think I've read, a Beverly Cleary book, and some Ghostville Elementary books. None of these are worth mentioning.
Then we have Hoot by Carl Hiaasen. We had to read Flush, another one of his books, for school once. His books are basically just about kids helping the environment. They're not as boring as they sound.
The Dive trilogy by Gordon Korman is a great set of books. It revolves around Kaz, Star, Adrianna, and Dante, four young divers called to intern at a research center in the Caribbean. They realize they've been called to look for sunken treasure, and start trying to take matters into their own hands. Very good books, actually.




So from the top, we've got some Babysitters' Club books, a My America book, which I enjoyed a little. The next book is from the Dear America series, which is a little more advanced reading than My America. This particular one is about Pearl Harbor.
Next, we have My Teacher Flunked the Planet, which is the third book in the My Teacher is an Alien series.
The next book is just a summer activity book that I only got because it came with a little, toy-sized beach chair.










These are the books that were on the top shelf, which isn't big and kind of dark. We have an anthology of the first Cirque du Freak books, which I'm going to review when I finish the entire series. There are 9 or 10 books in all.
Then we have An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green. John Green, whose books I've just started reading, is a really good author. An Abundance is about a guy named Colin who is a child prodigy. His friend Hassan convinces him to go on a road trip, where he meets a girl named Lindsey, and starts working for her mother. Colin, despite being a prodigy, has dated twelve girls, all named Katherine. Colin tries to create a formula that can predict how long relationships will last. It's a great book, and one thing I love about it is the footnotes. I love footnotes in fiction books.
Leviathan is the latest book by Scott Westerfeld. It's set in WWI era, except that history's gone a little differently. Instead of the war being Axis Powers against Central Powers, it's Darwinists against Clankers. Darwinists include the British and French, and Darwinists have engineered animals as weapons. The Clankers include the citizens of Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Germany. The book revolves around Alek, the son of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary, and Deryn, a British girl disguised as a boy, trying to serve in the Darwinist army. It's a great book, in a planned trilogy. I believe the next book comes out in the fall.
There's one book I haven't reviewed, but I have it in another photo with its sequel, so I'll get back to The Looking Glass Wars.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the second set of mini book reviews! More to follow, and let me know if there's anything you'd like me to talk about on here, or my other blog, Musings by Kara.
Keep reading (and commenting, please) and I'll keep writing! If you're reading my blog and I don't know it, please let me know and I'd be happy to follow and read your blog.

2 comments:

  1. I might have mentioned this before, but I don't really like Harry Potter (at all). But I loved Hoot!! And any Pokémon book is a good book, obviously ;) ANd I can't belive you didn't mention "The Secrets Of Droon"!I loved those books when I was younger.

    And I haven't read any of your top shelf books, but I would really like to read Leviathan, and An Abundance of Kathrines sounds interesting. Also, everybody's been telling me to read Cirque du Freak, so I may have to at one point or another. I think I saw the looking glass wars at borders, but it was hard cover ($$$) and sounded kind of funny.

    and BTW, if your going to use labels, seperate them with a comma, otherwise they end up as one big label. and I try to link the the website for books or authors when I do reveiws, but that might be a little to much work for something like this :)

    So keep writing and I'll keep reading!

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  2. I didn't mention the Droon book because there's only one. I have more on another shelf.
    I'm nearly certain that the first book in the Looking Glass Wars is paperback now. And yeah, lol, I try to buy minimal books in hardcover as well. Leviathan's fairly new, so I'm pretty sure it's still in hardcover, but I'll lend you it if I ever see you.
    And thanks for telling me... I thought they were just separated by spaces.
    And no comment on not liking Harry Potter.

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