Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3)

I did not sleep until I finished this book. It is a true page turner and a MUST read. I highly recommend it!Buy Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3)!

His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1)

Don't judge a book by its price! This free download turned out to be a marvelous read. Clever, unusual treatment of dragons. I want more! And, hey, more is available. I'll be reading the rest of this series very soon.Buy His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1)!

Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)

Nothing happened until near the very end. It was an interesting development but I feel anything would have been welcome at that point.
Pages and pages (and pages) of Bella gasping over Edward's beauty, Edward warning Bella he is dangerous (huh - not in the bedroom department he isn't)and a depressing teen angst storyline that had me thinking it would end in joint suicide.
Edward was vampire 'lite'. He was intriguing but just needed to be a little more lively, sexy, powerful etc for my liking.
Bella didn't get why Edward wanted her. Frankly, neither did I.Buy Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)!

People of the Book: A Novel

I could not even finish it. Formulaic, cartoon characters, predictable plot. Our protagonist book conservationist has questions, and we get snippets from the past to answer them. Nothing original, nothing enlightening, nothing transformative. After a third of the book I did not care about any of characters, or the book. I've been waiting a long time to get this on my kindle and not I'm sorry I wasted my time. Buy People of the Book: A Novel!

The Graveyard Book

I won't re-hash the plot -- others here have done nice jobs of that. I just want to say that I had a wonderful time with this book and I am not EVEN a kid. This is, however, the kind of book I would have devoured when I WAS a kid -- flashlight under the pillow after I was supposed to be asleep and everything.

Gaiman finds the balance between adult fiction and juvenile fiction. In fact, the copy I read had a gold seal on it where it had won an award for "Young Adult Fiction". It's probably a little too heavy in places for little kids (the beginning which others have discussed, plus the death of a character who was defending Bod) but Gaiman handles them with just the right amount of honesty without belaboring them. Bad things happen sometimes; Gaiman knows it and he knows we - kids and adults - know it too.

On the main, I found the whole story completely engaging and hated to see the last page. The charm of it, of course, is all the interaction between Bod and the family that raises him...who just happen to all be dead. Beyond that, they're pretty much like you and me with a few restrictions on what they can do, but also a few abilities we don't have, all of which are positive or at least benign.

In a way, I think the book could provide some kids (and adults?) with a point of view that might make death a little less fearsome. At no time is death advocated - in fact, it's rejected by the ghosts as a possible solution to a problem Bod's having at one point - but, especially for kids, death can be such a taboo subject that seeing it handled as almost a footnote to the characters' interaction at times might be a nice alternative viewpoint. After all, none of us knows for sure...

I've read almost everything Gaiman's written (my favorite adult fiction of his: American Gods) and I'd LOVE it if he'd write a sequel to The Graveyard Book. I'd like to know what happens to Bod as he grows into adulthood and (hopefully) finds a way to span the worlds of life and death so we can find out about his world outside the graveyard and once again meet the ghostly friends we've made in this book.Buy The Graveyard Book!

The Book Thief

When I first started reading this book I was a little skeptical about how I would like it when I found out that "death" was the narrator. Thank goodness I kept reading. Not only was the story moving (another point of view of Nazi Germany), but the authors chosen words throughout the book. I know this might sound like an oxymoron of some sort, but the book was vivid in it's simplicity. The right words were chosen each and every page to describe thoughts, feelings, and events which made them more real and more true. A story told by a real person feeling real emotions.

By the end of the book you feel as though you really know the characters. You can see them, you grow up with them. You smile in their triumphs, and likewise your heart aches when they feel pain and sorrow. I can be honest in saying that this book moved me to tears.

It's not just a story about Nazi Germany, but rather a story of words and how the words affect us in each of our own ways. Words are an important theme in this book and I highly recommend this book to anyone and recommend a box of tissue near the end too :-)Buy The Book Thief!