Review: The Little Moose Who Couldn't Go to Sleep

The Little Moose Who Couldn't Go to Sleep by Willy Claflin

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I really liked the story line and the illustration. Wasn't very keen on the attempt to dialect the language.



View all my reviews

Review: Captain Courage and the World's Most Shocking Secret Book 2

Captain Courage and the World's Most Shocking Secret Book 2 by Stacey a Marshall

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Children's stories tend to have two main elements - to entertain and to teach. I thought this one was too much in the direction of teaching the lesson, without enough entertaining. Granted, I didn't read this one with a child, so perhaps they'd be more amused by it than I was. Still, I really enjoy children's literature and this one didn't do much for me. Just as the Goodreads rating suggests, this one was just ok.



View all my reviews

Review: The Deja Vu Experiment

The Deja Vu Experiment by J.G. Renato

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



Wait, what? WTF did I just read? First off, Diana is the most impressive sounding waitress from Iowa who ever existed. Who knew waitresses from Iowa had all the answers to how to live your life? Secondly, is this New Age mumbo-jumbo wrapped in science or...? Yeah, that wasn't what I was expecting, in the least. And I'm probably the worst possible reader for it, seeing as spirituality is really not my thing.



View all my reviews

Review: Let's Tell This Story Properly

Let's Tell This Story Properly by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, this short story tells the tale of Nnam, whose husband was hiding a second family in Uganda.



View all my reviews

Review: The Foot Soldier, a novella

The Foot Soldier, a novella by Mark Rubinstein

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I got this for free from Netgalley. It was a well written novella about Vietnam. I enjoyed how the ending and the title come together.



View all my reviews

Review: Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I didn't expect the kid to be such an asshole. I wish I'd read this with some students, because I'm curious about how they'd respond to him - would they see that he's quite a bully, while himself worrying about being bullied?



View all my reviews

Review: The Story of the Red Cross

The Story of the Red Cross by Krishna Satyanand

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



Sometimes I download random books - I'm not even sure where this came from or why. Now that I'm choosing my next book at random (Wyatt picks a page, I read the shortest book on my Kindle list on that page), it's getting, well, interesting.

This is clearly a children's book, but I won't lie, I learned things from it. I'm going to poke around and see if I can find Dunant's A Memory of Solferino, because I think that would be quite an interesting read.



View all my reviews

Review: Dirty Cop

Dirty Cop by Kyle Adams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was an amazon freebie. I get an email that alerts me to deals and based on whatever the blurb was, I downloaded this. Turns out it's MM erotica -not what I was expecting, but it was a decently written short story.



View all my reviews

Review: Where There's Smoke

Where There's Smoke by Jodi Picoult

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



That was quick and fun, though I wouldn't normally be all that interested in psychics.



View all my reviews

Review: Swift as Desire

Swift as Desire by Laura Esquivel

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really enjoyed this..an interesting look at Mexico and a sweet love story.



View all my reviews

Review: Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary by David Sedaris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



These fables are hilarious.



View all my reviews

Review: The Vampyre: A Tale

The Vampyre: A Tale by John William Polidori

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Now that was fun. Also short, which is what I'm going for right now. Pregnancy seems to have left me with little reading focus - or focus of any kind, actually. Right now I pick a number at random, go to that page on my Kindle list of books and read the shortest thing on the page.



View all my reviews

Review: Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights

Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights by Anonymous

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



The tales were fantastic and aside from Sinbad, I'd never even heard of any of them. I'll have to read the rest one day.



View all my reviews

Review: A Fatal Grace

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Loved it. The characters of Three Pines are so much fun, as are all of the detectives. It feels like the kind of town I'd like to live in, in spite of my general dislike of small towns. The mystery was fun, in that there were parts I guessed well in advance, but the over all answers escaped me. It was slightly odd to read such a winter book in the summer though.



View all my reviews

Review: Menace

Menace by Gary Fry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



I clicked on this randomly while scrolling through my Kindle book list. I really quite enjoyed it, although I found the ending disappointed. The suspense had built up quite nicely, only to hit an anti-climatic end.



View all my reviews

Review: The Magiker

The Magiker by Charles Dennis

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I really liked this - found the plot and characters interesting and enjoyed trying to figure out how it was all going to go horribly wrong.



View all my reviews

Review: Kilingiri

Kilingiri by Janna Gray

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



It's hard to express what I didn't like about this book, exactly, except that it felt like the narrative just went from tragedy to tragedy without enough emotional impact of each. It has what I call Party of Five syndrome - too many bad things happening to one family making the whole unbelievable. I did enjoy all the exotic settings.



View all my reviews

Review: The Grrrl of Limberlost

The Grrrl of Limberlost by Annie Pearson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This was okay. It took me something like a third of the book to really see what was going on - if I didn't have such long stretches of reading time right now and an anal need to finish all books started, I might have given up. But I did come to be interested enough in the main characters to enjoy the rest of the book.



View all my reviews

Review: The Boy in the Suitcase

The Boy in the Suitcase by Lene Kaaberbøl

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I accidentally clicked on this on my Kindle while looking for something else, but it drew me in immediately. First, because the switching between the various characters without much information put me right into the story before I knew what was what and secondly, because I found the main character, Nina, intriguing. I hadn't realized it was the first in a series, but I look forward to the next one, especially since I read this one in half a day, between spurts of napping. This baby growing is tiring.



View all my reviews

Review: The White Dragon

The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Reread - April 2014 - I had forgotten how much I love this book in particular. It shifts the series significantly in a new direction and Jaxom is one of my favourite characters.



View all my reviews