Photo by Gary Tamin from FreeImages

Five more reads today, then just two more posts after that! It’s been so fun going over all the books I read last year and sharing my thoughts with all of you. As always, let me know your thoughts if you’ve read any of these!

Finally, the end of this series! It ended a little differently than the show version. And it really culminates the subtle thematic arc of the rest of the series — in the first book, good and evil are very black and white. Good guys and bad guys stand in sharp contrast and decisions about the right thing to do are always clear. By the time we get to The End, things have gradually become a little murkier, a little more gray. We have learned that sometimes there is a little more to people and their stories than may first appear, and that discerning the right thing to do is not always obvious. Very good discussion fodder for a read-aloud!

Another one that I cannot, of course, rate or review, and the final book that I read aloud to my husband last year (I timed it so that I would read it to him in October). But I will say that this book is very close to my heart, and I had been looking forward to sharing it with him for a long time. If you want to see reviews of this one, check out its Amazon page!

This was another book club read, and as you can see by the rating, I did not like it. I had read it once probably close to a decade ago and didn’t like it then, but I thought maybe the maturity of the ensuing years would change my perspective of it.

Nope.

I just really don’t like the story. The protagonist is really not compelling or likable in any way, the monster, while an interesting character, doesn’t get the treatment he deserves in the story. Also, it has the potential to be terrifying, and yet instead of being remotely scary it’s just boring. Rather than action or horror, we see pages and pages of the monster sitting on a mountain pontificating on the philosophy of his existence.

The one thing I do appreciate about it is that as a female sci-fi writer I think it’s pretty cool that one of the foundational classics of science-fiction was written by a woman. I just wish it were more interesting and entertaining!

This is my lowest-rated book of the year. It was another book club book, and I outright hated it. Nobody in book club liked it very much — though they swore to me that the author’s other books were better (and as you’ll see in later posts, I took them at their word). But this particular one was her first published book and it shows. The only reasons I’m glad I read it were that it introduced me to her work and that it’s kind of cool to see how her writing and ideas developed over time and how the seeds of her later work were present in this first story.

Essentially, it was too sexually graphic for me, I found none of the characters likable or admirable, the morality was severely lacking, and it was just overall not compelling to me. The over-the-top nature of the main characters was annoying, and there were a lot of places where the story went a direction that seemed superfluous and just broke the flow. I don’t recommend this one at all, but if like me you’ve tried it and don’t like it, don’t let it scare you away from this author entirely!

I’ve read this one before, and I’m not gonna lie — I mainly just “read” it this time because the audiobook is narrated by Dan Stevens, who I absolutely love. And he did a phenomenal job. But it is a great book, too — though not quite as gripping the second time, once you already know the twist.

As a side note, I decided afterwards to watch a miniseries version of the story on Amazon, and it was okay — phenomenal casting but too many changes to the story (mostly involving inserting modern values) to really be excellent.

Thank you for sticking with me this far! I’m looking forward to wrapping up my list over the next couple posts.