Anyway, the next reviews will be on the local books I picked up late this year. I started reading some local chick lit for research on my 2008 NaNoWriMo novel, and I ended up buying and reading more than I originally planned to. It was…entertaining. It’s interesting to read some local chick lit, and I’m glad there are some, but I wish they’re longer. Reading really thin books makes me feel like I’m not reading anything at all. But then again, who knows about the market here?

Here are the books I’ve lined up for review for this post:

• No Boyfriend Since Birth by Claire Betita
• The Hagette by Katrina Ramos Atienza
• Every Girl’s Guide to Heartache by Marla Miniano
• Vince’s Life by Vince Teves
• Every Girl’s Guide to Boys by Marla Miniano
• Vince’s Life The Next Chapter: Getting Over Andrea by Vince Teves
• Odd Girl Out by Anna Ishikawa

Since they’re all relatively short novels, I thought I’d bunch them up in one post. :) Before anything else, please note that the contents of this post are purely based on my opinion. My opinion is bound to be different than others’, so no offense to anyone. :)

No Boyfriend Since Birth by Claire Betita (Summit)

Junior marketing executive Rudie Bermejo can’t figure out why she’s never had a boyfriend, and why no one seems interested beyond being friends. All her friends tell her she looks great, her boss thinks she’s got the smarts to make it big, and guys think she’s a cool chick to hang with. That should make her a catch, right? Determined to graduate from the No Boyfriend Since Birth Society, Rudie decides to take matters into her own able hands. And the dating spree is only the beginning…

Rating:

I picked this book up because it’s the one with the closest premise to my 2008 novel. The idea is typical: pretty girl with no boyfriend and no one seems interested in being more than friends with her, so why is that? I wish the book had been more than typical, but it was. It was a bit entertaining, but there was something about the book and the protagonist that just irritated me. It may be with the cheesy lines or how flat the characters are, but somewhere in the middle of the novel, I want to strangle the characters already. I’m also NBSB, but I didn’t feel like doing what the main character did here…so. It’s not something I’d like to read again. :|

The Hagette by Katrina Ramos Atienza (Psicom)

Self-confessed “Hagette” Cynthia de la Rama seems like the perfect girl: she’s tall, thin pretty, charming, and fashionable. So why hasn’t she found the right man? Her gay friends thing it’s her defective gaydar to blame. Most of her exes were in the closet. She’s right about ready to give it all up for a well-dressed celibate existence. That s, until two men enter her life at the same time: the bad boy ex who disappeared without a trace many years ago (and whom she hasn’t gotten over yet) and an aloof, handsome model with a knack for doing the laundry. The problem is, will her gaydar let her down yet again?

Rating:

Now this is more interesting. I like how the story flowed seamlessly from the flashbacks in Cynthia’s life to the current time. The secondary characters were vibrant, true to their gay selves. I loved the scene where Cynthia and her gay friends were dissing the restaurant they were eating at — I could just imagine them yelling “CRUSTACEAAA!!!” in their gay voices. The characters have their own voices and I love that Cynthia had her own back story, which made her more human. There was enough tension in the story between Cynthia and Ramon, and the ending, although expected, was quite satisfying. Oh, and the best character of all? Mario’s mom. :D

Every Girl’s Guide to Heartache by Marla Miniano (Summit)

When Anna is dumped by the love of her life, the perfect guy, the only one in the world who truly meshes with her, she is devastated. She’s angry, she wants revenge, and most of all, she wants him back. But when life throws her a curveball in the form of Miguel, literally The Boy a Few Houses Down, Anna thinks she can be happy again — or is her heart just playing tricks on her?

Rating:

I bought this book because Macy blogged about it, and even though I thought local chick lit isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anymore, I decided to give this one a try out of curiosity. I read this within a day! It’s mostly for teens, so I found some of it a bit too young for me already (too young — as in, “I’m over this part of my life already”), I thought the story was nice. The premise is solid, and even if I’ve never been through what Anna went through in the book, I can relate in some parts. The story is fluid, and the characters are interesting enough to keep me hooked. The story’s lesson is something a person coming from a relationship should really learn, regardless of their age. :)

Vince’s Life by Vince Teves (Summit)

From the pages of Seventeen magazine comes the book that chronicles real college life: making the grade, forming friendships that will last the rest of your lives, charting your future, and falling in love possibly for the first time. For regular guy Vince Teves, every significant experience during the four years that would shape the rest of his life was worth remembering. This is his story.

Rating:

I’ve been meaning to buy this book since I saw it at Powerbooks before, but only after recommendations from friends that I finally got it. This is probably the first lad lit in the country, if I am not mistaken? This book is cute, mostly because it’s written in a guy’s point of view. I can feel Vince’s sincerity in the various parts of the book, which made him more endearing. The story is a bit typical, but I liked how he described his relationship with Andrea when they finally got together up to the point where she had to go away, since it’s something I’m not familiar about. It got a teensy bit dragging somewhere in the middle, but it got me curious enough to finish it until the end. My friend thinks the book is a bit emo for a guy, but then again, don’t all guys go emo when they’re in love? :)

Every Girl’s Guide to Boys by Marla Miniano (Summit)

Chrissy thinks her life is problem free (she even set up an online advice column to make use of all her good girl talent) til her best friend, the boy she’s been in love with since she was maybe five, comes back from the US. Now this would be a good thing if she wasn’t already in an unofficial, sort-of relationship with her long-time crush Nathan. Is it finally time for Chrissy to trash the good girl image and follow her gut? Or is she making the biggest mistake of her life?

Rating:

This is the second book in the Every Girl’s Guide series, and this one features Anna’s friend Chrissy. Chrissy is a solid and believable character — in fact, I can relate to her quite a bit. ;) She’s a good girl who’s always done good things, and everyone expects her to do the same thing, until her best friend comes back, and things go haywire from there. Nico’s character (the best friend) seems a bit of an extreme, like a bad boy who is not really supposed to be a bad boy since you can’t really see Chrissy with him. The story is okay, but a bit too typical: bad boy vs. good boy and girl picks bad boy and she gets into trouble. There’s the cheesy “Did you come back for me?” line, which reminded me of Serena and Nate in Gossip Girl season 1. The story is good, but it just didn’t really sit well on me. I think the first one is still better.

Vince’s Life The Next Chapter: Getting Over Andrea by Vince Teves (Summit)

After Andrea leaves for the US, Vince lands his first job in an award-winning ad agency. Nursing a broken heart, Vince doesn’t think he can meet anyone who can compare to his first love. Then he meets sexy, fun, and vibrant Cat and life is wonderful again. Till Andrea says she’s coming home…

Rating:

Vince returns with his life post-college, and it’s a different world out there without his best buds Connie and Spider and his ex girlfriend Andrea who he hasn’t really gotten over yet. Vince starts working for an ad firm, meets new friends and is surrounded by girls who are very single. Vince meets Cat, and then it seems like romance from there, but then Andrea starts being sweet again and announced she’s going home. It’s a perfect follow up to Vince’s Life, really, only it gets a bit dragging somewhere in the novel. I like how the conflict was presented, and the emo parts where Vince has this unsent email for Andrea on how he never got over her and all that. I liked the ending, though, as it presents the reality of life that, well, you have to move on. And you can’t keep pining for one person and hope that nothing’s changed when in fact, everything has changed. It’s a good sequel. :)

Odd Girl Out by Anna Ishikawa (Psicom)

Half a year after parting from her first real long-term relationship, former heartbreaker Cerisse finds herself ready to begin anew. She moves into a new apartment, starts a new business routine, meets new friends and seduces a new love. But when her high school and college circle of fashionista friends express their disapproval of the guy, telling her she can do better, she realizes she has to make a decision: will she drop Ethan in favor of her old rep, or will she choose to confront love in all its weirdness?

Rating:

I kind of expected this to be a good book, but I guess I also kind of expected too much. Cerisse is a heartbreaker back in college who is ruthless among guys she didn’t like, going up to the point that she’d give them nicknames and laugh about them with her friends. Thing is, after experiencing her first heartbreak, she gets hit by karma when she sees and falls for Ethan, one of the guys who she labeled back in college. The initial premise was okay, but it kind of went downhill when Ethan and Cerisse got “together”. I have to keep on remembering that a lot of time has passed since the time they met and the time they got together, but it didn’t feel like it. The other characters were too cardboard and generic, so I didn’t really feel their impact in the story. The ending was, well, typical, too, and I kind of expected that already. I kind of wish the story focused more on Cerisse’s liking Ethan but not going for him since her friends seem to think he’s not worth her rep and then finally going for her gut in the end, instead of being in the relationship and then suddenly thinking about it. But then again, that’s just me. *shrug*

Well this is a really long post, but I actually enjoyed it! I wonder how it feels like to be paid for reading books and reviewing them? Haha, I hope I can run a home based business like that. :P Anyway, there’s a party at the street right now, and it’s free dinner, so off I go. :D

SCOOP (2006)

Rating:

A student journalist, for a college paper, visiting friends in contemporary London happens upon the scoop of a lifetime. Along the investigative trail, she finds magic, murder, mystery – and perhaps love, with a British aristocrat.

Now I only watched this movie all because of the hunkiness that is Hugh Jackman. ♥ I also think Scarlett Johansson is a good actress, so this should be interesting. The movie starts with Joe Stromble’s funeral, which later moves to his soul together with the other dead ones on a boat with the Grim Reaper. He talks to one, who apparently is the old secretary of Peter Lyman (Jackman) and she has reason to believe that he is the Tarot Card Killer, who kills brown haired prostitutes with a tarot card sign after. Scarlett plays Sondra Prensky, a journalism student who is in London for some project. She attends one of Sid’s (Woody Allen) show as Splendini the magician and volunteers for the vanishing act. Inside the box, she meets the ghost of Joe Stromble who gives her a tip on Peter Lyman. So off she goes to investigate, dragging Sid with her. She meets Peter with her fake drowning, and they use this closeness to investigate on him. Sondra falls in love with him, while Sid realizes that maybe Peter really is a fake.

Now the movie is nice, if only because of Hugh Jackman’s presence. But somehow I feel like the movie’s lacking something. I feel like Hugh and Scarlett didn’t have much chemistry together, even if I think they played their roles perfectly. Did that make sense? Maybe it just turned me off that from the first moment that Peter and Sondra met, they both want to get into one another’s pants. That particular part did not feel realistic enough; half the time they were kissing and making goo-goo eyes to each other. I also feel that the investigation/mystery part of the movie wasn’t given that much focus. It dragged on the first part and then quickly wrapped up at the last. Woody Allen was stellar, though, and if it weren’t for him (and yes, the hunkiness of Hugh Jackman), the movie would lose all its charms.

Just three stars, and one is for Hugh Jackman. Sorry, maybe on your next movie, I’ll give you more. But you’re still hot. :P

Meet the Robinsons (2007)

Rating:

Lewis is a brilliant 12-year-old orphan who has failed a lot of adoption interviews because of his creativity. On his last failed interview, he decides to create an invention that would let him search deep in his memory so he could see his mother when she left her at the orphanage. He brings this invention to the science fair and meets Wilbur, who warns him of a Bowler Hat Guy. Lewis’ invention screws up much thanks to the said person, and he loses belief in himself. Wilbur tries to convince him to go back to the Science Fair but Lewis doesn’t want to and he doesn’t believe that the former is from the future, so Wilbur brings him to 2037, his current time. Unfortunately, the two of them got into an accident, which makes Lewis stay, making him meet Wilbur’s wacky family as well while the Bowler Hat Guy works on destroying the time and space continuum.

Now this is a good movie. :) I am a fan of cartoons, so this interested me, but the story just pulled me in. Its main storyline played on time travel, and unlike other time traveling movies, this one doesn’t make you confused with the continuity. The characters were wacky, especially the Bowler Hat Guy! The revelations were quite surprising, and the ending was nicely done. The movie stresses the importance of family, and of always moving forward despite all failures. :)

This movie is definitely a keeper, something I’d like to watch over and over again. :) Another notable character there is Goob. Who is he? Watch the movie, you’ll know. :D

Jay Jarvis just moved East.
His dating life’s gone south.
What else is a guy to do but go fishing?

Flabbergasted is a story of a twenty-something year old stockbroker who just moved to Greenville, South Carolina. Jay is not a serious Christian; in fact, he calls his religion “workaholic”, and it wasn’t until his real estate agent told him that in Greenville, the in thing are churches, not bars. So Jay drives to the North Hills Presbyterian Church, fully intending to meet females but he didn’t expect Ecuador missionary Allie Kyle to catch his eye. In order to get to know Allie, he volunteers to help out in their singles beach trip. There he meets his new best friend Steve, righteous-man-with-big-words Stanley, married surfer dude Ransom, The Numericals, Allie’s lime-green loving best friend Darcy (and her lime green Sherbet) and of course, Allie. Jay’s landing into the church feels so casual, and yet, “God had him at the collar” and was leading him into places he never would have imagined he would be.

Flabbergasted is a lad lit, a sub-genre of chick lit for men, where a twenty-something semi-successful man is the narrator. Reviews of this book are mixed; some of them really like this while some don’t. I fall in the former.

The novel, true to its nature, is very light and funny. The dialogues kept me laughing and giggling to myself while reading it and the characters are indeed so wacky but at the same time so real. I like how clean it is, with hardly any mention of sex or male enhancement or anything in that nature. The story is real enough in the sense that some people join religious groups to scope out some chicks or some boys, and while it’s not right, the novel shows that even with these kinds of intentions, God makes use of them to get us closer to Him.

Writing wise, some parts of the story are kind of hard to connect with each other, especially when the story suddenly turns into another part of Jay’s life. Some chapters are kind of skippable too, but they make up the story quite nicely. I think we will all see ourselves in Jay Jarvis as he eventually sees himself and what God wants for him. The ending is a bit obvious, but Jay’s realizations wraps it up really good.

It’s a good book, perfect for some light afternoon reading. :D

“…I really just wanted to stay tight — tight to the south of God, right there in his shadow. Because outside of God’s shadow, I was just a gaudy plastic float filled with stubborn air, drifting off like a blind Jonah in search of Plan B, manipulating circumstances and wondering why I kept waking up in my very own Tarshish. But in God’s shadow I had been dazzled by the detour, amazed at the fraternity, and flabbergasted by the depth that comes from simplicity, from serving in a village that was shabby, green, and pulsing with life.”
- Jay Jarvis, p. 326

I’m coming home to prove something..to my city, my mother, and myself.It is a place known to most as Savannah. It is a place known to me as home. I wish I could tell you it was my love for this city that precipitated my return. But I did not return out of a mere longing for home. I returned because I have something to prove to home. I am Savannah…from Savannah.

Savannah from Savannah is the first part of the trilogy of Savannah Phillips, a twenty-four year old woman who has been named by her mother after their beloved Georgia town, Savannah. Savannah had just finished graduate school when she learns two things: 1) her favorite newspaper writer back home passed away and 2) her novel was chosen by a New York publishing house and it will be considered for publishing and she should go to their awards night. After a bit of squealing and all, she notices that the letter has her mother’s name. She puts two and two together and realized that her mother Victoria (Vicky) pulled some strings to get her there. She decided to go home and apply at the newspaper to continue the legacy of her favorite writer and to show her mom just who she is and that she doesn’t need any help — especially her’s — to reach her dreams.

Or does she? Savannah goes back home ready to prove things to her mother, but it turns out she has a lot more to find out not only about her mother but also about herself. (What a cheesy way to put it. :p)

Savannah from Savannah is a good first novel for a trilogy. It introduces a lot of the characters that would make up Savannah’s world and you know from the ending that there would be more stories for Savannah to come. Savannah seems like a bright young girl who has a knack for making fun of her mother, and her mother is a dignified woman who seems like a flake at first but turns out she really is not.

The story is very entertaining and even if the novel’s length is quite okay, there are a lot of parts in the novel that can be removed and the story will still remain intact. Though these removable parts of the novel add a bit more information and funny memories for you to share with the protagonist, I don’t think they made much significance over the entire storyline. They weren’t hanging subplots; they’re just little stories that seem to be thrown there just so there’s more to tell about the characters.

It’s a good read though. Savannah is someone to look out for. :)

The future changes in the BLINK of an eye…or does it?

Seth Borders isn’t your average graduate student. For starters, he has one of the world’s highest IQs. Now he’s suddenly struck by an incredible power–the ability to see multiple potential futures.

Still reeling from this inexplicable gift, Seth stumbles upon a beautiful woman named Miriam. Unknown to Seth, Miriam is a Saudi Arabian princess who has fled her veiled existence to escape a forced marriage of unimaginable consequences. Cultures collide as they’re thrown together and forced to run from an unstoppable force determined to kidnap or kill Miriam.

Seth’s mysterious ability helps them avoid capture once, then twice. But with no sleep, a fugitive princess by his side, hit men a heartbeat away, and a massive manhunt steadily closing in, evasion becomes impossible. - From Westbow Press website

This is my second Dekker book, and because of the good experience I’ve had with Thr3e, I expected a lot from this one too. The blurb from Westbow Press explained the basic plot of the story already, so let’s get to the review.

The thing I really like about Dekker is that his characters come out like real people. Thr3e‘s characters (Kevin, Sam, Slater, Jennifer) makes me wonder if they somehow exist out there (then again, that existence is kind of weird…haha, you’d have to read the novel to get what I mean :p). Blink is no different, and I’ve grown to love Seth Border for the past 36 hours or so since I started reading it, I kind of wish he’s a real person. But then again, that may be the inner girl speaking in me — Seth seemed like the perfect gentleman, even amidst his intellect and unique gift. One particular scene that proved this was when he and Miriam booked into a hotel: he knew he had some sort of feelings for her, but he reserved two rooms so as not to take advantage of her. Then again, this is Christian fiction.

Storywise…Blink is slightly less captivating than Thr3e. It may be the lack of psychological suspense and the somewhat dragging chase scenes all throughout the book. Admittedly, I mostly stuck to reading it because Seth has grown on me. :p It’s somewhat less gripping and it kind of left me hanging at the end. The Christian aspect of the novel is quite good, and I found myself wanting to explain to Seth that something is wrong about his logic about God…but he figures it out in the end anyway…sort of. And it does show that the power of prayer to the God (of Jesus, just so there wouldn’t be a confusion — they called Allah the God of Mohammed in the book) work, though they did it in a desperate time. Who could blame them — Miriam is Muslim and Seth is a non-practicing Christian/agnostic. It just shows that God will change the future for you for your good if you come to Him.

I can’t say much about the book’s explanations about Mohammed and Islam because I don’t know much about it, so I’ll leave it up to those who know better than I do. ;)

Finally, what I also really liked is that Blink sends out a message that women want to known and acknowledged, that they like to be called beautiful, to be free from oppression and that they deserve just as much respect as men do.

So…all in all, Blink is a good read, and I doubt you’d lose much sleep over this, unless the suspense gets to you that fast. But it won’t play much of a mind game and it won’t make you start looking over your shoulder for someone who might decide to kill you, if you get what I mean. :) It’s a good read for days where you just want to get lost in another world and not worry about your own problems for a while.

“Anything is possible in the BookWorld. The only barriers are those of the human imagination.”
- Miss Havisham

Protecting the world’s greatest literature — not to mention keeping up with Miss Havisham — is tiring work for an expectant mother. And Thursday can definitely use a respite. So what better hideaway than inside the unread and unreadable Caversham Heights, a cliche-ridden pulp mystery in the hidden depths of the Well of Lost Plots, where all unpublished books reside? But peace and quiet remain elusive for Thursday, who soon discovers that the Well itself is a veritable linguistic free-for-all, where grammasites run rampant, plot devices are hawked on the black market, and lousy books — like Caversham Heights — are scrapped for salvage. To top it off, a murderer is stalking Jurisfiction personnel and nobody is safe — least of all Thursday.

This is the third novel in the Thursday Next novels, which tells of Thursday’s first adventures in the BookWorld while she “rests” from the real world. She resides in Caversham Heights as a part of the Character Exchange Program, lives in a houseboat with two Generics ibb and obb (eventually named Lola and Randolph), her pet dodo Pickwick who is warming her egg and her 108-year old Granny Next. She is apprenticed under Miss Havisham and meets lots of books characters including Trafford Bradshaw, Vern Deane, the Bellman, the Cat formerly known as Cheshire, detective partners Perkins and Snell and the only other Outlander (meaning a real person), Harris Tweed. As well as trying to learn her way around the Book World and playing her role as DS Mary, partner of DCI Jack Spratt in a totally unreadable novel in danger of being scrapped, she also has to battle Aornis Hades’ mindworm which threatens to erase all her memory of her eradicated husband, Landen Parke-Laine.

And that’s just the start! The novel is so much fun to read, with all the references to other works of fiction and it gives us another view of how books are created deep within the imagination of a person. This book actually urges the reader to read even more, to keep up with all the books mentioned in the novel (i.e., Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations). It plays on the reader’s imaginations and makes you wonder if there is indeed a world inside a book, where the characters go to BookWorld Awards, where Generics are taught in a college where they develop their character. It’s like Harry Potter but less of the wizards and magic and all that. The book is so creatively done that I bet you’d even try reading yourself into a book to see if it works. I swear, this book is like watching blu ray movies, but better!

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Jasper Fforde is a genius. If you haven’t read any of his books, you really are missing a lot. :p

Trivia: This book creatively introduces some of the characters of Fforde’s other novel, The Big Over Easy which was still unpublished at that time this book was written. The Big Over Easy apparently is the result of Thursday’s intervention with the story to keep her temporary home from being trashed.

Her adventures as a renowned Special Operative in literary detection have left Thursday Next yearning for a rest. But when the love of her life is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath Corporation, Thursday must bite the bullet and moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative in the secret world of Jurisfiction, the police force inside books. There she is apprenticed to Miss Havisham, the famous man-hater from Dickens’ Great Expectations, who teaches her to book-jump like a pro. If she retrieves a supposedly vanquished enemy from the pages of Poe’s “The Raven,” she thinks Goliath might return her lost love, Landen. But her latest mission is endlessly complicated. Not only are there side trips to the works of Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Flopsy Bunnies, Thursday finds herself a target of a series of potentially lethal coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge from engulfing all life on Earth.

Well, that summary surely said enough. Lost in a Good Book is the sequel to The Eyre Affair, which picks up just about two weeks from the last novel. The book is just as fun to read as the last one, with all the new characters coming in especially the ones from fiction.

The only thing that didn’t agree with me are the long explanations on the chapter of Thursday’s Uncle Mycroft’s retirement. Too many technical stuff that my brain froze when I read it. ^^; It is fun to figure out the crazy coincidences in the book (even if Mycroft’s explanation of how coincidences work are totally fake).

The book ends with the impression that there will be another book coming…after all, Landen still has to be uneradicated, and Thursday is still pregnant. The end of the book opens another world for Thursday which is surely to be a great read as well (I should know, I read it already. :p hahaha).

Another great read from Mr. Fforde. I swear, if you haven’t read any of his books, YOU SHOULD. You’re missing half of your life if you don’t. ;)

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

It’s a story of what it’s like to grow up in high school. More intimate than a diary, Charlie’s letters are singular and unique, hilarious and devastating. We may not know where he lives. We may not know to whom he is writing. All we know is the world he shares. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it puts him on a strange course through uncharted territory. The world of first dates, family dramas, and new friends. The world of sex, drugs and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where all you need is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite.- blurb from the back of the book

I’ve been trying to find this book for almost a year but always failing. This is just like The Virgin Suicides…a copy keeps evading me, until that day at National Bookstore when I finally spotted a copy of this. I bought it immediately, savoring the idea that I finally have this book. :P

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is an epistolary novel, filled with letters from Charlie who seems to be writing to you, the reader, because “she said you listen and understand and didn’t try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have.” Charlie begins to tell you of his adventures during his freshman year of high school, of how his friend Michael kills himself, on how he met his friends Patrick (aka Nothing) and Sam. Every letter is filled with stories of his experiences with his family (who is actually quite normal), his friends and their encounters with drugs, alcohol, smoking and sex. The letters are honest, with the intention of delivering what really happened to Charlie, his observations about the things around him, and his way of trying to “participate” and not at the same time. The novel wraps up quite nicely, tying up the loose threads that hang from the plot and ending with a nice goodbye with Charlie, who I have gotten to know and like for the past two days I’ve been reading it.

I have to admit, however, that the situations that happened to Charlie’s life can’t really apply as much in the country, especially with how conservative Filipinos are as compared to the Americans. Aside from that fact, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a good read because you get an instant connection with the protagonist. His family is not the dysfunctional family that I expected it to be…in fact, it’s quite normal, albeit with some quirks. Charlie’s letters are sincere, and you know that even if things are happening around him that makes him cry (and yes, he cries a bit too much), he still finds a way out of it. You can see that he wanted to protect his friends and be there for them, and protect and love his family as well. Charlie, in a way, acts as a mirror to all of us, who tries to find himself in a world where it’s easy to lose yourself in everything around. Charlie’s illness (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I think! :p), but this illness is what Chbosky used to wrap things up in the end…that to really know yourself, you’ve got to be honest with yourself. And even if you have a really bad past, it will still be your choice with if you would let this bad past rule your life. You have a choice.

Good book. Not exactly the best, but really good. :) This would be up for re-reads. :)

Dead bodies never look like this.

It’s Easter in Reading — a bad time for eggs — and the shattered, tuxedo-clad corpse of a local businessman Humpty Stuyvesant Van Dumpty III has been found lying beneath a wall in a shabby part of town. Humpty was one of life’s good guys — so who would want him knocked off? And is it a coincidence that his ex-wife has just met with a sticky end down at the local biscuit factory?

A hardened cop on the mean streets of the Thomas Valley’s most dangerous precinct, DI Jack Spratt has seen it all, and something tells him this is going to be a tough case to crack… - blurb from the back of the book

We all know Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall and had a great fall…but do we ever wonder why he fell? Jasper Fforde explores this idea in his first Jack Spratt novel, The Big Over Easy. The novel starts with the introduction of Detective Sergeant (DS) Mary Mary, who is applying for a job in the Reading Police Department. She’s a good detective, though she always ends up having to do difficult choices for herself. She thought she would be working with Friedland Chymes, her number one idol but as with every new employee, she had to start out low — in the Nursery Crime Division (NCD) under DI Jack Spratt.

The NCD is considered the place for losers in the Reading Police Department. Besides being understaffed and under budget, the NCD is also in danger of being disbanded. Mary knew she doesn’t want to last there, and that she’d do anything to get to Friedland Chymes…until Humpty Dumpty dies.

But why did Humpty die? Did he just fall? Was it suicide? Or is he killed? Jack and Mary gets in the middle of the case and as the case gets more and more complicated, Jack is faced with the possibility of losing the case and his department to Chymes and Mary had to make some of the most difficult choices in her life.

Okay, I made it sound so serious, but the novel’s actually quite funny. It’s full of connections with other fairy tales and nursery rhymes (i.e. Jack exchanges a painting of a cow for some magic beans which grows into a giant beanstalk in his mother’s backyard, Jack also has this thing about killing giants = Jack and the Beanstalk :p). The story is engaging, but not that full of suspense, so you won’t really lose sleep over it.

The only thing that didn’t really appeal to me here is the number of times Jack “got” the criminal, but then turns out there was something more after. Somehow the ending dragged a bit longer than I think it should, but the ending itself is quite good. :)

I can’t wait to read the next Jack and Mary novel. :D Jasper Fforde, you are a genius!

Literary detective Thursday Next is on a mission — and it’s not just a mission to save the planet. If only life were that simple.

Unemployed following an international cheese-smuggling scandal, our favorite cultural crime-fighter is faced with a world of problems: Hamlet’s not attending his conflict resolution classes, President George Formby is facing a coup led by dastardly Yorrick Kaine and, what’s more, the evil Goliath Corporation are refusing to un-eradicate Thursday’s husband, Landen.

Will she ever see Landen again? Is shopping the new religion? Can Thursday prevent Armageddon? And who will babysit her son while she does it? - blurb from the back of the book

If you were (or still) a fan of Nancy Drew or have read Agatha Christie novels, you’d probably like Thursday Next. Thursday is Nancy Drew and Hercule Poirot thrown in a Harry Potter-like land: an alternate England where there is a special police department named Special Operatives (SpecOps) who deals with EVERYTHING (from literature to the undead), where having a stalker is normal, where time travel is possible and where dodos make good pets. What a world, eh? I definitely agree. :)

Something Rotten is actually the fourth Thursday Next novel in Mr. Fforde‘s Thursday Next series. In case you’re a new reader of his works (like me), you don’t have to worry about getting confused with the characters because more or less each character was re-introduced at the start of the novel. Thursday Next is a literary detective at SpecOps-27, the Literary Detective department (or LiteraTec) of the SpecOps. Thursday is also the head of Jurisfiction in the BookWorld and after living there for two years, she wanted a break for her to properly take care of her son Friday and to find a way to get her husband Landen back after being eradicated by the ChronoGuard (the time-travelling department of SpecOps — SO-12) when he was two. So she goes back to Swindon with her son, her pet dodo Pickwick and her son Alan and Hamlet the Prince of Denmark (who wanted to see if the reports about him from the real world a.k.a Outland is true). Thursday heads back home and tries to fix her life again (and to bring her husband back), but then finds herself under an assassination plot, responsible to get rid of Yorrick Kaine, a fictional character who got out of an unknown book and was planning to become a dictator and of course, to stop the world from ending. What’s new?

The book is a wild ride, totally different from all the other books I’ve read before. It comes close to Harry Potter, but on a different scale because it makes use of references from all other pieces of literature, most obviously from Hamlet. It’s a fun read, with lots of unexpected twists and turns and little subplots to get your mind busy as it tries to connect everything at the end.

As weird as Thursday’s world may have been, she actually feels like a real person, which is quite remarkable given the world she moves in. The other characters in the book (such as Millon de Floss, her stalker, Stig, the Neanderthal from SO-17, Bowden Cable, her partner and Granny Next) feel so real as well, that it would actually make you wonder if this alternate universe was actually, well, real.

The book made me want to read up on classics more (right now I want to get my hands on Hamlet), and read other possible books that Mr. Fforde got some of his jokes from. Something Rotten is a really good read and I can’t wait to get my hands at all other Fforde novels. :)

Read this! I’m sure you’ll have fun. :)