One imperfect letter, one missing page

115. *How to Ditch your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier (300)

I really enjoyed this book. It is fairly light and playful and has a refreshingly new premise. The characters act believably - incredibly stupidly at times, but believably, especially for high school students - and I love the universe that it envisions.

116. *Chalice by Robin McKinley (263)

I'll have to read it a couple more times to form a full opinion, but having read it once, I can say that I definitely liked it and I look forward to reading it again. The feel of Chalice is much more like McKinley's earlier books, such as The Blue Sword, rather than her more recent (and modern) ones. It is a lovely book.

116 / 150 books. 77% done!

57 / 75 *new books. 76% done!

4 / 10 ^non-fiction. 40% done!

32040 / 33000 pages. 97% done!

113. *The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (386)

It's no surprise that I liked this book. A Little Princess, also by Burnett, has been one of my favorite comfort reads for many years. I loved the movie of The Secret Garden growing up, and I have seen and frequently listen to the sountrack of the musical.

No, the surprising thing is simply that I've never read it before.

As with A Little Princess, The Secret Garden is a sweet book, with lovely writing. Even what could be major disasters - the cholera in India, Mary's bad manners and temper and Colin's as well - are written so beautifully that there's no real sense of menace. The store is moved along by little mysteries - can Mary adapt to her new life? Can she find a way into the garden? What is the crying she hears and why doesn't anyone acknowledge it? And so on.

It was great to read the book having just listened to the musical. There are lines, especially dialogue, that are pulled straight out of the text, and although there are minor differences in the plot (for example, in the book, Mary's father is Mr. Craven's wife's sibling, and in the musical it is Mary's mother), the musical captures the story well.

113 / 150 books. 76% done!

54 / 75 *new books. 72% done!

4 / 10 ^non-fiction. 40% done!

31165 / 33000 pages. 94% done!

110. *Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin (275)

It's kind of an afterlife story. A girl is in a bike accident and wakes up on a boat. She doesn't realize it for a while, but she's dead and they're on the way to 'Elsewhere', which is apparently where dead people go. And live backwards, so you start out whatever age you are and live until you're a baby, then you're sort of sent back to Earth to be reborn.

At first the main character resists starting a new 'life' in 'Elsewhere', instead obsessing about her old life. But she eventually accepts it and learns to enjoy it. At the end of the book, she is sent back to be born again.

It was an ok book. I didn't quite get the point of it. It was decently well-written and the characters were interesting enough, I just couldn't really get into the plot.

110 / 120 books. 92% done!

51 / 75 *new books. 68% done!

3 / 10 ^non-fiction. 30% done!

30222 / 33000 pages. 92% done!

108. *Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (382)

Little Brother starts out with a group of four kids who are in the wrong place at the wrong time - that being, near the site of a terrorist attack in San Fransisco. They get picked up and held for nearly a week as suspected terrorists, and when they're finally released, only three of them are let go. One of those three, Marcus, decides to fight back.

A seventeen-year-old kid fighting against the Department of Homeland Security.


Little Brother is a wonderful, if slightly terrifying, book. It makes me want to pay for everything with cash and get rid of my newly-purchased E-ZPass.

Some books are scary despite how impossible the premise may be. Little Brother is scary for the opposite reason - it really seems like something that could happen, especially in today's climate of the War on Terror, idiotic airport regulations, illegal government phone taps, and so on. The question is, I guess, if something like this happens, will we have a brilliant (if occasionally misguided) high school student to knock sense back into us?

It's also beautifully written. I read the whole book in two days (which would have been less of a big deal to me a month ago, when I didn't have a full-time job to get in the way of my reading) because I just couldn't put it down. There is some 'infodumping' but it's fascinating - to me, anyway - and absolutely necessary. If he'd used terms like ARG, LARP, TOR, crypto and so on without explaining what they meant, the whole book would have been a maze. As it is, it reads like someone (Marcus) telling the story, with these little asides to explain this bit of technological geekery that was mentioned or that bit of just-plain-geekery that is relevant to the plot.

I loved this book. It is every bit as good as I heard it was.

108 / 110 books. 98% done!

49 / 75 *new books. 65% done!

3 / 10 ^non-fiction. 30% done!

29854 / 33000 pages. 90% done!
Audiobook time: 27h7m