Rachel Caine: The Dead Girls' Dance

I'm a little baffled why the book was given the title it was. The Dead Girls' Dance is indeed an event in this book...however it's so very brief and hardly a part of the book at all! That said, this book is in need of a different title.

This was another quick read that I would have finished yesterday had I not been LTing all day. With reading this second book, the characters are finally starting to have some decent character development. The story goes very fast and it seems as though the whole time the main characters are on one mission or another, always busy, always watching out for what might lurk in the dark. I'd keep reading the series, but I'm unfortunately out of Morganville books. I would definitely love to find out what happens next.

Rachel Caine: Glass Houses

In search of other vampire books after reading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, I had at one point mooched the first two books in the Morganville Vampire series by Rachel Caine on BookMooch. The first book is called Glass Houses which I finished reading last night.

This book is a very quick read - I read it in hardly more than one day. It's definitely not the same as all that dazzles us in the Twilight series - the characters aren't as well developed and after reading it one gets the idea that it's only meant to be a small story, never a favorite book - still, it's a story that holds it's own. I don't think we should enter books while holding onto another to compare them to necessarily, and I did not do that with this book but simply read. It has it's strong points and some chilling as well as touching moments. Spooky.

Unhappy though I was with the ending, I'm going to continue the series and begin book two.

Scott Westerfeld: Uglies

After a month in a half of not really reading and trying to pick up a few different books, I managed to jump into one this week and keep reading. I just finished it earlier today.

After hearing Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series being brought up time and again at work and on LibraryThing, I give it a try. My biggest disappointment is that I didn't buy any of the other books in the series.

Right away I could tell this book takes place somewhere different than our world because of the technology, and in a way, it does. It takes place in the future. We are known as what they refer to as Rusties. There are no more people in the simple way we see it as now. Instead there are Littlies, Uglies, Pretties...

They have some interesting terms (SpagBlo) and devices of technology (crash bracelets), but at the same time it's funny hearing them talk about things from our day (roller coasters) that characters are just as mystified over.

In future, people looking different is done away with. They are all made to look the same, equally pretty, upon their sixteenth birthday. All of one's life, children are brought up to believe they are hideous and ugly, to become beautiful only with the surgery that will change their lives for the better.

I think if anyone had a problem with this book (which I doubt, but if it happened), they should at least consider this: this book can do wonders for young teenage girls. If anything it will teach them there is more to the world than being pretty, and that beauty comes from within. It's about being an individual, a good friend, and doing what is right.

The ending of this book definitely holds on to you and makes you want to know what happens next. With luck I'll find out soon...but I'm not wanting to buy any books at all except for Stephenie Meyer's The Host before I go on my trip this summer. I'm eager to read the excerpt for the next book, Pretties, that's in the back of this one, but because I know it won't be till when I can borrow it from a friend in June that I can read it, I'm not going to.

My book challenge is so shot this year. I still have hope, though.

"Read in order to live."

Nearly a month has gone by and I have hardly touched a single book. I've read a few chapters of Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, but that is all. I am feeling the toll that what not reading takes on me. I haven't not read in so long that I had forgotten this happens. Whenever I stop reading for a while, there are a few things I do not like that slowly begin to happen. They rather depress me and I had not realized until just very recently that this is what has been going on.

One of the things that happens is that I am more likely to slip when talking. I have more tongue-twists when I have not spoken any words that would typically create them. Another thing that happens is I begin to lose words from my vocabulary in not just speech but in writing as well. I will feel as I type that fewer words are inhibiting my word bank. I may typically view the difference in my quality of writing through graded essays as well when I read less, but I am no longer enrolled in classes so this one is not affecting me this time around.

It must surely sound crazy to some people that by stopping reading I will notice such things as I do and so quickly, but I am well-tuned and throughout my life have always noticed the difference reading makes. It improves one's speech, writing, and settles one's mind as they can remember what word it is they are trying to think of. My learning disability, I was told, is a partial one, that I am neither here nor there with either those who are ordinary and those with full-blown learning disabilties. I was not given the help I needed and spend many years struggling not knowing I could cure myself with merely the reading of books. It's sad that I didn't discover this till college, but reading does so much for me, and to read regularly is something I coin as taking a dose of medicine. I know what it is I must do to receive a dose of words and I think it is time I pluck a book from one of my shelves, turn back the cover, and begin to read. I think I will do this very soon.