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Sticky! I may not update this as much as I want to, but head over to my tumblr, to see me, my hubby Herr J and Baby Jazz rolling about.

Seasons & walls

I was riffling through my bookmark manager and came upon my Deletables folder. Filled with old links that I should’ve posted in one of all my blogs. The thing is I get bored easily, I have my seasons. For a couple of months I’d be obsessed with one thing, be it a website or a game, then a wall will come out all of a sudden and smack me in the face. Then I’ll never even click the link for months. Some how I’ve lost interest in it. Repeat repeat repeat.

So this is one of the link that I should’ve posted years ago but didn’t because of that goddamn ADD wall.

Best opening lines ; An article about best opening lines in literature.

Others were Guardian’s top 10 list that’s more irrelevant than this one.

Bentley Little

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Title; The Store

Author; Bentley Little

Category; Horror

Published by; Signet; paperback edition (July 1, 1998)

I rate;  A light read. Don’t buy it, just download it, borrow it, whatever.

A huge ass corporation coming over every little town forcing almost all mom and pop store to close. Think Walmart with brainwashed employees and Nazi zombies as their night managers. I didn’t like the incestuous bit, not only that it was predictable, it was also, boring.

Title; The Academy

Author; Bentley Little

Category; Horror

Published by; Signet; First Thus edition (August 5, 2008)

I rate; I read it once, I like it.

I like the multiple point of view approach. It made me concentrate on the book instead of just speed reading it. A public school severing ties with the district to become a charter school. The lunatic principal (I imagined the woman portraying Professor Umbridge as the principal) with her crazy rules and regulations. The Tyler Scout = Hitler Youth. The teachers going nuts and those who opposed the charter disappeared or dropped off like flies.

Title; Dominion

Author; Bentley Little

Category; Horror

Published by; Signet (March 1, 1996)

I rate;  A light read. Don’t buy it, just download it, borrow it, whatever.

Daneam? Come on. I felt like he was trying too hard to shock, with all the sex and violence in this book. It read painfully like a B movie. The starting was bizarre enough for my liking, complete with mommy complex syndrome. The characters were so so, I hated Penelope’s crazy bitches. The authorities were useless, I really can’t imagine what I’ll do if this happens in real life. The whole town was crazy after people got themselves possessed after drinking Daneam wine. The Ovidians were horrendously incompetent. The ending was godsend, I really couldn’t read the book any longer. I gave this book a 2 because some people might like it.

Title; The Ignored

Author; Bentley Little

Category; Horror

Published by; Signet (June 1, 1997)

I rate;  A light read. Don’t buy it, just download it, borrow it, whatever.

An interesting thought. Herr J even dreamed about this. He dreamed that both of us were ignored or dead since all the people we met were his dead friends. This was because he was trying to get interested in all the books I currently read.

This book started slow, with the main character, Bob who worked in a dead end office job. The first few chapters were boring. He started to notice that whatever shit he does, however outrageously he dressed, no one even acknowledge him. Came one day, somebody did. He finally talked to Bob about who he really was, after Bob killed his boss. The killing was supposed to be an initiation of some sort. Bob was introduced to some other people, they call themselves the terrorist. Plot picked up as the gang did numerous terrorist activities to get themselves noticed, to no avail. Then they found out about a city for the ignored, Thomson. Bob met his ex girlfriend, Jane, there and they got married and had a baby, Phillipe. There was a slight fork in the plot, involving some alternate world and the great god Pan. However, they got through it and lived happily ever after.

Terribly bland book.

Title; The Mailman

Autstihor; Bentley Little

Category; Horror

Published by; Headline Book Publishing (February 3, 1994)

I rate; I read it once, I like it.

Now this one really gave me the creeps. So far my favorite Bentley Little book. This book was so creepy it actually reminded me of Stephen King’s work. The mailman was manipulative and for lack of any other word in my ever shrinking vocabulary, MAJOR CREEPO. I’d buy this.

Title; The Burning

Author; Bentley Little

Category; Horror

Published by; Signet; First Thus edition (August 1, 2006)

I rate; I read it once, I like it.

Another multiple person point of view approach. I usually like books with historic flashbacks in them but the flashbacks were disjointed few and didn’t really help with the story telling. There was zombiefied Chinese railroad workers wanting revenge, Native Americans getting sucked dry of their life energy (read ‘getting blowjobs’) by ‘shadows’. Infectious mold that made every Caucasian who touched them became racist.

In my humble opinion, Bentley Little is for teenagers as R.L Stine is for kids and Stephen King for adult.

Karin Slaughter – Skin Privilege

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Title; Skin Privilege

Author; Karin Slaughter

Category; Crime

Published by; Century; First Edition

I rate; I read it once, I like it.

Okay, I had no presumptions at all when I first read the title of this book because I have never heard of the author. While I’m not a choosy reader, I have read tonnes of disappointing books so I learnt not to have high hopes for unknown writers.

It started smooth, I absolutely loved the first few paragraphs. Then it went steadily downhill. It didn’t crash and burn but by the time I’m done with it, the whole story was a bit bland. The scenes were in the  working class area of 2 small counties. The characters were okay, at least they have more to them than that Twilight abomination.

I lost my notes somewhere so here’s what I remembered. The main guy was a cop, married to a doctor (was then embroiled in a medical scandal or something or other, I forgot) I had no idea who the bad guys in the first scene was until she revealed them at the end. I was lazy and when I read boring books, my brain will cease to function.

I had read so much  since Amy Tan’s but I forgot to review them! Now I have to read them all back to remember interesting stuff because I never write any notes while reading!

Amy Tan – The Kitchen God’s Wife

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Title; The Kitchen God’s Wife

Author; Amy Tan

Category; Novel

Published by; Ivy Books

I rate;  I like it enough to read it another thousand times.

Another book by Amy Tan. Same old same old but I still like it. An Americanized daughter’s shaky relationship with her mother who is a strong, misunderstood immigrant from the Mainland and that mother’s tragic life in China. I don’t know what is it with me and this ethnic relationship with sad sad past lives thingy. Unlike The Bonesetter’s daughter, this book is about the mother’s history instead of the grandmother.

Winnie was Pearl’s mother. Pearl was the Americanized daughter who found out she had MS. Auntie Helen was supposed to be Pearl’s SIL but she wasn’t, really. Aunt Helen devised a clever way to get both mother and daughter to bond and spill their guts. So Winnie told pearl about her life before she migrated and of who Auntie Helen really was.

Happy ending. I think.

John Burdett – The Sonchai Jitpleecheep Series

Title; Bangkok 8, Bangkok Tattoo, Bangkok Haunts, The Godfather of Kathmandu

Author; John Burdett

Category; Crime

Published by; Vintage Books

I rate; I like it enough to read it another thousand times.

Crime, cunts and corruption, my favorite topics! It was set in Krung Thep. At first, I thought that this was a city in Thailand. How am I supposed to know that it’s another name for Bangkok. The author noted this in the second book if I’m not mistaken. So, the main guy, Sonchai is a Bangkok cop. A true gem as he refuses to take bribes, but on the other hand, he’s okay with meth, spirits and whores. All the while reading the books I kept imagining Leonardo diCaprio as Sonchai. At first I imagined him as this burly American but then considering his mother’s a Bangkok whore, I gave him a more Asian stature. Speaking about his mom, Nong, she intrigues me. She’s a successful mother and is very intelligent. Colonel Vikorn is also an engaging charactor. He’s just a bullying corrupt cop but somehow I like his character, he doesn’t act like the father subtitute to the neglected bastard cliche for Sonchai. Sonchai also works as a part time pimp at his mother’s club.

Thai whores are featured prominantly in this series, especially from northern Thai, a place called Isaan. I googled the place, it was very very rural. Intelligent whores. I should cut my nails because they’re digging into this keypad protector of my laptop which I christened Baphomet because I hated it.

Bangkok 8 hooked me bad and by Bangkok Tattoo I still love Sonchai but Bangkok Haunts steered off the road a bit. It had a ghost in it. A ghost, raping and killing people in the most original way possible. I love it.

The Godfather of Kathmandu threw me off. I wasn’t expecting huge wall of text about spiritualism. I’ve been reading it for a couple of days now. All those spiritual yogin tantra blade wheel whatever fuck threw me off. Sonchai became very spiritual in this book because he lost everything he gained during Bangkok Tattoo & Haunts. In this book he became Hagen, a consigliere while Vikorn place a godfather after watching the movie.

I seem to be having such good luck this past few days, the books I randomly tossed into Blair were all nice to read. I’d love to read more of this guy’s work, however pretentious it is, it’s catchy, like Lady Gaga. *Pardon me Lord I’ll never say that again*

Rick Riordan – Percy Jackson & the Olympians series

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Title; The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, The Titan’s Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth, The Last Olympian

Author; Rick Riordan

Category; Fantasy Young Adult Action & Adventure

Published by; Hyperion Book CH

I rate;  I read it once, I like it.

This series of books is very fun to read. It’s for kids. Herr J kept pushing me to read it because we watched the movie a few weeks ago. By the time we watched The Clash of the Titans we were both all ready with all the characters.

Percy (Perseus)  is a demigod, meaning his daddy (Poseidon) fucked his mom (Sally) and left her, raising his bastard all on her own. Nothing sad there. He went to a camp for gods leftovers like him, to train to kill monsters even though it wasn’t their fault in the first place being unwanted children of the gods (Aren’t we all?).

The books are pretty much action based, kids will devour this as much as they like Harry Potter. They are a lot of characters, some expendable because so much names and so much myths as side stories sometimes made me forget about the main plot. Like Calypso’s island. A couple of pages in, I forgot why Percy was there in the first place. Okay now this was totally my fault because I speed read light books.

Entertaining read for a train ride, a flight trip or anything that requires you to do nothing heavy like lifting concrete pillars or thinking.

Sleeveless && reading && driving buses

Cool, eh? > LINK. Some were quite nice but some were half baked attempts. Bleh.

This guy should be given an award or something > BBC Link

Diana Setterfield – The Thirteenth Tale

Title; The Thirteenth Tale

Author; Diane Setterfield

Category; Gothic Suspense

Published by; Washington Square Press

I rate; I will buy this book and read it religiously.
This book was so amazing, if I wasn’t greedy I’d read this twice back to back. The narrator of the story is Margaret Lea. She helped her father run an antique bookstore and had a few of her biographies published. In other words, she was an unemployed amateur writer. However, one of her piece managed to attract Vida Winter, a mysterious writer whose fame resembled Agatha Christie except Christie doesn’t lie. She was dying and she want to tell the world the truth, about who she really was before she got famous.

The story hooked me from the start. I was expecting something else but the plot ran very differently from what I had in mind. I was pulled in the tragic lives of the Angelfields and I was fooled in the end. I never connected one of the minor character to the story and so I couldn’t think of the ending. It blew me away. I love this one, must buy!

Cornelia Funke – Inkworld trilogy

Title; Inkheart, Inkspell, Inkdeath

Author; Cornelia Funke

Category; Fantasy Young Adult Action & Adventure

Published by; Scholastic Books,The Chicken House

I rate; I read it once, I like it.

A heartwarming, magical story.

Inkheart’s not so bad. A very good first book. I don’t really buy the whole best reader in the world thingy. Dustfinger intrigues me.

Inkspell showed more about Meggie and Farid’s relationship and how their character matures little by little. Though Farid pretty much still the little kid with a daddy complex. Inkworld sounds like a pretty place for a vacation. Roxanne is sweet, her daughter is a slut. Violante, how I sympathize her. Her life is so tragic yet she’s a strong, intelligent woman.

Inkdeath is a good end to the book. Any more would be stretching the world too far. More maturing for the kiddie characters, less development on older ones except for Mo. The only thing that I want to see is Dustfinger’s fire dancing trick. Maybe I’ll download the movie for Inkheart just to sneak a peek…

I especially like the snippets of quotes she had for the beginning of every chapter. Very fitting. It made me want to go read those books the quotes came from. I’d probably buy this series for my kids. Good morals and all those fluffy shit.

Amy Tan – The Bonesetter’s Daughter

Title; The Bonesetter’s Daughter

Author; Amy Tan

Category; Novel

Published by; Putnam Adult

I rate; I will buy this book and read it religiously.

A touching mother – daughter relationship tale, set in China and America dating back to early 20th century. I swear I could’ve cried buckets if I can relate to them. Not that the characters are weak, I just couldn’t get close because of the race specifics and characteristics that I couldn’t ignore.

Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451

Title; Fahrenheit 451

Author; Ray Bradbury

Category; Dystopian Novel

Published by; Ballantine Books

I rate; I will buy this book and read it religiously.

The ending was very abrupt…or was it the fault of my ebook copy?It kept me wondering what will happen next.

Reading this reminded me of 1984 and Equilibrium. More of Equilibrium because I think or I read somewhere that the movie was partially based from these two books. It was awesome go watch it.

Back to the book, well, I didn’t expect that I could finish reading it in a matter of hours. It was bleak (in a good way) with the only color coming from the character of Clarisse. Guy’s character was surprisingly strong, I assumed he would be a pussy because he was a fireman.

I wouldn’t want to live in a world portrayed in this book, but go buy it, go read it and be grateful of the world we have today.

Andre Dubus III – House of Sand and Fog

Title; House of Sand and Fog

Author; Andre Dubus III

Category; Novel

Published by; Vintage; Trade edition (November 16, 2000)

I rate; I read it once, I like it.

The book is about two different personalities and the clashing of their beliefs and culture. Add another irrational cop, out comes a heart wrenching novel.It was narrated by both Behrani and Kathy. I got irritated by Behrani because he kept inserting Persian words. I had to assume what each word meant. Gendeh means whore? Pooldar means rich or snobby or both? What is it?!

Alexander Dolgun – An American in the Gulag

Title; An American in the Gulag

Author; Alexander Dolgun with Patrick Watson

Category; Nonfiction / Memoir Horror

Published by; Knopf : distributed by Random House; 1st edition (1975)

I rate; I will buy this book and read it religiously.

So. This is a story about an American citizen, stuck in some infamous Russian prison getting tortured then shipped off to a real deal gulag, and all of this happened because of Stalin’s paranoia and blind loyalty of his sheep, my fellow comrades. And maybe inability to differentiate right from wrong. Sounded like religion lol.

As I read through the pages I can’t help from frowning (not in disdain, mind you), I felt as if my soul and hope and faith were being sucked from my body with a vacuum. It was like watching Requiem for a Dream, it was that intense. Dolgun was innocent yet he spent years slaving in the gulag. For all it’s worth, he got it easy. He managed to survive and stay sane through it all. I would break down during interrogation just to make it all stop.

I (being somewhat of the Commie persuasion) was a teeny bit skeptical, but all that disappeared when I came back from bookland to reality. Shit like that happened. I can’t just stick my fingers into my ears and say “Lalalalalala” just because I hope that didn’t really happen and the Motherland is as clean and innocent as a baby’s bottom. To be honest I have no qualms interrogating, err, spies. It sounded like fun. It probably doesn’t matter if the guy is really a spy or just someone down on his luck, being a young outgoing American in Russia during the Cold War.

I can’t relate to what Dolgun has experienced of course, but I do sympathize and the horror of being imprisoned for doing nothing scares me shitless. If I don’t have books to read, I’d go insane. I mean more insane than I am now.

Ha Jin – War Trash

Title; War Trash

Author; Ha Jin

Category; Action & Adventure

Published by; Vintage

I rate; I like it enough to read it another thousand times.

The story is set during the Korean War. The protagonist, Yu Yuan was a graduate of Huang Pu military college. Among the prisoners and soldiers he was outstanding because of his good command of English. He became an unofficial interpreter to the commie leaders when he was stuck with them, and to the nationalists when he got stuck in their camp a while later. He saved a lot of asses for both sides.

The book is very engaging, even without much physical action, it delved deep into the turmoil in prisoners of war’s mind. The main guy especially was in a real deep shit a couple of times because he was neither a nationalist or a commie. He only wanted to get back to the motherland for his mother and fiance, that’s it. The only reason he survived after all those fuckups because of him pretending to be on one side, was his ability to converse well in English. I know jackshit about the history or background of Taiwan except of her strong reluctance to be a part of Communist China.

I was disgusted by the portrayal of China’s communist, as if all of them are blind, useless sheep. The difference between Commies and Nationalists were vague, they were all behaving like morons. Strong comradeship for a weak cause.

The ending was good eventhough some other POW’s were badly off after they got repatriated back to the motherland.