2010 May » Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

Review: Rough Guide First-Time Around the World by Doug Lansky

Posted by Anastasia on May 19, 2010 No Responses »

May 192010

112. Rough Guide First-Time Around the World by Doug Lansky
Publication: Rough Guides; 2nd edition (March 20, 2006), Paperback, 336pp / ISBN 1843536617
Genre: Non-Fiction, Travel
Rating:
Read: May 3-4, 2010
Source: Bought
Summary from Amazon:

Planning a trip around the world? Let “First-Time Around the World” get you started. Loaded with the very latest travel information, including all you need to know about round-the-world tickets, this pre-departure guide will help get your ultimate journey under way. This guide begins with a 16-page, full-colour, things not to miss photo section with suggested itineraries, details on what to bring, when to go, how much it will cost and which vaccinations will keep you healthy. The individual country profiles highlight the best places to visit with country-specific websites and necessary budget information. There are plenty of useful tips to help save you money, keep you safe and maximise your time on the road. This guide comes complete with concise regional information, with overland maps and details on weather, major attractions and unmissable festivals.

Review

I had actually forgotten that I had this book until I found it under a pile of school papers earlier this month. It’s the previous edition– the newest one came out in February– and I’m entirely sure what’s different from one to the next, but since I used it mostly for moral support and general tips instead of specific travel information (like hostels/money/etc) I didn’t particularly care that I had an older edition. So!

The Rough Guide books are really fabulous. I’ve been reading some of the guidebooks as well and I just find them so friendly and matter-of-fact, without being intimidating like the Lonely Planet books can be sometimes. This one, written specifically for people who are planning to travel long term and in multiple locations, was especially nice– it covered everything of importance plus more. Money, health, visas, planning, etc., plus in the sections about specific continents there’s very useful information like whether you need a visa or not to get in, and maps, and all sorts of interesting stuff.

Admittedly I did skip most of the stuff about specific continents, since I figured I could just go back and read them later if I really needed to. Plus! Horror of horrors, a page had been ripped out of my copy– I bought it used– and now I’m paranoid that the information on that page was of utter importance and because I didn’t read it I’m going to die as soon as I step foot out of the US. So maybe I’ll just have to get the newer edition after all, and just use that one when I travel!

I do think that I’m going to take SOME version of this guide because I think it’d be really useful as a sort of basic guidebook for the continents I’m going to. I could only carry one book, then, with additions of more specific info written in the margins, maybe, and then I wouldn’t need a specific guidebook for every country I’m going to. Although I did buy a South America guidebook already. Whoops.

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading the Rough Guide First-Time Around the World and I can’t wait to get out there and use it.

And

Get your own copy @ Amazon or IndieBound and support Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog!

Other reviews: CurledUp.com

Looking through guidebooks is fun, but I find that I can’t read them straight through like I can more general travel books. Almost like there’s too much information for me to process? And so I just tend to read the intros to a country/continent and then skim the rest. Shameful.

Review: Changeless by Gail Carriger

Posted by Anastasia on May 18, 2010 No Responses »

May 182010

111. Changeless by Gail Carriger
Publication: Orbit (April 1, 2010), Paperback, 384pp / ISBN 0316074144
Genre: Paranormal Romance, Mystery, Action/Adventure, Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Rating:
Read: May 1-3, 2010
Source: Borrowed
Summary from Amazon:

Alexia Tarabotti, the Lady Woolsey, awakens in the wee hours of the mid-afternoon to find her husband, who should be decently asleep like any normal werewolf, yelling at the top of his lungs. Then he disappears – leaving her to deal with a regiment of supernatural soldiers encamped on her doorstep, a plethora of exorcised ghosts, and an angry Queen Victoria.

But Alexia is armed with her trusty parasol, the latest fashions, and an arsenal of biting civility. Even when her investigations take her to Scotland, the backwater of ugly waistcoats, she is prepared: upending werewolf pack dynamics as only the soulless can.

She might even find time to track down her wayward husband, if she feels like it.

Previously: Soulless

Review

I said in my review of Soulless that while I enjoyed the plot/characters/etc I couldn’t help but be annoyed by the plot holes (or maybe “plot gaps” is a better term). Changeless doesn’t really fill in any of the gaps, but it does expand on some of the world’s details (like the technology!) and it was overall a so much more fun book that I’d say even if you didn’t particularly like Soulless you WOULD like Changeless. Which is just a rather confusing way to me to say this: Changeless is even more amazing than Soulless was.

Everything just seems so much better done in Changeless. There are less plot gaps, there’s more Alexia being awesome, more information about the Parasol Protectorate world and the people living in it (which is what I wanted), there’s a wicked interesting mystery with ANCIENT EGYPTIAN things in it (love!), and I even think the writing itself is a little bit better! I seriously couldn’t put Changeless down once I started reading it, and by the time I got to the end I felt like I was talking in capslock, that’s how happy I was reading it. Also, more exclamation marks!!

I rated both Changeless and Soulless 4 birds, but actually I enjoyed Changeless more than Soulless. It felt more solid, characterization- and plot-wise, and the plot itself was more fun. With twists! But not silly twists that just come out of nowhere (although they did sort of lean on the other side where you COULD see them coming, but just a bit). And even though it ends on a cliffhanger– which I tend to dislike– it ended in a way that the main plot, with the mystery, was solved and all that’s left to hang was the sticky personal relationships bit. Which, I admit, made my heart go “ow.” My heart went “ow” so much I actually read the bonus chapter from the third book that was in the back, and I never do that.

So, yeah, I loved Changeless. Can’t wait to read the third book!

And

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Other reviews: Dear Author | Stella Matutina | Outlandish Dreaming

TSS (May 15): Trying to play catch-up!

Posted by Anastasia on May 16, 2010 No Responses »

May 162010

So! I’ve been gone for a while, but the good news is that I’m done with finals, almost nearly completely happy with my grades, and have a massive amount of free time until my summer class starts in July. The downside is that I am completely out of practice with writing reviews, and I have so many to do I’m not sure where to start! I’ve written half of a mini-review yesterday, but I couldn’t get myself motivated to write the rest of it. This is bad news for my review stats, and so I think I’ve figured out a way to get myself back into shape.

I’m holding a poll! Of which books to review first. Yup. I’ve got around 15 books I need to review, but I’ve focused this poll on the ones from April that I haven’t already started writing reviews for. I figure those are highest priority, right? Right.

[polldaddy poll=3208238]

Pick the two books you most want me to review. I’m going to close the poll on…Wednesday, maybe? Don’t want to get too far behind, after all. Meanwhile, here’s some stats~

Books read this week:
113. Go Your Own Way: Women Travel the World Solo [rating: 4.5/5]
114. The Essential Guide for Women Traveling Solo – Beth Whitman [rating: 2/5]
115. Darklost – Mick Farren [rating: 3/5] %
116. The Little Giant of Aberdeen County – Tiffany Baker [rating: 4/5] %

Books reviewed this week:
Nada.

Mount TBR Stats (these may be a little off…)
2 books conquered
32 books conquered total
7 additions
8 subtractions
319 books remaining

Currently reading: The Prophecy of the Sisters by Michelle Zink, but it may be a little bit too dark for all this sunshine that’s been happening lately. I may drop it for something else, I don’t know.

Review: The Years by Virginia Woolf

Posted by Anastasia on May 5, 2010 6 Responses »

May 052010

100. The Years by Virginia Woolf
Publication: Mariner Books, Paperback, 444pp / ISBN 9780156997010
Genre: Fiction
Rating:
Read: April 16-17, 2010
Source: Bought
Summary from Indiebound:

The principal theme of this ambitious book is Time, threading together three generations of an upper-class English family, the Pargiters. The characters come and go, meet, talk, think, dream, grow older, in a continuous ritual of life that eludes meaning.

Review

It’s been a while since we read this for my Virginia Woolf class, so forgive me if I can’t remember everything I wanted to say about it. I definitely flip-flopped about what I felt about The Years–it was boring, it was fascinating, why the hell am I reading this– but by the end I flopped on the side of “really liked it.”

My reading of The Years came immediately after The Waves. Whereas with The Waves I said something like the book would be super boring if it didn’t have an interesting writing style to hide behind, The Years doesn’t have that interesting writing style to hide behind and yet somehow the banality of real life is still intriguing.

I’m not much for books that are just people going around talking about the weather and if that tea pot is going to boil any time soon, but that’s exactly what The Years is about. And yet I liked it! And I think it was partly because of the characters themselves, who aren’t particularly outstanding in personality but are fun nonetheless, and partly because of the concept of the book, which is to follow a single family through 50+ years of life and death. Trying to figure out why one character ended up marrying another and putting the pieces together re:what happened in the gap between two chapters made it sort of like a mystery, almost, and that was fun.

Gah, that was a lot of speculating. Anyway, besides all that, I also liked what VW had to say about people getting old, and I liked Eleanor, who was a free-spirited sort of person, and I liked how the characters took over the story of uber-reality and made it bearable. I don’t like The Years as much as I like Orlando or To the Lighthouse, but I certainly like it more than The Waves. I wouldn’t recommend reading this one first if you’ve never read a VW book before, but I wouldn’t skip it, either.

And

Get your own copy @ Amazon or IndieBound and support Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog!

Other reviews: Literate and Geeky

Does anyone know what that Sally/Sarah thing was about? Does she have two names? Is she a split personality? Wtf was going on there? The annotations are NO help.

Mini-Reivews: Othello vol. 1 & I-Doll vol. 1

Posted by Anastasia on May 3, 2010 No Responses »

May 032010

88. Othello vol. 1 by Satomi Ikezawa
Publication: Del Rey (October 12, 2004), Paperback, 208pp / ISBN 0345479130
Genre: Graphic Novel, Humor
Rating:
Read: April 8, 2010
Source: BookMooch
Summary from Amazon:

Yaya’s high school friends haven’t been very nice. They call her “Yaya the cry-ya! Yaya the misfi-ya!” But no matter how badly they act, Yaya is just too naïve and trusting to believe the worst of her friends. Hard-rocking, butt-kicking Nana is just the girl to grab hold of Yaya’s timid demeanor and turn it upside down. Nana exposes Yaya’s “friends” as slime bags, doles out punishment, and does it all with style. Can there be anything that terminally shy Yaya and hyper-confident Nana have in common? Well, for one thing, they’re the same person…

Review

I’ve heard good things about this series from other fans of graphic novels, and I can see why. It was really fun! I really enjoyed reading it: the story was quirky, the art was refreshingly simple and even kinda realistic, and it was very entertaining. Unfortunately I got the sense from this volume that the series is probably spectacularly long, which mean I won’t ever see the end of it because I don’t have enough patience to get through a graphic novel series longer than 10 volumes, actually. And I’m also kind of thinking the other volumes are probably formulaic and repetitive. I mean, the chapters in this volume alone are pretty repetitive, so I don’t have much hope for any variety in the other volumes. Nevertheless, I’m interested in seeing where the storyline is going, and I did really enjoy reading this volume, so I’ll probably try reading the next few volumes and hope it’ll turn out for the best.

89. I-Doll vol. 1 by Mi-ae Choi
Publication: TokyoPop (April 1, 2008), Paperback, 184pp / ISBN 1427805865
Genre: Graphic Novel, Action?
Rating:
Read: April 8, 2010
Source: Bought
Summary from Amazon:

When four troublemakers are arrested for a variety of crimes, the judge hands down the ultimate sentence: The quartet must form a band! Ji-Yoo Lee, the top student at school, is arrested for gambling with gangsters. Woong Jung, a gang leader, is busted for allegedly beating up innocent bystanders. And Eugene Kim, the Goddess of Argument, is being held for fighting with another girl over a plush toy. As punishment, they have to unite with a Hyuun-Goo Kang, Woong Jung’s rival gang leader, and form the definitive boy band! Will these menaces to society find out what’s so funny about peace, love and understanding? Global manga-ka Mi-Ae Choi spotlights the ultimate menaces to society–who are on a journey to find out what’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?

Review

Okay, this was a boring book. It’s focused mainly on setting up the characters and the situation, which is fine, but a) the story moved so slowly that the band aspect of the plot wasn’t even mentioned until the end (and the subplots were so convoluted they didn’t hold my interest, either) and b) I had considerable trouble telling the characters apart because the designs were so similar. So at the conclusion of this volume I’m not really interested in the characters and the plot didn’t even catch my interest until the very end, and that’s not real conducive to me wanting to read any more of the series. While I’m assuming the second volume will move quicker (and actually have something of them being the band) I don’t particularly want to bother tracking it down to read it. Oh well.

Monthly Review: April 2010

Posted by Anastasia on May 1, 2010 No Responses »

May 012010

I did a lot of stuff this month! I know I say that every month, but I really mean it this time: I did a lot of stuff. I read a lot, yeah, but I also made a new header! And I commented (somewhat) more! I did the readathon, held a contest, sold two books, and opened up a lot of space on my bookshelves. I also rediscovered my Sony Reader and read a few books on it, though I keep giving myself headaches from bad posture while reading it. Um. Gotta work on fixing that, yep.

And probably most exciting of all was that this month I discovered that I DO enjoy contemporary fiction! Contemporary, literary fiction. I never thought I would, except for the odd duck or two like William Faulkner/James Joyce/etc. It just never seemed like my thing, you know? But reading Virginia Woolf’s books have turned on a switch or something because now I can’t get enough– although of course I don’t love EVERY lit fiction book I try. But I’m glad I’ve expanded my reading horizons, because now there’s tons more books I can read! Yay!

For May I’m planning on catching up on reviews, writing a few more non-review/meme posts (sort of like the ones I did this week?), and working on my other blog. After the semester ends in the second week I’m also planning on starting my summer reading list. I’m thinking A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man first, then Ulysses. I also want to revamp a few things around here but I haven’t made my mind up as to what, exactly, I want to revamp. I think I just want to spruce things up overall, sort of like a spring clean!

What are you looking forward to doing in May? Do you have anything special planned? I know the wacky weather we’ve been having in the US isn’t real conducive to thoughts of summer, but I’m still excited for it!

Reading Stats
30 total books read
19 total books reviewed (15 of books read this month)
4 ebooks
3 audiobooks
23 pbooks

17.5 were by authors new to me (the .5 is because of Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
0 were rereads!

Mount TBR Stats
15 TBR books read
8 books purged
6 books added
320 total books left