This is the seventh book in the series, and as much as I said after book six that I thought Charlaine Harris had hit her stride and had the formula right, I now have to say maybe I was too quick to be quite so positive after that book. This one just lacked something - and it very well may be because Sookie left her home to go to the vampire convention, so some of the characters that set the...

I was first introduced to this book by a student who was doing a poetry project back in 2003, and when I found out that our curriculum this year had a Tim Burton unit I immediately remembered it; searching for it on Amazon, I was excited to see that it was available for 60% off (especially when I saw the cover price was $20). You know Tim Burton, right? The director of Edward Scissorhands...

After reading and reviewing The Hunger Games , I was told that the plot sounded like Battle Royale ; checking that out, I found that BR was a manga (and a movie). When I went to Borders a few days ago I picked up the only copy they had of the first book, and I finished reading it today - my first manga! Manga, for those of you who are old like me, has to be read backwards. The words aren't backwards...

One of my best friends recommended this book to me; she said both she and her husband found the advice useful and she thought I would too. The advice, in brief, suggests that we use writing to understand our eating impulses. The author - Julia Cameron - is actually a writing coach, and her biggest tip (that she repeats over and over and over) is that you start each morning with a three-page freewrite...

One of my former students recommended this book to me, and it was so good that I couldn't bear to go to sleep last night because I just had to know how it all came out. I like a book that sweeps me up and doesn't let me go. In the dystopian world of this YA story, each of the Twelve Districts is required to send two contestants to compete in the Hunger Games. These twenty-four contestants - all of...

This book was recommended (to everyone, not just to me) at my Weight Watchers meeting a couple weeks ago, and thanks to modern technology I was able to immediately purchase it and download it to the Kindle app on my iPhone (and I got it for just $9.99 as oppoosed to the $25.95 cover price or the $15.47 amazon.com price). I finished reading it last night just before I went to sleep. The thing...

This is the second book in Peter David's Sir Apropos series, and when I first tried to read it a few years ago I was unable to get into it. I think it had a weak starting chapter; the so-called humor of it seemed too ridiculously far-fetched to be more than moronically amusing (see, Apropos accidentally captures and kills something very much like a hobbit and finds a ring that attaches itself to...

I read this a couple years back and really enjoyed it, and it was the first book I got for the Kindle I downloaded for my iPhone (there's an app for that, you know). I had forgotten how funny this book is, how well it is narrated by the title character, how many plays on words Peter David uses, especially with names - not as in-your-face as Piers Anthony's Xanth series is, but still: Queen Bea...

Wow, I loved this book! I was reading a copy of Entertainment Weekly and came across Stephen King's recommendations for summer reading, and this book was recommended. I instantly knew I had to read it, and I bought it for the Kindle (it's in hardback for $25 right now, and kindled for $11.99). I think that was Friday I bought it, and I have had a hard time putting it down: I just finished...

When I took my Screenwriting class at USF in 2006, the professor said that this - - was THE best book on screenwriting that he'd ever read. So I picked it up, and it has sat on the shelf until now. It wasn't that I didn't want to read it, but I was busy with other things and wasn't really working on a screenplay after the class ended. So why have I picked it up now? And why have I read it,...