The Last Dance of a Black Widow by Bradley Convissar

read: December 31, 2011

read in 30 minutes

pages; very short

Completely eerie and haunting, well written. Quick fast read. Nice free short story from Amazon.

101 Tips for Travelling with a Vampire by Joleene Naylor

Read: December 30, 2011

read in 45 minutes

pages: approximately 20

Ok yes, this was incredibly short and some of the "tips" were more common sense when travelling in general but there were a few that were pretty funny. I even laughed out loud on a couple....like making the joke to you vampire friend that rabbits are "fast food" and that they just might not find this joke funny. Sorry I did find that funny.

Anyways it was free and I'd recommend the short book to anyone hooked on the vampire craze at the moment, just because if you are reading the novels chances are you might get a laugh out of these tips.

Added bonus there is a sneak peek of book two of Legacy of Ghosts by Joleene Naylor. So you could check that out and maybe read more of her books. I admit I did not read further because I'd rather start with book one not book two.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

Read: October 17- December 28, 2011

read in too long!!

pages: 272

This too far too long to read. Not a bad read at all I just think I wasn't really in the mood to be reading Sedaris at the time. And quite possible like the last of his books I read I must have stopped in the middle of one particular essay that may not have been the best or the funniest and I had a hard time getting back into the swing of reading him.

Glad to mark it as read even though it was on my goal list for LAST year! I will continue with more of his books when my co worker brings me the next in the collection because he is good for a laugh with his ridiculous family stories, life experiences and view of the world. For my reading pace sake I'm hoping I am not handed another Sedaris for a few months at the earliest.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Read: November 26-December 27, 2011

read in a month

pages: 387

I'm still working on my thoughts for this book. I liked it. I didn't really dislike anything about the book. I wish it hadn't taken so long to read. It took getting past the first 150 pages just to feel invested in the characters and for the plot to start taking shape and things moving the direction they should be moving. At that point I didn't want to put it down. I kept getting lost up to that point because it felt like there was so much going on that I couldn't keep up with everything. I think part of is was there was too much going on in my life at the time to stay focused when I was reading, and I had far too long of stretches.

I liked the characters, and how things ended. I won't give anything away. I'll admit that yes this may take a bit to read but its not a bad story once you get into it. I'm not the only person who noticed it took a while to read. I mentioned reading it to a couple co-workers who also remarked the same thing....its a time consuming read, but worth it in the end. One mentioned that it seemed like there was an agenda to her story. I follow the author on twitter and asked her and she responded (!!!!) what did I mean by an agenda? And that if she needed to ask then its probably just a story. I take away from it that its a story and there wasn't a certain message meant to be taken from it though someone could easily make one if they so chose too.

I'd like to come back to this and write a proper review because this does not properly do so, but at I still can't figure out what I want to say about the book aside from there were some beautiful characters.