All Good Things Must Come to an End

I just realized as I was typing the title for this blog that it's rather an ironic choice: I was thinking that at the end of his wonderfully clever Bartimeus Trilogy, Jonathan Stroud should have bid adieu to our favorite djinni and been done with him. However, the title might suggest that the recent addition to the series, The Ring of Solomon: A Bartimeus Novel, was good. And that would not be completely true.

Oh, it was not terrible, but it just didn't have the spunk and charm of the original trilogy. So much so that it took me f.o.r.e.v.e.r. to finish reading it. I normally finish a 400-page book in a matter of days...this one took two weeks! I kept falling asleep while reading it, or finding other things to do instead of read.

So next I will choose a book (or two) that I know I won't be able to set down once I begin. I'm thinking Crescendo by Becca Fitzpatrick, because my students can't stop talking about it! Oh, it won't be high literature, but I'll settle for something that keeps me turning the page.

Will Grayson, Will Grayson

At turns campy, hopeful, silly, and redemptive, David Levithan and John Green's collaboration resulted in a book that could easily be a (better-written) Glee episode. Will Grayson is surprised to meet Will Grayson, and everyone is surprised to find out how much they love Tiny Cooper. Will Grayson (well, one of them) describes Tiny as “Tiny Cooper is not the world’s gayest person, and he is not the world’s largest person, but I believe he may be the world’s largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world’s gayest person who is really, really large.” And that also kind of gives you the flavor of the book.

Another Day, Another Sequel

This time it was Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. This paranormal romance series is more like Harry Potter meets Twilight than the typical "Twilight remake" (a term coined by one of my 8th graders.) But what else can I say?

Perhaps no book that followed Hate List was going to make me happy. Hate List was just that good.