Double-Stacked Bookshelves

Though I'm still reading Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , I have picked up a read to break the heftiness of it up.  Something that can be plowed through quickly and that I can easily read between spurts of Tattoo .  That book is Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys.  I found this, randomly, at Wal-Mart (I know, I know) on the cheap.  It sounded good, so I picked it up and here you go: "Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth?  That morning, my brother's was worth a pocket watch" (27). This looks like a pretty good read to me and it's been decent so far.  Fingers crossed that it continues to be so.  Happy Tuesday everyone!

I've been looking forward to reading Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children for awhile now and have finally picked it up.  So, without further ado, here is today's teaser: "Each one would be dead before his sixteenth birthday, killed by the monsters he had so narrowly escaped.  But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around--they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late" (17). I'm excited for this read, though I've read some very differing reviews on it.  We'll see.  Happy Tuesday everyone :)

I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go a few days ago and have not had the time to write about it until now.  I read this book for one of my online book clubs and I have to say that I really enjoyed it.  The novel centers around Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy; three people who have been friends since they were small children.  It is through Kathy that the reader travels through the lives of these three and experiences the many ups and downs that each character goes through.  Having read the synopsis, you are not given much detail about the plot of the novel.  Really, the only thing the reader knows is that they're going to be exploring the characters through flashbacks narrated by Kathy.  You don't know much about the characters except that they are "special" in some way and how they cope with what they learn as they grow up. Ishiguro really makes an effort to flesh out all three characters, but he does the best with his narrator.  Obviously we get to...

I just finished reading Randy Susan Meyers' The Murderer's Daughters for one of the book clubs I'm involved in.  This was our June pick, though we had to extend it to July due to everyone having such a packed month and being unable to finish it.  I was happy when this book was chosen because it's been on my To Read list for awhile and I just hadn't gotten around to actually reading it. As the title suggests, the story follows the lives of Lulu and Merry, the daughter's of a murderer who just happened to kill their mother and tried to kill Merry and himself while at it, and spans thirty years of their lives.  As would be expected, their lives are anything but normal.  Immediately after the murder, their father is thrown in jail and the girls go to live with their maternal grandmother.  When she dies they are foisted onto their mother's sister and her husband only to be shoveled out to an orphanage quite quickly.  They experience several disturbing situati...