Anna's Picks

I really enjoy Jasper Fforde's romps through BookWorld. Call me a book nerd, but I just really enjoy it. The Thursday Next series is awesome, and this book is no exception. It's set from the point of view of the Written Thursday Next, who is trying to find the RealWorld Thursday Next.

POWERFUL. INSIGHTFUL. AMAZING. AWESOME. This book is an excellent collection by women who create -- be it fiction, non-fiction, poetry, spoken word, photography, performance art, graphic novels, etc. These essays, poems, photo collections, performance pieces, etc. address the pervasive issue of women+self-destruction+creativity, whether or not they've lived through something awful or relate to something women experience in their lives. Every selection provided something profound, to me, and every author sparked my interest in their other works. Read this book! You will come away with something valuable.

I really liked this book. I think there should be more books for adults starring children as characters -- the freedom, the imaginations, the dialogues, are soooooo much more interesting! Refreshing, if you will. I also really like books that take place in England, especially mysteries, because they tend to forgo the U.S. penchant for crime scene details, grisly murders, blood, real-life at the scenes of a murder stuff. It's more of a nice walk around the imagination to solve the mystery. This book would be a perfect suggestion for those folks looking for a nice, relaxing "summer read" or "beach read". It's totally not schmultzy chick-lit, and it holds interesting facts interspersed throughout the book. I really liked that the main character, Flavia -- 11-year-old girl, had a morbid fascination with poisons and chemistry. She hung out in her own chem-lab in a huge English-manor type home with two bully-sisters (Ophelia and Daphne). All in all, a pleasant read. Give it a go, it won't take up too much of your time.

"This book is not for the squeamish or easily disturbed, that's for sure. The scenes where this guy goes on crazy psychopathic killing sprees are amazingly gory -- I found my reflex to be that I wanted to close my eyes, as if I was watching an especially violent movie, but it's sort of difficult to do that while reading. From a literary perspective, this book is pretty amazing. The writing is masterful -- the way Bret Easton Ellis gets into this "psycho" mindset and writes from the first person for the whole book is just . . . wow. There are entire chapters about the designer clothes that everyone in a given room is wearing. There are chapters critically analyzing an 80s musician, naming acclaimed albums, why an artist is masterful, etc. Then we have violent-beyond-belief chapters (the movie is TAME compared to these scenes). At some point I tried to count just how many times the narrator is referred to as another person, by others around him (friends, co-workers,etc.) and I stopped around 7. So I started asking myself, is this guy real? Is his personality split into different people? Am I reading from one personality's perspective? Bringing up some interesting questions. There are large chunks of time he just doesn't remember, moments where he really loses control of his world (not the violent scenes, b/c he's in control there). Books built on unreliable narrators have a lot of potential because they keep you on your toes -- you are intentionally misled and told untruths because the narrator doesn't know or has some mental issue that filters out reality.

This Krakauer-esque adventure book is completely accessible and frighteningly fascinating. It's about serious adventure climbers going willingly into extreme environments, searching for the deepest cave in the world. This quest involves weeks of downward climbing and occasionally involves vertical drops (black pits) estimated 500' deep! Climbers camp in the pitch black underground surrounded by cacophonous, roaring waterfalls and cavernous, uncharted "rooms" capable of holding two Boeing planes! Add to that being dirty, wet, and exhausted, and then having to climb back out! In addition to the experience of this terrifying "hobby," two expert climbers are in competition to find the deepest climbable cave and then making it to the bottom. You will not be able to put this book down! Enjoy!