Preparing for the Read-a-Thon

As many of you know, tomorrow is Read-a-Thon day! My start time is 8am. I doubt I'll make the whole 24 hours (I don't do well on to little sleep - WAY too crabby ;o)), but I'm planning to read as much as I possibly can before giving up!

The only problem is: I'm staring at a HUGE stack of books that need to be reviewed and I really don't want to spend anytime reviewing them tomorrow. I just want to read! So, before I go into a reading frenzy and pile up even more books that need to be reviewed, I'm going to talk about some of the the books I've finished in the last couple of weeks.

First up is Marley & Me by John Grogan. Marley & Me is the story of the Grogan family and their incorrigible yellow lab, Marley. Grogan chronicles Marley's many misadventures in a warm, and obviously affectionate, voice. And it comes across as a heartwarming story about how attached we get to our animals no matter how "bad" they seem.

I was a little worried that the book was going to be depressing but, although it does come to a natural conclusion, the book didn't really hit me that way. Instead, it left me with a smile and brought up many fond memories of past pets. It also made me kind of glad that I own cats who, while having quirks of their own, do not slobber on me and are not big enough to destroy an entire room ;o). If you're a dog, or an animal, lover you'd probably enjoy this one, too.  3.5 roses (Very Good).

I also finished Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer not long ago. Into Thin Air is a haunting, first-hand account of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster that claimed the lives of five people. I know absolutely nothing about mountain climbing, but Krakauer clearly details the preparations needed for such a climb and the risks of climbing a mountain like Everest. He also gives the reader some knowledge of the type of person who is drawn to this type of challenge and his gripping tale of the events of that fateful day in May made the book impossible to put down.

Into Thin Air won the 1998 Alex Award which honors books that are written for adults but that may have a special appeal to young adult readers. If you enjoy adventure books that pit people against nature, this would be a good one for you. 4 roses (Excellent).

There are many reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson out there in the blogosphere. Like many of them, I also thought The Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo is a wonderful thriller. In this first book of the series Mikael Blomkvist, a magazine writer and publisher who has recently been convicted of libel, and Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant computer hacker and private investigator, of sorts, are hired by a wealthy industrialist to find his niece who has been missing for nearly forty years. 


While it took me a few chapters to get into the book, in the end, I really enjoyed it. This is the first book that I read entirely on my iPhone, but it certainly won't be the last. I'm finding that I really like reading e-books and I'm currently trying to decide between the Kindle and the Nook. In the meantime, I have a few other books loaded onto my iPhone to read as well. 4.5 roses (Highly recommended)


 Well, that's three reviews off of my stack! I still have five more and whatever books I finish for the Read-a-Thon tomorrow, but it's a start!