Gracielis

I just finished this and I loved it. But I'm not sure what to say - it was a quick read for me, it was fascinating and exciting, and the world was interesting. But I don't really know how to explain why I liked it so much...

An interesting idea, and colourful art, also brutal. I found it slightly difficult to get into. Also it was sometimes difficult to follow and to tell the characters apart, visually.

All I want to do right now is read short stories and this collection is a large part of the reason why.

This is a fantastic collection, and I loved so many of the stories! There are, I think 15 stories in the collection. Usually when I read a collection I put a post it in it and write down the titles of the stories I love. My post it has 12 titles on it...

State Change, The Perfect Match, Good Hunting, The Literomancer, The Regular, The Paper Menagerie, The Waves, Mono No Aware, All the Flavors, A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel, The Litigation Master and the Monkey King, The Man Who Ended History: a Documentary.

Exciting and captivating alternative history. I may read it with my students.

I always did like Colin, so I was happy to read his story.

I'm trying out poetry. This collection had more than 15 people queueing for it at the library, which is great!

However, it was not the collection for me. I did like a few of the poems, mostly from the last part: the healing.

A slow start, but exciting and fairly touching towards the end. I may have to read the sequel after all.

Last summer I really enjoyed listening to The Eye of the World. So, I got this. I've been trying to get through it since then.

My biggest problem was that so many characters, especially the boys, acted like complete idiots for so much of the book.

The ending was intriguing, though. So, I'll probably continue. Some day.

I read Oryx and Crake very soon after it first came out, and didn't finish Maddaddam until now, so this has been a long time coming. But, I've finally read the whole series, and it's a good one. The three books are very different from each other, but I really like them.

I read the beginning of this book a while ago, and didn't like it at all. Once I got into it it was really interesting though.

I've seen the TED-talk several times so no surprises in this. But it is a good text.

This book is so beautiful. Both the story and the illustrations.

I'm not a teenager, nor a big poetry reader, but I really liked this. Will have to read it again to see all the connections, think I may have missed a few, when life distracted me :)

I may never forgive Jim Butcher for Murphy's death...but the book was exciting and fast paced.

The amount of information that the author has been able to gather about five women about whom I previously knew: their names, that they were prostitutes (which turns out not to be true), and that Elizabeth Stride was from Sweden, is astounding.

The book is very interesting, and paints a stark picture of what it could be like to be a woman, and poor in times past. The story of these women is heartbreaking, and not only - nor primarily - because of Jack the Ripper.

It’s the end of the school year and as a teacher my brain capacity is temporarily somewhat reduced. So, this has taken quite a while to get through. It’s really good, though.

Battle, armies, intrigues, involvement of several factions and really powerful players. Laseen’s a badass.

I've always been fascinated by Ancient Rome, not so much the Empire and the armies, but the people.

I'm very far from an expert on the subject, but I did very much enjoy this beautifully written portrayal of Augustus.

Fun! I may continue reading this one.

This was pretty entertaining. I liked Gunnie Rose, she's pretty cool.

I'm sometimes annoyed by historical novels. There is a tendency to make the characters modern, and especially to make female characters who wear trousers and fight with swords. And that can be great fun, but it also hides the strength that women had through history, and had to have to survive.

Cecily is not that. She is shown as a woman of flesh and blood: smart, strong, feminine and ambitious. I really liked this book, and will look out for any more novels by this author.

I read this a few years ago, when I read Word Puppets, which is a great short story collection.

Recently I read The Calculating Stars, and realized I didn't remember this story very well and decided to reread it. Now knowing Elma and Nathaniel, it made me cry.

At first I found this one difficult to get into, interesting world, but I wasn't captured by the characters or story. I found it improved once Lila and Kell met.

If I understand correctly this is the first in a series? I may continue, but I'm not sure.

I've not been in a mood for YA lately. Some of these stories I loved, others were OK. I'm very happy the school librarian at the school where I work agreed we should buy this for the school library. I think my favourite stories were: Cookie Cutter Superhero, The Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon, Signature, Vanilla, Careful Magic and Happy Go Lucky.

This short story was amazing! Sad, and angry and beautifully written.

A Jewish man is tortured an killed in the 1600s. His daughter decides to seek revenge.

Absolutely charming little book - I love words, and the illustrations were lovely. Because of the languages I speak, I happen to know that a couple of the words exist in more than one language, but that's not really an issue for me. The one thing I wish, would be to have a pronunciation guide for the words - as I have no idea how to pronunce things in Welsh, or Hindi, or...

And, now perhaps we can finally spread “fika” to the rest of the world. It's important stuff, fika... :)