A Series of Unfortunate Events Book 13 The End By Lemony Snicket

Finally I got around to finishing this book. I don't think I finished #12 because some of the stuff didn't sound familiar.
This was a fun and gloomy series. Lots of mystery, deception and of course horrible unfortunate events.
One good thing about the stories...they are very unpredictable.
I do learn lots of new words too. Like argybargy, braewoman,ceviche, and herpetologist.
Very clever, good ending and I would still have to say they are broken books. They don't even come close to the healing book category either, just broken on purpose for the young readers enjoyment..now there is something wrong with this, don't you think?

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Hmm, it was a weird book. Very Young Adult (teenager level). Everybody gets to be super model gorgeous, what is wrong with that? Uh, I can think of lots of things but the book spends the whole time trying to convince us that beauty is everything...or maybe not? Then the book leaves us all hanging in the end. Why? Well, there is a second book called Pretties. Oh, I guess I will have to read that one now so I can maybe find the answer to this question.

I think the book reminds me of The Giver and The White Mountains but with a horrible shallow spin on the whole Utopia thing. It doesn't make any sense that the main character and the group she is rebelling with never get caught even though the society has high tech spy agency and future advances in biology working against them. It is a bit "dumbed down" so your average cheerleader would be able to read this book. AND I can't believe the main girl just doesn't tell the truth! She lies and keeps getting deeper and deeper and then digs a pit so deep she ends the book doing something really stupid but of course made to look like the ultimate sacrifice or penitence for her lying. She is such a heroine.

Overall I found it entertaining and enthralling enough to read it straight through only stopping to right a talk and sleep and eat sometimes eat. Now to get my hands on the second and third books!

Healing Book

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

This was a very scary book!

I usually don't read Ghost Stories. I think they are too scary and I always get nightmares so I'm not sure why I picked up this book in the first place. I do love the author so I guess I just wanted to see what he could possibly write to scare me. WELL, this book wasn't written by him, just compiled by him and it had plenty of ghosts to keep me up at night.

In 1958 Roald Dahl wanted to make a tv series of ghost stories. He read 749 short stories called ghost stories. He was very disappointed in the first fifty or so stories because they were trivial and not the least spooky. Finally he found one that gave him the shivers! In the end he found about 24 really good ones and the rest were just gibberish. At first the female ghost story authors were ahead but in the end the males caught up. He thought this was interesting that females write really good children's books and really good scary stories but weren't very top ranking in sculpture, painting or music. This is all in his Introduction in the book, which I liked better then the ghost stories. He really rambles on about interesting things. Anyway, he never got to do the tv series because their pilot was a big flop in Hollywood because it offended American Catholics or something. Bummer.

So the book has 14 short stories that will scare the pants off you! Each one by a different author, each one original and unpredictable.

"The best ghost stories don't have ghosts in them. At least, you don't see the ghost. Instead, you only see the result of his actions. Occasionally you can feel it brushing past you, or you are aware of its presence by subtle means...I hope you will be disturbed by all the stories in this book they were written with precisely that end in mind." R. Dahl