Author Topic: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012  (Read 8686 times)

smirnoff

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Re: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012
« Reply #20 on: August 28, 2012, 06:44:26 PM »
Haha, damn. I didn't think of that.

Sandy

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Re: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012
« Reply #21 on: August 28, 2012, 11:29:25 PM »
Junior will read:


Junior

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Re: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012
« Reply #22 on: August 28, 2012, 11:37:58 PM »
I'm always interested in book that have that Newbury seal.
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Sandy

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Re: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012
« Reply #23 on: August 28, 2012, 11:48:21 PM »
It never read like a youth book to me. Will you let me know your thoughts on that when you've read it?

Junior

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Re: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012
« Reply #24 on: August 28, 2012, 11:50:11 PM »
Will do! I've been listening to the audiobooks of the Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch which focuses on a group of guys that set out to steel large things from rich people. Might be a connection there, too. We'll see!
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worm@work

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Re: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012
« Reply #25 on: August 31, 2012, 06:22:34 PM »
pix is going to be be reading:


pixote

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Re: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012
« Reply #26 on: August 31, 2012, 09:09:38 PM »
pix is going to be be reading:



Um, you know that's like a billion pages long, right?

(Just kidding, I'm totally excited to read it!)

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Bondo

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Re: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012
« Reply #27 on: September 06, 2012, 07:17:55 PM »
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Junior, I start this review with an apology. I made it about 90 pages in but I just couldn't take it any more. So sorry about that. Reading this, I can see many of the critiques of the film (which I have not seen) fitting in. I'm not entirely averse to gimmicky writing, I certainly love the ASD perspective in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, but here for our main character it hit me wrong. And each of the other characters introduced has a similarly over-cute element.

Junior

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Re: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012
« Reply #28 on: September 06, 2012, 07:30:37 PM »
You can't be right all the time! Thanks for trying.
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Junior

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Re: Book Dictator Club: Fall 2012
« Reply #29 on: September 06, 2012, 07:59:57 PM »
Junior will read:



And I did! Finished last night, in fact. It was a quick read, which is good and bad. Turner writes a nice sentence, and the story flows nicely. It's actually quite simple, plot wise. Simpler than most other YA fiction I've read. It's ancient Greek... kinda. The gods match up somewhat, but the people don't believe in them too hard. There's a thief in prison and he's conscripted into a mission to steal a pendant that will make the ruler of the country also the ruler of an adjacent country. It's political. He's led by a snooty but smart magus and his two acolytes. They go to where the Magus thinks the pendant is, a journey which takes about half the book and then the thief has three tries to steal the pendant. He does or doesn't and then other things happen. It's all very straightforward. The story is told in the first person from the thief's perspective, but Turner gives us about as much information in one book as George R.R. Martin does in one chapter of his series. There are reasons for this, and Sandy assures me that the next two books are vast improvements on this book, which makes a lot of sense given how the story ends. I will continue reading, but this one won't be joining the ranks of those other classic first books, The Giver and even The Hunger Games.
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