Lies - Michael Grant

Title: Lies
Author: Michael Grant
Genre: Dystopian
Rating: 4/5
# pages: 502
Date read: July, 2010

It happens in one night: a girl who died now walks among the living, Zil and the Human Crew set fire to Perdido Beach, and amid the flames and smoke, Sam sees the figure of the boy he fears the most - Drake. But Sam and Caine defeated him along with the Darkness - or so they thought. As Perdido Beach burns, battles rage: Astrid against the Town Council; the Human Crew versus the mutants; and Sam against Drake. And the prophetess Orsay and her companion, Nerezza, are preaching that death will set them all free. As life in the FAYZ becomes more desperate, no one knows who they can trust.

A fascinating continuation to the series. This book had a very interesting twist that once again has me wondering how many books are left in the series. Also, I'm starting to think that the series will soon start to get tedious/repetative if Michael Grant lets it go on for too much longer.

Aaanyway, for now the series is still interesting and captivating. It is not a comfortable read, but I'd come to expect that, so it didn't freak me out as much as the two first books in the series. I did feel that there were some threads that were just left hanging from the earlier books. The Human Crew was such a big part of Hunger but hardly touched upon at all in this one. On the other hand, I did like seeing something of a resolution to the tensions between Sam, Astrid and the Committee.

The fourth book is coming out in 2011. From the sounds of it, it won't be the last, but it's hard to find any definite news anywhere.

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader - Anne Fadiman

Title: Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader
Author: Anne Fadiman
Genre: Essay, non-fiction
Rating: 4.5/5
# pages: 162
Date read: July, 2010

Over the course of 18 charming essays Fadiman ranges from the "odd shelf" ("a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection reveals a good deal about its owner") to plagiarism ("the more I've read about plagiarism, the more I've come to think that literature is one big recycling bin") to the pleasures of reading aloud ("When you read silently, only the writer performs. When you read aloud, the performance is collaborative"). Fadiman delivers these essays with the expectation that her readers will love and appreciate good books and the power of language as much as she does.

I love books about books, so when a friend recommended this as one of the best of the genre, I knew I had to pick it up. And it didn't disappoint.

Ex Libris is a charming essay collection all about books, reading and the love of both. As something of a bibliophile myself, I could very easily relate to Anne Fadiman's experiences, and was delighted to see some of my own thoughts echoed in her writing.