Books: To Read or Not to Read.

Just a quickie post on what I've been reading.

Two thumbs up: Overall Rating 8.5/10 Michael Scott's The Alchemyst: The Secret of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel is wonderful. It's the first of a 6 book young adult series. Genre is fantasy which is not usually my cup of tea- but it was offered for free for a limited time for the Kindle and I just couldn't resist downloading it because of all the fantastic reviews.  Does the name Nicholas Flamel ring a bell Harry Potter lovers?? Ofcourse he is none other than Dumbledore's friend who finds the Secret of the Philosopher's stone (aka the secret to immortality).  The basis of these books are very similar to the Harry Potter series- there is a prophecy that predicts the posibile end of the human world because of the coming back of the "Elders" or magical ones.  The humani twins Sophie and Josh might be the twins of legend mentioned in the Codex. In this case the word humani = muggle. I find that this series is for the graduates of the Harry Potter series, meaning a slightly older target audience" because it introduces many true historical characters and envelopes them in the world of serious magic and not so much folly. The following books of the series "The Magician" and "The Sorceress" are equally as good (I finished all three books in 4 days). Unfortunately fans will have to wait until May of 2010 for the 4th installment, "The Necromancer".

One Thumb down: Overall rating 4/10 Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. In all honesty- I didn't finish the book. Who am I kidding? I hardly even started it!! I know that Dan Brown think that he has a winning formula. Robert Langdon gets a call about some mystery. He gets to the mystery and someone dies or is missing. He goes on a crazy chase for the answer to the mystery.  That's just all fine and dandy for Angels and Demons or the immencely popular The Da Vinci Code but doesn't he think that his fans would realize the pattern by now? It gets old real fast. Luckily I didn't actually pay for my copy of the book. I read the sample (thankgoodness for free kindle samples!) which was roughly the first 6 chapters of the book and I already felt that it was predictable. Ofcourse, there are going to be twists and turns- ala the Dan Brown formula- but then you expect that. Maybe I'll give the rest of the book a try some other time when the price goes down and maybe I'll have so many GOOD books to read that I won't.

Next up: Another kindle freebie: According to Jane by Marilyn Brant