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With a nod to Halloween, book club chose the genre of thrillers for October. I was happy for that because it meant I didn't have to read horror (which they'd already read before I joined). A thriller could have been anything, and I really had no idea what to read since this is outside my normal taste in books. I happened to be having a conversation with a colleague about the book she was reading at lunch, and she steered me towards Ransom Rigg's first book. I remember seeing the cover when it first came out and there was a bit of a buzz around the book - the cover is darn creepy. The synopsis sounded interesting enough, so off I went on a bizarre trip to Wales... October 2014: Thriller Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children By Ransom Riggs 2011 352 pages Jacob is quite disturbed after witnessing a family tragedy. The teenager carries fond memories of his grandfather and the weird stories he used to tell. In order to try solve his grandfather's mystery, Jacob co...

I'm a Veronica Mars fan. The TV show was good, and the movie was good closure. Imagine my surprise then when I found out they were doing a series of books to follow up the movie! Veronica Mars: The Ten Thousand Dollar Tan Line By Rob Thomas & Jennifer Graham 2014 336 pages This book picks up right where the movie left off. [SPOILER ALERT] Veronica has moved home, her dad is recovering after his "accident", and Logan is on a Navy ship somewhere. We follow Veronica as she (with Mac and Wallace's help) tries to keep the detective agency afloat. (Un)fortunately, there is enough crime in Neptune, and an incompetent sheriff, to keep Veronica busy. She takes the cases of two missing spring break party girls. What follows is an almost episodic story of Veronica tracking the perps, getting into an unhealthy dose of trouble, and meeting some old characters. I found the story to be very much like a tv episode. Besides the format shift, it felt very much like I was reading wh...

I read another book for fun (yeah ok it was short)! Seconds By Bryan Lee O'Malley 2014 336 pages I read Scott Pilgrim and it was weird but ok, so I thought I'd try O'Malley's newest graphic novel (and the cover was cute and anime-ish, so there's that). It was a neat story idea, so that got me through. Katie is a chef who is opening a new restaurant. A few bad things happen in her life (as they do). She discovers a house spirit, named Lis, in her attic apartment. Lis tells her to write down a regret, then eat a special mushroom. When Katie wakes up, life is as if the regret never happened. Yay! But then Katie finds the mushroom patch and eats a whole bunch to fix a whole bunch of things that went wrong, and then everything goes wrong. And then there's a bad house spirit and the world is all screwed up and how will she ever get back to life before the mushrooms, oh no! Character crisis. And then it all works out. The end. I was enjoying the story, but the climax w...

September's book club genre was children's literature, and thank goodness because this month has been extremely busy and I haven't had time to read anything! I initially thought I would read a flimsy novel, but alas, I didn't even have time for that. At work, I've been organizing a monthly "librarians read to the day care" initiative, so while I was browsing our library's children's collection for books to read to the kidlets, I came across a picture book that I figured would make a great read for book club. Probably I should've picked a best seller or an award winner or something with literary merit, but reading about a bug detective just sounded so fun! And there are three in the series so put together that's an acceptable amount of reading, right? September 2014: Children's Literature Ace Lacewing, Bug Detective By David Biedrzycki 2005 40 pages Ace Lacewing is a bug detective in Motham City (!). Queenie Bee has been kidnapped and Ma...