Reading Through the Midterm Blues

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
Book #2 in the Percy Jackson and the Olympian series.
Published:2006 Pages:279
I borrowed this from my public library.

I enjoyed The Lightning Thief, so I requested the sequel from the library. Once I received it, I read it in one night. This book is even shorter than the first one and it was pretty easy reading. In The Sea of Monsters, Percy and his friends embark on a quest that takes them into the sea of monsters(the same sea that Odysseus traveled through), which is now where the Bermuda triangle is located.

It was a lot of fun and a welcome distraction from my homework. I will definitely read the other three books in the series.


the woman who gave birth to rabbits by Emma Donoghue
Short stories. Published: 2002 Pages: 255
I bought this book at my local bookstore.



I have had this book in my tbr shelf for quite awhile and I happened to pick it up one night while I was procrastinating on a paper. This book contains several short stories and they are all based on true things that happened, mostly in the 1700s and 1800s. Donoghue is not only a novelist of historical fiction (she has a pretty popular novel Slammerkin), but she is a historian as well. After every story, she included a page on the actual facts that inspired her to write that story. This book was fascinating! I loved every minute of it and I cannot wait to read more of her work. I have another book by her, Life Mask, and I plan on reading that soon. Any of you historical fiction lovers out there check her out!





The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
Audio book. Read by: Alyssa Bresnahan
Published: 2008 Length: 10 Cds.



This book is about Towner, a thirty something woman returning to her home in Salem after years of mental illness. She is called home because her grandmother has disappeared.


This was a crazy ride. I found myself sitting in my car after I got home just to see what happened next. Since Towner admits on the first page that she always lies, I was constantly looking for the twists. I guessed some of them, but there were several and I was very satisfied with the ending.

Barry's descriptive powers are amazing; I have never wanted to go to the east coast as much as I want to now! The pictures she paints in her writing make you like you are there.


The only thing that irritated me a bit about The Lace Reader, was that sometimes the dialogue got a bit cheesy. Barry tended to repeat things a lot such as "that happy ever after crapola" and "I got as far as I could without falling off the ends of the earth" (These are both paraphrased since I don't have have the book). These were both used at least four times. This is a small issue though and overall I loved this book.


And one other comment: what is up with all of the book about twins that have been coming out recently? This is the third book in two months that I have read involving twins.