It's Monday! What Are you Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week. 
You might also like to check out my Friday Finds highlighting new reads I discovered during last week that got added to my TBR (to be read) list over at Goodreads.


Finished this week:
 
Synopsis here.

I absolutely loved it. I think it was even better than The Hunger Games. I now have my husband addicted to the series and he is on this one at the moment.
I'm glad I saw the movie The Hunger Games as I can now put faces to the characters especially Haymitch!!
I think this was jaw-dropping good, but *darn* a cliffhanger!!
I am not a huge fan of Katniss, I think she is selfish, but then she does admit to that. After all, she is only sixteen and teens are pretty self-centered at that age.
Gale is further developed in this book but I am still a huge fan of Peeta.

Also finished this week:

I'm not going to put the synopsis here because it has spoilers in it in my opinion. 

Loved it also and could not have guessed the outcome. There was one sentence near the end that did get me wondering however. I don't want to give anything away here.

There were some tears shed as some favourite characters are sacrificed and some cheers when others were killed.

I devoured this book on the heels of Catching Fire and was not so disappointed, what am I going to read now???

A good reading friend has suggested Blood Red Road and I have seen ads for it on the subway.

Started this week, but it was a hard choice so I decided to go with a new author (to me) as I happened to find a hard copy of her first book in my bookcase and wanted to read it so I could clear it out of the house.

From the book jacket:


Greenwich, south-east London. The Met's crack murder squad, AMIP, is called out by nervous CID detectives to a grim discovery. Five bodies, all young women, all ritualistically murdered and dumped on wasteland near the Dome. As each post-mortem reveals a singular, horrific signature linking the victims, officers realize that they are on the trail of that most dangerous offender: a sexual serial killer.

Detective Inspector Jack Caffery - young, driven, unshockable - finds himself facing both hostility within the force and echoes of his past in this, his first case with AMIP. Haunted by the memory of a death long ago, he employs every weapon forensic science can offer for he knows it is only a matter of time before this chaotic, sadistic killer strikes again.

So far I am enjoying it.


2012 books read (31 to date):
The Coast Road - John Brady
Still Midnight - Denise Mina
The Bulgari Connection - Fay Weldon
Good Bait - John Harvey
The Heretic's Treasure - Scott Mariani
Dead I Well May Be - Adrian McKinty
The Devil's Elixir - Raymond Khoury
A Darker Domain - Val McDermid
The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin
GB84 - David Peace
The Emperor's Tomb - Steve Berry
Stonehenge Legacy - Sam Christer
Inquisition - Alfredo Colitto ABANDONED!
The Troubled Man - Henning Mankell
Nineteen Seventy-Four - David Peace
Faithful Place - Tana French
Dead Like You - Peter James
Brother and Sister - Joanna Trollope
The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton ABANDONED!
A Beginner's Guide to Acting English -Shappi Khorsandi
The Snowman - Jo Nesbo
The Leopard - Jo Nesbo
The Stone Cutter - Camilla Lackberg
Miramar - Naguib Mahfouz
The Gallow's Bird - Camilla Lackberg
Nineteen Seventy- Seven - David Peace
Timeline - Michael Crichton
Millennium People - JG Ballard
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week.
You might also like to check out my Friday Finds highlighting new reads I discovered during last week that got added to my TBR (to be read) list over at Goodreads.

Finished this week:

Synopsis over here.

So I persevered with this choice.  I was tempted to give up at one point especially when he goes on and on about physics and other scientific jargon. I stayed with it, albeit skimming certain sections and am glad I finished it. The parts I really enjoyed were the history of the French castles and then researching which castles still exist to add to my Bucket List along with Carcassonne  which I discovered when I read Labyrinth by Kate Mosse several years ago.

I thought the characters were flat, I wasn't drawn to any of them.  Knights, castles, fighting and suspense should have drawn me in but alas...

Also finished this week:

Synopsis here.

This was my first JG Ballard book and I liked it. I do think a Nick Horby  book is much more fun to read on this type of topic.

I know Ballard's point is the shallowness of middle class society but I just couldn't get into any of the characters especially the film lecturer who despises Hollywood cinema so much she organizes the burning  down of the NFT.

I did enjoy the geographical references to London and could relate to all the places that the protests were held in.

Also finished this week:

From the book jacket:

Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning?
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival.


I realize I'm late jumping onto the band-wagon, I had bought this for my 17 year old nephew at Christmas and assumed it was a YA book. As well I am not usually a big fan of dystopian novels (see Timeline above). I bought it because Kobo where I buy my e-reader books had a special for the trilogy.
Boy, was I wrong. From the first page I couldn't put it down!!!
There were times I could have cried, there were I gasped as the plot turned and twisted. 
We will be going to see the movie very soon as I am curious to see how it is done. 


Started this week:

From the book jacket:
Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol - a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.
Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

I am still captivated!

Plan to start reading this week:

I'm not going to include the synopsis here as I don't want to know!!!

2012 books read:

The Coast Road - John Brady
Still Midnight - Denise Mina
The Bulgari Connection - Fay Weldon
Good Bait - John Harvey
The Heretic's Treasure - Scott Mariani 
Dead I Well May Be - Adrian McKinty
The Devil's Elixir - Raymond Khoury 
A Darker Domain - Val McDermid
The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin 
GB84 - David Peace 
The Emperor's Tomb - Steve Berry
Stonehenge Legacy - Sam Christer
Inquisition - Alfredo Colitto ABANDONED!

The Troubled Man - Henning Mankell

Nineteen Seventy-Four - David Peace

Faithful Place - Tana French

Dead Like You - Peter James

Brother and Sister - Joanna Trollope

The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton ABANDONED!

A Beginner's Guide to Acting English -Shappi Khorsandi

The Snowman - Jo Nesbo

The Leopard - Jo Nesbo

The Stone Cutter - Camilla Lackberg

Miramar - Naguib Mahfouz
The Gallow's Bird - Camilla Lackberg
Nineteen Seventy- Seven - David Peace

Timeline - Michael Crichton

Millennium People - JG Ballard

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins