Shopgirl - a novella

Title: Shopgirl - a novella
Author: Steve Martin
Recommended by: Myself

And by recommended by myself, I mean that I was at the library trying to find CD's of Steve Martin's stand up, and found books he wrote instead. I read 'The Pleasure of my Company', and really liked it, so I thought I'd give his first (short) book a try.

I didn't think too much of this book, it was pretty average, although Steve Martin does an excellent job at single characters, and their mindset. That skill is what makes 'The Pleasure of my Company' such a good book, since it is about a obsessive compulsive half crazy main character. But in this book on relationships between basically 3 characters, it didn't seem very useful. My problem is more to do with this book's subject than the way it's written. This book is about a 28 year old woman, and her relationship with a 50-something year old man, and how they grow and what they learn through each other. It just didn't seem very fun to read, or challenging to think about.

Recommendation: 5/10, a quick read, not too noteworthy, but an interesting style of writing. But listen, if you're going on my recommendation, then just go read 'The Pleasure of my Company'.

Battle Royale

Title: Battle Royale
Author: Koushun Takami (translated from Japanese to English by Yuji Oniki)
Recommended by: Andy Theiss

This book's about an oppressive government that runs a "Program" once a year, where one class of 40 students is selected , they're given weapons, and they battle each other to the death. This book follows one class's participation in "The Program". It's a pretty long book, but it reads really quickly, and is full of action. And it's not just flash and gore, the book deals pretty well with the state of mind, paranoia, and fatigue of all the students.

Andy Theiss let me borrow this book on a plane trip, and I felt I couldn't get enough time with it. I'd sit down to start reading, and time would fly by.

Recommendation: Pretty intense while also being thought provoking! 8/10.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Title: Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Author: Lynne Truss
Recommended by: Matt Welty (Through Facebook)

I started reading books that were listed as my friends "favorites" on facebook. I mean, I trust my friends, and they have to like the book enough to list it. This book was on punctuation, and it wasn't that hot. The lady spent a lot of time being angry about people doing crazy punctuation errors like using a comma instead of an apostrophe. She was also British, so maybe things are a little crazier in the writing system over there, anarchy among the semi-colons. I learned a lot about how to use what in different situations, punctuation-wise, but I couldn't get over this lady's attitude.

She didn't seem to realize that language evolves, and even though she would mention ways that it had changed, she wanted to hold on so tightly to her view of punctuation. But it was her anger at the incorrect punctuation that bothered me. So what if some people use it incorrectly, it'll change. The last chapter of the book was really interesting though, talking about the effects caused by the internet, and how ideas (like punctuation) travel so quickly, and change rapidly.

Recommendation: If you love punctuation, and witty sayings about it, you'll love this. Otherwise you'll probably enjoy looking at this picture infinitely more. 6/10

Dune Messiah

Title: Dune Messiah
Author: Frank Herbert
Recommened by: Myself

Well, try as I might against it, the first book I'm posting about is science fiction. Ah, SF, my true love. Anyway, I realized one day that I'd never read the Dune Chronicles. So I read Dune last year, and I really liked it, and this book didn't disappoint in the series. It progressed the world of Dune, and made you really believe Muad'Dib is the man, and that the spice is life. Also, Herbert's way of writing really makes the reader feel that they are inside the heads of the characters, through the confusion, triumphs, failures, and prescience.

Recommendation: Dune's timeless, 9/10.

Not quite yet

Here I hope to post book reviews, about the books I read, something along this fashion:

Title:
Person who recommended:
What I thought:

It'll be a blast people.