Recent Book Rants - June 2024

Here are the  books I had finished reading recently. (Click on link if you want to know what the books are about.)

01 - Medusa (The Myth of Monsters Book 1) by Katherine Marsh > link
Since I barely know anything about greek mythology, it was fun to learn a few things but then again, some of it were refuted but that was the point of this book. I like the idea that Medusa and other greek myth are not monsters or evil but quite the opposite. And there's a lot of girl/woman power theme here which I don't mind. I enjoyed this but the ending was a bit rushed. I think this was meant to be standalone since there are so many information at the end and it seems like they would have expanded on everything but didn't. But it's a series so I'm willing to read the next book if there is one.

02 - Ghost Girl by Ally Malinenko > link
I'm a little disappointed since they titled the book with ghost in it and have the main girl sees ghosts and then go on to tell a story that involves the ghost but only like 0.5% while the main focus is on the creepy, new principal. The principal is creepy but he didn't really seem like he was doing much other than talking a lot and waving his red-gloved hand around which was never explained. The three main characters were kind of fun to read about but the story was just so-so. The happy ending was expected but I guess it just seems rather too easy for the main characters and her friends to win but if they didn't, then reading this book would be a complete waste of time.

03 - Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories by Truman Capote > link
I waited a couple of months to get this from the library and I have to say, it's not really worth the wait. Breakfast at Tiffany's is the story I wanted to read and it was good, almost like the movie or rather, the movie was almost like the story but the story ends differently and it wasn't as fun as the movie - it was rather depressing actually. The other three stories was okay, nothing special, like a slice of life kind of stories but I didn't like them.

04 - Ember and the Ice Dragons by Heather Fawcett > link
At first I thought this was a bit dull but it got more interesting. The main character, Ember, is a dragon who was spelled to human form but with her wings still there but invisible but she's a bit selfish at first but mostly because she never played with other children so she didn't know how to be around the two children she befriended but she learned throughout the book what friendship is. Toward the end of the book, I had hoped that Ember would turn into her dragon form to do some wacky things but she didn't which was a bit disappointing. I really liked when she crawled through a tiny portal to her father's office using a spelled doorknob and surprised her father's pupils. There aren't that many magical moments but that scene was fun. It's a good read but maybe it was too tamed and too bland for me.

05 - Aliens on Vacation & Alien on a Rampage (The Intergalactic Bed and Breakfast - book 1 & 2) by Clete Barrett Smith, illustrations by Christian Slade > link
The first book was a short, fun read though I didn't care much for the romance between David, nicknamed Scrub, and Amy. I'm not a fan of 13-year-olds having romances but it was not too annoying. The second book was okay but not as fun as the first book. I might have skimmed through the part where one of the alien was eating slugs but I do like the purple dog-like alien that became David's pet. There's a third book but I don't think I'll read that one, it sounds more of the same as book 2. But I think these books are enjoyed better by 9 or 10 year-old readers, not adults.

06 - Dreadful Young Ladies and other stories by Kelly Barnhill > link
The first story, Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch, started out mysterious but it became a bit silly toward the end especially the bits about the Sasquatch not wearing pants and that if the wind blows just a little, it might reveal his male parts - is this supposed to be funny? Then there is a scene that I remember where a pregnant woman was cutting off her hand which was another woman's hand that was somehow became her hand (from the story Notes on the Untimely Death of Ronia Drake) - that was kind of horrible but is written plainly with not much blood and detail. The last story, The Unlicensed Magician, a much longer story, was surprisingly enjoyable but it ends like a young adult love story and it's the only story I like in this collection but I don't think it fits in with the other stories. The title story, Dreadful Young Ladies, does have four mini-stories about four dreadful young ladies but it was bland. I don't know what I was expecting from this story but with the use the word dreadful, I would assume something like those penny dreadfuls.
    Overall, these 9 stories are a bit mysteries, a bit weird, a bit awkward and a bit off-kilter but told with some fantasy elements, some weird science fiction elements and some pretty writing. The title of this collection is a bit misleading along with the cover art (drawing of a girl's long braid with wings full of skull, flowers, patterns) - these stories are kind of dark and kind of creepy but they are probably just one step away from actually being dark and creepy.

Have you read any good books lately?