Sunday, February 6, 2011

January Reads

Because I've had a lot going on I've unintentionally neglected my blog. I have been reading though and have read 5 novels over the month of January. I figured I'd share what I read here, and I'm hoping to write some proper reviews at some point. As opposed to a quick few sentences on what I thought of the books.

These are listed in reading order, and I've linked them to their Goodreads pages.
Islands Siddons, Anne Rivers
The first novel read in 2011. This is one my mom lent me I might not have picked it up otherwise. That being said I did enjoy reading this one. The characters were interesting and I enjoyed how she described the setting related details.

Tara Road Binchy, Maeve
Another loan from mom. While the story started out quite a bit earlier than I had expected it worked for the book with setting up the characters and the plot. I enjoyed how much the two main characters grew from their experiences over the course of the novel.

CassaStar Cavanaugh, Alex J.
I really enjoyed reading this book. There were enough details about the setting to create a mental image of the world around the characters, without getting to bogged down in details. The characters are fleshed out nicely and their actions kept the story moving at a good pace.

Scarlet Feather Binchy, Maeve
While I did enjoy this book, I liked Tara Road better. There were developments between some of the characters that felt a little forced. Though the nine year old twins in this book are a riot. I was laughing out loud a few times while reading.

Precursor (Foreigner, #4)  Cherryh, C.J.
I started reading this series last year and I enjoyed this book better than some of the earlier ones. The world is well defined and the alien species is really interesting. Because this is book four I don't want to say to much because it would spoil things in the earlier three books.

4 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Claire, thank you!
Your review on Goodreads came through in a Google Alert, so I saw it a couple weeks ago.
So glad you enjoyed my book - thanks again!!

Claire Goverts said...

You're welcome. I only did the ratings in Goodreads, I still want to write something out review wise there.

Anne R. Allen said...

This is great to blog short reviews like this (and give the excellent Mr. Cavanaugh a nice plug.) Goodreads is a good resource, but I find I've had to cut back to just a few social networks in order to work more on my own stuff (and read!) I figure blogs are kind of the writer's "core" site. I hope you'll do more of these.

Claire Goverts said...

Anne - Thanks. I may do more short reviews, probably on a monthly basis. Awhile back I was thinking about posting a single longer review every week or so. Then I figured that might be to ambitious.

I like Goodreads though lately I've been using the lists/shelves more than the social aspect of it. It's what I have time for. Blogs are great, especially for writers. It's nice how flexible of a platform they can be.