(Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish.)
1. Shades of Grey, Jasper Fforde – I love Fforde’s Thursday Next and Nursery Crimes series, so I thought I’d love this one too. Unfortunately I didn’t realize it was dystopian, and of course I ended up hating it.
2. The Freedom Writers Diary, Erin Gruwell – A little disappointing. This is one of the rare instances where I liked the movie better than the book; the anonymous nature of the kids’ journals in the book made it hard for me to connect with them.
3. Lucy, Laurence Gonzales – I normally shy away from horror/thriller stories because they give me nightmares, but I read Lucy because it was compared to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. And I’m so glad I did! It was by no means or light read, but it brought a fantastic theme/subject into a modern setting and added even more great layers. Great story.
4. Behold, Here’s Poison, Georgette Heyer – Discovering Heyer was a happy accident; I love her Regency novels, and was excited when I learned that she also wrote many mysteries. Behold, Here’s Poison was well-written, but it lacked the spirit of her Regency novels, and just couldn’t hold my interest.
5. The Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan – Although I liked the premise and the main character, in the end I just couldn’t handle what felt like such gratuitous gore.
6. Murder at Monticello, Rita Mae Brown – Wasn’t sure what to make of a talking cat who solves mysteries, but was pleasantly surprised. Great mystery, great characters.
7. Manning Up, Kay Hymowitz – I was really looking forward to this one because I so rarely read a gender and psychology/sociology book about men. But while the author did a good job of explaining the problem, she didn’t really present any suggestions for fixing it. Plus I felt like Hymowitz was doing all her writing while thinking, “If only these women weren’t so gosh-darn independent, we wouldn’t have all these immature man-boys loafing around playing World of Warcraft!”
8. Jane Austen Made Me Do It, Laurel Ann Nattress – I hoped that I could overcome my general dislike of short story collections if they were Jane Austen-related. But while some of the stories were great, the majority were just kind of…blah.
9. Death Comes to Pemberley, P.D. James – Ugh. Just, ugh.
10. Murder on the Eiffel Tower, Claude Izner – The premise sounded so exciting, but the story took forever to get going, and even then it didn’t feel like much was happening. It was just kind of boring.
What books did you like more or less than you thought you would?
Interesting that a book about a talking cat ended up being good haha. I love when books completely surprise you like that.
I’m sad that you don’t like short story collections! What is it about them that you don’t generally like?
Surprise books are fun. Typically I’m a fan of talking animals; I guess that since it was a mystery novel that seemed completely serious, I was hesitant about how those were going to mesh in the novel.
I’m sad about short stories, too. I think I dislike that they’re so short; there’s simply not enough time for plot and character development, and I can’t get into the story.
Thanks for stopping by my blog!
Wow, I haven’t heard of/read any of these! For the most part it sounds like I’m not missing out on the disappointing ones (lol), but I might have to check out Lucy… that sounds really interesting, though not something I’d normally pick up. 🙂
Lucy was really surprising. It’s definitely not something I’d pick up either, but I loved it. It’s sad and difficult to read, but worth the tears. Promise.
I was disappointed by The Last Werewolf, too. I didn’t mind the gore much, but there was definitely something that kept it from being as good as I hoped.
The gore, unfortunately, is what turned me off. Other than that the plot was good, and it was well-written. It just wasn’t my thing.
Oh, bother, I was hoping Death Comes to Pemberly would be good! I remember reading P. D. James’s early Dalgliesh books — five or six of them, I think — but I haven’t picked up one of her books in years. Nuts.
I’ve always avoided the Rita Mae Brown cat mysteries. I’m not even sure why, anymore. I think that years ago, I didn’t like talking animals except in books that were obviously fantasy. Oh, well, tastes change. Perhaps it’s time to try one?
I really, really wanted to like Death Comes to Pemberly, and I’m so mad that I didn’t. I’ve never read anything else by P.D. James, but I’ve heard good things about her; I just think she wasn’t the right author to attempt a sequel. She broke too many of Jane Austen’s own rules.
Well put about talking animals typically being part of the fantasy genre; maybe that’s why I shied away from the story. Fortunately there are many “main characters,” the majority of them human. It seems like that would feel unnatural, but Rita Mae Brown is known for her excellent writing. I say give it 50 pages and see if you like it.
Hi, saw your comment on my blog – you should definitely give Anno Dracula a try. I’ve got to say, your revelation that Heyer also writes mysteries but that they aren’t very good moved me from excited to disappointed in the space of about three seconds!
Anno Dracula is on my list to research a bit more this weekend. Excited about the possibility of a book about vampires that don’t sparkle. 😉
I was bummed about Heyer’s mysteries, too, especially because her Regency novels are so incredible. Apparently she wrote the mysteries to make money—they sold well at the time—but it wasn’t something she enjoyed writing. That lack of passion shows.