A Dance with Dragons (Fire and Ice #5) by George R.R. Martin (read 2/12 to 3/3)

So this is the last in the series currently written.  And it is true to Martin's form, he has great writing and an in depth character cast.  The problem is that I lost momentum with A Feast for Crows.  It focused too much on minor characters and was tedious to get through.  And because of that I had no built up momentum to carry me through the start of this book, which felt dull and pointless to me,  it took almost 600 pages to get to the new "combined" timeline.  It was awful, I really had to force myself to read it, I had to twist my own arm.  And there was still no story movement, two books and no closer to resolutions, just more cliff hangers, I hope the next one is good and we actually get movement, because if the story stands still for much longer I may not care enough about the ending to read a 7th book.

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins (Read 2/6 to 2/18)

This was a BOTM series read, we read one book a week. The  Although it took me much less than a week to read each book.  The Hunger Games (24 hours), Catching Fire (3 days), and Mockingjay ( 3 days).  They were a really easy read and I literally flew through them
So as I am sure almost everyone is familiar with the premise of the books even if they have only seen the movie previews on TV.  So as we know there was a war 74 years ago between the Capitol and 13 outlying districts.  The capitol destroyed a District (District 13) had has since been oppressing the reaming 12 districts, keeping them highly policed, isolated, uber poor and starving.  Then to keep them even more depressed and desperate, they make them send 2 of their children (age 12 to 18) each year to die via a horrible death at a highly televised game show.  Then two contestants come and shake it all up, and start a revolution.  It take all three books to get from the start of the revolution to the end.  Hunger Games is set in District 12, and the random names draws are Peeta Mellark and Prim Everdeen.  Prim however is only 12 and so her 16 year old sister Katniss volunteers to go in her place.  The two contestants find themselves in the world of the Capitol, a place of wealth and overindulgence, the Capitol citizens are materialistic and shallow.  Katniss is only thinking of herself and getting home to her family.  Peeta on the other hand is thinking of how to get Katniss home and starts a lie based on truth that he and Katniss are doomed lovers.  It works, but in the end she pulls it out and saves him too, defeating the Capitol at its own game and giving inspiration to all the districts to fight their own oppression, with the message "if we die in our fight, at least it was our choice and not yours."  My summation not Collins's.
We  surprise, surprise this really pisses the Capitol off, so they decide as retribution that in the special 75th edition of the televised child slaughter that they will spare the current children this year, and contestants will be selected from the previous winners.  Oh damn, Katniss is the only female to have one from District 12, I guess she is going back.  And because Peeta really does love Katniss, he is not about to let her go it alone.  So sequel is a repeat, but nastier.  There is no way the Capitol is going to let Katniss and Peeta cheat them again, their intent is to kill Katniss, hoping it will also kill the revolution that she is unaware of, that also happens to be using her as a symbol.  Oh did I mention the Revolutionaries plan on rescuing Katniss and making her their leader, well image of a leader anyways.  Problem is no one bothers to ask Katniss, or even tell her about these plots within plots. It really comes as no surprise that she doesn't play her part, she doesn't know her lines after all, and throws all sorts of monkey wrenches in things.
Then because they left Katniss out of her own rescue, they screw up and leave Peeta behind, Katniss does actually become the figurehead of the revolution to save him.  But Peeta comes back different, and then Katniss's goal becomes to kill the person who did this to Peeta, but who really is the cause?  Is it the leader of the Capitol President Snow?  The leader of the revolutionaries President Coin?  Is it society that let these awful games come into being?  Or could it be Katniss herself? Hmm...social commentary GO!
Oh wait I almost forgot, Katniss is torn between Peeta and her best friend/potential boyfriend Gale.  Decisions Decisions.
Now I know the synopsis sounds a little off putting, don't be off put I really like these books.  Do they follow the same pattern as many of the YA dystopian society books that are all the rage right now yes.  Does that make them bad no. I was drawn into the story, did I see parts as cookie cutter, yeah but its hard to read any book nowadays that doesn't have something cookie cutter about it.  I think what I liked best about these books was the ending.  I really liked that Collin's didn't give a traditional happy ending, some important characters die unexpectedly right when the reader thinks the win is at hand, spoiler it is not our three main players, Katniss, Peeta or Gale.  What I like is that Katniss, Peeta and Gale come out the other side of this revolution changed, damaged even.  In real life no one who went through what these young people did would come away with no emotional scars to match their physical scars.  And Collins' gives us readers that truth.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn (Read 2/3-2/6)

When Libby Day was 7 years old she lost her entire family, her sisters and mother were brutally murdered, and her 15 year old brother was convicted of the crime. For the next 24 years she has been living off charity and generally has not moved past her 7 year old self. Then she comes in contact with a group that is convinced her brother is innocent and makes Libby start to question everything she thought she knew about that night.  Everybody involved had a secret that 7 year olds were not included in.  If her brother did not kill his family, who did?

This is the second Gillian Flynn book I have read.  I read Gone Girl in June of 2014.  I have become a fan.  She takes us down such an unexpected rabbit hole with her stories.  The twists of this book wasn't as shocking as in Gone Girl, but it still wasn't easily predictable.  I was a bit disappointed in the ending.  I felt that it all tied up a little to neatly, I wanted more left undone.   It seemed pretty neat compared to Gone Girl.  I still flew through the book, 3 days to read.  It was really hard to put down, and I kept staying up past my bedtime to read "one more chapter."  Flynn's writing is so smooth and conversational that it felt more like I was listening to a friend talk than reading a book.  I need to get her book Sharp Objects because I have a feeling history will repeat itself and I will love it!

Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold (Landover Series #1) by Terry Brooks (read 1/5 to 1/30)

This is the next series in BOTM.  Meet Ben Holiday, a trial lawyer from Chicago, grieving the loss of his wife and unborn child in a car accident. He finds an advertisement in an upscale Christmas catalog claiming to offer a magical kingdom for one million dollars by a man named Mr. Meeks. Although skeptical, Ben pursues the offer out of a desperate need to start a new life. Ben receives a magical medallion and is transported through a swirling mist to the kingdom of Landover. Unfortunately, he finds it not exactly as described.
This is my favorite type of book, lightweight fantasy with sarcastic and a bit self-depreciating humor.   I can't believe I have missed this series before now.  I am liking how easy this read is, nothing heavy and maybe I'm not laughing out loud, but I have absolutely caught my self snorting now and then.  I think the simplicity of the story is what is so great, this was written in 1986, so I'm not sure if it is a landmark in the genre, but it wasn't a common style then either, at least as far as I know.  This is light with humor, not a real thinker but something to go hey I feel like reading, and I don't want to be a better person when I'm done, but I want to enjoy it.  Even if my book club doesn't read the rest of the series I will.

Change me into Zeus's Daughter by Barbara Robinette Moss (read 1/1 to 1/14/15)

Book Club read, was nervous going in sounded like another depressing read.

This is a memoir about growing up poor and undaunted in the South. Barbara Robinette Moss chronicles her family's chaotic, impoverished survival in the red-clay hills of Alabama. A wild-eyed, alcoholic father and a humble, heroic mother along with a shanty full of rambunctious brothers and sisters fill her life to the brim with stories that are gripping, tender, and funny.
Moss's early fascination with art coincides with her desire to transform her "twisted mummy face," which grew askew due to malnutrition and lack of medical care. Gazing at the stars on a clear Alabama night, she wishes to be the "goddess of beauty, much-loved daughter of Zeus."

I had a hard time with this time flow in this book, it seemed really slow at first, then we suddenly had skipped high school and she was a single mom.  WTF?  Then the fixing of her face was in the epilogue, not in the story itself? It happened during the fast forward part, it was confusing.  I'm not sure what the point was, I mean there was no conclusion, she just stopped writing.  I had a ton of unanswered questions when I was done reading.  Did she confront her Mom about why did she stay with her Dad?  Did she ever find or confront her parents about Mary Louise?  Why was Janet so sheltered?

Kill Smartie Breedlove by Joni Rodgers (Read 12/30 to 1/1)

This was a quick filler book for in between book club books.  It was a free book on my Kindle that I had downloaded ages ago and not gotten around to reading before now.
Recently widowed private detective Shep Hartigate is hired by a pulp fiction writer Smartie Breedlove to find out who’s killing the exes of Texas, including Smartie’s best friend, Charma Bovet.
This was really good, I love the idea of an author trying to solve a mystery, while writing her next book, and elements of her real life leaking into her fantasy life, until the two are parallel.
This was an easy light read, with fun characters, and it poked fun at writers not letting them take themselves too seriously.  I would read more in this series, in fact I think I should check now to see if there are more.

A Feast for Crows (Fire and Ice #4) by George R.R. Martin (read 12/12 to 12/29)

We continue the tale of seven kingdoms in A Feast for Crows.  

In 2005, Martin announced that the "sheer size" of his still-unfinished manuscript for A Feast for Crows had led him and his publishers to split the story into two books.  Rather than divide the text in half chronologically, he opted to instead split the books by character and location, resulting in "two novels taking place simultaneously" with different casts of characters.  A Feast for Crows was published months later, and the concurrent novel A Dance with Dragons was released in 2011.

In A feast of Crows we find ourselves following the stories of many minor character's whom we haven't had their point of view much before now:  Cersei Lannister; Ser Jaime Lannister; Brienne, Maid of Tarth; Sansa Stark; Arya Stark; Samwell Tarly; Aeron "Damphair" Greyjoy; Princess Asha Greyjoy; Victarion Greyjoy; Areo Hotah, Captain of the Guards of Dorne; Ser Arys Oakheart of the Kingsguard; and Arianne Martell of Dorne.

Tommen is now the King of King's Landing, with Cersei as his regent, and Margaery Tyrell as his wife.  Brienne, the Maid of Tarth, is on a mission to find Sansa Stark, aided by Jaime Lannister. Sansa Stark is hiding in the Vale, protected by Petyr Baelish as his daughter Alayne.  Petyr has murdered his wife Lysa Arryn and named himself Protector of the Vale and guardian of eight-year-old Lord Robert Arryn.  On the Iron Islands, Aeron Damphair calls a Kingsmoot to identify a successor as king of the Iron Islands.  In Dorne, Doran Martell is confronted by three of his brother Oberyn's daughters, who want vengeance for their father's death. Because they are inciting the commonfolk, Doran has them imprisoned in the palace.  Doran's daughter Arianne Martell plots  to crown Doran's ward Myrcella Baratheon as queen of Westeros under Dornish law. Upon arriving in Braavos, Arya Stark finds her way to the House of Black and White, a temple associated with the assassins known as the Faceless Men and becomes a novice.  Jon Snow, now Commander on the Wall,  has ordered Samwell Tarly to sail to the Citadel in Oldtown to research the Others and become a Maester. 

The writing is still great and the movement is fine, but I think splitting the story the way he did and focusing only on these minor characters (beside the Stark girls) was a bad idea.  These were not characters I was engaged with or really cared about, the characters I wanted to hear about, Tyrion, John, and Bran, Rickon, and of course the Girls, and Dany were not there.  It felt like filler chapters and I just couldn't get through them quick enough.  I was bored and I admit a bit pissed that no one I cared about was talked about, I just have to say he better make it up in the next book.