Leviathan

I've been looking forward to this book. As the author of the Uglies series, I knew it would be good, and it doesn't disappoint! It's for a bit younger of an audience, but the writing and the plot and the characters are all so well done. Readers of any age should like this, and there should be two sequels, so the characters will be growing up. There's lots of adventure and history (with a sci-fi alternate history tweak to it) in this book. It's loads of fun.

Anne Frank

I read this book for three, no, actually 4, reasons:

1. It's interesting.
2. Masterpiece Classic is airing a new adaptation of this on Holocaust Day (April 11th).
3. Miep Gies (a woman who helped Anne's family hide and was the one to recover and preserve Anne's diary) just died on January 10th.
4. I own it and have never read it all the way through. Sad, huh?

Plus I had to leave something out to read. All the rest of my books are packed up in boxes and will be in boxes until we get into a house which will be soon hopefully but we don't really know. Wow, I really should have used some commas in that last sentence. :D

Loved Anne Frank. I think part of its charm is how simple and innocent it is, but now and again Anne will say something completely profound. It's just heartbreaking how it ends so suddenly. One day she's talking about life as usual, maybe something about her blossoming romance with Peter, and the next, there's nothing. Just a note at the end of the book saying that her family's hiding place had been raided and all the family arrested. She died far too soon after that in a concentration camp. It is so sad and moving.

The Lost Symbol

Generally, I've liked Dan Brown novels. I thought DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons were both original and incredibly interesting. Having read a few more by him, including this latest, I'm starting to feel like he's become very formulaic. The symbolism stuff is way cool, but the rest is rubbish. So boring. Basically, it goes like this: someone has discovered a dead body, mutilated in some disgusting way that only Robert Langdon will recognize as a symbol leading him on some hunt to discover the truth before the world is destroyed. Oh, and what? There's a beautiful women who's incredibly smart and related to the original murder victim who is ridiculously intelligent with a secret lab and access to information Langdon needs and no one else can give him? Yeah, that's all part of the Dan Brown formula. Add in famous locations, secret societies we all know about, paintings that obviously mean more than meet the eye, and you have a complete Dan Brown novel. Like I said, parts of his books are so cool and interesting. There was a lot of Masonic stuff in this book and I thought it was fascinating to read about. Dan Brown just needs to come up with a new plot.