The Kari AnnAlysis

It’s that time of week again when Booking Through Thursday asks about a recent book you’ve read. This week’s question is “What’s the biggest book you’ve read recently?”.

You could either answer this question by length or by popularity. I’ve been working on my A to Z List and have just been reading random books I’ve found so the popularity question is kind of void for me.

I looked through a couple of books to see what my longest read has been and while Dracula took me longest to read, Son of a Witch was the longest book.  It was 407 pages.

Maybe length isn’t my thing. I didn’t really like this book. I only gave it 2 bookmarks. Click here to read my review.

I’ve been debating doing Musing Mondays for a while now. I’ve recently started Teaser Tuesday and Booking Through Thursday, but when I saw today’s topic, I had to respond.

The 8/24 Musing Monday topic: Do you prefer to read stand-alone books, or books in series? Do you stick with a series the whole way through or stop after the first instalment? Are there any particular series you enjoy?(question courtesy of Elena)

I think by looking at the list of books I’ve read in the past year, you can tell I’m a series girl. When I meet a character, I like to stay with  them and keep learning about them.

I’ve read all of the Janet Evanovich Stephanie Plum novels but one. This year I’ve also read Son of a Witch, which is the second in the Wicked Years Series. I’ve read the second book in the Poseur series. I also read A Job to Kill For which is the second in the Lacy Field Mystery Series.

I read the first 12 Plum books one after the other, but since then, I’ve slowed down a little. On the other ones, I normally just read them when I get to them. I rarely ever go to the book store when a book is released, even if it is next in my series.

My favorite series is the Plum Series. Check out my book list and I’m sure you will be able to tell.

Every now and then I like to read a single novel to get my mind off things, but in the end, I think I’ll always come back to a series!

Son of a Witch is Volume 2 in the Wicked Years series by Gregory Maguire. If you don’t know anything about the series, it shows you the other side of the Wizard of Oz. The first one, Wicked, lets you see the life of Elphaeba, the Wicked Witch of the West.

The series is a little more difficult to read compared to the girly murder mysteries I normally read. In both books, I’ve had to re-read parts and even look up words.

Speaking of words, I took note of a few words I had to look up: Quions, Unguents and Grousing. Those were all on the same page

One thing I like about this series, much like Harry Potter, is that the world you read about is completely made up. I don’t think it’s as well written as the Harry Potter books, because JK Rowling was very good at being descriptive. These books are very detailed, but I didn’t feel like the explanations were great. I like to be able to close my eyes and see what I’m reading and in these books, I can do that at times, but not all of the time.

One thing I suggest is that you read these books back to back. I haven’t read Wickedin over a year and forgot most of it. So when it referenced some things, I had a hard time remembering. It came back eventually, but I wish I would had read them closer together.

One thing I really liked about this book was in the beginning, it bounced back and forth from the past to the present until finally they caught up with each other and went forward. I thought that was written very well.

The thing I liked the most about the first book was Elphaeba, and since she was killed, there wasn’t as much about her in this one. It took me a while to read because there were parts that really just lagged.

It was good, then it got slow, then it got good, then it was slow for a long time until the very last line. Then it ended. Crap! Now I’ll have to make sure I read A Lion Among Men which I guess is looking at the Lion’s life.

I only give this book 2 bookmarks. It wasn’t bad enough to be trashed, but it wasn’t good enough for me to read again.