All These Things I've Done (Birthright #1) by Gabrielle Zevin

From Goodreads:
In 2083, chocolate and coffee are illegal, paper is hard to find, water is carefully rationed, and New York City is rife with crime and poverty. And yet, for Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the city's most notorious (and dead) crime boss, life is fairly routine. It consists of going to school, taking care of her siblings and her dying grandmother, trying to avoid falling in love with the new assistant D.A.'s son, and avoiding her loser ex-boyfriend. That is until her ex is accidently poisoned by the chocolate her family manufactures and the police think she's to blame. Suddenly, Anya finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight--at school, in the news, and most importantly, within her mafia family.

The thing I liked about this book most is the mafia mystery.  Anya gets caught up in her family's politics, a place she doesn't want to be.  She mostly just wants to fly under the radar, make it to her 18th birthday and keep her siblings safe.  But by virtue of her birth, she is meant to be more in her family's business.  I have a feeling that is where this series is headed.  Unfortunately, the mafia angle is dropped half way through and the romance angle becomes the focus.  It's not necessarily a bad thing.  It's only that the thing that drew me in is swept aside for something a little less compelling. But I'm guessing that it will be explored more in the next book.  Anya is pretty emotionally detached from life expect for the few people she truly loves that it is hard to "feel" the emotions she is feeling as she falls for Win, the Assistant D.A.'s son.  But the book is told from a past perspective and so I guess in the re-telling she is less inclined to become too emotional.   I enjoyed the whole book though I wish it had stuck to one kind of story and I also wish it had explained it a bit more.  The idea that chocolate and caffeine is now illegal is intriguing one. I get wanting to outlaw drugs in the future, but alcohol is still available so that doesn't fit.  The time setting is 2083 but it had a very 1920's Prohibition feeling with the coffee bar speakeasies and the smuggling of chocolate.  That was my favorite part, but it needed more explanation.  I mean why, of all things, chocolate?  I felt like that part was glossed over too quickly.  Still, conceptually, it is pretty awesome.

Weekly Round-Up 11/28

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week, reviews I've posted, books in the mail and anything else of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I'm reading Heavy Weather (Wodehouse). And I'm listening to Forever (Steifvater) and The Penderwicks (Birdsall).

Last week I finished  All These Things I've Done (Zevin).

Weekly Round-Up 11/21

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week, reviews I've posted, books in the mail and anything else of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I'm reading All These Things I've Done (Zevin). And I'm listening to Forever (Steifvater) and The Penderwicks (Birdsall).

Last week I finished Every Other Day (Barnes).

Weekly Round-Up 11/14

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week, reviews I've posted, books in the mail and anything else of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I'm reading Every Other Day (Barnes) and All These Things I've Done (Zevin). And I'm listening to Forever (Steifvater) and The Penderwicks (Birdsall).

Last week I finished Touch (Accardo) and reviewed Prized (O'Brien) and To Say Nothing of the Dog (Willis).

To Say Nothing of the Dog: Or How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis

Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest.  He's been shuttling between the 21st century and the 1940s searching for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's bird stump.  It's part of a project to restore the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years earlier. 

But then Verity Kindle, a fellow time traveler, inadvertently brings back something from the past.  Now Ned must jump back to the Victorian era to help Verity put things right--not only to save the project but to prevent altering history itself.  -- Goodreads

I love this book!  Seriously, I first listened to it about 10 years ago and then listened to it again a couple of years later.  When I saw it on Audible, I was ecstatic because my local library did not have it on CD.  But would it still be as good?  The answer is yes.  It starts out a little slow because I was impatient for Ned to get the Victoria era, but man the whole thing is good. I haven't read Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, a book which is referenced a lot and from which this book gets its title, but I will one of these days.  To Say Nothing of the Dog is written in a high manner house comedy style, much like a Wodehouse and has the same sensibilities as those book but with a large slice of science fiction thrown in.  Basically the whole book is about surviving the Victorians with their awful taste in furniture and the belief in seances, all while trying to save the space-time continuum.  But it never gets confusing or really all the science-y.  And the technology is a little laughable since they can travel through time but don't have cell phones.  But that has more to do with being written in 1997 when such things were not widely available and the internet wasn't what it is now.  Still I can forgive all that because the plot is so wonderful as are all the characters.  I was a little sad when it was over and I couldn't live in this world anymore.

Steven Crossley is the narrator and the voice of Ned.  He has the perfect British voice for this book and I love hearing his narration and the voices he does for the various characters.  He gets the tone and the inflection just right every time.

20 hours, 58 minutes

Whisper in My Ear

Touch by Jus Accardo

When a strange boy tumbles down a river embankment and lands at her feet, seventeen-year-old adrenaline junkie Deznee Cross snatches the opportunity to piss off her father by bringing the mysterious hottie with ice blue eyes home.
Except there's something off with Kale. He wears her shoes in the shower, is overly fascinated with things like DVDs and vases, and acts like she'll turn to dust if he touches her.
It's not until Dez's father shows up, wielding a gun and knowing more about Kale than he should, that Dez realizes there's more to this boy, and her father's "law firm," than she realized. Kale has been a prisoner of Denazen Corporation -- an organization devoted to collecting "special" kids known as Sixes and using them as weapons -- his entire life.
And, oh yeah, his touch? It kills.
The two team up with a group of rogue Sixes hellbent on taking down Denazen before they're caught and her father discovers the biggest secret of all. A secret Dez has spent her life keeping safe.
A secret Kale will kill to protect.  --Goodreads

While I enjoyed this book, it reads like a checklist of an action-adventure/science-fiction movie.  Plucky heroine? Check.  Brooding guy with a dark secret? Check.  Evil organization with an agenda? Check.  But despite the cliches involved, it is a fun book and an easy read.  I wasn't a huge fan of Deznee throughout the book.  She rubbed me the wrong way and I kept wondering what it was about her that made all the boys fall over themselves.  Because she is, frankly, fairly abrasive.  And Kale is so blank.  There is very little to his character except to growl menacingly at anyone who threatens his woman and to become fascinated at everything about Dez or the world in general.  A little more character development would not have been amiss for anyone in this book. 

The action never stalled though and that was good.  Because really this is an action based book.  Dez moves from scenario to scenario trying to figure out how to save Kale and her mom from Denezen and how to deal with her bad guy dad.  She does a great job figuring out what to do next.  And she really does kick ass in her own right.  The book ends with a typical cliffhanger and while I enjoyed reading it, I doubt I will continue on with the series.

From NetGalley
Published: November 1, 2011

Prized by Caragh M. O'Brien

The sequel to Birthmarked finds Gaia struggling to save her baby sister as she tries to reach her grandmother.  But when she is rescued by a stranger and taken to the town her grandmother use to run, Gaia finds the rules of that society are also constricting.  The number of men far outweigh the number of women and so the women hold all the power.  But power can be corrupting and the men are getting tired of being the underdogs.  Gaia finds unfairness at each turn along with someone from her past who provides another source of conflict for her.

While there is no such thing as a perfect society, it seems that all Gaia can find is dysfunctional ones.  This time she moves to one where the rules seems unfair to her and, frankly, chaffed me as well.  The Matrarc of the town immediately takes away her baby sister and her freedom. And it left me angry at how quickly Gaia or any stranger is treated like a criminal simply for being from somewhere else.  The action moved pretty quickly even as Gaia is kept locked up.  But the romance angle felt like it was too much and it was a little unnecessary.  I am curious to see what happens next with Gaia and her tendency to overthrow dystopias.  This series is turning out to be a real page turner.

From NetGalley

Weekly Round-Up 11/7

Weekly Round-Up is my wrap-up of last week's activities and includes what I'm reading this week, reviews I've posted, books in the mail and anything else of interest plus From the Library, my weekly listing of what I've checked out from the library.

This week I'm reading Touch (Accardo) and Every Other Day (Barnes). And I'm listening to The Penderwicks (Birdsall).

Last week I read Prized (O'Brien) and finished listening to To Say Nothing of the Dog (Willis).