The first book is the last one I needed to complete my Royal Diaries collection: Nzingha: Warrior Queen of Matamba, Angola, Africa, 1595. I thought I had had them all but then, as I looked through GoodReads one day, I saw this book and knew I needed it still. This one out of the whole series was the only one that wasn't a reread, if I remember correctly. When I was going through them all in my late teens or early 20's, this was the only one that wasn't in my library system and getting them through the library was the only way for me to get my hands on them at the time. Such is life when you're a poor college student. Nzingha is quite the woman. I've since read this since came in and she is one of my favorites out of the whole series. The major drawback to this story is how woefully short it is. Roughly 90 or so pages for the actual diary part of it felt too short. I wanted to see more of her life as she and her people tried to keep the Portuguese at bay. The author made her sound like the real person that she was all those years ago. Some of the other people in this series feel fairly flat. She was down to earth, her main wish to go hunting with her father at least once before she gets married. The historical note at the end brought her a bit more to life as it finishes telling her story of what happens after the last diary entry
Keeping with the historical books, although this one is closer in time than Nzingha's story. The cover, and eventually the tile, caught my interest when I was looking through some of the books. I had no idea what it was about and wondered why a book about someone's suitcase would be so interesting. Then I pulled up the description. Hana's Suitcase survived the Holocaust and ended up in Japan in 2000. It was marked "Hana Brady, May 16, 1931." The story follows the holocaust education center as they try to find clues about her and her family, who were from Czechoslovakia and what happened to them after the Nazi invasion. The book was a lot taller than I had anticipated it being and a lot thinner. This should be a quick read for me. I've been interested in years about what the Jews went through at that point in time and hearing their stories. Probably ever since we read Night by Elie Wiesel in the eighth grade at the age of 13. It's been about 15 years since then and I've been trying to get my hands on anything I can since then whenever I have the money for it.
Going back a little bit farther in time now. Just seeing the title for The Diary of Jack the Ripper: The Discovery, the Investigation, the Authentication, the Debate and I was sold. I couldn't hit the button to add it to my cart fast enough. Jack the Ripper has been someone I've been interested in learning more about for years. Ever since roughly junior year of high school, I've found crazy people interesting. The big paper we had to write for English class that year could be on anything we wanted. I ended up picking a local to Washington state serial killer;I think it was the Green River Killer I had settled on, I could be wrong, though. But Jack the Ripper, if I couldn't find enough information on my original person, would have been my next pick. His story felt like a whodunnit for the ages since they never did figure out who he was while he was alive. I cannot wait to get into this book and find out what's between the covers of this diary. You'll have to ignore the reflections of the overhead light and my phone on the cover of the book. (When the picture is bigger, you can just barely make out part of my phone case [which is a NES controller]).
This should be the last book I bought this time around that deals with something in the not so distant past. And it follows another serial killer. Zodiac was something I ended up buying because I've only just recently become interested in getting an idea of what kind of person the Zodiac killer was and why he did what he did. And to add to it, he left notes to the police. The notes are the most interesting part to me. How he wrote them. Some of them seem so... Childlike. I'm so interested to see how he got caught. The best part of this book is the author was the reporter who was obsessed with finding the Zodiac killer and seeing him brought to jail. One intriguing part of the whole thing is the amount of his victims doesn't match up across the board. Official count is 6. He admits to 37. The real toll could be well over 50 victims. I cannot imaging being a family member of one of the Zodiac's victims (or Jack the Ripper's). This is definitely a book that I'm super excited to get to reading here soon. I'm almost done with this month's TBR pile (that post is here.), so hopefully I can start this soon.
Might as well keep going with the psycho theme, no? Although this one isn't historical, the hotel that The Shining takes place in is based off of is a real hotel. I watched the movie that is based off this book at an age where I was at an iffy sort of age to watch it but had been reading books similar for a year or two. However, after seeing the movie, I put off reading this book way too long. I've had the sequel, Dr. Sleep, for almost a year now and haven't read it yet because I hadn't read The Shining first. To be fair, I hadn't realized when I bought the sequel that it was a sequel. Kinda glad I had actually looked at the book before I started to read it and noticed that it was book number two.
If you're not familiar with this one, it follows the new off season caretaker and his family. Which is supposed to work out so they get more time together as a family and Jack, the father, can get some writing done. As winter settles in, the forces in the hotel have other ideas as they start to gather around. And the only one to notice is Jack's five year old son, Danny. This book, while I'm excited to read it, may take me a while to get to with how many other books that seem to be getting put ahead of it. As it is, I've had the sequel in my possession for close to a year now. So a little longer can't hurt.
The Time Traveler's Wife will be a reread for me. I originally borrowed it from the library in my early 20's (I was borrowing pretty regularly from my library at that point) and liked it at that point in time. Now, about seven years or so later, I want to reread it again and see what I liked about it so much. There was even a movie that was based off this book and I still haven't gotten around to watching it. One day soon, maybe. This one follows the story of Claire Abshire and Henry DeTamble. Their story of their lives spans time as he goes back and forth into her childhood and the present, to where he's married to her. I don't remember this book being as thick as it is. It's over 500 pages long, weighing in at about 536. Which qualifies it as tome, I do believe. We'll see if I read it as quickly as I read it the first go around several years go. I think I had more free time when I read it the first time. So we'll see and good luck to me on getting this done. This one may take me some time to pick up as well. Since someone wants to borrow it from me, that may be the thing that gets me to pick this book up sooner rather than later.
When I bought Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman, I didn't realize that it was technically book two in the American Gods series. And it's a book that's on the chunkier side of things at 400 pages. The description on GoodReads doesn't go into too much detail about what goes on in the story. Just that the main character, Fat Charlie Nancy, didn't know his father was a god or that he had a brother. His normal life had ended when said god-for-a-father died in Florida. And now the brother he didn't know he had had was now at his door. With Fat Charlie's brother, Spider, around, life is about to get more interesting. And dangerous.
I'm rather intrigued as to what happens, despite the vague description. It seems like this could go either way: The book could go very well or or it could end badly. No way to find out except read the book. A few of the comments on the GoodReads page say that you don't have to read the first book to read this one but... I'm one of those people where I like to read things in order (hence why I haven't picked up Dr. Sleep), so I will probably wait until I can get a copy of American Gods.
I loved reading the books in The Wicked Years. This was another series I had read in my twenties and loved. Retellings are some of my favorite books to read. Son of a Witch is book two in the series and follows Liir, who is the son of the Wicked Witch of the West. He was last seen hiding in the shadows of the castle, nearly dead after watching what had happened with Dorothy. In the Cloister of Saint Glinda, Candle, a silent novice, takes care of him. The story follows the two of them as Liir tries to find his half sister, Nor. He has the witch's cape and broomstick but is he really her son and does he have her powers? And since the wizard left Oz, the people running Oz may be dangerous. I don't remember loving this book as much as Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West but this was a very close second in terms of favorites. I don't remember the books very well and how things went down exactly in each book but this is a very near and dear storyline to me in terms of retellings. I've read a couple of others from Gregory MaGuire since having picked up The Wicked Years books and everything so far has been pretty good. Will have to pick up more of them since outside of this series, I borrowed every other retelling of his that I've read from the library.
Last book from Thrift Books! And it just happens to be book three in The Wicked Years series. The sticker that was on the copy of A Lion Among Men (as seen in the picture) bothered me. I don't like stickers on my books due to potential damage to the book. I know I shouldn't really complain since it's a second hand book but... Still. It was a sticker. On my book. Which, luckily, ruin the cover. But still. Grr.
Anyways, this one follows Brr, the Cowardly Lion. You get to hear Brr's story from cobhood as hetells it to an oracle named Yackle. As he goes to fix a mistake that he had made in the past. there are misadventures along the way. Such as becoming implicated in a massacre of trolls, faling in love with a Cat princess, and avoiding a jail sentence by agreeing to service as lackey to the Emperor of Oz.
In all honesty, this one and the last book in the series were a pretty close tie for not being my favorite books out of the series. They were still decent books, though, and worth giving a shot.
Bonus book! While I didn't get this book from Thrift Books, I picked it up while at Target when I friend and I went last week to pick up some last minute Mother's Day things. She and I can't not go to the book section of stores that have books when we're together and I happened to notice that they finally had Stars Above by Marissa Meyer in paperback in store. I've picked up this series almost entirely at Target. I was so very excited to see it. Now that I have this one, the only ones I have left is Winter and I'll be getting that one once it gets released in paperback. Which I think is later this year.
Stars Above is part of The Lunar Chronicles. Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter are all retellings and Stars Above is the same way. Except it has short stories of retellings. Almost all of them are prequels to the main stories. I'll pick this one up after Winter comes out and I have gotten it read. It's going to be so hard to not read this book. However, I have managed to hold of on reading Fairest, which is the story of the evil queen in the series. But, again, not something I will be picking up until after I get ahold of Winter.
Let me know if you've read any of these books and what you've thought of them. Are there any books that catch your interest? If so, maybe we can buddy read them together!
Your kindred bookmate,
Cassie
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