BOOK 48: A Study in Scarlet (Sherlock Holmes #1), by Arthur Conan Doyle

Rating: 3 stars

Cover synopsis: A murder that takes place in the shadowy outskirts of London, in a locked room where the haunting word Rache is written upon the wall. Quickly picking up the "scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life," Holmes does not fail at finding the truth -- and making literary history.

I was excited to read this book, because I've been watching the British Sherlock Holmes miniseries on Netflix, and I've enjoyed it immensely. It takes Doyle's actual stories of Sherlock Holmes, and transplants them into the 21st Century. The acting is wonderful and the writing is smart.

However, I found this book tough to rate. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Watson. They are a fascinating pair, comical yet brilliant. But the book has a 5-chapter flashback to the killer's background which reveals Doyle's ignorance on Mormonism. He perpetrate falsehoods on the religion -- my religion. And it made me very uncomfortable!

And I'm not sure the Utah interlude added a whole lot to the story.

So. If you excise the lies in those 5 chapters, this would border on a 5-star book. The characters are vivid, fully fleshed, and a pleasure for the reader to decipher. But for Doyle's part in spreading anti-Mormon sentiment, I was sorely disappointed. (Thankfully, the mini-series adaptation of this story had nothing to do with Mormons!)

BOOK 47: The People of Sparks, by Jeanne DuPrau

Rating: 2 stars

Cover synopsis: The people of Ember are above ground, and they come across a town where they are welcomed, fed, and given places to sleep. But the town’s resources are limited and it isn’t long before resentment begins to grow between the two groups. When anonymous acts of vandalism push them toward violence, it’s up to Lina and Doon to discover who’s behind the vandalism and why, before it’s too late.

This is the 2nd book in the City of Ember series. And I just didn't enjoy it as much as the first. I thought the premise was interesting: How does a small town handle a population doubling overnight, and how will the people of Ember adjust to life above ground. But the execution of the premise was off.

The writing was flat. The foreshadowing was insultingly obvious. I didn't like or care about any of the characters -- even Lina and Doon became even more cardboard-cutout than they had been in the last book. And I found the storyline contrived and unlikely. I felt like the author came into this with a theme -- War Is Bad -- and twisted the characters around her moral to make them fit, instead of letting the characters take the story in a more natural direction. She created conflict and strife where it felt unnatural and contrived.

I probably won't venture on with the series.

BOOK 46: The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler

Rating: 3 stars

Cover synopsis: Macon Leary is a travel writer who hates both travel and anything out of the ordinary. He is grounded by loneliness and an unwillingness to compromise his creature comforts when he meets Muriel, a deliciously peculiar dog-obedience trainer who up-ends Macon’s insular world–and thrusts him headlong into a remarkable engagement with life.

I waffled back and forth on what to rate this book. On the one hand, I found it depressing, and I didn't agree with many of the choices the characters made. I also found it predictable -- sad lonely stick-in-the-mud is taught how to live by a crazy vivacious woman! However, I did find the character development fascinating, the story well-written, and many situations that made me stop and think about how I would handle that situation.

I read this for my book club. One person has already told me she LOVES this book. Another one told me she DETESTED the book. Should be a pretty interesting discussion next week!

BOOK 45: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

Rating: 3 stars

Cover synopsis: An intriguing tale of revenge in which the main characters are controlled by consuming passions. A tormented foundling falls in love with the daughter of his benefactor, and the violence and misery result from their thwarted longing for each other.

I'm a sucker for a good classic. I love dissecting the characters and the author's motives. And there's plenty to examine in Wuthering Heights. It's a different sort of book, where the reader hates the characters. They are truly detestable beings. Yet, I could sympathize with them to some extent. I found Bronte's choice of characters fascinating and bold.

Still, it was hard to read a book where you don't really care about what happens to the characters. It took me about 3 weeks to plow through the book -- which is a really long time for me! I also wasn't terribly fond of Bronte's writing style. The devise of telling the story through the maid Nelly was cumbersome and didn't add much to the story -- if anything.

It seems unfair to compare Emily to her sister Charlotte Bronte, but what can I say? Wuthering Heights was interesting enough, but it was no Jane Eyre!