5. Dan Brown - Digital Fortress

I've only ever read one Dan Brown book (The Da Vinci Code), despite people telling me I should read more. Digital Fortress was good, but not Brown's best. For his first novel, you could tell that he was still getting the hang of it. He had some parts that were really exciting and some plot twists that were really unexpected, but there were also a bunch of them that I saw coming and just wanted to end. Unfortunately, the last major "riddle" I saw coming every which way from Friday (or whatever the actual phrase is...that sounded right).

Also, he should have done a bit more research into cryptography before writing a novel based around it.

Decision: Worth the read, but if you have to choose between this another Brown book, I would bank on another, despite not having read them.

4: Stieg Larsson - The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

So this is one of the books I started with, and it only took me a month to read it. It also occurs to me that I'm now still 4 books behind the schedule of 2 books per week that I originally wanted to keep.

So the basic idea of this book is that a journalist gets into trouble and needs to take a break from writing. Then this old rich guy decides to hire him as a private investigator for something that happened 37 years prior because it's been haunting him. Larsson is a good author, but there's too many clues that the main characters skip over like it was nothing. For instance, I figured out like 3/4 of the mystery before I was halfway done with the book. But despite all of that, there were a few twists that I never saw coming, and I appreciated that fact. A book is less fun when you know how it ends.

One other thing I didn't like was the way the author ended the book. He wrapped up the main plot just fine, but he left the plot of the characters hanging. It was more like the end of a television season than the end of a novel. And yeah, I know he had all 3 of these books finished before any of them were published, but it still kind of irks me.

But despite all of my griping, it was an enjoyable read. Especially the second half, which I read in 2 or 3 days after taking 25 to read the first half.

3: J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Again, everyone has read this book. And honestly, it's probably my least favorite out of the first 6 Harry Potter books. Having the British version wasn't much different, though it was hilarious when Ron was mad at Riddle because he "grassed" on Hagrid. I honestly have no idea why that would mean "told." Maybe it's rhyming slang. Anyways, I'll probably read the third one now, though I might actually try to finish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

2: John Green - Looking for Alaska

So long story short, I decided to read this book because I watch a vlog between the author and his brother and they're both hilarious. This book is split into two parts, so my review will be as well.

Before: This part of the book was great. It was quick-moving, had a few things to laugh at and generally kept the idea of a light-hearted book, despite the stereotypical trouble that high schoolers get into. It had some autobiographic anecdotes (that I had heard on the vlog), and they were still extremely funny.

After: It gets into a much more serious book at this point, and I think I enjoyed this part less. I still read the whole part in one sitting (it's only like 100 pages), but it's less my type of book.

All in all it was a good book, worth reading and I knocked it out in two sittings, and I'm an incredibly slow reader. If you're wondering what it's about, it's about a high school kid from Florida with no real friends going to a boarding school in Oklahoma or Alabama or something (it really isn't important, just that he's far-ish from home) and doing the stuff most teenagers would do in the same situation, with a little bit of deeper thought involved in some parts of the book.

1: J.K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

So for those of you who haven't read Harry Potter, you should probably go smash your head in with a bezoar.

That being said, I'm not going to recap the book because there's no reason to since every living person over the age of 1 has read it. But this is the first time I've read the British version of the book (though I've read the American version like 20 times), and even though the differences were minor (mostly adding 'u's), I liked the fact that Dudley's new word was "Shan't" instead of "Won't," as it sounds cooler.

Also, I noticed that Quirrel says Voldemort's name near the end, and it confused me. Is that in the American version? Because one of the key things in the rest of the books is that nobody says "Voldemort," especially his followers. But this does remind me of A Very Potter Musical where Voldemort tells Quirrel that they're past the point where he has to keep calling him "The Dark Lord."

So I lied...I'm going to do a recap.

So this short main character grows up in what is essentially a hole in the ground, raised by his uncle. He then meets an old wizard with a long gray beard who tells him that, for the next year, he's going to be on what is essentially an adventure. At first he's worried that he isn't up to the task, but with some help by his short friends, he manages to defeat the Dark Lord and destroy the One Ring. I mean Philosopher's Stone.

Example: J.R.R. Tolkien - Return of the King

After reading Return of the King, I realized that this is probably the single greatest book of all time. It ties together everything from the first 2 (or 4, if you're picky) books, and ends in a manner most befitting to the work. On a scale of 1-10, it's an 11 (similar to the volume control on my amplifier). I would recommend this book to anyone who had read the first 2 (4), and would recommend the trilogy to anyone that has the ability to read. And if they don't, it's probably worth learning to read just to read this trilogy.

~Zebarah