Never in my life have I read a book with such bla­tant use of the word “fuck” and all of its deriv­a­tives. Hon­estly, The Elec­tric Church has more swear­ing in it than Theresa’s sister in a bad mood, and let me assure you that that is a siz­able amount. Jeff Somers either has a severe case of sailors mouth, or he has an almost unhealthy pen­chant with the word.

I’m impressed with The Memory Keeper’s Daugh­ter.

I thought it was going to be a dry, boring read, much like Every­thing Must Go. I was mis­taken (mostly) and by the end I found myself devour­ing the last pages. Despite its small dimen­sions, the novel sports 401 pages, 300 of which were a fan­tas­tic, engross­ing read. Kim Edwards does a won­der­ful job of get­ting the emo­tion across as well as man­ag­ing to make very real characters.

Why can’t the new series make books that match the cal­iber of the old series. This is prob­a­bly the newest one that I have read of the original(ish) series, and its grandeur dwarfs any of the new series with out even bat­ting an eye­lash. Taking place during the Sixth Doctors’ time, The Quan­tum Archangel is a sequel of The Time Mon­ster from the Third Doctors’ time in the limelight.

Who knew that read­ing about a gay man who dresses in drag and his call-​boy lover would be all that inter­est­ing? I sure didn’t! To be honest had some­one sug­gested it to me, I prob­a­bly would have sprained my eye­brow from the speed in which it would’ve raised. All that aside, I Am Not Myself These Days is a great first book to the year. Start­ing off with your good foot and all that.

Finally! A new series that actu­ally has a little body to it. I was hon­estly start­ing to lose hope in the new adven­tures. The Last Dodo puts a little bit of that dark­ness, that deep reflec­tion of the Doc­tors that has been until now has been sorely lack­ing from the new books. Though there is only a small moment of it (part of which is quoted in this review) it demon­strates what I’ve been talk­ing about over he past couple books. I know that the authors were prob­a­bly told that they need to ease into it all, what with trying to nail such a wide demo­graphic and so many new read­ers, but have a little com­pas­sion for those who’ve stuck with the series all these years.

So much like the other 3 mil­lion people - if the cover tells the truth - who have bought this book, I caved and decided to read Gre­gory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. I admit that it has inter­ested me for a while, but I’m adverse to read­ing much of what the gen­eral public reads. I don’t even want to start on The DaVinci Code. What is shock­ing is that it took this long for the book to become such a hit. It was orig­i­nally printed 12 years ago. 12!

Where to begin with this one? I hon­estly don’t know and I’m at a bit of a loss. Maybe I’m just not used to read­ing this style of book. Maybe I just don’t get the point behind it. Maybe I over­looked some obvi­ous and keen insight that every­one else picked up on. No matter how you put it, I still don’t know what to make of this one.