Weekly Reading with Will Grayson, Will Grayson and The Beauty Who Tamed the Beast

Recently Finished Reading

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithon, narrated by MacLeod Andrews and Nick Podehl. One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens - both named Will Grayson - are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history's most fabulous high school musical.

I listened to the audiobook and the narrators were FANTASTIC. They made the book about love - boy-boy love, boy-girl love & love for friends - come to life. I KNOW that if I had been reading a hard copy instead, I wouldn't have finished. It's not that this is a bad book, just one that I should have paid more attention to the summary so I would have realized that this isn't really my type of book. I'm just not into reading about teenage boy angst, or the day to day lives of teenagers (that aren't vampires, werewolves or otherwise out to save humanity from destruction :-)

I enjoyed the complexities of the characters - they were all really well developed - and I especially enjoyed the over-the-top, incredibly gay, Tiny. But I also thought the book was entirely too long. I was a bit over it shortly after the 2 Will Grayson's met. I could have done without any more mention of Moira, I could have done without so much ado leading up to Tiny's play and I could also have done without the drama after Will Grayson number 1 told Jane that he liked her - they should have just started dating then. I did like the ending with Tiny's suitably over-the-top play, but I didn't like the extra dose of cheesiness at the end.

When Beauty Tamed the Beast, Eloisa James. Miss Linnet Berry Thrynne is a beauty betrothed to a beast. Piers Yelverton, Earl of Marchant, lives in a castle in Wales where, it is rumored, his bad temper flays everyone he crosses. And rumor also has it that a wound has left the earl immune to the charms of any woman. But Linnet is not just any woman.

Don't be turned off by the cover - I know I initially was - but this book turned out to be such an endearing romance that only took a little over a day to read. There was real depth to the characters, with a strong, willfull, but also surprisingly innocent "beauty", and a suitably gruff, brash, flawed but kind (in his own way) "beast". The story was wonderfully written and I was enthralled with the book from beginning to end. This is the 2nd in a series, but each book is a stand-alone novel, so I didn't feel like I was missing anything. It's also the first novel I've read by James and I'm looking forward to reading more from her.

Currently Reading and Listening To

Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman. Really enjoying this one so far - and incredibly annoyed that Richard is so daft!
When Richard Mayhew stops one day to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London pavement, his life is forever altered, for he finds himself propelled into an alternative reality that exists in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations. He has fallen through the cracks of reality and has landed somewhere different, somewhere that is Neverwhere.

We Others: New and Selected Stories, Steven Millhauser. I've been reading this for the past 2 months!
The stories gathered here unfurl in settings as disparate as nineteenth-century Vienna, a contemporary Connecticut town, the corridors of a monstrous museum, and Thomas Edison's laboratory, and they are inhabited by a wide-ranging cast of characters, including a knife thrower and teenage boys, ghosts and a cartoon cat and mouse.

What are you looking forward to reading this week? For February, I'm reading books with a romantic/ love element, as well as some books by or about African Americans.

- Inspired by Book Journey - It's Monday, What Are You Reading?