A nice mix of books(:

I managed to go to the library of Saturday (Yay! The first Library Visit of the year!), partly to 'stock up' on books and partly to find books/research for school (basically my BM IA and my EE). While I had a fairly fruitful time borrowing books, it didn't go so well with the school-related stuff (although I did manage to borrow 14+1 books in the end; the plus one is for the book I renewed, since I still haven't been able to buy my new EE book).

So far, I've managed to read one book a day(: So, since all of them are good, I'll do quick mini-reviews here(:

One book I really enjoyed was Maximum Ride the Manga. It's drawn by a Korean, so the art is well-drawn, not at all like the "wanna-be" style that characterises (at least to me), so many manga adaptations. And the book also follows the plot pretty closely, leaving on a nice cliff-hanger. It's a good thing I've already read the series. The good news is that Lil'est sis enjoyed the book, which means that there is an unlikely chance that she might read the book too~

Another light fiction I read was The Reluctant Heiress by Eva Ibbotson. I really like Eva Ibbotson's books, and I wasn't disappointed by this one too. It's about a Republican Austrian Princess, and her unlikely romance with a Self-made English Millionaire. I really enjoyed the 'reveal' scene, where everyone (except the nobility), finds out that she's the princess; her descent down the stairs was very well written.

After reading such light fiction, I went on to read The Last Jihad, by Joel Rosenberg (who also, if you can remember, wrote Epicentre). It's a really interesting read, since it 'predicted' 9/11 before 9/11. The story is taut and very suspenseful, and like the reviews said, it's totally believable. I think it's a better 'end times' (not really though) story than others like the Left Behind series.

But since I can't always read for fun, I decided to read one of the EE research books I borrowed, about Graham Greene. I just found out today that my school has a Graham Greene room(: But, I also realised that in the National Library (at least the Jurong East Branch), I can probably do an EE on Terry Pratchet's Discworld and find more material than Graham Greene and Shusaku Endo put together. Anyway, the book was Graham Greene, A Life in Letters, and compiles some of his (numerous) letters into one very thick volume to give the reader an idea of Graham Greene, who although was Catholic, had a fairly lot of lovers. But the book did help me understand a little more about his book that I'm analysing (and even talked, for a little bit, about Shusaku Endo), and gave me some quotes I can probably use in my EE. (:

Last (so far), I read The Lake Of Dreams by Kim Edwards, who also wrote The Memory Keepers Daughter, another really enjoyable read. I read it mainly because I helped Aunty Florence collect it on Sunday, and I wanted to finish it before I went for the next lesson(: Sometimes, when a writer has a really good first novel (see the totally random change in topic?), the second novel doesn't compare; but gladly, this isn't the case. The book is sensitive and well written, with a very believable twist/reveal at the end (you can see that having believable twists is important for me). And although the author mentioned Japan (the protagonist lived there), it was done quite believably (except for the part where the Lucy, the protagonist, has stayed in Japan for a long time with Yoshi but doesn't know much about the language except 'I've turned off the gas', and the frequency of earthquakes, although I'm probably wrong about this). But overall, the book, although thick, was very engrossing.

I'm so glad the books I've read so far are good, I can't wait for the others ^_^