I AM NUMBER FOUR (Pittacus Lore) - January 25/11

This is easily the best book I've read in a while. It's super fast-paced, genuinely exciting, and filled with impressively memorable characters. (RIP Henri!) It definitely reminded me of Twilight at times, which might be why I enjoyed it so much. The action-heavy ending is, at times, a little too descriptive for its own good, but it's immediately followed by a number of character-centric sequences that got me a little choked up. A strong start to a hopefully strong series. (Let's hope this isn't another Hunger Games...) ***1/2 out of ****

NO COINS, PLEASE (Gordon Korman) - January 20/11

This cute, inoffensive children's book is actually quite poorly written by Korman, though he was apparently a teenager when he wrote it. The highlight is probably Artie's different schemes (ie the cow-milking thing, the attack jelly, etc), as the other characters remain utterly underdeveloped from start to finish. (I never did figure out who was who.) *1/2 out of ****

THE IRRESISTIBLE HENRY HOUSE (Lisa Grunwald) - January 15/11

This interesting yet overlong book charts the upbringing and young adulthood of a "practice baby" named Henry House. Grunwald does a good job of vividly establishing the '50s world and the various characters, yet the meandering structure of the book ensures that it runs out of steam somewhere around the halfway point. And while I did enjoy the stuff involving Henry's work at Disney, the book's second half, which tediously unfolds in the swinging '60s, is quite a slog to get through. **1/2 out of ****

THE HAUNTING (Shirley Jackson) - January 1, 2011

Oh god. What an awful, horrible little book. Shirley Jackson is as incompetent a writer as I've had the misfortune to come across, and it just blows my mind that this story is even remotely well known. Jackson offers up a selection of laughably phony characters and has them spout dialogue that doesn't even sound authentic accidentally. She has this weird writing style that renders entire stretches of the book unintelligible, and I still have absolutely no idea what happened in the house. It's just incoherent and unreadable. What a waste (and a frequently infuriating ordeal). 1/2* out of ****