Fan Fiction Books

I first read 'Misery' long after seeing the film, but to this day it remains my favourite novel. Stephen King at his absolute best shows us exactly how to build and maintain suspense throughout with ease.

The movie was a good translation, but it definately failed to show us exactly what Paul Sheldon's No. 1 Fan is really capable of. One word - Awesome!

Horror at its very best!

I read this book and I liked it. It inspired me to read more of Stephen King`s books.
The scene that stood out for me the most was when
Annie hobbled Paul. It was so attentive to detail that it felt like I was looking at a picture inside of the book.
This scene showed just how deep Annie`s paranoia went. Paul hadn`t done half the things she was accusing him of and his legs were healing, but what she did to him pushed him back to the beginning of his torture.
You should read this book because it is so good that once you pick it up you can`t put it down.

~submitted by my student Jake

Another excellent Stephen King book. Hard to read sometimes because of the nature of the story but, very well done.

No reason not to read this book...you like King, you like gore? you like horror? Suspense? Mystery? Insanity? Then this is the book for you, recommend, but don't get nightmares!! Loved it!1

This is a great read and essential "King." The story draws you in quickly and keeps you reading, never wanting to put it down until the very end. You can almost feel the pain as you read; this is a must for any fan of thrillers and horror.

I love this book! I was at my cousin's house when she had book club, and having read this many times, I forgot how great it was! Luckily, I chose to read it again, and fell in love for the second time! With characters that only Roahld Dahl himself could come up with, this book is a find. An eccentric grandmother, a curious boy, and evil creatures, this book is masterpiece. One of my favorites in the Dahl collection, thank you to the author!!!!

This is an excellent book for 3rd grade readers. It is very exciting and keeps my child interested. I recommend this book.

This will continue to be one of the most dazzling examples of children's literature. How can you not love something of so much horror that comes off with such humor and charm?

In classic Dahl fashion, a boy is horrible orphaned to be left with his grandmother, a woman who belives in the dangers of witches.

What follows is a hotel adventure that manages to make witches villainous and yet as properly British as possible.

It's tongue-in-cheek and continuinly clever. I also think it is some of the best imagination Dahl has ever shone.

I think this is a really good book. It is mainly about a nine year old boy who has a very sweet grandma and sets off to stop the witches from vanishing all the children. It is not just funny, it is also frightening. The part I like the best if when the witch turns the boy into a mouse.

I like this book a lot and would recommend it to my friends. I like the part best when the little boy who has been turned into a mouse steals the witches poison and puts it into the witch's cup!

Often when you see books written about the life of black people in any point and time before the 1960's its main message is "My life was hard because white people are terrible," and that gets very redundant. However this was quite refreshing, as he did not harp on racism on every page. This is a very well written and intresting account of this man's unique life experiences and all the strange, crazy people he encountered within his family and outside them as well. People who have a few or several nuts on their family tree will be able to relate to Black Boy.

The best autobiography EVER, in fact I am not even sure it should be called autobiography because it is much more than that for many reasons. Autobiographies are often flat and either self pitying or glorifying, but this one is completely at another level. I was so impressed by the brilliant mind that shines through all obsacles, and his writing is just so natural, logical and insightful, not just about his personal life experiences, but about human suffering, senseless oppression, and unyiedling human spirit. Wow!

I ordered this book because it was on my nephews book-report list. It's a good book. But it is full of bad language. I think it's an adult book--with a very compelling story. But completely not for kids. I know kids hear bad language all the time. But to have it presented to them by a 'trusted' adult--gives it a kind of condoning that it doesn't need.

Not only did I reaceive the book on the promised delivery date, but I found it to be in perfect condition. It was purchaed for my grandson who is really enjoying it.

Every time I read a book about the plight of blacks in the South in the early part of the 20th century as Jim Crow society solidified I have to shutter in disgust. I have just finished reading communist Harry Haywood's autobiography Black Bolshevik. I have read Malcolm X's words on the fate of his forebears in the post-bellum South and now I have read Richard Wright's autobiographical sketch Black Boy. I will make no defense of the unequal treatment of blacks in the North. There is none. However, Wright's descriptions of the physical and psychological damage, as presented by his own experiences of Jim Crow, done to blacks by Southern whites are positively feudal. There was no room for illusions about the goodness of humankind in that world. To believe so was to face personal humiliation, or worst-the lynching tree.

Wright, after great personal struggle within himself, is able to reflect on his experiences and to articulate the effect that Jim Crow had on him as a black, as a man, as a human being. It was not pretty. One can only image the fate of those less articulate than brother Wright as they try to comprehend a world not of their making but which they early on must learn to navigate. The description of this grinding struggle is heart of the first part of the book.

Wright goes back to the mist of time in his early youth to dissect the hunger, psychological as well as physical, than never was far from his door; the effects on him of a sick and helpless mother; of an absent ne'er-do-well father; and, an overbearing and religiously-driven grandmother on his early development. And those are just the problems in the house. Once Wright steps outside those comparably comfortable confines he faces the outside world of Mississippi reality that he must put on a mask in order to survive in a world that will literarily cut him down if he does not learn the code. Although Wright gives many examples of how this system robbed blacks of their personality the most graphic descriptions, by far, are those that deal with the need to have to put on the mask when whites are around. And the consequences if one did not.

And what of the great escape to the North (via Memphis) to Chicago-the Promised Land that forms the basis for the second part of the book? We have seen that urban story portrayed in other locales as well, for example, in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Claude Brown's Man-Child in The Promised Land. That is where my statement about the treatment, or rather mistreatment, of blacks in the North comes into play. In effect, Wright articulates the contours of a psychological feudalism in the North where the special oppressions of blacks as a race are met with indifference by whites. What makes Wright's case special is that through self-education and willpower he breaks out of the endless and destructive turning in on oneself to articulate his experiences and those of other blacks like him displaced from the rural life of the South to the uncertainties of urban life.

On the face of it seems incongruous that Wright would find a solution to his angst in the American Communist Party during the heyday of the `third period' in the early 1930's. I have mentioned elsewhere, most recently in my review of Harry Haywood's Black Bolshevik (part of which also deals with this period in the American party), that on reading memoirs and autobiographies of the older generations of radicals and revolutionaries I am looking for the spark that broke them from the norms of bourgeois society. I have found that there is a great range of reasons from racial and class hatreds to intellectual curiosity. I find that in the end that Wright's relationship to communism, not without some bumps and bruises along the way, came from intellectual curiosity as much as any sense of racial or class injustice.

In Chicago, in many ways the embryonic black proletarian core of the country in this period, Wright continued his struggle for physical daily survival and for intellectual understanding. His fortuitous linking up with the local John Reed Club helped, at least initially, stabilize his intellectual life. His description of the inner workings of the Communist Party and its role in its own front group creations, like the Reed Club, jibes with other accounts that I have read. The tremendous pressures to conform to party life and the party line are chilling for what, in the final analysis, was a voluntary political organization and not a cult. Moreover, one of the characters portrayed in this section bears a striking resemblance to the above-mentioned very real Harry Haywood. Wright's take on Haywood is very, very different from how old Harry portrayed himself in his autobiography. Surprise.

One of the charges brought against Wright by fellow black party members was that he was an intellectual. Self-taught, yes, but an intellectual nevertheless. One would think that recruiting such a fairly rare person, black or white, would have had the comrades spinning cartwheels. No so in Wright's case. Tremendous pressure was placed on him to conform to party dictates. Or else. This seems counter-intuitive. The relationship between communism and intellectuals and artists has always been a somewhat rocky one. But know this-then and today we need as many intellectuals as we can get our hands on to write, think and lead the struggles of humankind. Ignorance never did anyone any good. Enough said on that. If you want to get a real feel for what that old expression Mississippi God Damn from Nina Simone's song really meant read this well written and thoughtful book.

An excellent, rich book. But I gave up after 889 pages, thinking every other chapter would end in a massacre, just as the rest of the book seemed to. But it was terrific storytelling.

I am a lover of historical fiction and this book is one of my favorites. I highly recommend it for anyone familiar with some of the history but even more so for those looking to learn more about the evolution of religion.

Michener, in his usual style, created a masterpiece of well-researched historical fiction in this novel. The book begins in the 1960's (the present at the time the book was written) on an archeological site. As the scientists dig through time from top to bottom, Michener starts from the beginning, the bottom layer of the site. The location of the dig, a site in the then newly-founded Israel, makes the stories of the city which once stood there hugely important to the history of the world. The interesting thing about this book is that the stories are still important today. Take one quote from the book..."...they had been promised certain heaven if they killed an infidel." Sounds familiar, right? But this quote is in a different context than you might think. It was the Thirteenth Century then, the ones promised heaven were Christian Crusaders, and the infedels were Muslims. The cyclical events of the area around the archeological cite, where the three major religions of the world were birthed, are told in great detail in this book. The inability of people to learn from history also is told. "When men ignite in their hearts a religious fury, they inflict at the same time a blindness upon their eyes," says the Muslim character in the book. One of the Jewish characters says,"...all of us, Catholics, Arabs, Jews, have got to work out some sensible pattern of life for the world..." This forty year old book has several insights to offer the modern reader. First, it shows us the world as it was when man differentiated himself from the animals. Then, it shows us as it was when man decided to serve one God. Finally, it shows us how it is now that we serve one God in many different ways. You must read this book if you have interest in the history of Israel and the Jewish people (which you should if you live in America). After all, as Michener described one of his characters, "...this reasonably intelligent professor was aware that those who worked in Israel lived under the hammers of history, under the constant threat of annigilation, but he seemed not to be aware of the parallel fact that he in New York and his brother in Washington lived under precisely the same threat." Hopefully, this time, we learn the lessons.

This was a challenging book in a few different ways. Firstly, it's long and dense. I'm a pretty quick reader, but at 900+ tightly printed pages, the reading of The Source was definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Secondly, some of story was very slow moving and not very enjoyable.

I'm not totally slamming the book here. There were parts I found fascinating, that really held my attention. It's just that long passages were the exact opposite.

The book comprises two running narratives. On the one side there is the modern time (relatively speaking, of course) story of an archeological dig. This starts as the main thrust of the text, but gradually takes up less and less of the author's focus. The other is the running story of the site of the dig over the history of human inhabitance. The dig is located in what is now Isreal, so you can imagine the scope of timeframes covered.

The issue I had with the book is that the modern story was, to me, much more interesting than the historical one. Since that part was ever-shrinking, and the latter ever-expanding, you can see my problem. I'm definitely a history buff, but I just couldn't get into much (though not all) of the story Michner was presenting. I was bored with it.

All that said, I definitely came away from the book with a deeper understanding of Jewish culture and the history of the Middle East.

I absolutely loved this book. I learned so much about humankind and the history of religion. The stories enterwined made the books so readable. Great writing.
I appreciate Michener more and more as I get older.

Master Israeli spy Gabriel Allon is called in to investigate the death of a professor friend. He was killed because of a book he was writing, but what was in it that would cause his death? This book has the usual formulaic spy necessities - secret societies, double crossing, high speed chases, beautiful women and plenty of violence. The novel revolves around the Vatican and it's role during the Holcaust.The new Pope wants to release secret documents. Been there, done that in many novels before. Still the characters are fun and the novel keeps one turning pages.

"The Confessor", part of the Holocaust trilogy featuring Israeli spy Gabriel Allon once again delivers excitement, intrigue, human drama, and superb historical interest. The fictional Pope of "The Confessor" is the target of a plot within the Vatican intended to silence him because of his desire to confess the sins of the Church during the Holocaust. His impassioned words brought me to tears.

This is my first Daniel Silva novel, but definately not my last. In short, I am hooked. Why? Because Silva's writing is crisp, taut, and fast-paced, without being cliche. From the opening pages of the book, Silva writes in a way that keeps you with this work until (a)you can't read any more because you are tired(or out of time!), and/or (b)you have finished the book.

This work of intrigue at its complex/darkest is about an art restorer by the name of Gabriel Allon who investigates a friends murder at the hands of neo-Nazis, or so we think. The novel delves headlong into the Vatican's controversial history during World War II: whether or not they helped European Jews fleeing deportation to Nazi death camps, or did they faciliate their doom through inaction. Early on in the book we are introduced to the fact that the murder of Benjamin Stein is much larger than a simple hate-crime by a derranged Nazi.

The books plot does not take any unnecssessary twists and turns; a literary device all-to-common in most thrillers. Silva keeps the story line relatively simple, without being simplistic. His characters are rich and textured; the dialogue is incissive.

Like I said, this was my first book by this author, but not my last. If you love a good read that keeps you engaged throughout, giving you a good mental workout, that this work is for you.

I love Daniel Silva's novels. He is an expert at thrills and chills.

I really wanted to like this book, because I like good spy thrillers, and the author does an excellent job of conjuring up images of European locales. Unfortunately, the characters and story aren't engaging enough to maintain interest.

First, my thoughts on the characters. There were a HUGE number of characters and all of them had similar sounding names. This, coupled with the fact that none of the characters had much in the way of personalities, made it a chore to keep track of who everybody was and what their motives were. The protagonist, Mossad agent Gabriel Allon, was one of the dullest series characters I've ever come across. He barely says anything and the author never reveals what's going on inside his head, save for a few mentions of his participation in the Israelis' "Wrath of God" operation in 1972 as a response to the Munich Olympics masssacre. Perhaps it was Silva's intention to make Allon a laconic and gruff individual, but at the end of the day, I need to have a reason to like the protagonist and to care about what happens to him. With Allon, I simply felt no connection.

As for the story, I feel like it was Silva's attempt to cash in on the popularity of "The DaVinci Code". While I'm not offended by the book's attack on the Catholic Church, I'm really getting bored with writers in recent years using the same scenarios involving evil conspiracies within the Vatican, etc.

I will not be reading any more of Daniel Silva's work.

I love the Greek Mythology It's a great change from fairy stories. Its a different kind of magic. I have read all the books in this series except the 4th book I am still getting to that one. I love how the main character is not Hercules. Percy Jackson is a new kind of Hero.

Both my 8 year old and 11 year old boys love this series. There is just the right amount of action to keep them hooked. Knowledge of mythology helps but is not necessary to enjoy these books.

This is book 3 in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. This time Percy receives an urgent distress call from his best friend Grover, a satyr which looks human expect for his goat legs and hooves. Percy immediately prepares for battle and knows he'll need help from his powerful demigod friends, Annabeth and Thalia; his trusty celestial bronze sword, Riptide; and . . . a ride from his mom? The half-bloods are only between the ages of 14 and 16. With Greek Gods and humans as parents . . . who has time to learn to drive a car? As a demigod, you're usually too busy fighting demons to worry about small things like that. Good thing Percy's mom is use to all the odd things involving her son.

Percy and his friends race to the rescue, and find that Grover has made an important discovery: two new powerful half-bloods whose parentage is unknown even to them. But that's not all that awaits them. The Titan lord, Kronos, has set up his most devious trap yet, and the young heroes have played right into it.

With the help of the Greek Gods and Artemis's Hunters, Percy and his friends charge into another quest that holds the fate of Olympus in his hands.

The Percy Jackson & Olympians series keep getting better with each book. Young readers begin to understand what the Fates have in store for their young hero Percy Jackson. More details about Chiron's prophecy are revealed and one of the Big Three has to make a choice many readers wouldn't expect. This series is one Harry Potter fans shouldn't miss and one reluctant readers won't want to put down!

This series was read by my 5th grader who didn't know who the greek heros were. He read it in less than a week and completed the 4 book series in a month. It encouraged him to go on to read other books on mythology. We hope Rick Riordan continues the series! He made education fun for my boy.

now we are back on track! this is alot better than the last attempt. this has alot more action and shines light on new characters and events. also, about the gods that DID break the vow (hades) this is the best book in the series so far. CHECK IT OUT!

A Fan's Notes is quite different from anything that I've ever read before. Those who want to escape "the usual" should give A Fan's Notes a try.

Fred Exley uses A Fan's Notes to recount his turbulent life; Exley's work is "faction" - mostly fact, but he gives himself some wiggle room by calling it "a fictional memoir."

A Fan's Notes examines Exley's failures for almost 400 pages. Exley started life with some promise; he graduated from the University of Southern California and seemed poised for a prosperous life in advertising. But bad choices, alcoholism, mental illness, and a pompous attitude pushed him to society's fringes.

Given all of the misery recounted in its pages, what redeems A Fan's Notes? Exley recounts his life without flinching; Exley's unwillingness to "spin" his life story in a way that portrays him more favorably sets A Fan's Notes apart. This provides Exley with a measure of redemption.

The other redeeming aspect of A Fan's Notes is that it contains not a little philosophy and insight into "the human condition." Consider Exley's lengthy digressions about football. From his boyhood days in Watertown, New York, Exley admired his father, who was a local football hero. As an adult, Exley came to admire Frank Gifford, when Gifford played first at USC and then with the New York Giants. Exley admits that -similar to his father and Gifford - he always sought some way of standing apart from the crowd; but all of his efforts ended in failure. In a heartbreaking line, he finally admits, "...I understood and could not bear to understand, that it was my destiny... to sit in the stands with most men and acclaim others. It was my fate, my destiny, my end, to be a fan" (p. 357). Ironically enough, it was Exley's account of his failures in A Fan's Notes that finally gave him the fanfare he craved.

In the end, A Fan's Notes will be worth it to those readers who, in order to expand their horizons, can stomach reading about one man's self-inflicted tragedies. I recommend A Fan's Notes.

Damaged life cannot be lived rightly. Exley threw himself at crummy jobs and airhead blondes with unrequited passion in an administered world. He had in fact the misfortune to love life in an America of pompous men in grey flannel suits who didn't, and who created, with their little advertising jingles ("that's the way the missile goes, pop goes the world") a world of Manufactured Consent that created the mess in Iraq in our time, and Vietnam in Ex's.

Ex violated rule one: white males, the supposed beneficiaries of a rotten system, are never to complain when the heart attack machine is strapped to their bodies (and then the kerosene).

Ex knew what people went to bars for. They didn't go because they were connie-sewers of fine wines. No, they were prey to the desparate isolation and anhedonia, the complete and utter isolation of an American life. He scandalized the pompous Yuppies of his day with his honesty.

However, it wasn't self-applied, and this was his tragedy.

The book doesn't glamorize an alcoholic's life, any more than Bukowski did in Barfly. It's not as if Ex mounted any sort of rebellion against an America given over to folly. He couldn't get to the admission that while it might be true that America was a nightmare and a Moronic Inferno, he, as a product, might be like his brother in law consuming himself with hate, and self-hate.

Pompous jerks of course act as if "looking at yourself in the mirror" is in a zero-sum game with your lousy attitude (about graduating from UCLA and becoming at best a flack for a railroad): as if what you see will make America a city on a hill. But if you are the product of America, well, that's a comment on the rottenness of a system.

Frederick Exley has long been released from the wheel of fire on which he spent most of his life, and his tears no longer scald like molten lead.

May he rest in peace, and eternal light shine upon him. Let him into Heaven, G-d, he's served his time in Hell. I pay him the "abundant tribute of my tears" for he did so for men no one else could love, who lived on grilled cheese sandwiches and beer and usually concluded a night in the bar with a sucker punch, directed at some pompous a-hole who deserved it.

It was a harsh sentence for Ex to see into what Eliot called "the heart of light: the silence" in the middle of Marshall Field's, following a girl around, shopping. There is a cognitive dissonance in being human, on a Shakespearean scale as was Ex, outside crappy little book-clubs at Border's, at Barnes and Noble, or, Ex's Chicago-Onhava, Kroch's and Brentano's...where in my experience the art section was run by one of those Last Men on Earth, a man who loved life so much that he smoked away the pain of life-in-death and died.

Divided men in other words discuss in such refined tones the entrails of writers like Fitzgerald and Exley and as quickly forget when the book discussion club breaks up, or the PhD dissertation is complete.

To be Wisdom, to cry aloud in the American street, is to be unheard, especially if you don't take care of your own butt first as Exley did not.

Et lux aeterna luceat eis.

first third is good, so is the last third. middle is muddled and the writer rambles on about nothing much.
constant mention of Frank Gifford and football might bore you stiff (like it did me.) It seems Exley worshipped the ground Gifford walked on... My take on that is: so what? Sports figures are mostly overrated--even when they appear to be "winners."

Lots of rambling in this book...that can be tiresome at times.

I'd actually give it about four stars, or maybe 3 1/2--if I could change my rating.

I'll be brief: this is a long, intense, parodic, rhapsodic, beautiful and, at times, ungainly piece of American literature. A Hemingwayesque verve, a Faulknerian playfulness, and a Nabokovian look at the underside of American life, this book should be read by men, women, and children (over 18 years of age, of course), after which they will know not only much more about narcissism, alcoholism, sex, friendship, celebrity worship, suffering, gluttony, satire, and wit, they will have experienced an important excursion into a truly literary and literate sensibility: less polished but deeper than updike, less funny but wider ranging than cheever, less grand but more poignant than fitzgerald.... a grand, flawed maw... to be read and savored like an oversized plate of ribs or, if you're a vegetarian, like a mound of fried sweet potatoes. Bon Appetit.

In spots, Exley shows that he can hold a reader's attention. The narrative about Paddy the Duke, for example, builds to a nice tense moment, with the inmates in an asylum unifying in their dislike of the independent Paddy, who wins at ping pong (and life) despite a mediocre and uneducated style.

But such moments of narrative success are overwhelmed by shortcomings in this seriously flawed book. Among the more blatant is the protagonist Fred Exley, who ranges from superior and domineering to weak and inept. While always egotistical, this character doesn't read as the same person from chapter to chapter. Here, the author Exley is not simply creating an unreliable narrator; instead, he is creating a character who is psychologically inconsistent.

In HUMBOLDT'S GIFT, Saul Bellow created the poet Humboldt Von Fleisher, who had a huge personality that included many admirable virtues as well as their opposites. In A FAN'S NOTES, Exley also seems to go for range. But it's beyond him.

Another problem with this novel is the sometimes terrible writing. For example:

o On my first breathless vision of her, I wanted to bury my teeth, Dracula-like, into her flanks, knowing she would bleed pure butterscotch.

o She was the girl next door who only yesterday ran around the yard with pee in her pants.

o When he finally fell silent, the stillness was of that horrified kind that follows a fart in a Methodist church.

Finally, I'd say that Exley is trapped by the dated social assumptions of his protagonist. Read A FAN'S NOTES and step back in time to the late Fifties and sample the attitude of a real white American man toward "Swishes, Negroes, and Girls." The problem with this stuff is that Exley presents these social assumptions as insights. A more skilled author (such as Richard Yates in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD) would have shown how this then conventional outlook limited or harmed a character. This would be the cause of character's tragedy, not his glory.

I'm sorry Frederick Exley had such a hard life. But this is a seriously overrated book.

Book #1 in the Gallagher Girls series.

Cammie Morgan, aka The Chameleon, is a sophomore at Gallagher Academy. Gallagher, while masquerading as an elite prep school, is really a boarding school for girls in training as spies. Cammie is a legacy--her mother is the headmistress and her father was killed while on a top-secret assignment. Cammie enjoys her training, but things start to fall apart when she meets Josh, an ordinary boy who lives in the nearby town.

Can she keep her true identity a secret?

No real suspense or danger, but an entertaining read nonetheless.

The story itself is rather original . The characters were interesting but Cammie was probably the most boring. The whole idea of a spy girl school was just great and the entire time I kept wishing I had gone to one.
I listened to this on c.d and it was just awful. The reader sounded more like a 12 year old than a 16 year old character as depicted in the story. The lovey dovey scenes were even more ridiculous due to the voice. Had they got a better narrator I probably would've given this a higher rating but I just couldn't get past that to really get into the story. Sadly I also expected - all girl spy school kick butt theme would give us some strong role models and there just weren't any. Hope they get a better reader in the next audio book for this series.

I'm an 11 year old girl and I love the plot!! It's genius! It's funny, entertaining and not like any other book! I'm a complete book worm and I have read evrything possible and it takes a lot to impress me in books. this one has it all! Its definetly not slow or draggy either. its quick and gets right to the point with minnimal suspese but good suspense!!! I LOVE everything about it!!!!!

I picked this book up because of all the media hyper surrounding it--the Disney option and the New York Times bestseller status, not to mention the cute cover and interesting premise. Who hasn't found themselves imagining what it would be like to be a secret government operative during an especially boring Physics lecture? Behold: the appeal of this book (to me, at least).

With all this in mind, why oh why was I so disappointed upon finishing it?

Because this book was subpar to its media attention. The writing, the characters and the subplot were average. Boring. I didn't learn anything particularly new reading it, I wasn't entertained, and I wasn't blown away with Ally Carter's prose. What's ironic is, the elements that would've made this novel a winner--such as character development, for starters--were all there. The girls had interesting (and heartbreaking) backgrounds. But those were for the most part ignored, except for some scenes where Cammie feels the loss that her friend could be facing and feels the loss of her own father, which I felt were the best parts in this entire novel.

Because of all the superfluous jokes and one-liners inserted in places that did not require the likes of them. (And usually in parentheses and followed by an exclamation point so the reader can feel the excitement!) The only comment I have of this is: Uncooked spaghetti is not as clever a weapon choice as the author seems to think it is...

Because of the underdeveloped relationship between Josh (is that his name? I can't be bothered to check) and Cammie. I would've liked to see the beginning stages of first love instead of being told, after the fact, that they went to such and such movie or something equally nondescript. With a book based on the challenges of falling in love as a spy and having to lead a double life, one would've thought such details of the romance would be shared from time to time.

Because of the main character. No way in hell is she sixteen and no way in hell is someone that average, intelligence-wise, would be qualified to go to such a pizzazz school like Gallagher Academy. Oh, and, how was she able to fool the adults in that place even for a second? What does that say about the school we are led to believe is The Godsend of Security?

I'm not understanding what makes this as popular as it is. It's not really funny and it's not really bright. What gives? The only redeeming quality it has, in my opinion, is that it's making me re-evaluate my verdict of The Squad: Killer Spirit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, which I am coming to realize is infinitely better.

If I had to describe this book in a word, it'd be: Lifeless. No real stakes and no stimulating qualities. Get it from the library.

So... I've just read the book I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have To Kill You and I have to say, I'm impressed! I picked up this book expecting a wacky twist on Spy Kids, but this is what I found... We are taken to the Gallagher Academy for Excpetional Young Women where we meet Cammie aka "the Chameleon". What people don't know is that this school is actually a private all-girl school for spys-in-training. All the girls in this book I have started and grown to love. First off there's Cammie Morgan. Cammie is like the girl-next-door who you would never guess is a spy. She is smart and fun and sometimes shy. She is the daughter of one of the worlds best and most well-known spy couples, Mr and Mrs. Morgan. Mr. Morgan dissapeared on a mission never to be found again while Mrs. Morgan is the princaple of the all-girls school... Gallagher Academy!
Then there's Bex! Bex is Cammie's friend who also lives in the same room as her at the academy. She is not one of the most intelligent of the characters but she is by far the most physical. Bex is an English goddess and the first non-american to attend Gallagher.
There's also Liz. Liz is one of the most smart people in all of the academy and you would rarely find her out on a physical mission. All three of these girls, when paired together, can never be up to any good. Soon Cammie is secretly meeting with a local town boy named Josh and sneaking around. Little does he know that Cammie is a student at the Gallagher Academy. Josh will soon find out what REALLY happens behind the ivy covered walls surrounding Gallagher... only to find out that Cammie isn't the same girl he had actually pictured she was.
All outsiders think that the Gallgher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is filled with stuck-up girls who count on Daddy's pay-checks for a living. Little do they know that not only are most of the girls the most down-to-earth people alive, they are also walking around saving the world, one school day at a time!
I gave this book five stars because you can tell the author put serious effort into her work. Every page was something new and fun and the whole story kept me guessing. In the end i was very pleased and raced off to the bookstore to buy the second book in the series. I would certainly reccomend the book for teens like me, kids, or even adults! This page turning novel is surely something to be read!

Hope you enjoyed my review!
<3 tAyLoR

You can tell that a lot of research and time was put into making this book and it really shows because it is so hard to put down once it gets going. If you have ever wanted to know the workings of and behind the scenes stories of Star Trek conventions, then this is for you.

In "Get A Life!", William Shatner gives the history of the end of Star Trek (which is just a retelling of the story that is in his other book "Star Trek Memories") but it sets up the story of how the conventions began beautifully. Not only that, but Shatner interviews cast members as well as those who worked behind the scenes of the series, fans and conventioneers who run the conventions. Needless to say, you get an insight into this world.

If you loved other books that he has written on Trek, then this is no exception. I'm telling you, it is just a real page turner because you can relate to these people in the interviews if you are a Trekkie. Shatner literally goes undercover in make-up at a convention to get the true feel of a Star Trek convention, so this is also first hand experience speaking the entire time. The best thing is that by the books end, you get the feeling that Shatner (finally!) understands the fans and knows why we love it so much. Overalll, really fun! Definitely a must have in your Star Trek library

Funny, witty, creative, insightful, deep hearted, informative..etc. So many differnet terms you can use to describe this very enjoyable write up by the former Admiral Kirk himself.

This late 1990's book takes the reader through a wide variety of emotions, knowledge and underground information when dealing with all things that go on at the various and too many to count "Star Trek Conventions" around the country and even the world. William Shatner has always been facinated by the type of people that show up at the various conventions, dressed up like characters on the show and worshipping every word he has to say as if it was from the mighty ship captain himself. But one thing Mr. Shatner never did, was actually focus on what was going on around him. He would fly into the location, quickly be escorted in right before he was to speak, do his 45 minute talk to the crowd quickly, wave goodbye and get his pay check and head back home and do it again when he was up to it. That was all it was to him. But suddenly the Captain was killed off in Star Trek: Generations and had no more TV shows to do. Now he was being booked to more conventions then ever, and thats when he realized, that he had never even understood the people that he was addressing all of these times. That was until he decided to write this book and quite a book it is.

You will go through the entire gambit of emotions with this book. It is never nasty or spiteful. If anything William is very humble and seems to be genuine in his hopes to learn about the fans and the conventions that he has always thought was just full of crazy fans who need to "Get a Life" as he famously said on the just as famous Saturday Night Live skit so many years ago. Mr. Shatner has a way of being friendly, down to Earth and talks in this book not as a serious author, but as the same William Shatner we have always seen and heard everytime we see him. He learns everything there is to learn about the people who go to these conventions. The types of things they buy. The types of costumes they wear. The history of how the conventions started in the first place. Talks a lot about things that he himself has to deal with when associating with the fans. Answers a lot of questions he has been asked over the years. And even has some very touching and deep moments when some of the fans are explaining why they love Star Trek so much. It is quite surprising when you hear some of the answers they give and how much the show and entire series really means to them.

This is a must read to anyone who is into Star Trek, gone to a convention or just enjoys learning more about the Star Trek fan base and history. It is quite informative and just very interesting. William even goes undercover in a mask at various points so no one will know that thier beloved captain is walking amongst them and has some interesting revelations as he observes first hand what is going on at the various tables, shows and speaker sessions that each convention is made up of. I really couldn't put this book down. The moment I started reading it I was hooked and I'm not even that big a Trekie. I never even been to a convention and still haven't even seen every episode. But something drew me into this book which really just had a very high intrest level that won't bore you for a moment. The interviews are short and sweet and the humor constant and even gets in a few moments to poke fun at a certain Mr. Nemoy who Shatner has kept close contact with over the years.

I really was quite surprised in all honesty at how good this book was. We all know the image we have of Shatner. Being a hammy, over acting so and so who steals lines, talks in huge pauses and seems to eat up the screen time. And he freely admits to or even tries to explain all of these views people have on him without holding back any shame of admiting truths or non-truths to us. But after reading this book you are almost humbled and regretful that you even thought of him in that way. He truly shows a new side of him that you never expected. It is not often that actors on a TV show would even care to learn more about their fans or the people that worship them so dearly. I will definitely be reading this book again soon enough just to see what I missed and to laugh yet again. Some of the stories and situations are just laugh out loud moments that you can't believe you are reading. He doesn't hold anything back and you really get a new respect for the man we had watched in various movies and television episodes over the years. Most of all he has always cherished and loved the fact that he played Captain Kirk and doesn't run away from the fact of what people percieve him as any longer.

Anyone who is into Star Trek or even those non-Trek fans who want just a nice light read when they have read all the deep Non-Fiction pieces out there.. has to read this book. I can promise you, it will be a pure enjoyment and enlightening experience that will break some of the images and stereotypes the majority of people have had over the fanatic fans who frequent these conventions. The only complaint I had was I wanted even more. It just never seemed enough. The captain may have died in the movies but this book is proof enough he isn't going anywhere any time soon. He will be with the Trek fans for a very long time to come. And I think we should all be very nervous for that fact as he will be watching from now on.

The book title comes from a bit William Shatner performed on Saturday Night Live where he bellows out the line when the audience at a Star Trek convention gets a little....well, out of the galaxy.

It started an oftentimes silly debate on whether Shatner actually meant what he said, with fans lining up in several camps of thought. Shatner had avoided appearing at the ever-popular conventions and books by other castmembers were none-to-kind at times to the fine captain.

But as anything in the entertainment business, never means never doubt that things can change. Shatner agreed to promote Star Trek Generations through a series a speaking engagements. And this is where his humor takes over.

Shatner takes a basic premise - chronicling the phenomena of Star Trek through fans, castmembers, memorabilia dealers and convention promoters - and turns it into an event shrouded in mystery; he dons a monster outfit and sets out to interview folks at the conventions.

The pictures are priceless and the text not only gives the reader a true appreciation on what the series has meant to so many people, but how the research gave Shatner a vehicle to come to terms with the legacy he left through the TV series and movies.

This book is part biography & part the history of the "Star Trek" fans. Throughout you see Mr. Shatner as a driven & often anxious man who is in the pursuit of both critical & commercial success.

The first chapter where he describes the death of Kirk's character and the author's interviews were the most entertaining. The author using plenty of humor admits that for ages he was clueless about what "Star Trek" truly meant to the shows fans. This part gets a little erratic. But, he gives numerous examples of how he learned to appreciate both the fans and the show that made him famous.

The man who popularized the phrase, "Get a life!" writes a book to deal the dirt on those people for whom the expression most applies. It sounds like a wacky idea, but it actually turned out quite well. William Shatner and his co-author Chris Kreski have a pleasant, enjoyable, breezy prose style and what they're talking about it actually interesting. There's an entire strange sub-culture that goes on in science fiction fandom and it's fascinating to get a peek at it. Unfortunately, since this comes from William Shatner, it's not going to get at the darker side (through no fault of the author), but for what it is, it succeeds.

First of all, I should state that while I'm a fan of (a few of) the Star Trek series, I'm not terribly big into fandom. So while I'm certainly not ignorant of the vocabulary, I was a bit fuzzy on the details. But once the stories and the backstage secrets are revealed, well, it turns out there aren't that many big surprises. Shatner may have been astonished to learn that fans were as interested in hanging out with each as with the "stars", but it shouldn't come as a shock to most other people.

The book is more a journey of exploration than a straightforward journalistic look at fandom. The journey belongs to William Shatner. Apparently at one time he was famous among fan-circles for arriving shortly before his appearances, saying a few quick words and then counting his money on the next flight out of town. But after his character was killed off in one of the Star Trek movies, he decided to take a closer look at what went on at the convention scene.

GET A LIFE! begins with a potted history of organized Star Trek fandom. Given that Shatner freely admits to have had nothing at all to do with that, I can only assume that this portion of the book was researched by either Shatner or Kreski. Although the progression isn't exactly unexpected, I enjoyed reading about how it came about.

The book then moves into Shatner's relationship with fandom. Moving from his aforementioned "take the money and run" approach to gradual curiosity to understanding, reading his journey is quite interesting to see how someone from outside looks in.

Now, human nature being what it is, we can gather that not everything is warm hugs and embraces within fandom. I'm no fool; a quick look around the Internet can bring up thousands of flame-wars, feuds, angry grudges, various "he said / she said" battles and, in some extreme cases, lawsuits and restraining orders between various members of fandom. The book never gets into this topic, which I found a bit of a disappointment.

The portrayal of fandom is almost overwhelmingly positive. Lip service is paid to the looniest aspects - the folks who dress in Star Trek uniforms to inappropriate venues - but for the most part, anything negative is glossed over. The reasons for this rest on the author. I imagine it must be virtually impossible for William Shatner to go to a convention and not be greeted by a venerable wall of yes-men who happily tell him that everything is running fine, everyone connected with the organization is well liked and that there's nothing bad going on at all.

Still, despite possible inaccuracies and/or omissions, I did enjoy reading this one. It's funny, amusing and quick to read. There are numerous unrelated anecdotes, but I didn't find them at all distracting. Overall, I liked reading this. It's not the deepest sociological study you'll ever read, but the look it takes at certain individual fans is especially interesting. The thought of William Shatner donning a latex match and wandering through the dealers room to do research is certainly an amusing idea.

I enjoyed Arianna Kelt and the Wizards of Skyhall. It's way better than Eragon. It's way better than the first Artemis Fowl too, but not as good my favorite Artemis fowl Artic Incident. It is a very good book for kids and teens. It also makes you want to read the next book in the ARIANNA KELT series.

Like many readers, I bought this book with high expectations based on the overwhelming claims it was so good. I hope to save others from my fate. Don't believe the "reviews" here that call this book a masterpiece or a classic. This book is terrible! Where are the honest reviews of this book?

King's writing is dreadful, at times it seems English is his second language. His reuses the same or similar phrases. He uses many unnecessary modifiers. He adds extraneous words for filler. The dialogue rings false almost in its entirety. To make matters worse, the story is derivative and cliche. This concept of a child discovering that he or she is a wizard has been done to death already.

I know it's a matter of taste, but nearly anything would be better than this.

In this magical first episode of a projected trilogy, an orphan girl Arianna Kelt discovers parallel universes and gets wizard training while helping to resolve a war between wizards and warlocks. Pulling Arianna through inter-dimensional gateways from earth to the wizarding world of Xjoz, King (a teen author) proceeds to build his tale with humor, action and adventure. What a brilliant debut novel by a promising young author. Fans of Eragon, Artemis Fowl and Harry Potter are sure to love this.

When Arianna mistakenly sees a wizard, she is taken away into the wizarding world, where wizards coexist uneasily with other magica creatures. This world is on the brink of war, and Arianna's arrival is surely no accident. There are hints that Arianna has a role to play in the Xjoz's uncertain future. Arianna wants no part of it -- until she realizes it's the only way to figure out her own life and find out more about herself. Reluctantly, Arianna embarks on a dangerous adventure that will change both her and the Xjoz forever.

Arianna Kelt and the Wizards of Skyhall leaves you wanting more. This is an engrossing adventure for fantasy fans and for those new to the genre.

My kids just loved this and they fought so much over who got to read next I bought extra copies. Having just finished it today myself, I can say unequivocally this was fantastic. Better written than most books for kids written for adults and that's a significant achievement in itself for such a remarkable young author but what's even better is the story. The humor is wonderful, along with the action and adventure.