Following the advice of a friend where books are concerned can be a little risky. There will always be points where your taste and your friend’s tastes do not coincide. (For instance, I had a friend who liked Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant books. I do not. Emphatically.) Therefore, it took me awhile to get around to getting this book.

The Thief is a young adult fantasy novel taking place in a setting that is a great deal like Greece. (The technology level is pre-Industrial, sword and gunpowder.) This is a “low magic” setting; the one character identified as a “magus” is actually a scholar. What magic there is comes in the form of extremely subtle miracles and interaction with the gods. (The author does a really great job of having the gods seem distant and a little alien/beyond human comprehension, but not necessarily “remote.”)

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I just finished reading The Dark and Hollow Places, the third book in the "Forest of Hands and Teeth" trilogy by Carrie Ryan.

( General thoughts here, cut for possible spoilers )

Title: Hawkes Harbor
Author: S.E. Hinton

Oddly, I have never before read a book by S.E. Hinton, which for an American of my age is just plain weird. Just plain weird also describes "Hawkes Harbor," but in the best possible way.

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46. The Damascened Blade by Barbara Cleverly.
More like 3 1/2. The plot got really bogged down in the middle part, if not for that it would have earn 4 stars.

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47. The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians book 4) by Rick Riordan.
Book 4 in the series and it sets up the last book intelligently and style without losing its own identity.

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Book #18
Book Title: Where the Sidewalk Ends (reread)
Author: Shel Silverstein
Category: ya fiction; humor; poetry
# of pages: 166
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best].: B
Short description/summary of the book: (taken from amazon.com): Come in . . . for where the sidewalk ends, Shel Silverstein's world begins. You'll meet a boy who turns into a TV set, and a girl who eats a whale. The Unicorn and the Bloath live there, and so does Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout who will not take the garbage out. It is a place where you wash your shadow and plant diamond gardens, a place where shoes fly, sisters are auctioned off, and crocodiles go to the dentist.
Shel Silverstein's masterful collection of poems and drawings is at once outrageously funny and profound.

My Thoughts:I really enjoyed this book but I think I honestly appreciated it more when I was a child myself. However, I will definitely be giving my future children this book so that they can enjoy it as much as I used to. :)

Books read this year: 18/50.

Pages read this year: 6887/15000

Next read(s): I am about to start Blood Rites by Jim Butcher. I am still also reading Angels & Demons by Dan Brown & The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie OMartian.