The Thirteenth Tale

This book was absolutely nothing like I expected it to be. The general story is that this woman who is obsessed with books, works with her father running an old book store, and she is hired by an extremely famous author to write her biography. This author, Vida Winter, is beloved by the public and she has had numerous people try to tell her story, but she always made up her past. Now she is finally about to pass and she wants to tell her real story which involves how she grew up, a twin.

I really don't want to give any more away because the whole story works because of the twists and turns and veils it has. The woman who is listening to Vida's story and will eventually write it is a lonely woman who has known no other life except reading day in and day out. Thus seeing her step out of her comfort zone and taking in this other person's story as well as being able to see it from her view point. She becomes so involved in the books she reads and it's incredible. In fact a little joke in the book is that she won't read standing up becasue once she got so distracted she fell down and hurt herself.

Very very good book, a little confusing to follow until you get a hang of the storyteller, but it's been one of the best reads I've had in awhile. Please check it out.

The Waiter Rant

This is a book that is written by a guy who has spent years waitering. He started out talking about his experiences on a blog, waiterrant.com, or something that is still going as far as I know and this is a compilation of some of his posts. I was interested to read it as I've been a waitress and my roomate is waitressing right now so I know both sides of the story here.

I was rather dissappointed though by the book. Number one the guy repeats himself and some well known beliefs easily 4 or 5 times throughout the book. I understand that waitering is a very hard business and alot of times they aren't respected and it's one of the only jobs where they really don't get paid anything but their tips, but I felt like he almost kept putting himself up on a soapbox because he was willing to do this while also calling himself a loser every 5 pages becuase here he was a 30's age guy who was still waitering. Some of the stories were good and funny to read. There were def parts that I could relate to and laugh at, but overall I was annoyed with this guy. I feel like maybe his blog might be better because it wouldn't be him imagining himself as a waiter so much as just him writing what happened that day at work. I do believe his worst problem was that he kept imagining that this book would be the thing that got him out of his rut in the service industry when in essence he is not that good of a writer and his thoughts are not interesting. His stories are what were interesting and they got lost in all his ramblings.

I would suggest check out the blog rather than the book if you want a laugh, and man, get a better editor cause your book sucked.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard

I wanted to read this book because I loved Harry Potter. It is a small book, with huge font, and the pages aren't even completely filled with words. I read it in maybe an hour while sitting at Barnes & Noble which would be what I would suggest rather than paying the $13. Though it does go to a charity organization so if you have the money, go for it.

It was cute. It was a collection of 5 short stories (fairytales but with wizards) and then it had documentation from Dumbledore's point of view after each tale sort of telling the moral of the story as he saw it. Cute stories, the writing was nice and good just like J. K. Rowling. If you have some time to kill, which we did, it's amusing and fun.