Powering through the trilogy. I read this with the distinct feeling that something interesting was always about to happen, and while things did eventually happen I found I never actually cared by the time they did.

This is the first self help book I have ever read, but after 10 years of near constant pain and being faced with the possibility of risky surgery I figured why not give the book a shot. The key idea here is that several types of pain are actually the brain's way of getting you to ignore emotional pain in exchange for the "easier" to deal with physical pain. So in effect "your brain is causing your bad back." We will see if I improve.

The first 60 pages are great and the last 70 or so are great. The middle hits a lull that I felt like I had to "power through" in order to get to the true story.

Thank you @gaming4justice for the borrow. Amazing and eye opening way to spend a weekend.

Not a bad read. Geared toward the younger end of the YA spectrum. The story is fairly interesting and the characters are well developed. The only thing stoping me from throwing up the horns for the rating is some of the over-explanation that the author frequently goes into. However that is pretty much my only complaint. If you decide to read this though please know that it is the first of a trilogy and does not work as a stand alone title.

Hillarious and hard to describe. Probably best suited for people who get a kick out of B-movies.

I dominantly really like Palahniuk's stuff. I find it just the right amount of gritty and believable that it makes me see the world differently and question things just a little more each time I read one of his works. However I'm not sure what is up with this one. He just seems to be hitting the reader over the head with satire to the point that the whole book kind of becomes simply ridiculous by the end.

An amazing collection of fascinating short stories from and or about Japan. Most are in the sci-fi fantasy realm, but there are smatterings of other genres as well. Every story is well crafted and engaging.

I used to think that every published author was a better writer than me. Thank you Zombies vs. Unicorns for proving me wrong multiple times in the same book.

Time traveling history bandits! Sign me up!

Not as good as "The Alienist" but that is still pretty damn good. If you are into historical fiction nothing should stop you from reading this.

Caleb Carr is one of the most amazing historical writers out there. Everything is so vivid I now feel like I was alive during the infancy of New York, and the science of profiling.

Double plus good. Just make sure you give this another chance if you hated it when your high school English class made you read it.

This is the reason the phrase "The book was better than the movie" exists.

Yes this is a hackneyed concept, robots rise up to kill all humans. However this book makes this idea far more terrifying than anyone other than the author could ever imagine. Seriously this will scare the bejesus out of you and have you doubting Siri's intentions.

The climax to this sci-fi epic is amazing. However where I do take issue with it overall is that nothing in this one gets interesting until the last 150 pages or so. Additionally the whole story is stretched over 4 books and more than 3000 pages, after finishing it I feel like the whole story could have been told in less than half that.

The 3rd installment in the Otherland series. While I like the series as a whole I felt like almost nothing happened in this entry. It felt a little too much like fluff to me.

Lots of "world jumping" in volume two. This one takes the reader on several mini-adventures that combine into a cohesive whole later on in the overall narrative.

A great start to an interesting quadrilogy. Lots of set up for the story as a whole, both character and world development. On its own it's an interesting read.

I'm not sure if this book was going for a YA feel or a dystopian sci-fi thriller feel, but it didn't do either of those things well.

A concept unlike any other I have seen. Set in the early 1900's the book starts with Europe just vanishing to be replaced by a completely alien ecosystem. From there the story keeps getting more intriguing.

Great sci fi horror with just enough WTF moments to keep you engaged, and guessing.

Not bad but I feel like this author has a tendency to dump the reader into very complicated worlds without building much of a base for you to fully understand said world. First half is good, second half gets somewhat convoluted.

Interesting combination of mystical yet realistic, and fun yet depressing.

Good book but very difficult to follow at points. About as hard as "hard sci-fi" gets.

Didn't sleep for a week 10/10

Event Horizon meets The Ring