I read a comment somewhere about a person reading Lamb right after reading this.  I can certainly understand why, however I must say that Lamb is my all time favorite book, and Good Omens (although excellent) was no where near Lamb. Not even close. Lamb left you a fuzzy yet I've lost a best friend feeling, and Good Omens was just a great story.

Good Omens is a story about Armageddon and the fight between Heaven and Hell, with two angels (one from each side) doing their best to foil the plans. The way they see it, six thousand years wasn't long enough for them. 

Although this book was written by two authors, you certainly would not be able to tell. I will be picking up Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, and checking out the other books by Terry Pratchett.

Terry Pratchett
Neil Gaiman

These are the top 106 books most often marked "unread" by LibraryThing's users. Here are the rules: BOLD the books you have read, italicize the books you started but did not finish (DNF), *STAR* the books you've read more than once, underline books that are on your TBR pile, and cross out books that you hated.

Here is my list:
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel Read more

I finished this book last night with the thought of how wonderful it all has been. What an excellant book. I'm not going to spoil anything for anyone, but the ending was much like a fairytale. Also, you do not need to know anything at all about Shakespeare's Macbeth in order to enjoy this story.

Beginning & Middle Review

This is yet another book that I've had on my bookshelf for quite sometime. Sometimes picking it up, only to abandon it again for other books that caught my interest. It's a serious shame that I didn't give this a full chance.

The Beginning - This story starts off with a young woman named Gilly who lives in the a broken down hut with two old wise woman. The story telling is wonderfully told, and it's not hard to imagine the three woman picking through the dead bodies on the battlefield. Soon, Gilly begins to ask the two woman when they will kill Him (Macbeth). I am worried at this point that I have never read any Shakespeare other than the required reading of Romeo and Juliet in High School. Hopefully I will be able to follow along, as this book is written about the three witches that foretell the downfall of the great Macbeth.

The Middle - Even though this story uses slightly different English and phrases used today it isn't hard at all to follow along. Speaking of phrases, there are a few that Gilly repeats over and over again. I'm a little tired of reading it. The author has done a good job with the characters, they are likable and easily imagined, but sometimes it's hard to take Gilly's "always have to be tough attitude." I also wish I knew more of Macbeth and why Gilly hates him. I don't know if it apart of Shakespeare's play or not.

Ending Review

Beginning

Started out eerily enough. Man spies another man out in the front yard with a rifle, what else is there to do but go chase him through the woods in the middle of the night? I think it's needless to say that the man doing the chasing (DV) ends up dying, but not in the way you would have guessed it. Now his assistant (Lucy) has to fly over to Italy and start the process of going through the dead man's belongings.

Middle

*Sigh* With over forty pages of the main character being ill and lying in bed, it's enough to make you want to hurl, hurl the damn book across the room. Really, it's nothing more than endless chapters filled with the phrases "and she awoke" and "she still didn't feel well", oh and "just when she thought her stomach could hold the liquid down". Give me a break.

Finally when Lucy does feel well she immediately starts a fling with a married Italian (Massimo - who will now be known as Mass) who has been caring for her. Now the reader is meant with the challenge of figuring out if she is in love with him, or is really just having a good old romp in the hay. Good luck figuring it out though, because in one paragraph she is watching his every move, acting on every word he says; and in the next chapter she is commenting on how she will leave him soon to return home.

At this point you will also start noting sudden jumps in the story. In one chapter, Lucy and Mass are eating dinner with the local family and suddenly out of nowhere Lucy is reading the next few pages in DV manuscript. Hopefully the end will be better.

End

And it wasn't. I wish Martin would have chose a side. Is this going to be a Gothic Mystery, or a Romance? Or a unique blend of both, which is certainly doable, but Martin failed to do it. It remained a Romance with barely a hint of what the book started off as, and continued right up until the last 40 pages, where it clicked back into Mystery mode and although these last pages were written beautifully, with enough suspense that it literally gave me goosebumps, it was still too little too late.

Linkage

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Lamb is a story about the first 30 years of Jesus's life, told by his best friend Biff (aka Levi). It is a beautifully written story that I'm really upset to be finished with. I honestly debated about reading the book again for the second time after just having finished it.

Biff is brought back from the dead to write another gospel, so the book is interlaced mostly with the story of his time and travels with Jesus, but also with his time with an angel in the present. Some of this time with Jesus includes travels towards the east looking for the three wise men who visited Jesus on the day of his birth.

Biff is an incredible character whose voice is hard to erase from your head. And Jesus is of course what should be expected, but add a smart ass best friend who will help bring some lightness to his character.

Let me state that you do not to be Christian or even have a religion in order to read this book, although if you know some of the bible, you'll begin to recognize bits of it towards the end. Of course this story has little to no truth in it, but I think everyone could get something out of it.

I just may become one of those crazy fangirls now ;-)

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I was hooked right from page 1. Each character had there own unique voice and mannerisms that they could easily be pictured.

This book is about ten people coming together on a little island owned by U.N. Owen (Unknown). Each person came there for a separate reason, but they are unaware that the original reason is for them to pay for past crimes they committed.

I've mentioned it before, but I have a bad tendency to look at the last page before actually reading to the last page, so I caught a glimpse of who the killer was. However, towards the end of the book, I started doubting myself thanks to the clever writing of Agatha Cristie. What a well written book, I'm glad I've finally read one of her books, I'll definitely be reading more.

Beginning - Started out well enough, quickly went sour. First off, the book is about a woman (Maggie) who loses her job and within that same day gains a new one from a woman (Felicity) she has never meant. And there starts the most irritating character I have ever read. Without spoiling too much, the new boss Felicity is a suspect in her sisters murder and since Maggie has only known her for oh maybe twenty four hours at that point, decides that Felicity is the most innocent person on the planet, and she is hell bent on proving it. I am reminded of a lap dog. I just cannot imagine a person doing everything Maggie does in this book for someone they've known for such a short time.

Middle - A few times I threw this book down in disgust. I would wander over to my husband and share my opinions of the book with him. The book continues along in the same thread of how Maggie must stop the entire town of thinking bad things about her new boss. She must prove to everyone that her new boss is the greatest person in the world. All the while, snubbing family, and hiding out in her apartment when she gets a date out of fear.

End - The end was not all half bad. It, like the middle, is about proof of greatness on her bosses behalf. The ending tied everything up nice and neatly, and shows that Maggie might become a better character in the next book.

Overall - I tortured myself to make it through this one, all the while thinking to other books that I would like to start. Others that still hold promise of being a good book. So people, if you are looking for a very light book, this is it. If you are looking for a character that you will love, who knows, maybe this is it, but it certainly was not for me. I will say though that there may still be a chance that I will pick up the next book in line, as the main character (Maggie) shows promise, and there were other character in the book that I fell in love with, i.e., Steph and Annie.

Favorite page - "Margo extended a regally limp hand, looking half as though she expected me to kiss it. "Maggie O'Neill. 'Maggie O'Neill..." She paused thoughtfully. "Did we go to school together?"

With anyone else, such a memory lapse was forgivable. With Margo, the smirk glittering in her hard eyes made it clear that she remembered me all too well. She just meant to be insulting.

Well, two could play at that game. "Did we? Sorry, I guess I don't remember. It has a been a loooong time. Were you a few years ahead of me?""

Madelyn Alt

Amazon

Book Description:

Cemetery tour guide Pepper Martin never imagined she'd get to meet rock legend Damon Curtis, the bad boy poet who made millions of teenage girls scream. After all, he kicked the bucket years before she was born. But thanks to her newfound ability to chat up the dead, Pepper's got a front row seat perfect for swooning over the still-sexy Damon's latest lyrics. He's convinced that his former bandmate Vinnie Pallucci murdered him back in ‘71, and he's promised Pepper she won't get any rest or peace until she helps him prove it.

But when Pepper goes behind the music, she finds Vinnie with a knife in his heart and the rest of the band members running for their lives. And if Pepper doesn't snare the killer soon, Damon's next hit from the great beyond might be her swan song.

My take:

Pepper Martin is a smart, attractive girl with an extra skill up her sleeve. She can see and speak with the dead. Nothing that she ever wants to admit to, and certainly not a gift that she wants to have.

In this third installment I thought the book got along pretty quickly, but by the end it started to drag. I raced through the last 50 pages or so to get the book finished. The book ended nicely enough, but with Pepper having a pity party every other page or so at the end I was beginning to wonder why I should keep reading? I will say though that when the next one comes out, I will be picking it up.

Casey Daniels