Stacking the Shelves & Mini Book Review “Odd Thomas” by Dean Koontz

With finals looming over me like a black cloud, I haven’t been able to really think about posting or what I’m going to post, how I’m going to post it, when I was going to post it. Ah! But woe is me, I suppose.

As I’ve admitted in previous posts, I love thrift stores. And in addition to thrift stores, I also love auctions. And this week I ended up bidding on a box full of Stephen King and Dean Koontz books. They’re my guilty pleasure, those two authors. I already own a lot of their books and I was a little worried that when I got this box of goodies, that I was going to end up having a lot of doubles.  Much to my delight, there were only two or three that I found in the box that I already had. And to add the whipped cream and sugar on top, the box also included the next two installments of the Odd Thomas series by Dean Koontz, which I haven’t read yet.

I pretty much exploded with happiness.

Synopsis:

“The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why.” But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Odd Thomas thinks of himself as an ordinary guy, if possessed of a certain measure of talent at the Pico Mundo Grill and rapturously in love with the most beautiful girl in the world, Stormy Llewellyn. Maybe he has a gift, maybe it’s a curse, Odd has never been sure, but he tries to do his best by the silent souls who seek him out. Sometimes they want justice, and Odd’s otherworldly tips to Pico Mundo’s sympathetic police chief, Wyatt Porter, can solve a crime. Occasionally they can prevent one. But this time it’s different. A mysterious man comes to town with a voracious appetite, a filing cabinet stuffed with information on the world’s worst killers, and a pack of hyena-like shades following him wherever he goes. Who the man is and what he wants, not even Odd’s deceased informants can tell him. His most ominous clue is a page ripped from a day-by-day calendar for August 15.

Today is August 14.

In less than twenty-four hours, Pico Mundo will awaken to a day of catastrophe. As evil coils under the searing desert sun, Odd travels through the shifting prisms of his world, struggling to avert a looming cataclysm with the aid of his soul mate and an unlikely community of allies that includes the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. His account of two shattering days when past and present, fate and destiny converge is the stuff of our worst nightmares—and a testament by which to live: sanely if not safely, with courage, humor, and a full heart that even in the darkness must persevere.

This book is so good. I remember reading it and falling deeply in love with Odd. He is, in fact, probably my biggest crush in fiction. Everyone else is drooling over the sparkling Edward, the tatted up Jace from City of Bones, or Four from the Divergent Series. But you know what? You can have them. Because my man is Odd Thomas. 🙂

I would review this book completely right now, however, I’m going to be diving head first into Forever Odd, the sequel to Odd Thomas, and then Brother Odd, the third book in the series. When I have finished those I will be posting a huge wrap-up post on the three novels as a bundle.

Stacking the Shelves is hosted by:

---

Onto the other books I’ve gotten this week:

The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl [Published by Random House]

Synopsis:

   Boston, 1865. A series of murders, all of them inspired by scenes in     Dante’s Inferno. Only an elite group of America’s first Dante scholars–Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russel Lowell, and J.T. Fields–can solve the mystery. With the police baffled, more lives endangered, and Dante’s literary future at stake, the Dante Club shed its sheltered literary existence and find the killer.

Comments: I just think it sounds really interesting and I’m always up for a murder mystery. Also, I read Dante’s Inferno last year. So lets just say, I’m intrigued.

---

 

 

 

Mr. Darcy, Vampyre by Amanda Grace [Published by Sourcebooks]

Synopsis:

A married man in possession of dark fortune must be in want of an eternal wife.

“My hand is trembling as I write this letter. My nerves are in tatters and I am so altered that I believe you would not recognize me. The past two months have been a nightmarish whirl of strange and disturbing circumstances, and the future…

I am afraid.

If anything happens to me, remember that I love you and that my spirit will always be with you, though we may never see each other again. The world is a cold and frightening place nothing is as it seems.”

Comments: I can’t even begin to explain what made me pick this book up. I’ve been on a pretty vampire-less reading diet since Twilight. But the cover was really pretty. What can I say? I’m a sap for pretty covers. **Oops, on that price sticker there… I definitely only spent about $1.00 on it. So I don’t feel so bad about being too lazy to take it off. The thrift store didn’t bother to either. 🙂

---

Asylum by Madeleine Roux [Published by Harper Collins]

Synopsis: 

Once you get in. There’s no getting out.

For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, New Hampshire College Prep is more than a summer program—it’s a lifeline. An outcast at his high school, Dan is excited to finally make some friends in his last summer before college. But when he arrives at the program, Dan learns that his dorm for the summer used to be a sanatorium, more commonly known as an asylum. And not just any asylum—a last resort for the criminally insane.

As Dan and his new friends, Abby and Jordan, explore the hidden recesses of their creepy summer home, they soon discover it’s no coincidence that the three of them ended up here. Because the asylum holds the key to a terrifying past. And there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried.

Featuring found photos of unsettling history and real abandoned asylums and filled with chilling mystery and page-turning suspense, Madeleine Roux’s teen debut, Asylum, is a horror story that treads the line between genius and insanity.

Comments: I actually got this a long time ago.  I just found it in my car last week, so it’s like a brand new book! Yay! Sorry about the price sticker… I’m lazy today.

---

 Big Fish by Daniel Wallace [Published by Penguin]

Synopsis:

He could outrun anybody, and he never missed a day of school. He saved lives, tamed giants. Animals loved him. People loved him. Women loved him (and he loved them back). And he knew more jokes than any man alive.

Now, as he lies dying, Edward Bloom can’t seem to stop telling jokes–or the tall tales that have made him, in his son’s eyes, an extraordinary man. Big Fish is the story of this man’s life, told as a series of legends and myths inspired by the few fact his son, William, knows. Through these tales–hilarious and wrenching, tender and outrageous–William begins to understand his elusive father’s great feats, and his great failings.

Comments: I loved the movie when it came out and I swore on my heart of hearts that I was going to read it. Well, that was a long time ago, and this pretty little thing was staring at me when I walked into the thrift store the other day, so it was an absolute must.

And that’s it 🙂 I hope everyone has a good day and enjoys their weekends.