The Lincoln Lawyer

The Book:  The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

Summary (taken from author's website, found here):
Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn't recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him. But what he should have been on the watch for was evil.
    
Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car, traveling between the far-flung courthouses of Los Angeles to defend clients of every kind. Bikers, con artists, drunk drivers, drug dealers — they're all on Mickey Haller's client list. For him, the law is rarely about guilt or innocence — it's about negotiation and manipulation. Sometimes it's even about justice.
    
A Beverly Hills playboy arrested for attacking a woman he picked up in a bar chooses Haller to defend him, and Mickey has his first high-paying client in years. It is a defense attorney's dream, what they call a franchise case. And as the evidence stacks up, Haller comes to believe this may be the easiest case of his career.
    
Then someone close to him is murdered and Haller discovers that his search for innocence has brought him face-to-face with evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, he must deploy every tactic, feint, and instinct in his arsenal — this time to save his own life.

What I Thought: 
I am a fan of Connelly and as soon as I heard this novel was being made into a movie I knew I needed to read quick, before see the movie.  I have to admit, I had a hard time getting into this book at first, but that could have a lot to do with the busy schedule leaving little time for reading.  Once I had a chance to read more than a few pages in one sitting, I found it hard to put down.  Each chapter seemed to offer a slight change in the case against Roulet and I was never quite sure what to believe.  As the reader, you are really finding everything out along with Mickey and there seems to be a twist or a surprise everytime you think you have it figured out.  This was the first of Connelly's books I read that featured Haller (I've read several books about Detective Bosch), and I'm definitely planning to find another to read soon!  I was also glad that I finished the book before seeing the movie, I think it made the movie even better somehow.  (The movie was very good, I'd recommend seeing it.)

Rating:  8/10

The Hunger Games

The Book:  The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Summary (from this website for the book):
Twenty-four are forced to enter. Only the winner survives. In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Each year, the districts are forced by the Capitol to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal and terrifying fight to the death - televised for all of Panem to see.

Survival is second nature for sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who struggles to feed her mother and younger sister by secretly hunting and gathering beyond the fences of District 12. When Katniss steps in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, she knows it may be her death sentence. If she is to survive, she must weigh survival against humanity and life against love.


What I Thought: 
I must say that even after close to 400 pages, I'm not sure how I feel about this book.  I do know that it kept my attention - this is a credit to the awesome writing.  I also know, though, that it was an unsettling experience because of the actual setting and storyline.  Each time I found myself really relating to the stories and characters, the barbaric setting snapped me back to the reality of the book:  these children, most of who are already starving, are basically being selected to serve as gladiators or sorts on reality television.  Reading the book as an adult, I can appreciate that the world of Panem - the North America of the future - is very likely a sarcastic approach to the authors political opinions.  As a young adult reader - the intended audience - I would likely take the book more at face value.  Either way, the setting of the book left me uneasy and not wanting to stay long in the world of the characters.  Although I would say I'm not a huge fan, I would like to read the second book.  I find that, while I'm not a fan of the setting and what happened in the first book, I am interested to see the reactions of the people of District 12 (like Gayle and Prim) after what happened in Book 1. 


Rating:  7/10

The Great Gatsby

The Book: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Summary (an excerpt from this article):

The Great Gatsby is probably F. Scott Fitzgerald's greatest novel--a book that offers damning and insightful views of the American nouveau riche in the 1920s. The Great Gatsby is an American classic and a wonderfully evocative work.Like much of Fitzgerald's prose, it is neat and well--crafted. Fitzgerald seems to have had a brilliant understanding of lives that are corrupted by greed and incredibly sad and unfulfilled. The novel is a product of its generation--with one of American literature's most powerful characters in the figure of Jay Gatsby, who is urbane and world-weary. Gatsby is really nothing more than a man desperate for love.

The novel's events are filtered through the consciousness of its narrator, Nick Carraway, a young Yale graduate, who is both a part of and separate from the world he describes. Upon moving to New York, he rents a house next door to the mansion of an eccentric millionaire (Jay Gatsby). Every Saturday, Gatsby throws a party at his mansion and all the great and the good of the young fashionable world come to marvel at his extravagance (as well as swap gossipy stories about their host who--it is suggested--has a murky past). Despite his high-living, Gatsby is dissatisfied; and Nick finds out why...

What I Thought: 
I decided to read the book because it's a classic - classics are generally the best literature has to offer.  I found this book starting out very slow and I had a hard time getting into it.  By the end though, I felt so close to the characters I was sad at the ending and at the fact that the there was an ending.  So much so, that almost immediately after finishing the book, I dug out the movie (Robert Redford was a fitting Jay Gatsby!) Although I can't say that this is one of my favorite books, I think it could eventually become one of my favorites.  I think - as might be hinted at in that it is a classic - this isn't a quick one-time read.  I plan to re-read this novel a few more times in the future and I predict I will like it more with each read.


Rating:  8/10