Inferno by Dan Brown (#11, Fiction)

I'm always going to like this book more than others do, or more than it deserves because I read it one week before going to Italy.  I had no idea it was about Italy, let alone took place in Florence and Venice--two of the three places I would be visiting just a week away. 

I certainly took a closer look above me as I crossed the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, and wowed my friends with my knowledge of the Doge Palace in Venice.  But, that said, this one wasn't your best Mr. Brown.

Upon quick reflection I was like, wow, solid wrap up there at the end.  But the more I thought about it and talked about it I realized that the entire "quest" was pointless.  No one died, the catastrophe was not averted, and basically everyone was running around for no reason. 

It's been a slow but continual decline in interest with each book, but I'm sure I'll jump on the bandwagon next time around anyway.

2 out of 5

Known to Evil by Walter Mosley (#14, Fiction)

My reading guilty pleasure is still the crime genre.  Give me a crime book and the chances are good that I will finish it in less than 48 hours.

I liked this author.  It's suspenseful and well thought out, but you're not waiting for that huge major plot twist that usually is a huge let down.  No let down here.  I got what I paid for with this book (free) and it was exactly what I wanted.

How do I even rate this?  Guilty pleasures should have a whole rating scale of their own.

Guilty pleasure: 3/5

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (#13, Nonfiction)

Did you know that the World's Fair in Chicago was a tribute to Christopher Columbus?  Nope, me either.  Or that Columbus Day became a holiday after the fair concluded? 

I learned many things about Chicago, architecture and psychopaths in this well researched (and possibly a bit fact heavy) historic book.

There is a 100 percent chance that I started doing a lot of skimming about 150 pages in, I can only tolerate so many facts about buildings and landscape.  But, I didn't skim the sections on creepy H.H. Holmes, and how he lured and murdered numerous young women in the late 19th century.

3.5/5

Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel by Jeannette Walls (#12, Fiction/Nonfiction blend)

I went into this one with very high expectations.  The Glass Castle continues to sit near the top of my "best of" nonfiction book list, but Half Broke Horses came up short.  The book had me hooked at the beginning--it is the story of Jeannette's grandmother's life in the wild, wild west.  The book is technically fiction, but all the stories are based off of Grandma Lily, and she certainly had many stories worth telling.  I don't know if it was the voice Walls wrote in, trying to capture her Grandmother's language quirks, or the piecemeal storytelling but I found myself flipping very quickly skimming through the second half to just get to the end.

2.5 out of 5.