Yeah, I agree about the wizard series. I enjoy them, but they keep getting more and more complicated. Which is true of her Star Trek books as well.

I'm now three-quarters of the way through [Gone Girl], and holy shit. Unprepared is an understatement.

And yet, the HSQ increases.

Man, I am nearing the end of The Shadowed Sun, and I am having Mark-level reactions to this book.

I told you those books were awesome.

I'm more into the characters in this book (Hanani especially is way more relatable than Ehiru, and I love her). Though both books could use more Sunanda.

Finished Gone Girl. Talk about being unprepared for the ending.

I do think there's a lot of really perceptive stuff about relationships in there, despite the WTF of the plot. But it's not actual Amy who has them, it's Diary Amy -- some of the things she writes early on seem very true when it comes to expectations and what happens the longer you know each other.

I also think Nick's decision to stay with her in the end is completely crazy, but when you look at what they've just been through, it makes a horrible kind of sense. And Nick's realizations about what his life would be like without her are also crazy, but they struck me as really honest, too. Some people love the pain, you know?

I was most impressed with the voices throughout -- Nick and Amy both seemed very real to me, maybe because they admitted to so much ugliness and pettiness and violence?

Also not sure how realistically we're supposed to take it. The whole book is so over the top, I think the end makes perfect sense, as megan said. And I've read/edited enough true crime that it doesn't seem that terribly far-fetched, although Nick and Amy are miles smarter than most of the people in those situations.

I have to read her other books immediately.

yeah, you too see the ending more "favorably" than I did. I really hated it. Makes me wonder if this is how her parents started out .

Oh the wizard books! Good stuff. I lost track of them around the eighth book though - eight is too many of most things.

Eight?! I think I petered out around 5 or 6. Huh.

Well, if you are interested, Duane is re-releasing an edited and updated set of the novels, which take into account advances in technology in the time since she started writing the series.

I bought the whole series in ebook form last year and read them in one gulp over a couple of weeks: they went down better that way, although I do think the first two or three are still the strongest. On the other hand, I did get very fond of the secondary characters, particularly Carmela, Kit's sister.

Help me pick? Now that I've finished Gone Girl, I need to start a new book, and I can't make up my mind.

The top choices are:

Looking For Alaska, John Green
The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak
the first Skullduggery Pleasant

That's if I ignore three books I've only half-finished.