The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Clary Fray grew up knowing a normal life, knowing nothing of her "dead" father and nothing of her mother's past. Clary's life changes one night at a club where she runs into three mysterious people, Jace, Isabelle and Alec, who slay someone right in front of her eyes. But why can no one else can see them, but her? Has she gone crazy? One of the people she met that night, the handsome character named Jace, finds her again and shows and tells her things she's never imagined. Things like demons, vampires, werewolves, fearies and more actually exist. She soon learns that she is a Shadowhunter just like Jace, Isabelle and Alec, who hold the duty of slaying demons to protect man kind. But demons aren't her only problem. Her best friend gets kidnapped by vampires, her mom is missing, her home has been invaded by unknown creatures, she has been attacked more than once, and it turns out that her father isn't dead after all. Is he the one behind it all? And why?

I would recommend this book to anyone that likes to read about anything mythical. Cassandra Clare keeps the reader on the edge and keeps them guessing. She does a great job in describing the make believe things she writes about. You will fall in love with her characters and this book entirely.

Monster, 1959

This hilarious but serious book is a basic retelling of the King Kong story, but with a sympathetic, neanderthal-like character as the monster. Named K. this creature has, like King Kong, lived on a secluded island. In this version, however, K. get some sort of vague explanation as to how he came into being, since the neighboring islands had been testing sites for atomic bombs, therefore dousing K.'s island with radiation. As the story progresses, the simple minded K. is monsternapped, taken on a touring circus show around the late 50's world of the United States, and ultimately ends up perched on top of the Statue of Libery after a chase through the city. As in King Kong, K. becomes fascinated with a female character, Betty, although in his mind, it is a vague, primordial feeling of importance, and not actual beastly lust. The entire story is written in such a way that it paints the events of the 50's into an interesting, almost modern sense, and I sometimes found myself having to remind myself that these were past events, and not current events. All in all it's an interesting, well written, serious story with numerous funny parts that all come together to present a retelling of the calssic King Kong story.

The Kite Runner

Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner is a story that contains Amir, the main character, who tells us that a kite running contest in the winter of 1975 changed his life forever. This contest still haunts him and that it involves something he did to Hassan, whom he calls "the harelipped kite runner." Amir takes us back to his childhood, in the final decades of the monarchy in Afghanistan. His father, Baba, was one of the wealthiest and most charitable Pashtun men in Kabul, where they lived in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood. His mother died in childbirth. Amir's closest friend, the harlipped Hassan, was also his servant and a Hazara. He was very close to his father, Ali, who was Baba's servant.

After Amir had cut the last opponent's kite, the kite fell far away. Amir then asked Hassan to go and get it. While Hassan was looking for the kite, Hassan ran into Assef, a big bully, and got raped by him. Amir was watching all of that, and he didn't do anything to stop it. This event led to develop guilt in Amir's heart. After a couple of months, Amir and his dad , Baba, moved to the U.S. because the Taliban took over Aghanistan. Hassan then gets married and has a child of his own, he nemed him Sohrab. the Taliban hated Hazaras, so they killed Hassan and hist wife, but Sohrab ended up in an orphanage. After a couple of years, Amir got married, and went back to visit Afghanistan. He found Sohrab, Hassan's son. Somehow he found out that Hassan was his half brother. Amir then decides to adapt Sohrab, since he doesn't have a child of his own, and make up for the horrible things he had don to his half brother, Hassan.