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Never Read Passively

Currently reading

The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers
Ayn Rand, Tore Boeckmann, Leonard Peikoff
The Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco
Ghostwritten
David Mitchell
To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon, Daniel J. Boorstin, Gian Battista Piranesi, Hans-Friedrich Mueller
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Douglas R. Hofstadter
Perfect Wrong Note - Learning to Trust Your Musical Self
William Westney
The Prince
Niccolò Machiavelli
The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James
Twenty Questions: An Introduction to Philosophy
G. Lee Bowie, Robert C. Solomon

The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series #2)

The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series #2) - I'm reading the series with Max (8) and he loves it. I think they're okay, but I can't get over the Harry Potter connections. My problem with the Percy Jackson series isn't so much that, that it blatantly copies the format of Harry Potter, but that it doesn't do it nearly as well as the J.K. Rowling. They are undeniably similar though:Parallels (Harry Potter / Percy Jackson):UK / USWitches / godsSummer at home / school year at homeBoarding school / summer campHarry / PercyHermione / AnnabethRon / GroverThe same:An evil antagonist, once dead, slowly restoring himself to power with the help of traitor gods/halfbloods/magiciansConfused teenager and his two close friends as the main charactersMain character has major issues with his parentsGods/witches constantly hide their magical doings from humans through diversion and subtle tricksDespite all that, the story isn't bad, the characters are actually decent, the greek god connection is sometimes fun, sometimes even educational and the writing isn't too bad. Edit: Just found a review that better sums up the similarities between the two series than mine does: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/50165597