Snow Days are the best days!

Pages read today: 92 for Meredith, 176 for Ilya

We have had quite a snow-filled winter this year, and today got hit with yet another blizzard.  The upside?  Getting let out of work at noon!  It was a rough ride home but sure was nice once we got here to just enjoy a free afternoon with our animal buddies.  
Another upside is by having acquired extra free time in the day, Ilya jumped back into the duel with a vengeance!  He's actually done with his book but is finishing reading the appendices.  I also finished my most recent read today and noticed there has been a trend in my reading lately, with the events in the books being during and/or after the decline of civilization.  Even when the story ends on some kind of optimistic note, the overall experience is quite depressing and I really need to get on a new reading path for a bit!
There has been a promise I made to write some kind of post about my thoughts on The Giver series but then I never got around to it.  So here it comes... There was a clear trend with the first 3 books having the ending come at you all at once with very little page time devoted to it, feeling somewhat rushed.  There was a steady increase in how noticeable this was as the series progressed.  At least with the first 3 books in the series, they were each fairly short (ranging from 169-215 pages overall) so it wasn't necessarily a bad thing or causing me to feel robbed in some way of a more eloquently-laid-out ending.  However, this was not the case with the final installment, Son, which was double the length (or more) of its predecessors in the series.  I was concerned going in, after having openly acknowledged to myself this trend in the rushed endings, but thought since there was double the page space it would certainly be able to better hash-out the ending that would tie the entire series up, right?  Wrong.  There was way too much repetition, as well as bringing the reader up to speed on events from the previous books, with a huge build up for a reunion between two characters.  Then the monumental, crucial events that the 300+ pages you've read have been building up to arrives and, I kid you not, they occur and the book is over within 15 pages, max (it may have even been less than that, I can't remember right now as I finished it a while back.  It was definitely no more than 15, and probably more like 10).  I was so angry I almost threw the book.  Not only because of how it was so abrupt but because it felt like she had just been writing along with no clue of how to actually play-out the ending, and then realized she had to end it so she just slapped it on haphazardly.  It was stupid.  There, I said it.  The way the "enemy" was defeated was so dumb and made no sense whatsoever that it could be that simple (and the defeating of the enemy received all of about 2 pages).  Since it was a library book, though, I decided that throwing it was probably not the best option, so instead I just complain about it instead!  Honestly, it felt rushed, sloppy and seriously like a massive insult to the readers who had gone on this journey through the entire series leading up to these final events to slap it together in such a short space.  And it's really upsetting because of how much I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the series and even despite the repetition and bringing readers up to speed for the majority of Son, I was ok with that and still enjoyed the rest of the book itself.  If only the ending had been handled properly.  Since it wasn't, though, it was just a huge let down for me. 
Anyway, that's that.
Dark Places was next for me, another Gillian Flynn read.  It reminded me of the experience reading Gone Girl in that there was an increase in the craziness level of the characters as the story progressed.  In the beginning it was just "eh, we're all a little flawed, right?!  Who doesn't have some kind of issues, especially from childhood trauma?"  But then gradually (and sometimes in a not-so-gradually but more of a "BAM!" occurrence), the characters became increasingly dysfunctional and disturbed to a whole other level.  As twisted and sometimes downright awful the characters and story were, though, I loved it!  It had me completely hooked and needing to know how it would all end.  I'm a big fan of Flynn's writing style, as she is able to work the chapters alternating between points-of-view beautifully and in both books of hers I've read now I can honestly say I never had a friggin clue how it would all end!  I'm looking forward to reading her other book, Sharp Objects and am waiting for the ebook version to become available to borrow from the library on the Nook.
And that brings me to the book I just finished, Shatter Me.  Not a lot to say on this one... I didn't love it, didn't hate it, it was kind of just there.  It seemed somewhat corny at times but nothing too crazy (nothing close to the Twilight-level or corny, that's for sure!).
And now I am going to dive into the Millennium series, beginning with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.  This one is pretty epic in length (for me), but everyone I know who has read it loved it so I'm pretty excited to check it out.
As a side note, the film version of The Road is now available on Netflix Instant.  We came across it today while perusing for something to watch.  Ilya has seen the film, never read the book.  I have read the book, never seen the film.  It seems, however, they are both fairly equal in being dismal and bleak, so we decided that we will need to be in the right mindset in order to watch it and today was just not that day.  I am looking forward to seeing it, though, as the conversations I had with Ilya about what general events were in the film made it seem that they were quite true to the book, which is always nice.  I'll still do my best to manage my expectations, though, since it is Hollywood and I'm sure they made sure to take their liberties wherever they saw fit.
Now that the snow has stopped falling, it's back to work for sure tomorrow, so my reading eyes need some rest.  I hope everyone is having an excellent week and that if spring hasn't quite sprung wherever you are yet that it will real soon (here too!).