Brief reviews...

Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances are the three short novels in a series by Alexander McCall Smith. Each book features the ridiculous troubles of Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, a noted romance philologist and the famed author of the book Portuguese Irregular Verbs. Items of little consequence take on great importance to Dr. von Igelfeld who thinks much more highly of himself than his colleagues or really anyone else. The dry humor employed by McCall Smith wouldn't be accessible to just any reader. However, I did find myself chuckling at the antics of von Igelfeld, especially when following his train of thought which always held himself in highest regard. The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs was probably my favorite with the very memorable scene where von Igelfeld is confused with a surgical veterinarian and the result leaves a little sausage dog nearly legless.

The Host by Stephenie Meyer was definitely a more compelling read than Twilight (somehow I couldn't get myself into the whole Edward/Bella/Jacob triangle). This science fiction book is mostly the story of a girl and the people she lives with fighting to help her take back control of her body from an invasive host that lives inside (these hosts are taking over the world). Overall I enjoyed the book. Meyer did a good job of making me feel the urgency of the characters. In general, my big complaint about Meyer's writing is that she is very repetitious. She doesn't trust her readers to remember what they've read several chapters before. Therefore, her books aren't nearly as clean and succinct as they could be. I don't mind reading a 500 page book if that's how long it takes to tell a good story. For Meyer's stories, that's just not the case.