MA thru ME

Mairelon the magician by Patricia C. Wrede.  Sadly, this book was not as amazing as her Dragon series.  But still, this was better than most.  Primarily plot-driven with a decently developed air of mystery and danger; wonderful sentence structure and a freedom from grammatical and mechanical errors help.

Make lemonade by Virginia E. Wolff.  This is written in free verse form, which threw me off at first.  Later, I got used to the style and appreciated it as an interesting literary tool.
It brought up a lot of good points and things that people in my situation don't tend to see a lot of and tend not think about much.  I loved how it brought up all these issues without making issues out of them-- that is, not baming or accusing and thus turning readers off.

The mammoth hunters by Jean Auel.  These books go into a good amount of detail to explain the histories and practices of the culture involved.  It gives an understanding of the evolutionary view without either feeling forced or like a textbook.  It's very interesting.
In relationship to the story, I did not feel it quite matched the quality of its two predecessors  Maybe the author was going for a more emotional kind of suspense, but she did not achieve it.  So much was focused on this emotional sturggle, but it ended predictably, unsurpringly, and rather anticlimatically.  It was a bit of a let down.
Stil, by no means the worst book I've read.

Marked for mercy by Alton Gansky.  This medical mystery/Christian fiction book was pretty poor.  It got off to a smeg-tastic start by having a horrendous number of proof-reading errors on the first page.
The plot was slow; the sentence structure, predictable; in general, it felt too simple and didn't take all of my attention to follow.  The foreshadowing was blarringly obvious, the reptition and reminders of facts were unnecessary, and in general the entire thing was too slow and pretty dull.

Maskerade by Terry Pratchett.  This would be really fun to use with a class or book group, because it parodies The phantom of the opera so well.

Masks of the martyrs by Jack L. Chalker.  After so much time and effort and struggle, the fourth ring and the ending both seemed so anticlimactic.  Plus, the very end was so open, anything could happen next.  I suppose he can't tell the rest of the story until the end of the world, but a clean, clear-cut, happily-ever-after ending would have been nice.  You don't just shut down Master System and then stand around for the rest of your life whistling and twiddling your thumbs.

Maximum Ride: The angel experiment by James Patterson.  Although an interesting and exciting story, there weren't too many deeper issues to explore.  An entertaining book, certainly.  It was very similar to Uglies in many ways, except for small details about the story; the feel was the same.
I'm of mixed emotions about the slang used.  Although how teens actually talk, and thus accessible to young readers, it may quickly date the book.  Otherwise, mostly good.

Maximun Ride: School's out-- forever by James Patterson.  The first book was a good story, and even a good beginning to an onging story.  This, instead of being another installment, felt like a placeholder, trying to keep fans interested until the next real story.
The characters didn't seem as natural this time around, and for al the paper used, nothing new was really learned and nothing monumental happened or was revealed.  Not so good.

Memoirs of a geisha by Arthur Golden.  I enjoyed this book very much.  It was a totally believable story.  What I found most striking was that this story, which has a female narrator, has a male author.  I have never read a book by a dude in which he got all the little details right.  His voice was perfect.
You could love the characters-- or, in some cases, really hate them-- and I loved the writing stye.  This is a great book.

Men at arms by Terry Pratchett.  This was one of the better ones.  Now I can say that his early works were more poignant, as this one was.  It also had that element of sadness that is so amazingly unexpected and different from his humor.  Yet they fit together.

The merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.  This only qualifies as a comedy by the old standard, in which the antagonist eventually wins, as it was not funny in the least.  That's probably the main reason I didn't really like it, although the characters weren't exactly a draw.  Antonio, the merchant, was so blah all the time that it's like he doesn't deserve a play.  The other characters are all pretty lame, too, just looking for a good time.  Portia's rather in the same boat as Antonio for the beginning at least.
I would like a summary of the racist feelings at the time, to better understand Shylock and how he is to be interpreted.