The Sea of Monsters - Rick Riordan

The second novel in the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series is, like the first, very very good.
This time, the thirteen year-old Percy Jackson is accompanied by Annabeth (again) and Tyson - a very tall and ugly and socially rejected kid that attended school with Percy this year - and once again a quest! appears. Yes, it involves Grover. This new quest more or less follows Odysseus' odyssey, and by the end of the book the plot surrounding the eeeeevil titan Kronos thickens.
Now, I have to draw the inevitable parallels between Percy Jackson's series and Harry Potter's: in both cases we have a heroic but not perfect hero (Percy), who has an extremely smart female friend (Annabeth), a bit of a comic relief of a best friend (Grover), whose adventures take place at a specific time of year (during the summer), feature a magical location away from his parent(s) (Half-Blood camp), and... It doesn't matter. Because these resemblances in no way detract from the story's enjoyability.

Much Fall of Blood - Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint & Dave Freer

Once again, this story concerns a certain Prince Manfred of Brittany and a certain Erik something-or-other from Iceland. This time, though, their story takes place in lands held by the Golden Horde, the Mongols. And we have a very strong female protagonist, the princess of the Hawk clan, Bortai, who is actually likable.
So first things first: the cover. It pretty much screams "FANTASY FICTION!" with its typeface and colour of typeface, and with its shiny cover art. That's all I have to say about it, really.
One thing that I appreciated very much about this novel was that the chapters were short, to the point, and they switched between the different characters' points of view. Also, since this 594-page book is divided into nine parts and 85 chapters (a lot, I KNOW), you get an average chapter-length of 6.98 pages. So if you read so much of this novel in one sitting that you get sick of it, it's your own damn fault.
Now, to be honest, the beginning of the story was slow. A bit boring, too - I'm not a huge fan of fictional political intrigue, and it's been a while since I read This Rough Magic, the immediate prequel. Thankfully, the pace picked up once elements of fantasy fiction (werewolf-ish gypsy-ish people! A dude who is almost a reincarnation of his legendary mad grandfather!) and ass-kickery were introduced, to make for an overall okay read. I don't regret reading it, but I won't re-read it either.

(500) Days of Summer - That 2009 movie

Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Zooey Deschanel. What's not to love?
I liked it - except maybe for the you've-got-to-be-kidding-me ending and the fact that Summer's storyline is a bit um... Nonsensical. Out of character.
But apart from that, I really liked this movie; it's a non-linear story with little bouts of interesting cinematography in-between the major plot points. It's enjoyable, even when you want to tell some characters that they're being real douchefaces.

Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

This is just so good!
You've probably heard about the film, but this is about the novel. The graphic novel, to be precise. And it is just SO good!
It's a bit of a memoir of Marjane Satrapi's life growing up in Iran between 1979 and 1984 - from when she was nine to when she was fourteen. It spans from the Iranian revolution to the institution of the Islamic theocracy, up until when her parents sent her to Austria to continue her education in a social environment where she'd be happier.
It's touching, heartwarming, heartbreaking and even funny at times - it puts the universal experience of growing up in a setting which I really was not familiar at all. Plus, it does all that in a sequential art format. It's great, really!

The Winter Oak - James A. Hetley

Apparently this is a sequel to The Summer Country (by the same author), but oh well.
To be absolutely honest, the only reason I picked up this book was because, as the blurb on the back tells us, there's a dragon called Khe'sha. I giggled a little bit (I mean, who wouldn't?), and decided that what the heck, this 295-page-long fantasy novel (magic! People with the Old Blood can wield Power! And Important Words are always Capitalized!), with a partial setting in the real world and a partial setting in a Celtic fantasy world, and several nods to Arthurian legend.
It was okay - at times I felt like I missed something that would explain some of the characters' motives (as in, why does Jo suddenly decide to, um, try to convince policepeople that she had killed her father? What? I don't get it!), and I got a few "um, what? Why?" moments, but it's all right. I was still reasonably entertained.

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace

This book is HUGE, and challenging, and I'll have to pay some overdue-book library fines for it. Oh well.
Let me put it into hard data for you: the story is 981 pages long, and we're talking about some standard-size, 43-lines long, size 12 text here. And then you have 98 pages' worth of endnotes (388 endnotes total). Which makes for a 23.5 cm (9.5") long, 15 cm (6") wide, and 5 cm (2") thick brick - and that's with a soft cover.
Now, about the story itself: it's a nonlinear narration that follows a bunch of characters. These include a competitive-junior-tennis player and total pothead who attends this tennis academy his parents have founded, his older brother, his older brother's super pretty ex-girlfriend, an ex-Demerol addict dude with a huge head who now works at a halfway house down the hill from the tennis academy, and a superviolent Québec separatist terrorist cell descriptively named Les Assassins en Fauteuils Roulants (The Wheelchaired Assassins). Plus a bunch of other characters. Who are all, in twisted and non-obvious and often surprising ways, interconnected.
This novel (published in 1996, hey look at that right after the last Québec Referendum; this might explain why Québec Separatism is such a huge thing in this book) takes place in the future - that is, at about this point in time. However, I don't know that for sure since a new time-naming system has been conceived to help keep the North American economy strong; years are sponsored by different products. So you get the Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. Or the Year of the Whopper. Or the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment (which is the year of the story). Which is rather confusing until, after a few hundred pages or so, a convenient list of the years' chronological order just appears.
Ok, so what else... A huge northeastern chunk of the United States and of eastern Canada (bye-bye New Brunswick and southeastern Québec!) is called the great Concavity. You see, instead of filling up landfills everywhere in north america, the O.N.A.N. just launches its garbage (on prime numbered days only!) into that region, the Concavity. Which is the site of so-called "annular fission", a weird thing that removes toxic waste from the environment to provide literally clean energy to the ONANite countries. So essentially what happens is that in the early part of the month the Concavity is this teratogenic, carcinogenic, toxic wasteland, and in the late part of the month it becomes this super lush and overgrown jungle full of feral hamsters and "insects of Volkswagen size". You know what? I think this means it's a dystopian novel. Because seriously, wtf?
The thing about this novel, though, is that the entire story feels like a giant foreshadowing of this dark, looming and terribly awful thing that's going to happen - and after the first chapter you know something really messed up happened - and yet it never tells you what happened. Or really, what will happen; the novel ends on a completely unresolved note (um, spoiler alert I guess?). It's a great read, though; a challenging one, but even without resolution I think it's worth it.
On a final note: although it didn't take me 100 years to read Infinite Jest (yes, I'm bragging right now), it did take me almost two weeks. I wasn't reading anything else. IT'S JUST SO HUGE!

The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan

The first novel of the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series is very very good. No, really - I read it in two sittings, it's that good. (Yes, I enjoyed it very much)
If you've seen the movie, you'll easily recognize the first chapters of the book - except that you should visualize Percy as a twelve-year-old sixth-grader, and not the seventeen-year-old high schooler who took the lead role in the movie. Be warned, though: starting from Percy's arrival at Camp Half-Blood, all the details change, and a slightly different (but essentially the same) story is told from then on.
Apart from that, what is there to say? The story is a lot of fun to read, full of action and adventure and Greek mythology (wooot!). I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel!