Johanna Florez
In the spirit of summer reading programs counting a significant number of pages read as one book, I'm officially marking myself done with this. I slogged through well over a hundred pages (the last chapter number I confidently remember is 19), and I don't think I even got to the story's main conflict. It was a good book to read at bedtime. Girl lives in wilderness. Wilderness is nice. Wilderness can be hard, but always nice.
Spotted in a gift shop and bought it just for myself. Maybe eventually I'll read it to a little one. On my own I enjoyed how it summarized and simplified the key plot points, quoted some iconic lines and included interactive components in the lovely illustrations. Just a fun board book for a grownup.
This isn't a nerdy book in the sense that it requires much prerequisite knowledge in order to understand and be entertained by its plot. But I think it's especially delightful to people who can tell by the cover that it's about capitalism and who have some knowledge of artistic techniques like atmospheric perspective. While it was definitely a YA book, reading it made me feel smart.
I didn't appreciate the excessive swearing, and the chronic diarrhea issue was understandably unpleasant. The conflicts and resolutions aren't super compelling. But it does manage to be a teen dystopian novel that's not quite like any others I've read. I have a lot of difficulty imagining what the vuvv are like, but the consequences of their presence on earth are completely believable.
- Broad cast of likable characters. Believable middle schoolers, but not obnoxious to read about. The main characters were well-rounded.
- Excellent handling of feeling isolated by mental illness and finding ways to describe scary, familiar sensations. And the relief that comes from finding a name, even combined with the disappointment that a name doesn't automatically make it go away.
- I just liked it. As a college student I won't usually be interested in stories about middle schoolers, but this is good for anyone- enjoyable at different ages and to different people for different reasons. But a really good novel to breeze through in a day. Made me laugh out loud many times.
Reread this today. I have no idea how many times I've read it. It's been a lot.
I'm twice the main character's age, got through the whole book in probably under 40 minutes, and it's still good.
The reading level is far below mine but it has important things to say and says them well. It touched my heart.
Before I get into any analysis of the book I'm going to give the trigger warning I wouldn't have expected to be needed. There's a bit of content that could be very upsetting and even dangerous for people who've struggled with self-harm to read. I didn't see it coming so I'll warn you here. In the chapter titled “Ritual” Tally and another person see a group of people cutting themselves to try to get an adrenaline high. (The context of that, and who's doing it and why, will make sense as you get there.) If you want to just skip to the next chapter without reading that part, here's what happens right after that: All the people gathered to cut do so. Zane stopped breathing briefly, and Tally insisted on taking him to the hospital. All the Cutters saw them as they left. Once they got to the hospital, Zane intentionally injured his hand so they'd have something to treat.
Now. The book! It annoyed the heck out of me, but it was supposed to be kind of boring and senseless. Scott Westerfield does a great job of immersing his readers in the world of Pretties. They use idiotic slang all the time and are very empty-minded, and he really manages to explore that and make us feel that. I think he also did a good job of exploring how they could grasp a desire to escape their pretty-mindedness. It was a struggle for all the characters to break through the haze of their vane world. The author didn't make the decision easy or automatic. They had to keep fighting. So he didn't make it easy for us to read. It was frustrating to watch them “relapse”.
I think a lot of people disliked this book because he rarely gave us what we were rooting for. Junk went wrong and characters made stupid, senseless choices. It's very brave to screw up your own story. So I admire and appreciate that.
I'm glad that Tally is trying to be a better person. I mean, she fails. A LOT. But she has learned some lessons about being honest with people. She's making a lot of hard choices and trying to do the right thing. So we are seeing character growth, even though her mind has been turned Pretty and things aren't going the way we want them to.
Three stars (“liked it”) because it annoyed the heck out of me at times but it was for good reasons, and it didn't always. I won't say it's amazing writing, but it's pretty good. (Basically I want to save my four and five, which is why this gets a middling score.)
[update]
Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention.
I'm really sick of the dystopian novel trope of a teenage girl resistant to some drug. Cassia Reyes in Matched fought through two pills and refused to take the third. Tris Prior in Divergent is resistant to many serums. Even Jonas in The Giver stopped talking his pills. And here we have Tally Youngblood beating the brain lesions through sheer willpower. (At least Katniss Everdeen didn't fight the effects of any drugs.) I know Matched and Divergent were written after Pretties. If anything they're all borrowing from The Giver. I'm just so tired of that shared feature in all these series -_- We can have a compelling story without any characters rejecting the control drugs or medical procedures are supposed to put on them! There can be something else that they fight! I guess I'm complaining of the unoriginality of a genre at this point.
HOW DARE SHE SMILE AT US IN THE JACKET PHOTO.
OK, Veronica Roth. You see what happens when you decide to kill your main character/narrator? Yeah, you have to CONFUSINGLY ADD IN A SECOND POV. Maybe this wasn't her choice, but I wish they'd printed the narrators' names at the top of each page- sometimes I'd forget which voice I was listening to and had to search for “Tris” or “Tobias” on the page to figure it out.
I can't judge this book effectively outside of its context as the third part of a trilogy, so I won't try.
Having Tobias narrate some chapters was amazing. It was a terrific idea, which should have probably been introduced much sooner so it wasn't so abrupt and weird and hard to adjust to. But I did like it (once I was used to it). Hearing him grapple with not wanting to become what he hated, that was really important to me. I wish we'd gotten to know him so deeply sooner.
I laughed a lot, and yelled at the characters a lot (sorry family), and the scene in the airplane left me breathless.
I think there was too much making out towards the beginning of the book. Can you guys see each other and NOT kiss? I love romance as much as the next teenage girl but, please, I'm gagging.
I'm still kind of confused about what exactly Tris and her friends were trying to accomplish towards the end with all those serums. I'll have to go back and re-read that part. I know she and Tobias both strayed from their initial declared plans, but I'm not sure the plans were what I thought they were to begin with. I don't know. A lot happened at once that was hard to keep track of. But I did feel the desperation and the urgency. Except in the bit where they possibly had sex even though it doesn't really say either way??? Children??? You have LESS THAN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS AND MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO IN THAT TIME THAN MAKE BABIES WHO WON'T SURVIVE THE FIGHTING YOU'LL HAVE TO DO. Maybe I'm reading the wrong thing into the absence of details, but that's what it sounded like she was skipping over.
Anyhow, I loved the highlighting of the importance of friendship and forgiveness, of honoring family ties whenever possible, and knowing that love is not a one-time thing and then it's set and done and Happily Ever After. It's continually choosing a flawed person who will keep making mistakes, but who makes you the best YOU possible. I also appreciate the very casual inclusion of gay and lesbian characters. No big deal, no earth-shattering ramifications for Tris wondering “HOW DO I DEAL WITH A GUY I KNOW BEING ATTRACTED TO ANOTHER GUY I KNOW?!” but just “here's some people. they like each other. or one of them likes the other. sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't, for a wide variety of reasons. gravitation between two people is a thing that happens in the real world and in this one, so here it is.”
I hope you have enjoyed this immensely disjointed book review.
Oh yeah P.S. this book contains more obscenity than the previous two (four letter word starting with S. I'm too tired to remember if there are other S words, LOL). Warning for, um, all the kids reading the book? It's worth noting, even though it's not that much, it's in there.
This is like a high 3.5 stars. 4 just feels like too much.
(As few spoilers as possible contained below)
I honestly don't care for the major ship in the book. I found it vaguely horrifying at times. The dude says it tenderly and admiringly that he forgets Tris is not invincible, as if it's so romantic that he puts her on a pedestal of strength. But I read it and thought, WHAT? He hurts her because he doesn't look closely enough at her to realize that she's capable of pain??? How much can you say you love someone if you aren't even a little concerned about their NEEDS? Tris has weakness and feels pain and I'm not sure it's such a nice thing that he forgets that.
I did laugh in several places.
The suicide made me very sad, even though he had screwed up royally, it still grieved me.
I liked the big issues at stake in the book though, what is the best way to deal with fear, and when is killing another person justified? Most of the time there's no way to determine a right answer, and you just have to choose something and accept the consequences. Tris lost two friends to stay alive. If she had chosen to die her two friends probably would have stopped being friends. She was on a mission and she made her choice.
I'm quite dizzy and shaky because I stayed up way too late reading this and then was so absorbed by the rest of it in the morning that I didn't eat anything. bites banana tentatively
I'm sure you can all tell two things about this book immediately:
1. It was one of the most anticipated books (at least in America), like, ever.
2. It is now super super controversial.
And I'm not even going to get into the whole question of whether or not ancient Harper Lee is still capable of consenting to having her over-a-half-century-old first draft of To Kill A Mockingbird published. But I really appreciated this as a sequel to TKAM. Not because it made me happy, but it made me think, and it adds far more depth to TKAM.
There is one issue, which is peripheral to the plot of GSAW but pretty central to TKAM. This book references Tom Robinson's rape trial, but in this version the outcome was different. I understand why the case ended up being decided the way it was in TKAM. It built Atticus's lesson of what courage is: “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." Atticus's lesson only makes sense if he doesn't win the case and knows he probably won't. But it is a tad awkward-feeling to read that Tom was acquitted.
I think this book is best understood and appreciated when you can think of some parts in their context as a first draft and some as a sequel. Clearly, the different decision in the rape trial is a symptom of the revisions that what we now know as GSAW went through before becoming our beloved TKAM.
But, once upon a time, in the 1950s, a young woman named Harper Lee set out to write a novel about another young woman named Jean Louise Finch finding out that her father wasn't the hero she idolized. Through a number of flashbacks, she established Scout's unconditional admiration for Atticus, the perfect lawyer and perfect father who can do anything. What other dad will NOT approach you about your somewhat creepy behavior because your kind-of-boyfriend reported it in a situation to which lawyer-client confidentiality applies? We'd all love a dad like that.
And that's what we were given.
The editor loved all those lovable scenes more than the heavy adult discussions, and so young Harper Lee rewrote the book to be about this hilarious little girl Scout and her amazing dad. And we were children with Scout, and we fell in love.
How many articles on “X ways Atticus Finch was perfect” (pre-2015) can you find with a quick Google search? Okay, I haven't checked, but probably like a thousand, if you're only counting the ones in English. For half a century, multiple generations have been permitted to idolize Atticus just like Scout did. And Uncle Jack might deny that there is such a thing as a collective consciousness, but together we all forgot that we were looking through the eyes of a child.
All along, the entire point was that Atticus WASN'T perfect. He did very good things for really crappy reasons which had some correct reasoning behind them and some that was a result of growing up in a country surrounded by truly institutionalized racism. And the whole point of the book was that Scout was finally growing up. Dr. Finch even said it to her- she needed to separate her conscience from her father's and become her own person. And to do that, she had to take Atticus off the pedestal she'd put him on for the 26 previous years of her life.
Now, maybe a book review oughtn't be a critique of the book's readers, but here I go.
I think that the people who hate the publishers of this book for letting Atticus be so different from the man in TKAM, and the people who hate Scout for in some sense accepting Atticus, haven't grown up. Crazy little Scout has finally passed you in maturity. When she was a little girl, she saw her father as the culmination of all things pure and noble. When she grew up, she still saw her father as essentially a god. Ageless and unchanging in his truth and goodness. But eventually she was faced with undeniable proof that he was a human being just like her, a man with contradictions and mistakes and, hey, who's to say that Scout wasn't the wrong one in some of their areas of disagreement? But he was wrong sometimes. Maybe a lot of the time. Maybe in his whole world view. And he always had been. When the 26-year-old child Scout saw this she couldn't bear it. Believe me, my heart was wrapped up on Atticus's perfection too, and the mere concept of him being in any way “bad” hurt me too.
But then Scout and I got a long talking-to from Uncle Jack. Boy, that man rarely makes any sense. We understood so little of what he was getting at, and were won over to mostly none of it. But he still helped us. Somewhere in his long long loooonngg, my goodness, SO LONG, talks, we were able to accept Atticus's fallibility and welcome him to the human race. And we did not agree with him. I feel that in any other era this lesson would be taken for granted, but today it must be stated explicitly- acceptance and agreement are far from the same thing. We now ACCEPT that Atticus is kind of pretty white supremacist. When we were children we saw his perfectly equal treatment of all people and said “There walks a good man who is not ever racist.” And we agreed with the lack of racism. But all along, not being exercised, but being believed, was the supremacy. Atticus thought of himself and other white people as better than black people. He treated everyone the same. Both were true, but only one was seen. And the only thing he taught us was to wait in line behind the black people who were there first. We did it because he taught us too. We thought he taught us to because he, like us, was colorblind, when to him it was just manners. It made him feel good. When we discovered the true reasons behind everything he ever taught us, we felt completely lost. Our foundation was gone.
Yet we've long been able to tolerate people like the man who delivered the racist rant in the courtroom- again, not approve of his beliefs, but not have our world shaken by the fact that he exists. Scout never came to agree with Atticus that, really, giving black people equal rights would tear their world apart. She still thought (recognized?) that the Negroes of Maycomb County, the South, the United States, deserved far more than they were being given. But she could accept that Atticus disagreed with her the same way she could accept any random racist Maycomber disagreeing with her- it's his opinion, to which he's entitled, even if it's wrong. He's human like me and I'm wrong sometimes too. I'll probably argue with him if it comes up and I'm at that time in a position to do so, but in the meantime, the world still turns with wrong people in it.
This is a coming-of-age story. Finally, the little girl in a grown woman's body has matured to the point where she can disagree with her dear old dad.
OK so that's what I have to say in GSAW's relationship to TKAM and what is required of you in order to appreciate this book. Well, nothing, really. It kind of slaps you in the face and forces you to grow up. It's hard. It's really hard.
But I also loved this book, maybe as much as TKAM. It was so much the same Scout, just older. I think the first time I laughed out loud was about 3 pages in, when her train bed folded in on her and she needed to be rescued when she didn't have pajama pants on. I loved the awkwardness of puberty, of the first French kiss and its many months of repercussions. I loved the first dance and the items that were present at the beginning but not the end. (I'm so grateful now that I was never invited to prom or a dance early in high school and that I've never had access to fake boobs. NOT WORTH IT.) I loved the revival meeting. A lot of changes certainly happened between GSAW and TKAM, but Scout is Scout. Clever, ignorant, hilarious, human Scout.
I also liked the part where Henry told Jean Louise off about how she could get away with anything she did and no one disliked her any more than they did before she committed whatever newest misdeed. Without saying so, he pointed out that privilege is a lot sneakier than it seems like it should be. Anyone can tell you that in Maycomb county, “the whites” as a a group were privileged, and “the Negroes” as a group were not. But this alone couldn't define what that privilege meant. If you're privileged, blame bounces away from you as an individual and onto circumstances you can't control (in Jean Louise's case, the supposed eccentricities of her family). Responsibility for wrongdoing divides and dispels. If you're part of a not-privileged group, each individual takes on all the blame for the whole group, and the whole group takes on blame for an individual's evil actions- responsibility multiplies to land on every member of that group. This attitude, held by individuals, is what can end up leading to differences in laws.
(unfortunately i need to stop reviewing now. congrats for getting this far. i'll finish later.)
"it's like, you know how sometimes you see a really sexy baby? wait, that sounds f***ed up."
This quote is almost all you need to know of this book. It's ridiculous. It's hilarious. It made me laugh out loud many, many times with how zany the characters are. It also contains tons of foul language. Like, an inordinate amount of swearing. This is the kind of book you get censored from a friend.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson alternates between two narrators named Will Grayson. The first Will (capitalized Will) has two rules: don't care too much, and shut up. He will adore a girl and flirt with her, but he will not kiss her or ask her out because, oh wait, he doesn't actually like her. That's against the rules. will #2, who doesn't use capitals, is clinically depressed and gay. He is perfectly okay with being gay, he just doesn't feel like letting anyone know. Anyone, that is, except for his online boyfriend Isaac. He's never heard Isaac's voice but has definitely been talking to him long enough to know that he is really a teenage boy.
The Wills run into each other by a crazy coincidence one night. Both of them become caught up with First Will's [quite a bit]larger-than-life and immensely gay best friend Tiny Cooper and his magnum opus- a musical about how gay he is. This book really spares no stereotypes, no truths, no gayness. Somehow there's enough openly gay guys in Tiny's high school for him to fall in love with a new one at least once a week. The whole idea of being a homosexual teen is treated humorously, sensitively, and mockingly all at once. The book sort of pokes fun at those who would be okay with being teased, and also respects the frustration of those who don't really feel like coming out of the closet yet. It ends with everyone loving each other as Just Friends, except for the one straight couple. First Will finally gets over his idiotic rules and they get together.
ALSO
NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL IS A REAL BAND
HOLLAND, 1945 IS AN ACTUAL SONG YOU CAN LISTEN TO
IT'S VERY WEIRD
Message of the book: You can't usually pick your friends, you can't always pick your nose, but sometimes you have to pick your friend's nose. Also, triple-check the birthdate on your fake ID.
Loved how funny this book is, stars knocked down for the profuseness of obscene language. Up to you to make your own choice.
This was a masterpiece- but what else have I come to expect from Neal Shusterman? He's cool like that.
This book comes from a completely implausible premise- a boy named Brewster who automatically takes on the wounds of everyone he loves. His brother Cody kicks a rock? It's Brew's toe that hurts. Neal Shusterman has a knack for writing the supernatural believably. His character's don't go into long explanations of how they're “this way”. Like in The Schwa Was Here, the character doesn't know why he has this power, and he doesn't like it, but he's learned to live with it.
This book was also relatable. The unnatural was explored through well-understood circumstances of high school life, sports injuries, teenage friendships, romances, and rivalries, abuse, and parents' divorce.
I love how Shusterman described the soft terror of not feeling upset.
I love how little-boyish Cody was. It's hard as a grown person to put yourself back in your third-grade brain and think how you would have responded at that age. Shusterman has it down.
I love how Brewster and Brontë were friends. Not Just Friends, but their relationship wasn't all making out and cuddling and stuff. It was watching out for each other and trying to help each other- even if sometimes their help wasn't as good as they thought it would be. They are possibly the normalest literary teen couple I've read (at least since I was a teenager myself).
I love Tennyson's friendships with his sister and her boyfriend. He was a good friend. He was also really selfish, which is human nature.
I LOVE the scene of the uncle's stroke. Has Neal Shusterman had a stroke and remembers what is was like? Whoa.
I love how the first chapter made me laugh out loud multiple times (“Rest her soul”) and then the book got so heart-wrenching and serious. This is how you write. I took the bait from the first 2 pages and then I was reeled into this world of heartache, or the emptiness of its absence.
I love the whole vegetarianism thing.
I love the format of a lot a Brew's poetry. There's the one that works itself backwards at the end, it's really cool. Sometimes the verse form seemed force but other times it was so awesomely effective.
I LOVE THIS BOOK AND I LOVE NEAL SHUSTERMAN ok i'm done
One thing I want to say right now (I'll probably add more later) is how awesome Haddix's portrayal of young children is. SHE GETS IT. She knows the unsophisticated terms in which little kids think about danger. I remember when I was little and I got scared, I would think, “If I lay perfectly still, the bad guys will think I'm asleep and nothing will happen.” Unrealistic, but accurate. And she was able to write several pages where all the events were told as they were being thought about in a small boy's head. #reallywelldone
This book was all right. I wish there wasn't SO MUCH swearing in it. Usually swearing in books doesn't bother me too much, but this book just had so much that didn't even seem to fit. Adam and Mia's relationship would just be getting to “super duper cute” and then someone would drop three f-bombs in a row and destroy the mood of the scene. If you swear in every other sentence then this book will probably feel very romantic and moving to you. To me, it seemed like the writing didn't even fit the story, which cut down my enjoyment of the book. I can't say I REGRET reading it; I just wish it had been different.
4.5 stars.
I loved that the author created a character who was not actually a damsel in distress, but who needed to realize that she had for so long been the villain of her own story. We're usually given a kind and loving princess but instead were given a realistically flawed character who's far from the constant victim she thinks she is. There are so many people who could benefit from reading the different messages contained in this story. I also like that she ended up with the best friend :)
Awesome origin story for Peter Pan! I liked that he was not born magical, but was just a common boy having uncommon adventures. The romance between Peter and Molly felt a little forced though. IDK, remembering how I operated when I was 12, and not knowing how old Peter actually is... it was a little awkward. They were cute together though. The loyalty of Peter's friends was great. I liked that (even though I kept mixing up their names) the boys were not simply generic friends but each had a clearly delineated personality. Alf: <333 Slank: I wish he was a good guy because he's so clever! Black Stache: It's cool to know who Hook was before he was Hook. Fighting Prawn: So bitter, but so interesting!
Good book for late elementary school and middle school kids. I jumped on the bandwagon a little late, but I obviously still enjoyed it. The writing was acceptable. It did some things that peeve me, though- sometimes the same adjective would be used to describe the same thing more than once within the same paragraph, and the edition I read had quite a few typos and missing punctuation marks in it. But I love it for the plot, setting, and characters.
All I feel like saying now is that the English weird me out. She married her first cousin? And then when he died, she married her other first cousin?
Also everyone has the same four names so it gets a little confusing at times.
And the inheritance laws seem to be taken for granted but I'm unfamiliar with them.
Ah, the British. Why do they write so well?
This is my kind of book. It's the best intersection of the historical fiction I grew up loving and the ancient references I know since studying Greek and Roman history and culture from elementary school up. It's told from the point of view of Lavinia, who is more than just Latinus's daughter and Aeneas's bride. She deeply considers what marriage and piety and justice for her land mean.
The writing style- some might find it dry. I liked it. It just takes a little getting into. Once you've been reading for a while, it feels natural to read straightforward narration and poetic descriptions.
Le Guin may not be trying to write a poem in any sense, but her words carry a rhythm of their own. This is a woman who reads A LOT. I love that.
The characters can seem bland on the surface. But all their discussions about the gods and duty didn't seem at all contrived.
The story isn't told in order at first, which gets confusing if you're reading in short spurts. I understand why the author made the choices she did, though.
Overall this book is appropriate for any age (but reading level is certainl middle school or above [maybe I'm overrating reading levels- I who studied Greek and Roman history and mythology could've gotten through this in middle school, I who read Paradise Lost as a high school freshman]). There are however a couple spots that will make people uncomfortable. There's two or three non-graphic sex scenes. Also a couple instances of obscenity that seem really random. I don't think there's reason why the monkey needs to handle its penis or pee on Lavinia, but Le Guin apparently disagrees. None of this has any bearing on the plot so if a parent wanted to “censor” the book before their child read it by blacking out those parts, they could do that.
I'm guessing a lot of people are unsatisfied with the ending. It's not really there. But I think it's beautiful. Vergirl gave Lavinia a name. Le Guin gave her a story and a life.
Lavinia lives on.