Lisa
> than the movie, which I saw several years ago now. There's a lot of things I liked...great color palette, great dialogue. I think it's hard to pull off a book, much less a graphic novel, that is full of conversations with very little in the way of visual cues, short on plot, and has an extremely unappealing protagonist. But it works. Love the scene in the grocery store with the Lunchables.
This is one of those books that makes me realize most fiction I read is tired and boring. Maybe Oscar Wao is just vibrant and immensely real by comparison?
I can't decide which story I liked more...Yunior's time with Oscar at Rutgers was great. But in the end, I think I think I like the rise and fall of Abelard Cabral more than anything. All the characters, even the minor ones, feel so well defined. Very well written.
Renesmee?
After talking to a lot of friends/family about this book in particular I've been able to come up with a conclusion. People who like happy endings love this book. People who find happy endings smarmy hate this book. Having that knowledge equipped I tried to keep myself impartial because it is a happy ending but I was not on board with a significant portion of the book, and it's an enormous lump of a book...Bella doesn't have to sacrifice anything. Not that she is required to by any means but...she gets every thing she wants, I suppose readers are conditioned into expecting some sort of tradeoff.
There was a lot to like...I liked the pack stuff with Jacob, any scene with Seth in it is a great scene! I liked hearing about the other vampires' abilities...but I just got supporting character overload in the last section of the book. One thing Nate and I brought up several times during the reading of this one is how much Edward seems to lose his bite (hah).
There's a lot to like in this story about a teen trapped in 1984ish hell courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security. Accurate descriptions of technology. A believable telling of our near future. Revolting against ‘The Man.' LARPing. Vampire LARPing. Vampire LARPing in San Francisco. I could go on.
The main character, Marcus, is written a little too perfect to be believable. Still, would recommend to geeky teens or teens looking for a good book written from a male POV.
A technical gripe: I listened to this in the car and the audio version cuts off the last three sentences of the novel. Way to leave me hanging!
But it's an interesting story, won a ton of awards etc etc. Very interesting to hear about schooling in Australia. The voice of narrator Josie seems quite fresh, despite the book being written in 1991. It is funny when she mentions things like Country Road jeans and Esprit clothing.
How did I fall into reading the second book of this series!? It's like a car crash. I'm not supposed to look and ... did I just see a disembodied arm? Whoa...that car flipped over!
Yea, it's like that. I think the way I've learned to approach this series is to read it like I'm Stephenie Meyer's editor. Nate actually forced this upon me since we decided to read this together at the same time. His request, ‘Can you just cut out all the making out and moping?' had a magical effect. New Moon seemed concise, engaging, and actually funny at times.
Loved the scene with Jacob hanging on the tree in Bella's yard and the vote scene at the Cullen's place.
Looking forward to dissecting Eclipse next week. :)
Well, I made it through about 500 pages, and that should count enough.
Political intrigue usually fascinates me, but this book is a turd. Books that give equal air time to multiple characters are ambitious, but all those characters have to be written well. I kept going for 500 pages because I really liked one character, Jon, but even his story went dry too so I said to hell with it.
I don't really understand why this serious is so popular.
Wow.... I was paging through the reviews for The Amber Spyglass on Goodreads and there is a lot of hate.
While TAS certainly isn't perfect, it's still five times better than most fiction people pick up. One reviewer commented on how much better a writer Dan Brown is than Philip Pullman. How anyone could ever arrive at that conclusion is beyond me.
There was a lot of stuff going on in TAS, and I don't think all of it succeeded.
Good Stuff:
I loved the relationship between Will and Lyra. It was pretty perfect.
I thought the evolution of Mrs. Coulter was handled well. She's so diabolical that even when she's double crossing Metatron I thought, “Wait, maybe she's going to screw over Asriel. Again.” But it's apparent at the end that she's got a heart, and it's nice to see.
Revisiting Scoresby, Iorek, and of course Roger was terrific.
Bad Stuff:
There's just too much going on.
The Assassin priest bit seemed anti-climactic. I didn't feel like there was ever any danger for Lyra, Will, or Mary Malone.
Slaying the Ancient of Ancients was over so quickly. When I think about this event, I imagine that there should have been more weight given to it. Wasn't it Lyra's main prophetical purpose, other than to succumb to temptation by Mary? But wasn't it Will who made the cut? I think I will have to re-read this portion to gain better understanding.
There's more stuff, but I needn't really go on. It was still an awesome read. I think The Subtle Knife is still my favorite out of the series.
Alarmingly short on Wallace Wells. I am only consoled by additional Kim Pine goodness, whose scenes with Scott BLOM really handles quite well. Wow, BLOM is an awesome acronym. BLOM BLOM BLOM.
My first instinct is that it's not nearly as funny as the first two volumes in particular, but I think it bears a second reading.
General Observations:
1) Will is a bad-ass.
2) Lord Boreal is a slimy little git.
3) Great payoff moment when you realize who Will's father actually is. One of those: Ohhhhhh, no WAY! moments.
I actually liked [The Subtle Knife:] more than [The Golden Compass:].
[The Amber Spyglass:] and I are having a standoff right now. I want to read it, but I should pack. If I read it, it'll be over! There's nothing like reading a good book for the first time.
Thanks for the recommendations!
Flash forward the age groups represented in [Bridge to Terabithia:] about 5 years, set it in a boarding school and you have [Looking for Alaska:].
The plot progression in the two are almost identical. That's not a slight at all, BTT is one of my favorite youth books ever.
Oh well! Looking for Alaska does have a hilarious scene where the main character sustains a concussion that made me laugh out loud. I can't remember the last book to make me actually laugh.
Uuuugh I can't finish this one.
I wanted to slog through it because the idea is great, but it's just 1) not very funny and 2) not very well written. This actually became far more evident the further into the novel I read.
I probably would have enjoyed this more had I read anything by Dickens or reread Jane Eyre in the last 10 years. But prerequisite reading for free reading is not my bag.
