Jane Eyre (film)

So I've been wanting to see the newest adaptation of Jane Eyre basically ever since I heard they were making it. It had a limited release, so I didn't get to see it in theatres, but I finally got around to getting it at the library. And considering that I was like, 350th on the list, I've been waiting a LONG time to see this movie.

I was very prepared to fall in love with this movie. For one, the trailer seemed like it was going to accurately capture the gothic feel of the book. Jane Eyre was (and still is) creepy and scandalous. I mean, so much so that Charlotte Bronte had to publish it under a different name because she thought people wouldn't believe a woman wrote it (well, for other reasons too). I'm not saying I didn't love the movie, not at all. But Jane Eyre is my second favorite book in the world (the first being Gone with the Wind). As an adaptation of the book, however, I think this film is only so-so. Granted, it's a long book, so some stuff has to go when a film is being made. But the whole Blanche Ingram storyline is completely glossed over, and I think that cuts out quite a bit of characterization of both Jane and Rochester. I love any scene where he's trying to glean information from Jane either about himself or about her life. That's how he falls in love with her, after all.

However, the acting in this movie is FREAKING BRILLIANT. Mia Wasikowska is homely-but-pretty enough to make a good Jane, and she displays the right balance of strength and insecurity that is Jane Eyre. I think in movies there's a tendency to make Jane too confident and secure in her decisions, and that's just not the case in the book. Jane does doubt herself. While she may have bursts of brilliance, every move she makes is not as deliberate as some film versions seem to suggest. Mia's portrayal of Jane shows her vulnerable side without losing that inner strength that endears a lot of people to Jane Eyre as a character. Side note: Mia has the TINIEST waist I've ever seen. I sort of noticed it when I saw Alice in Wonderland, but damn. She looks amazing in this movie.

And let's face it, Dame Judi Dench is a perfect Mrs. Fairfax. She's the right amount of motherly and nosey for the part. Plus, even though she's a major star, she plays in the background perfectly. With so much gravitas, it would have been easy for her role to have been greatly exaggerated, but it was played with just the right amount of subtlety. Nice touch.

And Michael Fassbender. Oh my God. I will forever picture him as Mr. Rochester now. People gave Fukunaga flack for casting Fassbender because he's "too pretty," but I disagree. Yes, Fassbender is good looking, but he's not classically handsome--and that's how I've always pictured Rochester. Not classically handsome, but not necessarily ugly. Interesting looking--and Fassbender most certainly is just that. Not to mention that Fukunaga's cinematography and styling make it so Fassbender has those rough edges that Rochester is known for. Fassbender's portrayal of Rochester is SPOT ON. I mean, he captured the spirit of Mr. Rochester to a T. He's brash, abrasive, possessive, and, at the appropriate times, a little sketch. And his passion for Jane is SO believable. The scene where he begs Jane to stay is just...oh my God. It's exactly how I pictured it in the book. I mean, they even include Rochester's veiled threats to make her stay. Wasikowska is no slouch in this scene, either--her physical portrayal of Jane's conflict is perfect. Once again, I think there's a tendency to play Jane here with ABSOLUTE resolve that she's leaving, but Jane clearly has her doubts. Wasikowska plays it as if Jane just barely has the strength to do it, which I think is more true to the character.

On a side note: I was poking around on the IMDb page for the film, and I noticed a reviewer saying they were disappointed that the movie didn't include the Wide Sargasso Sea interpretation of Bertha. This is something I do not agree with at ALL. While I love the concept of Wide Sargasso Sea and I've heard great things about the book, considering it part of the Jane Eyre canon just isn't right. Is Rochester as innocent in the whole Bertha incident as he makes himself out to be? Well, probably not. But Jane Eyre is Charlotte Bronte's book. Any portrayal of the story containing elements from outside the novel is not an accurate reflection of the work--even if those elements make sense in the context of the story.

It's one of the reasons I'm not fond of recent film or book interpretations of Dracula. People seem to have latched on to this idea that Meena and Dracula have this extremely sensual, intense love affair. And true, there is some sexuality between those two in the book--but she's not love with him. You don't yell "Unclean, unclean" after someone you love touches you. And I think people underestimate just how much Meena loves Jonathan. I honestly believe she wouldn't do that him. She just wouldn't.

Anyways, I digress. I enjoyed the movie. It's just about 2 hours long, and I didn't feel like my time was wasted. And the interactions between Jane and Rochester, the sparks that fly between them...it's all so authentic. I never once doubted their love for each other, which is something I've done in other film adaptations of the book. There was commitment to and understanding of these characters, and it really shined through. While I don't necessarily agree with all the story cuts that were made, the acting alone makes it well worth the watch.

34/100: Sisterhood Everlasting

So. It's been two months and 13 books since I last posted. My reading pace has picked up a little, but I sincerely doubt I'll make 100 books by December 31st. But I'm okay with that.

So what has raised me from my silence. This gem:


Now, I read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants when I was about 15 or 16, right when it first came out. And I dutifully followed the series, but by the 4th book, I was getting a bit tired of it all because I felt like the characters were making the same mistakes and having the same crises all over again.

So admittedly, I was skeptical when I found out about about Sisterhood Everlasting. So skeptical that I actually didn't even know it existed until I saw it on the Most Wanted shelf at work. Not knowing a new book in a series I've read is coming out is highly unusual for me. But I thought that for old times sake, I should give it a try. It takes place 10 years after Forever in Blue ends, but I still wondered, were these girls going to be making the same mistakes AGAIN?

Turns out, yes and no. The Sisterhood does make some of the same mistakes they did before, but in the context of this novel, it all makes sense. Life should be messy for these women. This is where they're supposed to be in life.

I'm genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed this novel. It is easily the best (new) book I have read all year.

I don't know, maybe it's because I'm in my 20s now and I can relate to these girls in a way I haven't been able to before. How sometimes we can be lost, even when we're supposed to be adults. Sisterhood Everlasting spoke to me in a way I haven't been spoken to in a very long time.

The whole time I was reading the book, "Arms" by Christina Perri was playing in the back of my mind. It fits the theme so perfectly. Like, eerily so:


This book. This book.
It broke my heart and put it back together again.
It does something completely ballsy in the first 50 pages and makes it work.
It was the first book in a long time that I started and finished in one day.
I loved and devoured every single word.
I haven't felt this content after finishing a book in a long time.

I love it all :D

Books Read: 34/100
Currently Reading: Between books

21/100: Smokin Seventeen

So for a very long time, I was very much against reading anything by Janet Evanovich. Mostly it was because of my library page weirdness, and since she has about a million books on the shelf, I had to hate her on principle.

But one day in the summer before I went to college, for reasons that I for the life of me cannot remember, decided to try her out. I read One for the Money in about two days, and I was hooked. I managed to get though books 2 and 3 of the Stephanie Plum series, but after that I started college and well, you know how that goes. It wasn't until the beginning of last year that I decided to make it my goal to finish the series. That was when I decided to get on the reserve list at the library for Sizzling Sixteen, and that gave me the incentive to catch up. So from January to June, I read the first 15 books in the series. So by the time I actually read Sizzling Sixteen, I was a little burnt out on the whole series. But Janet Evanovich only releases one book in this series per year, so I figured a year's absence would make my heart grow fonder. Or at the very least, less burnt out.

As the release of Smokin' Seventeen approached, I'll admit, I got excited. It's nice to have a new book to look forward to! But when I read it, I began to realize something: I'm kind of over it.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the book. Had a few laughs here or there, and I was interested in the main storyline (although I had the killer picked out practically the page after he was introduced, but this isn't Agatha Christie here or anything, so I don't really expect to be surprised by the mystery of the book). But...it was just a little same old, same old.

What's irritating me about these books is that they're all starting to feel like the same book. Stephanie gets herself into trouble and doesn't listen to advice from anyone, she and Lula try to catch an FTA or two and it goes horribly awry, Grandma Mazur causes trouble at a funeral, and Stephanie continues to agonize over the great Morelli vs. Ranger debate. Oh, and whoever the killer is decides to try and kill Stephanie because she's too nosy. To be quite honest, books 11-17 all run together because they're essentially the same book. Look, I give all the credit in the world to Janet Evanovich. She has unfailingly released a book about this character every year since 1995. That's impressive. She's discovered a formula for literary success, and power to her for that. But it seems like she's stuck in a rut. She's sticking to that formula to a T.

And honestly, I'm getting a little tired of it. Stephanie makes no progress a person. And look, I get that this isn't Literature with a capital "L", but that doesn't mean there can't be some development. Is Evanovich afraid that if she actually makes Stephanie get married or have a kid or move in with someone that the series is going to go to hell? The Moonlighting Curse does not not apply to books. Seriously, I'm real tired of this Morelli vs. Ranger crap. Stephanie is a grown-ass woman. Choosing a man shouldn't be this hard--especially when Morelli is the most obvious choice on the face of the earth.

OH MY GOD, THE STEPHANIE PLUM SERIES IS SUFFERING FROM THE REVERSE MOONLIGHTING CURSE!!! (The Reverse Moonlighting Curse, by the way, is when a series suffers when the two leads DON'T get together. See: the first half of season 6 of Bones). Seriously, if I have to deal with this high school relationship dramaz for another book...this whole relationship is just stagnating. If I want to read the exact same book over and over, I'll just read the first one, because that one is still, in my mind, far and away the best one.

I guess the last straw for me was the ending of this book: Stephanie has received a plane ticket to Thailand and enough money to purchase a second ticket for the man of her choice. She decides who she's going to take with her, but we as the readers don't know who that is. Which would be a great cliffhanger and all, if the EXACT same thing hadn't happened at the end of High Five. Seriously. At the end of that one, Stephanie has called a man over to her apartment, but we don't find out who it is until the next book. So that just means that 11 BOOKS LATER, she's in the exact same place. Dear God in heaven. I thought that maybe it seemed worse for me because I had read all the books in a row, but then I realize it's probably worse for people who have been reading the series since the beginning (having watched Bones from the very first episode, I can attest that the longer you've been waiting for something to happen in a fictional setting, the more frustrated you get when it doesn't happen. So I can only imagine).

It's this same reason that I've kind of gotten away from the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella. I really enjoyed it in the beginning, and even though each of the books has a completely different scenario, they actually all have the same plot. Becky never learns any semblance of self control. I mean, even just reading the synopsis for Mini Shopaholic, I can tell that it's going to be the same story: Becky can't help herself, and this gets her into all kinds of trouble with Luke, but in the end she pulls it all together and saves the day. At the beginning of the series, Becky was poor and living in a crappy apartment with no boyfriend, and now she's married with a kid. But she's still doing the EXACT same things she did back in the day? You can see how that would be frustrating.

Sigh. Like I said, I still enjoyed the book. But I'm starting to feel like I'm only reading the Stephanie Plum series out of obligation instead of because I actually WANT to. At the very least, I'm only glad there's one of these a year. Okay, not THIS year, since Explosive Eighteen comes out in October, but still. Maybe it's because I'm still coming out of my bitter old lady reading mood. But it's still a little sad, because I reallly did enjoy the series quite a bit.

But I'm not giving it up for lost. Things can change. I mean, one can only hope.

18/100: Jane by April Lindner

I know I said I was trying not to be negative anymore, but I’m granting myself an exception, because Jane Eyre is my favorite novel, right after Gone with the Wind.

This book. Oh, this book. Jane by April Lindner is a modern-day version of Jane Eyre. And…it….well, just read on and you’ll see.

Jane suffers from the problem of trying to be too loyal to source material. The back of the book has the tag “What if Jane Eyre fell in love with a rock star?” Well, the fact of the matter is, that’s really not what this book explores.

Basically, Jane is a line-by-line remake of Jane Eyre, with updated language and situations. An extremely loyal remake, if you will. Like the most recent version of The Karate Kid. Actually, it’s exactly like that.

Look, in theory, I think this is a good idea. If you’re not used to 19th-century literature, Jane Eyre is a little difficult to approach. And so at first, I was digging all the updates. They made sense, they felt current…I had hopes.

But midway through the book, I’m like, okay, if I wanted this story, I’d read Jane Eyre! I don’t feel like April Lindner is adding anything new to the story, or at the very least, exploring the nuanced facets of the original that Charlotte Brontë, couldn’t explore because of propriety. Nothing. It’s just an “updated” version of Jane Eyre. I was thinking it’d be more along the lines of Thousand Acres or The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. You know, retellings instead of remakes.

In order for an adaptation to be good, it needs to improve or expand upon the original. Take ideas from the book and blow them up. A really good example of this is the film version of Dian Wynne Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle. Miyazaki’s version expands on small ideas that Jones had in her novel, and deemphasizes the ones that wouldn’t work well in film. It connects with the source material, but distinguishes itself enough so that you can enjoy both of them in different but equal ways.

That’s the type of feel I expected from this book. For it to expound upon ideas in the original while staying true to the spirit of the story. That’s a tall order, sure, but that’s what makes these books so enjoyable when they’re done well.

Because of her unflinching loyalty to the book, certain scenes, when placed into a modern context, simply do not make sense. Or characters stick so steadfastly to their Jane Eyre counterparts, things they do simply don’t make sense.

For example: Jane and Nico (the 21st century version of Rochester. He’s a rock star) falling in love. I felt like Lindner’s Jane falls in love with Nico too fast. It felt like Lindner was following her Jane Eyre outline, and “here’s where Jane Eyre fell in love in the book, so here’s where my Jane falls in love.” I mean, I could see Jane having an attraction to Nico at that point, but ready to hop into bed with him, like 5 seconds after he says “I love you?” Nope, I don’t believe that for a second in this book.

And when they go shopping for clothes? When Rochester does it, it makes sense. Keeping up appearances was tantamount. But when Nico does it? Tway it’s written, it makes it seem like he’s just had this huge personality change. Which then makes him seem like a massive douchebag. And the following scene makes his relationship with Jane seem very…physical, rather than emotional or mental. Which in turn makes him look like one horny fuck; e.g., douchebag.

For obvious reasons, all the school/early days is omitted in this version. But that is very important to Jane’s characterization. You know that from an early age, Jane Eyre is a badass. She’s got a pair of brass balls on her, and she really doesn’t give a shit about what others think of her.

We don’t get that from Lindner’s Jane, so when she decides to stand up to her siblings, it feels false and very out of character. Lindner’s Jane is a mouse, and when she does things like speak her mind, it doesn’t feel true to the character. For example, the “am I handsome” question. In Jane Eyre, Jane is very matter of fact about her answer. I mean, on some level, she knows she shouldn’t say it, but she doesn’t regret her candor. She owns her honesty. The same isn’t true of Lindner’s Jane. Jane is like “oh, my bad, I wish I could take that back.”

And I think these are CRUCIAL events that Lindner missed out on. Because of those experiences in childhood, we know that while Jane Eyre is generally a rational person, she has a fire in her, which causes her to act with her heart on several occasions. But because we don’t have that characterization with Lindner’s Jane, I don’t believe it when she acts with her heart. She’s far too pragmatic for that.

But above all else, Jane made me realize just how important the socio-historical context is to Jane Eyre. While it is still freaky to lock your wife in the attic, on some level, we get that Rochester is a victim of circumstance. Sure, he could have made some better life choices, but once he married Bertha, he was stuck with her. Divorce really wasn’t an option. And mental institutions pretty much meant a death sentence back then, so Rochester looks like a REALLY good guy by taking care of her.

Lindner tries to make out like Nico is a victim of circumstance but that just doesn’t ring true. When I started reading this book, I said that there better be a DAMN good reason that Nico locked Bibi (Bertha in this book) in the attic. And you know what? There isn’t. An institution would have been a FAR better place for her, especially with all the advances in medicine. And sure, some people aren’t responsive to treatment (this is, in fact, the entire basis of the FABULOUS play “Next to Normal”), but there’s plenty of experimental treatments and trials that Nico could have easily gotten Bibi in to (side note: if the current nurse can’t get her to take her pills, HIRE A NEW NURSE. Seriously, not that hard). Also, it’s not like when a girl gets married, she suddenly becomes property of her husband anymore. Presumably, Bibi had some sort of family that would (I hope) want some sort of say in her care. So for Nico to lock her up like that? CREEPY AND WEIRD.

Nico explains that he didn’t know that Bibi had schizophrenia when he married her, and he got her into all sorts of drugs, which may have exacerbated her illness. He felt obligated to her. And on her lucid days, he’d see glimmers of the woman he fell in love with. I get that. That’s perfectly sound. But he knew early on that Bibi was lost to him. If he planned to take care of her regardless, then divorce shouldn’t matter. But according to Nico, “If I sent her away, the press would have gotten wind of it. ‘Rock Star Hides Wife in Mental Institution.’ I’d be the villain.”

Look, it’s 2011. If Charlie Sheen can act like a crazy mofo and still come out relatively ahead, then one rock star can divorce his mentally ill ex-wife.

Jane puts it best: “All these years you chose to stay married to Bibi. That tells me something.” This is something we don’t get in the original—it’s not like Rochester wanted to stay married to Bertha. He was in a position where divorce would have been nearly impossible. Nico, being a man of the 21st century, has a choice. Now, of course, Nico’s defense is that he “owed” it to Bibi, but you know what? This day and age, it’s okay to take care of someone even if you’re not related to them. It’s admirable, even.

In fact, that would have made Nico come off a whole hell of a lot better.

And Nico’s explanation of why he didn’t institutionalize her doesn’t hold water. He said that they were either “bad” or “worse.” Which may be true if you’re a ward of the state and have to go into a state-run hospital, but Nico is Oprah rich. He can afford the best for Bibi. It’s like Lindner was using the One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest view of a mental institution, and that just isn’t true anymore. I’m not going to say that mental illness is completely without stigma in this day and age, but compared to what it used to be in the period in which Jane Eyre was written, it’s practically nothing.

That’s not to say that Nico had to be divorced in this story. It could have worked if they had been married. I saw a very moving story on 60 Minutes about how one of the reporters was still legally married to his wife, but he was living with another woman. His wife had early-onset Alzheimer’s and while she knew she had a husband, and she loved him very much, she ceased to recognize him. Although the reporter looked pained to see his wife slipping away, he knew that she wouldn’t want him to stop living. And he would want her to do the same if the roles were reversed. So that’s what he did. It was romantic and tragic all at the same time.

But Nico’s story is hardly so noble. Basically, he didn’t want the press finding out about his wife and for it to ruin his career. I mean, I’m oversimplifying it a bit, but really, that’s kind of what it boils down to.

So because Nico’s reasons for hiding Bibi away seem really shallow when put into a modern-day context, this sets off a chain reaction that really makes Lindner’s Jane look like a damn fool for going back to Nico. I’m sorry, I don’t care what the circumstances, in 2011, nobody is ever going to think that locking someone in an attic is an understandable thing to do. And really, the public still likes this guy after they found out he keep his ex wife hidden from the world? Do you know where stories like that end up? On 48 Hours. And not in a flattering way, either.

I mean, it got so bad that I ended up rooting for St. John there at the end, even though I knew he eventually was going to douche it up. At least he put it all out there, even if he was a bit crass.

Sigh. I could go on and on about all the problems I had with this book. For instance, Nico is taking care of Maddy (the Adele character) because her mother left her alone in hotel rooms, so Nico sued for full custody and won (this version makes it clear that she is his daughter). Yet he somehow thinks keeping a DANGEROUS SCHIZOPHRENIC in the attic is better parenting?!? At least Rochester had the excuse of Celine being dead. And some of the attempts to be modern just…what is this I don’t even. I mean, at one point in time, a satin-lined mahogany box of condoms come into play. I am not even making that up just a little bit.

At the end of the novel, April Lindner has an endnote about why she decided to write this book. She talks about her love for the original, and how she was inspired by all the adaptations of Pride and Prejudice that were coming out. She wondered why nobody had tried to modernize Jane Eyre in a similar way, so she set out to do just that.

Like I said, the problem is that she is too loyal to the source material. To the point where characters do and say things that make no sense in a modern-day context. I appreciate what Lindner was trying to do here, I really do, but it just doesn’t work. Like, at all.

I think the reason that Jane Eyre hasn’t been modernized is that the story is so universal, even 150 years after its initial publication. Jane Eyre is still a badass by today’s standards. And because we have socio-historical background, keeping your wife in the attic—while a little weird—is still understandable. We sympathize with Rochester, even though he lies. And I’ll allow that some elements of the Jane Eyre story would work in a modern context.

But in 2011, there is no excuse for keeping your crazy wife in the attic. There just isn’t.

Why I'm Reading a Nora Roberts Book

So I'm currently reading a Nora Roberts book.

To be honest, I still find this a little shameful. Look, I have no objection to people reading Nora Roberts. But...well, to explain the shame here, I have to talk about working in a library.

You have to be a very special person to get five shelves devoted to your books in the library. Many authors have four shelves (Stephen King, Agatha Christie, Robert B. Parker, Janet Evanovich, Louis L'Amour), but to have five is a real accomplishment. I can only think of four people who win this claim: James Patterson, Danielle Steel, Debbie Macomber, and Nora Roberts.

Workers who shelve books hate these people. Look, it's nothing personal towards them or their books. But there are just so freaking many of them. And oftentimes, there's series involved, and then you have like, 12 books with essentially the same title that need to be shelved and depending on they way the books are cataloged, this isn't as easy as one would think. Especially if there are numbers in the title.

So really, my hatred of these authors derives from the fact that I have to deal with them and their books on a near-daily basis. Plus, there's an element of logic in there: These authors aren't terribly old, so they're churning out books like there's no tomorrow. Which means that it's clearly about quantity and not about quality (yeah, I'm looking at you, James Patterson. The facts speak for themselves here: he signed a 3-year, 17-book contract with Hachette. The man's a machine. That's not to say that I don't go to bed every night and pray that God turns me into James Patterson in the morning, but still. It's the principle of the thing). More books means more shelving for us. So over the years, I sort of came to the decision to not read books by these authors. Just as a professional courtesy, you know? I know, it makes no sense.

But let me reiterate what I stated early: I have nothing against these authors personally, or the people who read the books. But I do realize that I'm still a tad judgmental about people's reading habits.

But if library school has taught me anything, it's that I need to be less judgmental of what people are reading. So I finally bit the bullet and checked out a Nora Roberts book.

I picked Vision in White, since I had heard it mentioned in various blog posts in the span of a week or two. Also, it was available as an ePub from Overdrive, so I could check it out without shame (yeah, I know, still judgey. Baby steps here, people. Baby steps).

It's...about what I was expecting. I'm about halfway through. I mean, it's not terrible. The writing is okay, and the dialogue is a little stilted, but I've definitely read worse. My major problem is that I don't feel like there's much of a plot. Yeah, there's two people falling in love, but there's absolutely zero drama. Yeah, the main character has mommy issues, but with her mother hundreds of miles away, they don't seem like much of a threat. I'm just waiting for something to happen. I'm not holding myself to finishing the book. I haven't quite decided if I will or not. Hey, it happens.

But the important thing is, I see the appeal of Nora Roberts now. It's harmless fluff, and a great vacation/beach read. And sometimes, that's all people want, and there's nothing wrong with that.

So Vision in White may not be for me. But I'm more than willing to try another Nora Roberts book. She has plenty to choose from :)

Books Read: 17/100
Currently Reading: Vision in White by Nora Roberts

I'm Back (I Hope)

To say that I've been neglecting this blog and this project is a gross understatement. As the list attests, I've only just finished book #17. At the rate I'm going, I'm not going to make it.

I've been trying to figure out what the hell happened. I was so excited about this project at the beginning of the year. When I did my 365 Project last year, I rarely missed a day, and by this point in the year, taking a picture of myself each day was just a habit. But the same thing didn't happen with this project. And I've been trying to figure out why.

At first I thought it was that I was just reading crappy books. I started the year off with Mockingjay, which I just hated. Then I read a book to cleanse my palette, but then I read Water for Elephants, a book, which, the more I think about it, the more I hate it. But looking over my reading list since January 1st, I've read some good books, some by my favorite authors. So it couldn't just be the books. And that's when it hit me.

It was me.

During my reading of The Weird Sisters, I began to consider something. The Weird Sisters is about these three sisters who all come home after they find out their mother has cancer. Their father is this emotionally distant professor who finds more life in Shakespeare than he does in the outside world. The thing that links these very different girls together is their love for reading. On some level, it is a book about the love and fundamental power of reading.

Which got me to thinking about my own reading habits, and I came to the conclusion that being an English major in college nearly ruined my love for reading.

Look, I love the fact that I have a BA in English and I would not have had it any other way. But all that critical thinking about literature bled over into my recreational reading, and it was causing me to hate books. I first noticed it when I read the book Death in Daytime last fall. Admittedly, I was only reading this book because it was written by Eileen Davidson, who plays Ashley Abbott on the Young and the Restless. But I still expected it to be somewhat decent. It SO is not. The writing is amateurish and there's so much telling and not showing and SO MUCH UNNECESSARY DETAIL. Seriously, it was a struggle to get through. While I was reading it, I tore every single chapter to shreds. But I didn't think much of it, since it was a fun little book, and by a celebrity, no less.

But then I started to do it to every single book I read. And look, I get that not every book published has phenomenal, A-grade prose. Some books really are terrible. But I couldn't let anything go. I would analyze every single thing to death (as my previous posts this year attest), and it would consume me so much that I couldn't really enjoy reading any more. In a way, I started to become wary of reading, because I started to expect to be disappointed by books. I even started to wonder if I could ever enjoy reading again.

And as someone who will live and breathe the library every single day for the rest of her life, I know that that's no way to live. But I kept reading, and books continued to disappoint. The tipping point for me was reading the book Matched. Don't get me wrong here, the book has its fair share of flaws (the biggest of which is that characters would often jump from point A to point C without any explanation as to how they got there), but I couldn't even enjoy the act of reading the book because my mind was so busy analyzing the crap out of the terrible writing. After Matched, I don't think I read a book for a solid two weeks. Which for me, is a very long time. Perhaps the longest I can ever remember choosing not to read anything.

A few months ago, at the beginning of this reading crisis (as it were), I happened to catch an episode of Bones while my brother was watching the series. I'd seen this particular episode probably three times already, but this time around, something Angela said just stuck with me: "You need to learn to enjoy things as they are." That kept with me for awhile. And it wasn't until last week or so that I really connected the dots. I was taking every book far too seriously and I wasn't enjoying things as they were. I just needed to take a step back and recognize that I was reading for entertainment. Not for school, not for my career, but to have a good time. So the pressure needed to come down. Way down.

I needed to get back into the swing of reading. But nothing in my stack of books interested me, so I did the clean sweep. Took everything I had back to the library, and got an entirely new stack of books. I had a bit of a misstep, when my first book was Cat of the Century by Rita Mae Brown.

Let me explain: I have never read a Rita Mae Brown book before, and never intend to read another, but this particular book happens to be centered around William Woods University, which is just across the street from Westminster College (where I went to school). I just had to know how good old Fulton was portrayed.

Anyways, that book was terrible. I mean, just godawful. There were random tangents about the environment and the economy that had absolutely NOTHING to do with the plot. At all. But I could feel my bad habits starting up again, so I decided not to finish the book. Now, for me to start a book and get more than 20 pages into it and not finish it is very rare. In the past five years, I've done this to maybe 2 books. I don't know, I just feel...obligated to finish it, you know? Anyways, that's neither here nor there. So I picked up the next book in my pile.

I fully credit Diana Wynne Jones and Howl's Moving Castle for helping me get my reading mojo back. This was a re-read for me, but it's been so long since I read it the first time that I don't really remember a lot of what happened, so it was like a new book. And after I finished it, I realized that I hadn't made a single complaint about it while I was reading it. I just read. Enjoyed the book the way it was. And then, I just knew: I could read for fun again. My love of reading wasn't gone forever. Just quelled a little bit, until something could pull me back out. In the week since I've finished that book, I've read two more.

I'm back, baby.

Even though I'm WAY behind, I haven't given up hope on this project. If I can manage 12 books a month, I can do this. And if not, that's okay, too. There will always be more books. And now, I'm finally read to read and enjoy them as they are.

Whitewashing the Hunger Games

One day I'll post my feelings on Mockingjay, and you can see how I REALLY felt about The Hunger Games trilogy. The short version is that I liked the first two books and ABSOLUTELY HATED the last one. But that's not the point right now.

On my Google Reader, I found this article from Jezebel: The Imminent Whitewashing of the Hunger Games Heroine

Basically, the article mentions how Jennifer Lawrence is the frontrunner for Katniss in The Hunger Games movie (which makes me a little sad, since I was totally rooting for Hailee Steinfeld), and Jennifer Lawrence is, of course, very white and very blond.

Now, the article includes the description of Katniss in the book, which is this: "Straight black hair, olive skin, gray eyes." Which, in terms of description, is pretty scant. What exactly IS olive skin, anyways? But I guess people take olive skin to mean "non-white", which, in my opinion isn't necessarily true. I think of "olive" as more of an undertone than an actual color. You can be white as a ghost and have an "olive" complexion. One of my roommates in college was from Chile, and he had what I would describe as an olive undertone to his skin. He was pale, but I would definitely classify the tone of his skin as "olive," You can also be black and have an "olive" complexion.

Furthermore, it seemed obvious to me that the Seam (where Katniss lives) is in the Appalachian Mountain region. Which is a largely white population, even today, after that area has been populated for centuries. Ethnographically speaking, it would make sense for Katniss to be white. But then again, considering that by 2020, the United States will have a population with a fairly even spread of white, black, and hispanic races, it also makes sense for Katniss to be a woman of color.

None of that, however, is the point here. I think the beauty of the term "olive" is that it can mean anything you want it to mean. Which is part of what makes Katniss a great heroine--she could be anybody. You can think of her as a member of your own race, or as a member of a different race. She could be like you or like someone else. That's what made her so beloved by millions of fans.

For me, race was never an important issue of the books. I always saw the class commentary as a FAR more important aspect of the book. I mean, THAT part was so obvious that it smacked me straight in the face. And any sociologist will tell you that it's not JUST about race or class or gender, but that it's a COMBINATION of all factors that disadvantage certain groups.

Okay, I'm getting WAY off topic. I guess my main point is that there's not enough of a description of Katniss in the book to merit all these cries of whitewashing. Because in my mind, "olive" is a neutral descriptor. So in Gary Ross's mind, Katniss looks like a Jennifer Lawrence or a Hailee Steinfeld. In somebody else's mind, she could be a Zoe Saldana. Katniss can be anyone. That's the point.

Also, if you've read ANY interview with Gary Ross about how he's adapting the books, he says he's had EXTENSIVE conversations with Suzanne Collins about the vision he is seeking to put on screen. So if the AUTHOR OF THE FREAKING BOOK approves of the actress playing Katniss, so should you.

Edit Much?

I don't know if it's because I do so much reading, or that I have a degree in English, but lately, I've been noticing a lot of copy errors in the books I'm reading. Granted, most of them are in my Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management textbook (apparently, librarians are not the greatest spellers in the world. Who knew?) But I've seen a few show up in fiction as well.

Now, these are errors that should be caught in copy-editing. They're not spelling errors; they're usually grammatical errors. And going further, it's usually a matter of a missing word or a subject/verb issue. And for the most part, I can ignore these mistakes. I mean, take my Collection Development book—it's 400 pages long. There's bound to be a few mistakes in there, especially if they fall into tricky-English-rules land. I don't expect perfection when it comes to copy-editing. After all, there's still a very human element to that process and let's face it, nobody's perfect.

However. There are some errors that I've spotted recently that I think occurred more out of laziness than an honest mistake.

There's a rather significant mistake in Delirium by Lauren Oliver, which is what inspired this post. And by significant, I mean, this seemingly innocuous mistake actually serves to undermine the theme of the book.

My previous post gave a brief summary of what the book was about: a world where love is classified as a disease. Okay, so given that information, you'd think that the word “love” would be a pretty loaded word in this book, more so than in any other book. That's why I was able to make note of this incident.

On page 16 of the book, Lena is talking with her aunt about her final evaluation before she is cured, and Lena launches into an “acceptable” speech about her likes and dislikes. She states “I really like children” and when her aunt tells her that she makes a face when she says it, Lena replies, “I love children.” Now, I thought this was a little odd when I first read it, because this is a world where love is considered a disease. It seems rather odd that the world would be used so freely in the novel.

However, Oliver takes great care to construct a world that isn't necessarily in the future—that is, except for the whole “procedure” to remove the ability to love, the world Lena lives in is pretty much identical to ours. No cool medical advances, no awesome pieces of technology...nothing. So, I thought, since this world is so similar to the one in which we actually live, she's keeping with the colloquialisms. Perhaps Lena is just being sarcastic when she says “I love children,” in response to her aunt's nagging.

Except. When Lena is out in the Wilds with Alex, he shows her the stars. On page 298, he asks her what she thinks of them, and this is the passage that follows:

“I love it.” The word pops out, and instantly the weight on my chest dissipates. “I love it,” I say again, testing it. An easy word to say, once you say it. Short. To the point. Rolls off the tongue. It's amazing I've never said it before.

Wait, what? Lena has said this word before, 212 pages earlier. And in a lighthearted, meaningless way.

I don't think it could be argued that Lena use of this word on page 16 is a simple case of her just being a teenager and being sarcastic. This passage on page 298 clearly attests that Lena knows that this word has meaning. And that she's never used it before, until now. Allegedly.

Talk about a huge, gaping error. Now I realize, not everyone is going to nitpick or remember like I am, but sometimes, it's the little things that can completely derail a story. My thesis advisor told this great story about how one of her students wrote a decent story, but that there was this coffee cup that showed up in every scene. Which doesn't seem like a big deal, but the action of the coffee cup wasn't consistent. One moment the character would be pouring a new cup, the next she'd be rinsing it out because it had stayed on the counter all night. This coffee cup was a completely tertiary detail to this story, but because it was inconsistent, it threw focus off the real action of the story and as a result, the fiction lost its impact.

Which, basically, is what happened with Delirium. Once again, I recognize that nobody is perfect, and mistakes do happen. But I know that as a writer, if I were going to attach that much significance to a single word, I'd do a simple ctrl+f to make sure that I wasn't contradicting myself. As the passage on page 298 is written, Lena using the word “love” is a big step in her character development. But because she used the word earlier in the novel, this is basically meaningless. Don't you think, if Lena speaking the word “love” was going to be such a big moment, you'd do a simple ctrl+f search of your manuscript just to make sure you hadn't accidentally slipped it in earlier?

And now that I think about it, I know I've encountered a similar problem in another book recently. I can't remember the specific book or the problem, but I do remember that once I spotted the contradiction, I was pulled from the story and its effectiveness was lost.

Now, the Delirium example that I gave is an extreme one. I guess my point here is that even in a 400+ page book, the little things matter. And people will notice the little things. There's a lot of things you can get away with in a book that you can't get away with in any other form of media. But then again, there's an equally long list of things that you absolutely cannot get away with in books. Minor contradictions, no matter how asinine they may be, are one of them.

Makes you appreciate the job of a copy editor that much more, doesn't it?

10/100: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Delirium by Lauren Oliver was a book that I think I saw mentioned on Parajunkee. I thought it sounded interesting, so I snagged a copy.

Basically, this book falls into that ever-popular subcategory of Young Adult literature, the dystopian novel. I think everyone can agree that the bellwether of YA dystopian lit is Lois Lowry's The Giver. Pretty much everybody had to read that book in school, and I honestly think that it is the one piece of required reading that EVERYBODY loves. I honestly think I have yet to meet a person who didn't like this book. Because let's face it, it's a friggen masterpiece, so it's deserving of every accolade.

And naturally, not everything can be that good, so I usually use Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series as a basis of comparison when I'm dealing with dystopian YA.

So. Delirium is the story of 17-year-old Lena, who lives in the United States of the future, where cities are walled in from “The Wilds” and everyone, on or around their 18th birthday, undergoes a procedure in which they are cured of a disease called amor deliria nervosa, a disease more commonly known as “love.” People don't fall in love in this world. They are “cured” of all desire, and then they are matched with a mate and are expected to reproduce.

For the most part, the US in Delirium is identical to the one in which we live today. In fact, the only thing different about it is this procedure curing people of love. Other than that, there's not any futuristic technology in the book. There's a roundabout reference to the idea that the US has depleted its supply of oil, but other than that, it's the world we live in today.

So, as you can imagine, Lena, our heroine, is eagerly awaiting the day she'll be cured. After all, the government told her that the deliria is a disease, one she doesn't want to catch. But of course, a few months before her procedure, she falls in love with a boy named Alex.

I'll start off by saying that Delirium reminded me of Uglies SO much. Like, the two books were almost plaigiaristically similar, in my opinion. You know, girl in the have-nots is waiting for a procedure so her life will be better has a friend (who is part of the “haves”) is flirting with the fringes of society. Said friend leads main girl to this “other” world, and then main girl slowly changes her mind about the society in which she lives. This is kind of standard stuff for YA dystopian lit, so I go with it. In this case, the “other” world is called the Wilds, and the people who live in it the Invalids. As you may have guessed, Alex is an Invalid.

I guess Delirium is different in the fact that it's not so much a dystopian novel with a love story in it, it's a love story with a dystopian twist.

Where Uglies succeeds and Delirium fails is in the sense of scope. By the end of Uglies, both you and Tally (the main character) understand how sinister this society is and why it needs to be stopped. You understand why Tally decides to go back to the city to become Pretty, even though it means sacrificing the boy she loves and potentially losing herself.

No such luck with Delirium. By the end of the book, I didn't really feel like Lena understood that there was a “greater good” out there. Everything she was doing was for her and Alex. It was all about them. I get that this is a love story, but if there's going to be this dystopian element, you have to, well, acknowledge the resistance. Get the main character involved in it. Otherwise, it becomes just another dumb love story with no real purpose. So instead of Delirium telling the story of one girl's triumph over a corrupt government, it's a story of a selfish girl turning her back on a world that just doesn't understand her.

Holy crap, Lena's emo.

Ahem. ANYWAYS, you get what I'm saying. That the story is constructed as Lena's World vs. Their World, not Lena vs. the World. In the end, Lena choose her world, with love in it. Which is all fine and dandy, but if that's the case, if Lena has no sense of duty to spread love to the rest of the world, then it's going to be a hard sell as to why I should read the rest of the series.

If that's the case, then there's no urgency. I get that the government is bad, and that they're perpetrated lies about love, but if you're reading YA dystopia lit, you're familiar with the genre. I was waiting for something bigger and badder here. Like in Uglies, when you find out that the government isn't just making people Pretty, they're making them mindless drones. And then it just get worse. But in Delirium, I didn't get why the government was such a Big Bad. I mean, ostensibly, I know why: love isn't really a disease, they're suppressing people's ability to feel, blah, blah, blah. I get that. But I was waiting for a greater truth to be revealed, something more than the fact that the Regulators brutally beat people (we've all read 1984. I think by its very definition, dystopian lit requires an overly-zealous and harsh government). Lena's major revelation is that “The government has been LYING to us!! About everything!” WELL NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. This is textbook dystopian lit here; realizing that the government has been lying isn't exactly a major revelation.

Not to mention that by the end of the book, I about wanted to fucking punch Lena in the face. Ahem. Okay, I get the fact that love is THE major theme of this book, but good God, Lena is CONSUMED by her love for Alex. I mean, given the way she's acting, I can almost see why the government would want to ban love. Like, she's borderline Bella-in-New-Moon bad.

HOLY CRAP. The government was banning Twilight-type love (because, apparently, in this book, that's what love is). Well, in that case, I totally agree with their decision.

I mentioned that I was reading Delirium in my Collection Development class, and the girl I was sitting next to, a YA Specialist, said that everyone she had talked to about the book gave it a solid “meh.” I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. However, I am still interested in where this series is going. Since the book ends with Lena heading out into the Wilds (a plot twist for which I was glad; if it ended up that she had the procedure, I totally would have called copy on Uglies), Oliver really has no choice but to broaden the scope of the story.

One can only hope.

Books Read: 10/100
Currently Reading: The Crimson Thread by Suzanne Weyn

Among Other Things...

Okay, so it's been a month since I posted. And I haven't been doing much reading lately, so that's a big ole fail on that count as well. In order to keep "on pace" with 100 books in a year, I'd need to read 8-9 books a month. And I'm only on book #10 right now. Yikes. Well, I certainly have some catching up to do, that's for sure.

To be fair I did read a 12-book manga series after I finished The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown, but as I said in my first post, I'm not counting manga in the book count.

So I guess that really doesn't count for much.

I'm kind of stuck in a rut in my nonfictional life, and I think that's transferring over to my reading habits. Hopefully I'll be able to snap out of it sometime soon.

Whoa, I didn't mean for this to get so serious/depressing all at once. Because I'm not depressed or sad or even all that serious! Haha. I just wanted to sort of check and and let everyone know that I haven't abandoned this blog or this project. Just need to get the fire back, that's all!

Books Read: 9/100
Currently Reading: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

6/100: Life After Genius

Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby was a book I picked up because it was on an endcap at the library. The description on the book jacket reminded me a lot of the book An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, so it piqued my interest. Plus, it was described as an "academic mystery", which reminded me of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, another book I enjoyed. So I gave this book a chance.

The book is about a boy named Mead, who at 18 years old, is about to graduate college with a degree in mathematics. He's made a significant discovery about a mathematical concept called the Reimann Hypothesis, and he's due to give a paper on it. However, the day before he's due to give a presentation on his work, Mead leaves school and heads back home for reasons unknown to everyone but himself. The novel switches between flashbacks of Mead's childhood and life at college and present day, where everyone is trying to figure out why Mead dropped everything and came back home.

I'm a little torn about what to think about it. I was interested in the story, but not enough to block out a whole afternoon to marathon the rest of the book (which is what I usually do). The beginning and middle of the book are really strong, but in the last 50 pages or so, the story sort of fell apart. Not the whole story, but parts of it.

I think the key issue here is that I felt that a lot of the conflicts didn't necessarily match their resolutions, either in depth or scope. For instance, a significant part of the end of the book is dedicated to people confronting the death of Mead's cousin, Percy. Percy's mother, Aunt Jewel, has had a mental breakdown--but the way that aspect of the story is written definitely downplays the significance it has at the end of the book. It's hinted at throughout the story that Mead has some mental issues of his own--so it's perfectly reasonable for you as the reader to think that Mead is just imagining things about his Aunt Jewel. In the end, of course, we find out that Aunt Jewel really is off her rocker and it's this huge big thing--but up until that point in the story, it's never been THAT big of a plot point. So in comparison with the rest of this plotline, the resolution of Aunt-Jewel-is-crazy seems way out of proportion.

Mead also has HUGE issues with his mother--but they all seemed to get magically resolved when he finds out she kept a science report of his from grade school--the only thing he ever got a C on. The explanation is sweet and meaningful and motherly and all, but it seems to magically resolve Mead's issues with his mom (who he is very close to outright loathing by the end of the novel), and that's just not believable.

The biggest thing, though, is the academic part of it all. The WHOLE book, you are wondering why the hell Mead ditched school just before he graduated. You know it has something to do with a guy named Herman Weinstein, and you can guess it has something to do with blackmail, but you don't know exactly WHAT happened until the very end of the book. They build up this "Why did Mead leave" thing for over 300 PAGES. When you find out what happened, it is the most anticlimactic thing you've ever seen. I'm thinking that Herman threatens Mead or does something to him...but no, not really. He just kinds of pressures Mead into making him a co-author of Mead's work on the Reimann Hypothesis. Nothing particularly dangerous about it. Mead just kind of lets it happen. And you're like "Really? You're painfully awkward, yet you can ask a girl out and feel her up, but the next night you can't stand up to a simple schoolyard bully? ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU KNOW THAT HE SLEPT WITH A TEACHER AND THEN BRIBED SAID TEACHER?!?!" Seriously, Mead had more than enough ammunition to bury Herman--and Mead had reason to believe that people would trust his information. And nothing in the rest of the novel suggests that Mead is the type to take the moral high ground. Ever. Mead is supposed to be a genius here, and in this particular scene (the big revelation scene, when you find out what it was that precipitated Mead's leaving school), he comes off like a fucking idiot. And sadly, this scene kind of caused me to lose respect for Mead, so by the tail end of the novel, I didn't really care what happened to him.

As I mentioned earlier, Mead at times seems like he's a bit cracked in the attic. So when he mentions things that Herman does to him, you think that Mead's just a sucker or he's just being paranoid. You don't think Herman really is as bad as Mead thinks he is--or, if Herman is really that big of an evil dick, then he must be one twisted fuck. Nope. Herman is just a guy who was ignored by his father growing up. He's an ass, sure. And in the last 20 pages of the book, you find out that he really is crazy (you find out that in the 3 years he's known Mead, he's stolen Mead's girlfriend, slept with a professor, bribed a professor, stalked, kidnapped, and tried to kill Mead). Now, all together like that, Herman sounds like one sick fuck. But this is stuff you have already suspected throughout the whole book. So it's not exactly relevatory, except for the killing Mead part of it all. I expected Herman to be REALLY twisted, but instead, he's kind of a generic villain.

The book just ends with a bunch of loose ends. You have no idea if Mead's going to go back to college or work in the family business. You are terribly unsure where things are left between him and his mother. And he has this pseudo-girlfriend by the end of the book, but that story is dropped like it's hot and never mentioned again. There really was no closure by the end of this book, and I remember getting to end and thinking "that's it?"

I liked the first 300 or so pages of this book. The characters, setting, and story were all very rich and I was interested in seeing how all the conflicts were going to be resolved. But the conflict resolution itself fell very flat. The ending felt rushed, and a lot of things in the last 50 or so pages felt very tacked on. I don't want to say I didn't like this book, because like I said, the beginning of the novel is well done. I guess the best way to put it is that I was disappointed by this book. I expected the end to be as interesting and engaging as the rest of the book, and sadly, my expectations were not met.

Books Read: 6/100
Currently Reading: Queen of Babble by Meg Cabot

Win an ARC of BUMPED!

Megan McCafferty is one of my FAVORITE authors, and I'm super excited about her new book, BUMPED, coming out in April (you'll see that it's on my to-read list). However, there's a blog giving away a free ARC of the book. Go check it out!

Books Read: 5/100
Currently Reading: Life After Genius by M. Ann Jacoby

5/100: Across the Universe

The best way to describe Across the Universe by Beth Revis is that it's a mash-up of The Giver and Uglies with a bit of Wall-E thrown in there.

Odd, I know. But I love all three of those things, which tells you that this is a good book.

It's the first in a planned trilogy, which I'm thankful for, since that helps me overlook some of the issues I had with the book. Across the Universe tells the story of Amy, a girl who is cryogenically frozen with her parents to go on a spaceship to terraform a new planet, Centauri-Earth. This journey will take 300 years, hence the freezing. However, Amy is pulled out of her state 50 years too soon--and the only way that could have happened is if someone tried to murder her. When she awakens, she meets a boy named Elder, who is in training to be the warden of the ship she is on. Elder is in the midst of discovering secrets about the ship and his role in its leadership. The book is told through the alternating perspectives of Elder and Amy.

There is a lot to love about this book. It's original, and it's got a great tone to it. Revis does a great job of letting your emotions follow along with Amy and Elder's. And I think Revis does a FANTASTIC job of writing Amy's emotions. Amy is 17, so it would be real easy for this book to devolve into melodrama. But Amy's reactions to major events in her life are very earnest, and her struggles with her feelings for her old boyfriend, Jason (even though, logically, she knows he's dead by the time she wakes up), ring true. It's refreshing to see a heroine who isn't boy-crazy, but isn't totally without romantic feelings. You know, someone who actually acts like a 17-year-old girl. It's definitely one of the book's strongest points.

I can't talk a lot about Elder without giving away a lot of the book, so let me put it this way: considering the context that Revis has placed him in, she's done an excellent job at capturing that sort of character.

My major complaint is not with the story itself, but with the telling of it. There are few instances where the writing isn't as smooth as it should be. For instance, on the whole ship, there is only one medical doctor. This isn't really made clear until later in the book, so when Elder calls him "Doc" and Amy calls him "the doctor," I was confused as to who each was actually talking about. I get that that's not terribly major, but sometimes it's the little things, you know?

The book does take awhile to get started, but as soon as I read this exchange, I was hooked:

"He sounds like a regular Hitler to me," Amy mutters.
I wonder what she means by that. Eldest always taught me that Hitler was a wise, cultured leader for his people. Maybe that's what she means: Eldest is a strong leader, like Hitler was.

My other beef relates to the fact that while all the major questions are answered, they're done in such a way that I'm not even sure if they're all answered. The answers are a bit muddled. Even now that I'm finished with the book, I'm still left with a lot of questions. Actually, now that I think about it, there is one mystery that wasn't solved. It was mentioned at the beginning of the book and never mentioned again after Amy is pulled out of stasis. It's nothing huge, per se, but the way it was presented makes me think that it was important.

And there was this great big buildup to the "secret" of the ship, and when we finally learn what it is, everything happens so fast and action is taken that I don't really have time to process it all correctly. And since it did happen so quickly, I didn't really feel like there was any "true" danger for our protagonists. I had only just grasped the severity of the conflict, and as soon as that happened, it was all over. In fact, during the reveal, I began to see the Big Bad's side of the issue--and that maybe they weren't so wrong in their way of thinking. That's not a bad thing. Just something to consider. However, this leads me to believe that Revis has something bigger and better planned for books 2 and 3, so I'm remaining cautiously optimistic at this point.

There was a bit of a random plot twist thrown in at the end (that I halfway suspected at various points during the novel), which definitely adds to the story, but it seems VERY thrown in there at the last minute. It doesn't feel out of place, per se, but it's not necessarily integrated into the story all that well, either. Like, there are things that happen earlier in the novel that don't make any sense considering what you learn at the end. It's a bit of sloppy writing, but since it is such a good, believable twist, I'm willing to overlook it.

And then Elder says something in the last chapter he narrates that kind of sours my opinion of him. It's not so much WHAT he says, but how Revis has written it. Because what he says actually makes sense within the context of the story and is absolutely believable for his character. But it's somewhat devoid of context and that makes for a bit of character assassination on his part. However, I'm sure it will be addressed in the later books, so I'm going to let it go for the time being.

This is a dystopian novel, and I liked how it didn't go straight from dystopia to utopia. No society is perfect. There will be problems--and that's what the subsequent books in this series will address--at least, I hope they will!

This book is definitely worth reading. In terms of how I felt while reading it, it reminded me a lot of The Host, which is easily one of my favorite Sci-Fi novels. So basically, that's a glowing recommendation from me. As this post attests, this book is not without a few minor faults, but if you read it with the idea that it's part of a trilogy, those faults are easy to get past.

Books Read: 5/100
Currently Reading: Between books

4/100: Water for Elephants

Books Read: 4/100
Currently Reading: Still deciding

In order to reach my goal of 100 books, I need to be reading 8-9 books per month. So I'm already a little behind. Whoops. Generally speaking, I'm a pretty fast reader, but if I'm reading a book that I'm not that into, it takes me awhile. Also, I'm watching Community and playing way too much Pokemon. Clearly, I have my priorities in order.

Anyways, I just finished reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. I've had this book for about a year now, but when I saw the trailer for the movie, I decided I should probably get around to reading it.



It was...okay. I guess I was expecting more from it, since I've heard nothing but good things about it. Sure, there's a nice little twist at the end, but other than that, everything that happens in the book is so...expected. The hero and the heroine get together in the end, the villains are punished, and everyone gets the second chance they so deserve. I was waiting to be shocked, for my heart to be ripped from my chest, to be emotionally MOVED in some way, but that just didn't happen with this book.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love books where the hero and the heroine ride off into the wind and live happily ever after. But only if that story is tonally appropriate to the rest of the story, which I don't think is the case here. This story is extremely well-researched, and it shows the often gritty side of life on a train circus. For God's sake, the story starts with the narrator's parents dying and him finding out that he doesn't even get to inherit the veterinary practice that his father has been working at his whole life. Jacob goes back to school and tries to finish his exams, but he just can't do it. Destitute and alone in the world, he hops a train and finds himself working on a circus. That's pretty freaking grim! And I think that, for the most part, the tone remains dark throughout the rest of the book. So when all loose ends are tied up at the end, it feels so....forced. Artificial. At one point Jacob says something to the woman he loves and it sounds EXACTLY like a line out of a Harlequin romance novel. Seriously.

Like I said, it's not the happy ending I mind; it's that the tone of the of the book doesn't support that type of ending. Especially considering that this book takes place during the Depression...look, things just don't magically work out like that. It's too perfect for the time period, and it's too perfect for this type of fiction.

I realize I'm kind of focusing on the negative here. This is still a good book, and the scenes with the animals and other circus folk are charming and engaging. It definitely takes you into a world you've never seen before, so it's worth a read for sure.

The Beginning. Again.

So in April of 2010, I realized that I had already read 35 books that year. Which for four months into the year, is pretty impressive. Especially considering that was my second-to-last semester of undergrad. I decided that in addition to my 365 Portrait Project, I was going to try and read 100 books by December 31st, 2010.

I kept reading at a pretty decent clip throughout the summer. By August 15th, when I went back to school, I had read 55 books. Which was a little behind, numbers-wise, but I thought I could do it. But then it was my last semester of undergrad, and I had to write my senior thesis (which ended up being 140 pages long) so, understandably, I got a little distracted and knew I couldn't make my goal. Plus, I was still having to keep up with my 365 Project as well. I had a lot on my plate.

But now it's 2011. My 365 Project is over (and finished with flying colors). I finished my undergraduate degree last month. I am ready for a new project--well, new in the sense that it is my official focus of this year to read 100 books by December 31st.

It's going to be a trip, that much I know. And I wasn't planning to keep a blog, but in going over my 365 project from last year, I liked the blogging element I added into it. So I'm going to try this blog thing out and see how it goes. Don't fear. I have a B.A. in English. I am a trained professional at this writing thing. Either that or I wasted $80,000 on that degree.

The rules:
Complete 100 books by December 31st.
The books must exceed 150 pages in length.
Manga is not included in the book count.

Other than that, any book is free game. Re-reads are all good (and apparently, re-reading books isn't as common as I think it is? Post on that sometime later). And yes, even JF and YA. I'm not fond of book challenges that exclude these two genres and dismiss them as some sort of paraliterature. If not for these two genres, though, we would never have become voracious readers as children and in turn, voracious readers as adults. And sometimes, you just have to return to your roots. So yes, there will probably be more than a fair share of YA/JF represented in these 100 books.

I'm not keeping a strict to-read list. I have a shortish list of books that I want to read (or books that I'm waiting to come out, like Bumped and Goliath), but I don't really hold myself to any sort of organized list. My reading habits are very mood dependent. I can't keep a pile of books by my bed, hoping that'll force me to read them, because it's very possible that I could not be in the mood to read those books for months on end. Sad but true.

And then, of course, there's the bad book cleanse. Which I'll talk about later.

So what's this blog for? I'm not going to be posting about every book I read. That's a lot of books. And sometimes I won't have anything particularly interesting to say about a book, especially if it's one of my habitual re-reads. And it's not just about books. It'll be about reading habits, libraries, anything book related. So I guess this is kind of a general book blog with the undercurrent of this 100 books-in-a-year thing.

So that's what it's all about, I guess. Welcome to the year of 20,000 pages.