in which i finally talk about books.

Perhaps I should talk about books? I think the very fact that I posted about my laptop festering in cat poop is further proof of the non-existence of my brain these past few days. This has been the first cold I've ever had to escalate into an ear infection. Yes, including childhood. It's quite bizarre (now that it's no longer SO painful). Thanks to these ear drops, everything has two (annoyingly dissonant) pitches. It's fascinating to hear myself talk (ha!), but it's HORRIBLE for listening to music. Eek. [And here is where I pause to realize that, much like the cat poop, you guys probably don't actually want to know about this.]

Which is why I've decided to talk about books today. Ahem. So, back in the day (also known as: this past winter), I was all about reading lots of books and blogging about them. This was before I had really come to terms with wanting to blog about writing. It was also before the Hunger Games casting, before I started putting myself out there and actually making blogger friends (hi, friends!), and before I was even close to finishing that good ol' rough draft of yore. Thus, I have not blogged about my reading list in a long time.

Okay, so I talked about worlds on May 16. That sort-of counts. Yay me. Other than that, all I remember posting about is HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE. MmmMmmMmm. So, here are the books I've encounter since Howl (some which I've already mentioned, so bear with me), and a few sentences about them:

FALLEN by Lauren Kate. Not my cup of tea. The setting was the best part. There were definite merits, and I don't like to book-bash, knowing how hard it is to put everything together, but... sigh. Just... not my cup of tea. And that's okay! If the whole brooding fallen angel thing *is* your cup of tea, by all means. Don't let me stop you.

WITHER by Lauren DeStefano. Much more my cup of tea. This book is weird and twisted, dystopian without feeling dystopian, gothic romance without the romance you would expect. Not perfect (sort of lacking in the climax department), but heck, who's perfect? I really enjoyed this book. Thoroughly creepy.

THE TRUTH ABOUT UNICORNS by Bonnie Jones Reynolds. The only non-YA book I've read in a long time. Creepy and long and... kind of grown-up in parts, if you catch my drift, but ultimately a great read. But be warned... it's really weird.

RED GLOVE by Holly Black. Very good. I'm not really on the whole Better-than-White-Cat Bandwagon, but I did enjoy it. Middle books are hard, I'm told, but this one was brilliant. I will say, I was a teensy let down by some things, but not enough to boot this book out of favorite standings. The WORST part about this book is its cover, which makes absolutely no sense once you've read it. What were they thinking?

ORCHARDS by Holly Thompson. I wanted to read this book because of two things: it's written in verse, and it's set in Japan. Anyone read OUT OF THE DUST by Karen Hesse? I adore that book, and it was the first novel in verse I ever read. ORCHARDS was much simpler; it was almost an embarrassingly quick read. But there's lots of good stuff inside, about family, dealing with suicide, coming to terms with your heritage. What's not to appreciate?

THE CHAOS WALKING TRILOGY by Patrick Ness. Shoo. These books are amazing, exhausting, challenging. I was dazed by the end of it all. I still am. Can't find any more words. Still recovering.

PARANORMALCY by Kiersten White. I know. What took me so long, right? Meh, just me being stupid. I was pleasantly surprised, though. I loved Evie more than I thought I would. I loved her world. I even (gasp) loved Reth. Okay, not love loved, but I thought his character was great. All the Fey. Horrifying and totally cool. Lend was okay. Blasphemy! (Just kidding, I loved him, too... I guess.)

DIVERGENT by Veronica Roth. Ah. Now, this is a book I could talk about for days. Perhaps that's because it's so fresh on my mind. I really loved these characters. The factions are brilliant and scary. I would so have ended up in Candor, with my mouth. Or Amity. Or maybe Dauntless, were I insane. If you know much about me, you know that I tend to be picky with romance, and this is one that I really liked. The plot was stellar. Lots of twisting, but never beyond the reaches of what worked for the story. I loved Tris. I celebrated with her, grieved with her. Mm. Great stuff. Do read this one, if you haven't.



Okie dokie. Those are the books I've read since April. I'm halfway to my goal of 60, and, appropriately, just over halfway through the year (is that hard to believe or what?) (the year, not my reading progress). Tune in when I am no longer sick for something more interesting. Yippee!

a quick rant about worlds.

I see a lot of stuff out there about how a believable world makes the reader want to exist inside it. But is that really the case? Personally, I'm tempted to say, "no." A believable world is one that ties the story together, heck, maybe even makes the story possible. If a world is weak, the story will suffer, and vice versa. Thus, if the story is terrifying (due to the intrinsic nature of its location), I don't think that world--no matter how well-crafted--would offer much to my health and happiness. Here's a quick look into some books I've read recently that had rich, poignant worlds, in which I would never want to find myself.

Wither, by Lauren DeStefano. Oh, how I believed that world. I thought I wouldn't at first, but as the story went on, I really saw it take shape. Linden's mansion became one of the realest places I've ever read about. But would I want to live there? Not in a million years, at that cost.


White Cat and Red Glove by Holly Black. I mean, it's brilliant, right? You live in fear of everyone, always thinking, Are they? Is she? Which kind is he? Perfectly chilling and compelling for the books. But in real life? I would never want to live in that kind of uncertainty, or in a reality where a naked hand is not only a possible weapon, but also as private as an entire naked body. It makes me sad, which I think is part of the point.


The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. Um, yeah. This book is super-fresh on my mind, having just burned through the last half of it yesterday, and here's what  have to say. New World is simply horrifying. No place is safe, no place is entirely all-there, and home isn't even an option. Again, perfect for the story, and very well-written, but, oh my gosh. In a few centuries, when people start leaving Earth for other plants, JUST DON'T GO, OKAY?

And, hello, because there's no way I could leave this one out: does anyone really want to live in the world of The Hunger Games? Um, no. If you do, I think you missed the point, there.

So, what really makes a believable world? I don't think it's just a map and a list of clever, comforting foods (although I do like both of those). A real, honest world, is a vehicle. If the story's not pretty, the reality in which it exists probably won't be much fun, either. Of course, there are exceptions. For instance, Narnia. We're supposed to want to live in Narnia. Narnia, ultimately, is a place of joy and honor and growth and becoming the best version of yourself. Narnia is nothing like Panem, which tears down and destroys and murders. So, I'm not saying there aren't any well-thought-out, strongly written worlds in which I would like to find myself. There certainly are. I'm just getting it out there that, although I want to live in Narnia, but would rather get the ever-loving heck away from Panem, doesn't mean that both aren't brilliantly executed. You know?

Getting down off the soap box, now. Everybody having a nice Monday?

if love makes me sick, at least i'll still be human.

Interesting, but I like the ARC cover better.

Here's the post where I talk about Delirium, by Lauren Oliver.

First of all, I know I read an "Advanced Readers' Edition: Not For Sale," which means that some changes were probably made before the final final final version (like, the cover), so take what I say with half a grain of salt.  But only half.

The major premise of this book is that love is seen as a curable sickness rather than an God-given instinct.  Sounds terrifying, right?  Well, it definitely was.  One thing that has always bothered me about dystopian novels--that kept me from enjoying Brave New World and even tripped me up while reading The Giver--was the blazing frustration of:  Seriously, this would never happen.  Why are we even stressing out about it?  I think we can all agree that that was part of what made The Hunger Games so great: the realness.  The proclivity of humanity to possibly, actually, maybe progress that way.  The world in Delirium did not seem quite as possible, because, honestly, who would agree to a mandated transition from loving your children to feeling nothing but apathy toward them?  I mean, that's barely even human.  I suppose that was the point.

That's another thing that gets me about dystopian.  You want to fight so hard for what the characters believe in--what you believe in--but all you're really fighting for is something that makes you so innately human that it can never be taken away.  Makes the whole thing seem a little moot, to me.  But it works for the same reason:  Readers love having something to fight for.

Anyway, Delirium.  Things I liked:  The relationship between the main character and her best friend, the color of the boy's hair, the ending (no spoiling from me!), the "literature" at the beginning of every chapter, and the way the main character got around to figuring everything out.

Sigh.  I really liked that I had something to fight for (see above), but it bothered me that the first thing on Lena's mind was her romantic love and not the horror of losing all emotion.  I mean, it was there, but at the end (spoiler alert?) when she was deciding to stand up for herself, her reasoning was all I heart this boy, and not, uh,  Hey, this is one sick way to live if a parent can't even console their own child, which is what had been plaguing my mind the whole time.  That was my only real, major complaint, but it made sense to be that way.  I kept reminding myself that I was reading a seventeen-year-old girl, not a twenty-something-year-old woman.  Then I got frustrated even further, though, because I am pretty sure that at seventeen I still would have felt worse about the bigger picture.  Of course, I was never in love in high school.

I don't know.  Maybe it was just the way the people in that world had altered everything from the past, even religion, to serve their purposes.  I kept waiting for Lena to learn that God taught love, not warned against it, because I know that's where my motivation would have been as a teenager.  But that would have made an entirely different story.  That's what I told Joshua when I finished the book:  I was really intrigued by the world (as improbable as it was), but I would have maybe put a different kind of story into it.  I don't know what my problem with romance is.  Maybe it's because I've never been an overly-romantic person in real life (hello, first kiss at 23, here--by choice, at that), but it is really hard for me to grasp, sometimes.  I mean, I really liked both Lena and Alex as characters, and I did (I promise I did) very much like the story (once it picked up), but I so wanted there to be another layer to them the whole time.  What did they really have in common, again?  We all know why Alex stuck out to Lena, but why did she stick out to him?  To be fair, I know this was addressed in the book, but it's hard when you only get one character's point of view.  You know.

Lucky for all of us, this is the first of a trilogy, which I did not know upon finishing, and am a little surprised to find out.  I thought it worked splendidly as a stand alone.  Sure, there were loose ends, but they were poetic enough for me to accept and even appreciate.  So, three cheers for the author on that one.  But some parts of it (vague spoiling ahead) seemed so final, so complete, what else can there be to say?

Regardless, it was a gripping story with characters both lovely and frightening, and the last few chapters had me reeling with adrenaline.  I would recommend this book to anyone who likes romance and standing up for what you believe in, but not much else.  And I KNOW  I didn't read the final copy but, gracious, were there ever some typos.  I think I would make a decent copyeditor.  I usually (not always, but usually) catch all those things that somehow slip through, and no book is immune, it seems (or blog post, for that matter).

The more I think about it, the more I am really looking forward to the rest of the series.  I'm so curious to see where it will go.  Thrilling!