Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Requiem


The last book in Oliver's Delirium series leads Lena eventually back to Portland. The chapters alternate between Hana and Lena until they eventually collide. The whole romance thing sort of gets resolved by just ending, which I am fine with, but if readers are on some kind of "team," they may be disappointed.

Like I mentioned in the first review of book one, I don't have any desire to read the other sub-books that came out about some of the other characters. I'm just going to let these characters go and I will believe what I believe as far as what happened after the end and what happened when the characters were not part of the immediate storyline.


Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Pandemonium


This is the second of three books and it started with Delirium.

So in the blog post for Delirium I said that the second book is always a disappointment, but I'm going to read it anyway. Well, I devoured this book and I take back what I said about the "second book blues." Lauren Oliver is smart. She changed up the formatting of the second book to keep me in suspense. Lena, now in the Wilds, is seen in both flashback and present so it is jarring in the beginning and then it is a great suspense tool. It took me all day to cook Sunday dinner because I needed to fit the cooking in between chapters. And the ending. . . I saw it coming, but it was still good when it came. 


Monday, August 24, 2015

Delirium


The Hook: 
In an alternate United States, love has been declared a dangerous disease, and the government forces everyone who reaches eighteen to have a procedure called the Cure. Living with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in Portland, Maine, Lena Haloway is very much looking forward to being cured and living a safe, predictable life. She watched love destroy her mother and isn't about to make the same mistakes.
But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena meets enigmatic Alex, a boy from the Wilds who lives under the government's radar. What will happen if they do the unthinkable and fall in love?
My thoughts:
The problem with trilogies (and YA authors, especially YA dystopian authors, love to commit to trilogies) is that the first book is always the best book and those of us that read a lot of these dystopian YA books (well I will speak for myself) expect the first one to be the best and wait to be disappointed, but read the second book anyway. Hunger Games, Divergent, City of Bones, Girl of Fire and Thorns. . .

That said, this is a good first book to this trilogy. The dystopian society, Portland, has a cure for love and all of its horrible side effects so Lena looks forward to this procedure until she meets a boy. Yes, you know the rest, but it is still worth reading and the two bombshells at the end of the book are worth reading the second book Pandemonium

I will not, however read the 1.5, 0.5, 1.1, 2.0 books that came after the trilogy. I think young readers who are really hesitant to let go of a world find value in authors who continue stories through other characters. I'm old and although I enjoy YA books and teach teachers who need to understand the YA genre, I believe that there is power in inference and letting readers have more autonomy to create the lives of characters that belong now to the reader rather than the author. Isn't that what reading is all about?

Saturday, August 8, 2015

LOVE volume 2: THE FOX


Author: Frederick Brremaud
Publisher: Magnetic Press, Diamond Book Distributors
Publication Date: November 10, 2015
Hardcover: 80 pages

In short: A day in the life of the fox, a one-eyed survivor on an island that is literally blowing up as the day progresses. In this wordless, lushly illustrated book, will the fox survive the avalanche, lava flows, predators?

My thoughts: This book "reads" like an HD nature documentary, except that the animals on this island seem like they were just thrown together by some mad scientist trying to collect a menagerie of assorted animals who seem to be out of their element. I can see the fox with the brown bear, rabbits and porcupine, but with the killer whales and polar bear too? Who attacked the fox so that it is blind in one eye? And when the fox goes to the old tree, is the baby fox her baby?

Throughout the book, I kept asking myself why is this series called Love? Where is the love y'all? At the end is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson which is also curious, "Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen." Does the universe conspire to help this fox survive and live another day? Is that love?

See what you think.

Pre-published e-edition made possible by Net Galley and the publisher.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

The Girl of Fire and Thorns Trilogy by Rae Carson


I have no excuses, but here are my excuses - I finished my doctorate a year ago and was in an administration job,  while also trying to do research and publish as well as get my abstracts chosen for research conferences. So, my reading is behind.

The great part of being behind on my reading is that I am not waiting with bated breath for these authors to pump out the next book in their trilogy. 

This trilogy is another badass girl is gonna save the world all by her damn self trilogy (Hunger Games, Divergent, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera).

What I like about this chosen girl, Elisa, is that she is fat, like seam busting fat. She is the chosen one, but she doesn't know why and no one really clues her in so she needs to rely on her own wits and her heavy body to not betray her.

She is nowhere near perfect, but she transforms herself and she thinks about her people first. Nice.