Book Blog: Looking for Alaska by John Green

It's weird; the book is similar to TFIOSm yet it is nothing like it. I mean, not to sound vague on purpose or anything. It seemed like a nice way to start off a review at the time, but no it just sounds confusing. Forget it.

I remember when I found this book at the bookstore. I looked at the cover and thought, "What the heck is THAT?!" It seemed like steam or something completely unrelated to looking for something (I didn't read the back cover). But I get it now. It's smoke! ...right? Smoke from a cigarette.

I had very, very high expectations for this book. I mean, it's JOHN GREEN, the author of TFIOS! Bt I guess I should have lowered my expectations since this book was written BEFORE his master piece.

I'll start with the bad stuff. The role-modeling factor was bad. There's smoking, drinking, bad language, reckless driving, etc. I personally did not like the fact that Green made it seem that all teenagers did this stuff (see list in pervious sentence). I wish he tossed in more rule FOLLOWERS instead of rule BREAKERS. Just for variety.

Another thing I didn't like was the plot line. It seemed to be all over the place. Half of the time, I couldn't even figure out the point of it all. I suppose it's about Pudge finding the Great Perhaps, but I don't know. Before seemed to be a lot of development and nonsense fluffy while After was the actually meat of the story. And yet the After was smaller than the Before. Weird.

Now to the positive stuff. The constant countingdown of days because it left the reader wondering what was going to happen. And I really like how the readers can relate with the characters. Sometimes. Like the quote below:

"I hated discussion classes. I hated talking,  and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm the teacher, so teach me." -Page 32-33

Besides the obvious fact that Pudge is complaining (which I think annoys everyone because no one wants to hear someone complain all the time), I totally get that. I also wish that all classes would be lecture classes. And that's why I love Green so much.

But, despite all that, I have to knock off a star. It just wasn't amazing like TFIOS.

Rating: 4 stars

Book Blog: Tiger's Curse

IT LOOKS LIKE HE'S STARING INTO MY SOUL. The cover is freaky. Like, really freaky. Imagine waking up every morning, and then glancing over to your bedside table to see THAT. It might not seem that scary on your screen, but your probably haven't just woken up from a deep sleep not exactly knowing what going on.

Like usual, I'm writing this review based on my notes, so I'm sorry if its really choppy.

SPOILERS AHEAD

It's really, really obvious that the tiger is the prince. The prologue, the extremely tame tiger, and it's human like actions are all clear signs that its not a regular tiger. So when it was revealed that he was Ren the prince, it felt like a magic trick gone wrong.

Our protagonist, Kelsey, is not all that bright. I don't care what kind of instinct you have, you DO NOT touch a tiger without a professional handler around. And even then, it's not safe. She's an idiot! It also seems really unrealistic that she'll just up and go to Indai with a strange man that she hasn't know for very long and a tiger. And who in the right mind would send an eighteen year-old girl who has pretty much not training as a handler to India to help the tiger settle in?

The author concentrates on too many little details. Like how fantastic the plane is. Or how awesome Ren's house is. I don't really care! Why does Kelsey have all this free time, anyway?

So, I was looking at the praise for the book and I noticed that two talked about how it's like Twilight. This freaks me out. If there's someone out there linking this book to Twilight,  then it must be really similar in some way. And, what do you know? It is! There's the stupid love triangle and a guy who's really old, but looks really young. And Bella's kind of an airhead, just like Kelsey!

Speaking of Kelsey, you know what really annoyed me? The fact that she ordered Ren to call her Kells. It's not cute if the other person didn't make it up!!! And the dialogue is really weird.

"'My favorite style, though, is the way you were wearing it earlier when you had it draped across both of your ram loosely. That way, I get the full effect of your exquisite hair tumbling down your back.'" (Pg 131).

Okay, seriously you guys? Exquisite hair tumbling down your back? I mean, who talks like that? ONLY FANTASY GUYS IN CHEESY ROMANCE BOOKS!

The action scenes are poorly written. I don't feel the suspense at all! You know they're going to survive, been there, done that.

I don't get the big deal about Kelsey leaving. Why is she leaving, anyway? It's not like she's doing anything important at home. Sure, she can say all that crap about Ren not being independent enough without her, but personally, I think he'd do fine. Who needs Kelsey, anyway?

Something else I noticed was that there wasn't really a bad guy. Sure you can probably find the opposing side, but it's not very obvious. This, in particular, bugged me. I love reading about the bad guys! They're usually brilliant masterminds (although I wouldn't set my expectations too high for one in this book) that are SO much smarter than the protagonist. Well, that is, until they're beaten at the end.

Of course, I could rant on. But I think of bored you enough. I DO NOT recommend this book!

Rating: 1 Star

Book Blog: Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi

Alright, you guys. What happened to her legs? If you look really closely at the cover, you could see that they're cut off. Weird. Other than that, it's very eye catching. Loved the colors too.

Now let's quickly move on to the content.

 There have to be a billion words that Rossi just threw at me without an explanation. Sure, maybe some of them were explained later on (some of them later than other's), but by that time, I didn't really care. Well, I did, but I'm trying to say that it was too late.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Also, I noticed a few mistakes/stuff I didn't like. The scene when Roar is introduced into the story was too fast paced. Some of the beginning scenes where Perry shows sights of liking Aria were really, really cheesy.At the Box, Aria said that she took the elevator up to the roof when Perry clearly stated earlier that the elevator only went down, which is why it didn't have any buttons. I thought at first that maybe there was more than one elevator, but they both called it THE elevator. And when did Aria learn to read?

Sorry I put that all in a giant, wordy clump. But now I want to get to the awesome stuff.

I frickin' burst out laughing when Perry smelled Aria wanted to touch him and stuff. And when they finally get together was absolutely cute, cute, cute!!! I'm almost cried, it was so awesome. And the ending, my gosh, I can totally see it all in a movie. AWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!! Oh yeah, and the was this quote:

"Perry tipped his chin at Roar. 'I need you.' Roar followed him without question. He explained what he wanted in the elevator."

I just thought it sounded funny.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Book Blog: Legend by Marie Lu

Oh jeez. This is going to take a while.

The cover looks fantastic. Very clean, neat, and futuristic looking. This is why I bought the book; the cover's awesome. But I should have learned my lesson from Grave Mercy, the other time I read a book based on it's cover. I should have read the back.

My rant begins with the Trials. What are these things, anyway? Lu barely explains them in the beginning, and, although she provides a little more depth later, it's still not very clear what EXACTLY they are.

And what's up with these names? Day and June? Lu must have been staring at the calendar when writing. Day and June are our two lovely protagonist. The whole book is written in first person, but switches POVs ever chapter. I don't know, some authors can pull it off. But not Lu. No way. Absolutely not. It seems to me that Lu is an amateur writer who can't tell a story without having TWO people telling the story instead of one. Do you get what I'm trying to say? It was an bad decision as an author to use two points of view.

"The minutes drag on. I tuck my slingshot away and play a few rounds of Rock, Paper, Scissors with Tess. (I don't know why, but she's crazy good at this game.)" -Page 9

How old are they, five? It's sounds like they play Rock, Paper, Scissors a lot. WHY ARE THEY WASTING PRECIOUS TIME DOING THAT WHEN THEY SHOULD BE CONCENTRATION ON THEIR SURVIVAL?!

Metias, June's brother, has to be bipolar. One moment, he's got a stick up his butt and is all mad at June (because she misbehaved), but the moment someone agrees with him, he's all "Don't be so hard on her!" Can't look like the bad guy, huh, Metias?

"When I was seven years  old...I dipped a ball of crushed ice in to a can of gasoline, let the oil coat the ice in a thick layer, and lit it. Then I launched it with a slingshot through the window of our local police headquarters...They never found out who did it...I had committed my first perfect crime." -Page 22.

Wow. The security of the police headquarters must be really bad or something because I REALLY doubt that a seven year old can commit and so called "perfect" crime without get caught.

Y'know, all this complaining about the rich/poor people really gets on my nerves. Sure, you might think that the poor are filthy and the rich are snotty, but don't you have anything better to think about?

I found it surprising that no one knew the faintest detail of what Day looked like. He's committed so many crimes, you'd think they'd at least get a better guess at his skin color.

I noticed all of these points mentioned about in the first eighty pages. Now onto the rest.

I wish the characters would stop talking TO me. Just tell me your story and go away. Here's an example of when June asked me a question:

"How did he break into this bank in ten seconds, with four armed guards at the back entrance?" 

I don't know, June. How DID he do that? Why don't YOU tell ME? It's your story, isn't it? So you should tell it! This is all really, really stupid. That's the thing; Lu tries to make her characters equally smart. Which, I guess, makes sense SINCE THEY'RE BOTH EQUALLY STUPID!!!

Day is constantly meeting his brother (John) behind the house. I'm surprised that his mom doesn't question his actions. I mean, John mysterious gets some...stuff for Eden to help him recover and his mom doesn't push John to reveal where he got it from? Speaking of Eden, Day thinks that he's Eden's only chance of survival when he's not. Eden could recover on his own! Anythings possible.

I found it incredibly unrealistic that June could just spend, what, three days in a poor sector and suddenly WHAM! Your an instant beggar. This is, of course, how June meets Day. And it makes me sick, sick, sick! They have that instant attraction thing, and Day trusts her almost immediately. I knew he was a fool, but I thought he would have a little common sense. And that kissing thing...it's just not right.

So, yeah. If you couldn't tell, I didn't like this book. It might be good for, like, fourth graders, or something. But not me, no way.

Rating: 1 Star

Book Blogs: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno

Okay. I'll try to make this quick.

I'm a Star Wars fan, and yet I STRONG DISLIKED this book. First of all, the cover's disturbing. Second of all, the writing style was awful. The one good thing about it was the stuff about Maul. And the epilogue. That was pretty good too.

Rating: 1 Star

Footnotes: Unsatisfied With My Blog(s)

Yes, the title pretty much says it all. I'm unsatisfied with this blog and Information Forest. It became something that I really wasn't hoping for. So, as a summ project for myself, I'm thinking of starting over. No, don't worry, this blog will still be here. But it will be archived. I'll begin the slow, tedious process of transferring each post over to the new blog and editing it appropriately. When this change happens, I'll let you know and post the link here. If I have the guts to make the big change.

This will also mean that Information Forest will also be archived (once again). I was thinking about started the whole book description thing, but then I realized that it didn't make any sense. Readers don't want to look at TWO pages instead of one. It's one too many tabs. So I'll be working on that tool

And I want a better blog name. I've been calling this one "Emma Reader's Blog" just because I couldn't think up a better name. I keep telling myself that I'm going to change it, but I never did. And now I'm afraid that if I change the name and the URL doesn't correspond, then readers might get confused. Which is why I want to start "fresh".

So yes, I'm considering the concept of redoing my whole blog. But it's still a concept. I'll keep you guys posted.

Footnotes: A Little Crazy?

I just saw this and thought I'd share. I was looking at my Overview section on blogger for Information Forest and I realized that I had more site views on that blog than this one! I mean, seriously; is this blog that lame? Or is my other blog that helpful? I like to think of it as the latter.

Yeah. That's pretty much I have to say. I'm reading Darth Plagueis at the moment (yes, it IS a Star Wars book!), but I don't know how long it will take me to read it. Not long hopefully.

So, sorry for the very, very, VERY short blog post. Yeah. So. Bye.