My last post was a little angry. I'm sorry. Can you tell I'm not enjoying my first week back at school?
But I wasn't lying when I said I read about 116 books. I read A LOT. There's no way I will remember everything I read, but here's some of the ones I remember/have strong feelings about:
This is number 7 in the Artemis Fowl series, and I know it's for middle-schoolers, but ohmygosh, I love this series. And this latest installment is, in my opinion, one of the best. Usually the books are about Artemis being the super-smart 14-year-old criminal mastermind who saves/occasionally exploits the technologically advanced hidden fairy population in Ireland he has befriended.
And #7 was like that, except different. It had a different feel about it, which I LOVED. Instead of following the same tried-and-true formula, Eoin Colfer shook it up and gave Artemis a mental condition, the Atlantis Complex, which he developed because of meddling with magic and feeling guilty about the past crimes he had committed. So instead of everyone depending on Artemis, his friends had to save him. All the same surprise twists and turns that I loved about the previous were in The Atlantis Complex, but, like I said before, in a different way.
What Happened to Goodbye:
Sarah Dessen's latest novel wasn't bad, but it didn't blow me away like Just Listen did. The main character, McLean, lives with her dad, who moves around a lot because of his job. At every new place, McLean invents a new persona, a different character to be. And like every other Dessen book, the broken girl meets The Boy, makes a Best Friend, and overcomes her Family Issue. Her books have gotten a little formulaic, but she's talented enough to pull it off, because she makes her characters so unique and interesting. Eventually, McLean survives everyone finding out about her many personalities, makes up with her mom, and gets a boyfriend. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoyed reading the book because Dessen is so awesome at writing interesting characters and scenarios. If you haven't read any of Sarah Dessen's books before, I highly recommend you do, all her books are really great.
I really loved this book. I saw the movie when it came out a few years ago, and it was just OK. But wow, the book is amazing! It's about this guy who has Chrono-Displacement disorder, a genetic mutation that makes him randomly travel through time. He can't control it, though it happens more when he drinks or is stressed. He shows up at some place in time, usually during his lifetime, (though he does go further into the future a few rare times) and at a place that he usually familiar with. That's how he meets his future wife when she's only 9 years old. Through the years he shows up and visits her in a meadow behind her house. Of course, he was in his thirties when he would show up, so when she finally meets him in a real world setting, he has no idea who she is. She knows so much about him, but he has no idea who she is. Audrey Niffenegger (what a last name!) handled the complexities of time travel really well, and the book flowed well. Definitely a sweet love story.
I don't even know why I'm telling you about this book. It's about a girl who finds out she is half-pixie. Yeah. One of those books. The characters really annoyed me. The story annoyed me. And yet, I still read the sequel. Which was even more annoying. I told you I read a lot of books this summer. Even ones I didn't like, because Provo library does not have a good selection of books. Also all the good books are always checked out.
Delirium:
Officially the last book of the summer I read. I actually finished it just last night. Delirium is about a dystopian society where love is a disease they "cure" when you turn eighteen (like a lobotomy of emotions). Of course, the main character Lena gets "infected" a few weeks before she turns eighteen. Usually I love dystopian books (The Giver, The Hunger Games, Uglies, Matched (which is only slightly better than this book)) and maybe those other amazing books have ruined all others for me, because I didn't enjoy this book very much. It actually took me a week to finish it, and this summer I was averaging 2-3 books a day. I thought about it and pinpointed what went wrong: right from the beginning, Lauren Oliver tells you everything. The whole history of the society, the whole history of the character. There was no suspense, no sense of mystery that keeps the reader going because she wants to find out more. You know everything, about the "cure," about the new organization of the United States, how dissenters run away to the woods, why she lives with her aunt and uncle now. There was nothing to look forward to! But after reading The Hunger Games, where everything was so intense and crazy and I never knew what was coming, I guess reading about a girl who mildly takes a stand in the name of love seems a little hippy-ish and lame.
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