Light reading with substance

The Man of My Dreams

I first picked up this book because I read Curtis Sittenfeld's book "Prep" and really enjoyed it. Overall, I think I liked "Prep" better than this one, but this was still a good read. I know that from the title, it sounds all, "OMG I had a turbulent romantic history but true love will prevail!" but it's not really like that. I thought the characters came across as very real, complex, and relatable. What I really like about Sittenfeld's books is that they're really addicting and easy to read, but at the end I still feel like she has something of substance to say, which I really appreciate.

This is a book about a girl named Hannah and her ideas about love. It follows her from her junior high days up through her late twenties. I don't know how to easily sum up the plot, but I guess I'll just say it's about broken families, feeling abnormal, waiting, loneliness, and things not going according to plan. In the beginning, I thought I wasn't going to like it, because the junior high part feels a little... well, distant, I suppose, but after that it really picks up. Also, I thought the ending could have been stretched out a bit more. Everything was just wrapped up in letter form, which I didn't really like. But! These are just minor complaints. 7.5 pretzel bites.

KAY

Y.S.K.O.V.

You Shall Know Our Velocity!

This is a novel by the wonderful Dave Eggers. The basic premise is this: the main character, Will, came into quite a bit of money by doing virtually nothing and he doesn't want it. One of his best friends since childhood, Jack, just died and, in addition, Will was just badly beaten up, leaving his face all gruesome looking. Will and his other best friend, Hand, decide to go around the world and give all the money away, but they only have a week to do it. I will let you know that this is not one of those books where they get to the first place and decide, "Actually, let's just stay here." They really do go several places.

The plot is not gripping, but that doesn't really bother me. The characters are amazing and the writing is beautiful. I love the character of Will. Basically, the whole book is just an extended look into his head and it's fascinating. The middle was the best part. I think it fizzled out a little bit at the end. Not that the end was bad, the middle was just better. Overall, if you're looking for gorgeous, quality writing with interesting characters, I fully recommend this book. 8.5 pretzel bites!

KAY

Michael Crichton

Airframe AND Timeline by: Michael Crichton


So i got both these books at a used bookstore about 4 months ago and didn't read them either until about two weeks ago. Then I blazed through both of them.



So: I have learned that Crichton tends toward starting his books with a few people that you never meet again. In this case its a couple who are hunting rugs in New mexico and they find a crazy old man in the desert who only talks in rymes. Next, they logically take the crazy guy to a hospital. He promptly dies as all of his organs fail on him. Cut to some Harvard researchers in the French Dordogne river region, where they are doing some archaeological dig for some medieval buildings. The private company they are being funded by suddenly calls in the leading proffesor. Buisness continues as usual


until the team uncovers an underground room and find a centuries old scroll with the proffesors handwritting on it. The rest of the researchers demand answers from the company. The company then reveals that it has acces to quantum time traveling equipment and the proffesor has been trapped in the past. So the rest of the researchers of course have to go back and save him. I liked the book well. It was about a good and contoversial subject. But I swear Crichton must have taken whole college courses on each book he wrote because he has such a wealth of knowledge on each subject that he writes about. It is a bit rediculous.
Finnal rating: 7 pretzel bites
Fun fact i wrote a book review of this for my teacher for extra credit and he though I didnt actually read the book. Really Mr. Weber?





Airframe Review: So as mentioned before this book starts off with a couple of people we never meet or hear from again. They are are on an airplane that experiences some "difficulties". The rest of the book is just the company trying to figure out what the heck happened. I cant tell you much more because it pretty much all important. Now i know everything about 1980s flight procedures and the FCC. Its pretty interesting and i had a hard time putting it down toward the end.
I give it a 8 pretzel bites

TEE

She's so dead to us

She's So Dead to Us

This book, by Kieran Scott, is in the vein of such books as the A-list series and the Clique series, and I would imagine that if you liked those books, you'd like this one as well. The basic plot is this: formerly rich Ally Ryan suddenly had to leave town when her father caused her friends' families to lose millions. Now Ally's father is M.I.A., and she's moving back to her old town to live in a crappy condo and face the girls who used to be her friends. She returns to discover that a boy named Jake is now living in her old house and hanging out with her old friends. Ally likes Jake. Jake likes Ally. Ally's former friends do not like Ally and don't want Jake to be with her. Drama ensues.

I feel a little bit bad because we got this book specially from our friends and I didn't even really like it that much. The exposition seemed a little blocky. The characters were not as complex as I would have liked them to be. The plot was interesting, and I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I did get really caught up in it in the middle. Overall, though, I prefer my light reading to have just a bit more substance than this novel did. I will also warn you that it's meant to be part of a series, which means that at the end, nothing is resolved. There's just a huge cliffhanger. I give this book 6.5 pretzel bites.

KAY

I'm a Sarah Dessen expert now

That Summer

Hey, pals. So I just finished this book by Sarah Dessen. It was the only one of hers I had yet to read, and now I have read her entire collection, which is a little nerdy, but also makes me really happy. For a more general review of Sarah Dessen books, read my review of "Along for the Ride" here. In this book, 15-year-old Haven longs for summers past, specifically the summer when her sister Ashley was dating the fun, charming Sumner. Now, Ashley's getting married to a boring guy named Lewis, her family's falling apart after her parents divorce and her father's marriage to his mistress, and Haven has just about had it. That's when Sumner shows up again, making Haven long for the past even more. This definitely wasn't my favorite Sarah Dessen book (you can see how her writing matures in her later books), but it was still a really nice short spring break read, and I liked that the ending wasn't picture perfect. I give it 7.5 pretzel bites.

KAY

I don't want to be a freshman all over again

Please Don't Kill the Freshman

This book is a memoir by Zoe Trope about her freshman and sophomore years in high school, about falling in love, about being gay, about getting a book deal, about feeling misunderstood. I first picked it up because someone told me that something I wrote reminded them of this book. It was meant as in, "The writing and characters are really good, but the public won't like it because there's no plot." So, of course, I had to be self-centered and go read the book that was supposedly like mine. The first thing I discovered, before I even started reading, was that on the cover there are comments from DAVE EGGERS and JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER saying how genius it is. If Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer loved something I'd written, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care if the public did or not.

So yes. There's not really a plot. That didn't really bother me. It took me a little while to get into it, because a lot of times it's written kind of like poetry. It can be very cryptic. At first, I found the author irritating. Then, however, I hit a point where I couldn't put it down. I just wanted to keep reading. I still found it irritating in places, but it was just so beautifully written. There were several lines I had to reread multiple times because they were just phrased so perfectly. This book is definitely not for everyone, but overall it is a truly lovely piece of work. 7.5 pretzel bites.

KAY

Guess who's behind the times again?

The Time Traveler's Wife

So, by this point, practically everyone's heard of this book by Audrey Niffenegger. However, for a really long time I had the impression that it was about women being abused in ancient China, and that was never something I was in the mood to read. I know. I have no idea why I thought that. Then I saw the trailer for the movie (which apparently is horrible and I have no intention of seeing) and thought the concept seemed kind of interesting. For those of you who have been living under a rock like me and don't know what it's about, there's this guy named Henry who every now and then just disappears and travels through time involuntarily. Not like, oh wow, let's revisit Germany and try to stop Hitler, but like, to parts of his own past and whatnot. He's been visiting his wife Clare (who does not travel through time) ever since she was a child, so they've always known that they were meant to be together, and the book is the tale of their lives together. A lot of it takes place in Chicago, which was nice because I was familiar with a lot of the settings.

In the beginning, this book was really intriguing. The whole concept and logistics of time travel really interested me, and it was strange to think about because, when it really comes down to it, they only met because future Henry told past Clare they were supposed to, and then Clare grew up and met Henry in the present and told him, "Hey, we're supposed to be together." Interesting, right? It must have taken a lot of planning on the part of the author, too, to get all the chronology to match up. After a while, though, it got into all this drama where they were trying to have a kid, which was more boring for me, maybe because I can't relate. Then at the end, it got really intense out of nowhere. I didn't find the ending all that satisfying. I think I lost interest a little bit in the middle. Anyway, I give this book 7 pretzel bites.

KAY