YA Novels revisited and The Mortal Instruments

I retract my opinion of YA novels.

I don't think they're inherently terrible. Sometimes the writing is great, sometimes the story isn't great, sometimes both, and sometimes neither. But you'll find the same things happening in any kind of novel, and it's really not fair for me to clump all these together.

So, let me revisit some of the series that I've read.

Hunger Games:
It's first person, which I don't love, and I wish that some of the really critical scenes would actually be written out for us to experience (versus having Katniss pass out and then recapped later). But I like the story, I think it's good. It's been a while since I read it, so I don't really remember how the writing itself is, but I still read it all twice. And Catching Fire was my least favorite book. Mockingjay was my most favorite. I think the movies have been really well done.

Harry Potter:
Really good series! It spans a long time, and the writing starts out attracting a younger audience, which is cool, but not what I wanted when I started reading it (because I didn't start reading it until all the books were out, so I didn't grow with the characters). Rowling does a lot of things, actually, that I've read about doing in "How to Write a Novel" books, and it's interesting to see it in a real book. Like, one of the things I read is that whenever you have a character come up in the book, you need to emphasize something about the character (like Hermione's buck teeth and frizzy hair), and each time they come into a scene, make sure you include the description of them. I thought it was unnecessary, but I'm not an author, so what do I really know about it. Haha. Anyway, really good story, and I like how complete it all is. Also really well done movies.

Divergent:
First person, again. I still don't love that, and I don't really think there was anything spectacular about the writing, as mentioned earlier, but I love the story so much. I would recommend it, especially to people who aren't super into reading. It's nice and easy to get through, so that's got its perks. And the movie was fantastic. I like the little changes it had, I think I prefer it (but probably mostly because I saw it before I read the book).


The Mortal Instruments:
The last book just came out, which I just finished a week or so ago. This is the one that's made me revisit my opinion of YA novels, since I read it so close to having decided I don't like YA novels and it contradicted a lot of the things I said.

This is another 3rd person story, and I really like it. It has the main character, and then all her friends are main characters and frequently the POV character for any given scene. And the writing is actually pretty good, lots of nice metaphors and similes and all that. She references real things from the world (like bands, or pieces of art, video games) which I always think is odd, but it's not bad.

I read the last book in a few days (which is pretty average for a book I like, I'm a terribly slow reader). It was good, but what bothers me about it is the same thing that's bothered me about all of the books up to now. Everything comes together perfectly. Haha. That seems like a strange complaint. Hear me out. I'm gonna compare it Divergent a bunch, and also Harry Potter.

Everything that happens in TMI has a purpose, it all connects back to have had a reason for happening. It's kinda cool, but I think it's overdone. They do it similarly in Harry Potter *spoiler alert* like the killing curse rebounds on Harry to hit Voldemort, and yet Voldemort doesn't die. Even though it's the killing curse... why? Well, you find out books later, it's because Voldemort has horcruxes, so his soul is split into a bunch of different objects, preventing his death. And you find out later, that because Harry didn't die and he rebounded the curse, now he's an inadvertent horcrux. It all connects back to have had a purpose.

And it's similar in TMI. For example *spoiler alert* Clary has a friend who's a mundane (this world's form of muggle) and through a series of events, he gets turned into a vampire. Which is awkward, because the friend (Simon) is a vegetarian and now he has to drink blood, so he's trying to live off old animal blood so at least he doesn't drink for humans, but they're stuck on a boat, and he's dying since he hasn't fed in a while, so Jace (one of the main characters) lets him drink his blood. Simon does, and later, as they're on boat and the sun is rising, everyone's freaking out because Simon is a vampire and he's about to die because there's no way to save him from the sunlight, but turns out the by drinking Jace's blood, he can go out in the sunlight now. Why? Well, back in the day, the guy who raised Jace was experimenting with thing and he put angel blood in Jace's blood, and by drinking that, Simon can go out in the sun. Which makes him super special to all the vampires, and they all hate him a bit because of it, and that goes on to get more complicated.

The two have complicated story lines that run together and affect the outcome of events, but it's different. Take another example:

In Divergent, sometimes Roth (writer) has Tris (main character) do something just because she can. Like, Tris goes on a big zip line over the city. How does this change the story? It doesn't really, which is why I'm not calling a spoiler alert. All it does is give the reader some insight into the way the Dauntless live, but it doesn't affect the plot. It's just something Tris does because she can.

In TMI, you don't really get that. Everything that happens has a reason for happening, once you finish the story. Let's continue on with my previous example. *major-spoiler alert*

Clary and her group of friends all go to a party hosted by Magnus Bane. They go because Clary needs to talk to Magnus to try to get to the bottom of something or other, but really Clary's the only one who needs to go. And actually, she needs someone to escort her. So Clary and Jace are the only ones who really need to go. But everyone else joins because, well, party. This could have been a great opportunity to just get acquainted with how the Shadowhunter world works in a casual setting, especially when they mix with Downworlders (and this would have been an especially good opportunity since it's Simon and Clary's first party with Downworlders and Shadownhunters, as well as the audience's). But it's not left to just that. This is where Simon accidentally gets turned into a rat and accidentally gets kidnapped to the Vampire's lair in the Hotel Du Mort.

Jace and Clary go after Simon in the hotel and save him, and then they go home and everything's fine. They continue on with their plans as normal. It was odd to have them leave the Hotel and everything was fine. Simon turned back into a human, and they kept going along their way, no lasting conflict, just a random side trip. Several chapters later, though, you find out there was some conflict that came from that-- Simon is turning into a vampire. So they now have to deal with that for the rest of the story, and it complicates things nicely. It's a lasting hurtle to get over-- Simon is never going age (he's stuck at 17), he has to deal with his blood lust, inability to be in the sunlight-- until the thing with Jace happens, trying to tell his family he's a vampire, trying to maintain his old lifestyle, being rejected by all the vampires in New York because he doesn't really want to be a vampire... It's interesting. He has to come to terms with who he is now and find a place where he can belong in society.

And in the very end of the series, the group finds themselves in this situation, and to get free, Simon volunteers to give up his Daylighter Vampireness in exchange for himself and all of his friends to go home. Which then undoes the entire thing where he had to come to terms with being a vampire and try to work things out with his family and really everything that made this story line interesting.

I mean, I suppose it's ok, up to a point. I can deal with there not really being a period specifically to get to know how things work casually in this world. That can be combined with the plot twists, no problem. Plenty of books do that. But then, the ending... I'm not sure forced is quite the right word, but more like planned.

I firmly believe that there's the way you want to story to end, and then there's the way the story should end.

And sometimes it matches up. Like with Harry Potter. It was sad, it was happy-- it was mostly happy-- there was redemption and many people died that I didn't want to die, but everyone that was most important lived and went on to be ok. And they had their traumas and things to get over, but they all ended up fine. And there's no reason that anything different should have necessarily happened.

Sometimes it doesn't line up. Divergent had a way I wanted it to end: perfectly. I want this to be wrapped up nicely, I want them to work out their problems, I want him to gain back her trust... There's probably going to be some sacrifices, sure, but this is the idea I have of how I want the story to end based on how attached I've grown to the characters. And then there's the way it should end, and I think that's exactly how Roth ended it. If the story had ended any differently, it would have been wrong. It would have deviated form the integrity of the characters, and it would have been an insult to what she had created.

But I admire Roth for writing a story with characters so strong that this is the way it had to end, and there was nothing else that could be done for it, and then writing it anyway, even though honestly, it probably broke her heart more than anyone else's to have to write it how she did.

With The Mortal Instruments, the characters had flaws and everything, but it all worked out to create a perfect ending, so sickeningly happy that it actually turned me off a little bit.

It seems like the big difference is this: Rowling and Roth wrote about life and about characters. They had a story that needed to be told, and they had characters who manipulated the story to make it turn out the way it did. Clare wrote about a story. She had a story that needed to be told and an idea for how she wanted it to end, and she created characters that would fit the molds so she could have the perfect ending. It's the difference between the characters defining the story and the story defining the characters.

I can imagine Roth sitting down to plan her story and at some point having a realization about how the story needs to go and saying, "Oh no. I can't do that. Oh no. No no no no no. Oh but... eff. I can't not do it."

And I can imagine Clare sitting down to plan her story and saying, "Ok, so I want this ending, and I can get there if I do this... which will actually work out here because I'll write like this is what's going to happen, and it will catch everyone so off guard when I bring this out, and it's just, it's perfect."

Blah. I want to rewrite these stories haha. I want to rewrite Divergent so it's third person and has some more description in it, but keep the plot, and I want to rewrite The Mortal Instruments so that the story is tweaked just a little here and there. Maybe someday. I'll add it to the list of projects haha.

Be Brave.

I have a friend who is in love with the book Divergent. I also have a sister who read it and told me I should. So I kinda decided that someday I would, but I didn't exactly get a great recommendation (in fact, Scooter's exact words were, "you should read Divergent. It's a wee bit predictable, and some parts are super lame. Glowing review, right? You should read it.") so I wasn't particularly concerned about getting around to it.

And then it came out in movie form and a bunch of my church friends all saw it, my one friend who's in love with it saw it and posted about it, and everything, but I still didn't really care about it. I didn't actually even read the blog that went with it. I knew nothing about this book, but I decided it wasn't exactly my thing. Then Alli, my best friend since 3rd grade, listened to it on CD and she told me super vaguely about the plot, which interesting me enough to finally watch the movie.

I loved it. So much. We went to see it on the 7th, and I bought the first book, Divergent, that night. I had finals the study for and take the next week, so it took me a while to finish it, but I finally did around the 11th, and then immediately started Insurgent and finished it on the 16th, then started Allegiant and finished that yesterday.

Let me just start by saying that I don't love teen novels, especially the popular ones. I haven't read many of them (the only ones that come to mind are Hunger Games, The Mortal Instruments, and now Divergent. Oh, I guess Harry Potter, too, but that seems like an exception maybe since I didn't actually love reading the series until I got to the 5th book), but that's because I really dislike them. I always end up loving the stories, and usually I get really sucked in, but they're really... uh, how do I explain it... easy? They're an easy read, you don't have to think much, usually they're in first person (all the ones I listed are) and it bothers me. It makes me lazy. This isn't something I've always known about, I did have a blog a while back about how fantastic Hunger Games was. And after I finished that series, I wanted something else to read, and that's the first time I picked up His Dark Materials (which is so fantastic. I highly recommend it). But His Dark Materials is written better than Hunger Games, and I couldn't focus enough or use my brain enough to handle it. It was too thick. Which is embarrassing.

I dislike feeling like I can't handle something that "advanced." But every single time I've gotten into a teen series thing, that's without fail what happens. I can no longer focus on the better books. This is where I personally draw a line between a story and literature. If it's something that's easy to get into and doesn't require a lot of brain power, I just call it a story. If it's something that I actually can feel improving my cognitive skills, that's literature. There's just a difference.

All this said, I feel the exact same way about Veronica Roth's writing. There's nothing spectacular about it, and I had to engage myself with critiquing what she wrote as I read it to not fall into this trap. She had some entertaining dialogue, and there was like 1 or 2 sentences in the entire series that stood out to me. But, that's not a lot. 1 or 2? In 3 books? When I was reading The Way of Kings, I did not get through a full chapter before stopping and running upstairs to read a sentence to my mom, because I thought it was written so poetically. He seemed so cold. Like a shadow caused by heat and light falling on someone honorable and true, casting this black imitation behind. It was such a cool visual. Love it. And I just didn't get any love of the prose in Roth's stories.

However. The story was so good. I still do not love the way Roth writes. But her story was so well thought out and captivating that these characters won my heart, and I cried so hard at the end of it. Berserk once said that the ending for His Dark Materials made him really sad for the characters, but that was praise in itself, because he actually cared about what happened to them. I'd say it's similar here. The way the story is told might not be the best, but the story itself is so good that I genuinely cared about these characters and the ending destroyed me a little. PS, Mom would not want to read this one haha. She could probably hand the movies, though.


Honestly, maybe the story isn't all that captivating for everyone, but I loved it. Here's a quick run down of what drew me in so much. The story starts off in a place with factions. There's 5 of them and they each value something different. You're born into whatever faction your family is a part of, and the year you turn 16, you participate in the yearly Choosing Ceremony, where you decide upon a faction to live in for the rest of your life. There's a test you take to kind of help you figure out where you could belong, but the decision is yours to pick whatever you want. But the factions don't mix, so if you choose differently than you family, well.

Faction before blood. The factions are the most important things in your life. You swear to live a certain way, and nothing will break that bond. It's just not done. So the five factions are Abnegation (selflessness and serving), Amity (peace and harmony), Candor (honesty and truth), Erudite (knowledge and learning) and Dauntless (fearlessness and bravery). When Alli had finished reading this, she's going on telling me about how she thinks I would be Dauntless, which I just kinda nodded and went along with, pre-movie. While watching the movie, I realized how wrong she was. The Dauntless faction is really enticing, but there's no way I could do it. One of the things they do in the movie is just like, they climb things. I know I talk all the time about climbing and how much I love it, but I'm tied in. I trust the system, I trust my belayer, it's beautiful. I do not free climb things. The thought terrifies me. It makes my hands start sweating if I really think about free climbing. It's not my thing, it hasn't been for as long as I can remember. But that's like the first thing they do. They just free climb a bunch of scaffolding.

Anyway. The movie ends, and I feel really energized by watching the Dauntless this whole time, but really I think I'm more of an Erudite person. I get really excited to register for classes, I like to read, I'm pretty smart especially if I apply myself, my worst subject in history and I still pull a decent grade there. My second worst subject is the one I'm majoring in, and if I actually do a couple homework problems before taking the test, then I usually get over 100% on the test. So, I'm really looking at being Erudite. I love Alli, but she was wrong about me. But, the movie was really good, and while we were wondering around Flatirons, we found a second hand bookstore, and they had Divergent for pretty cheap, so I bought it and started reading it.

The difference is kinda amazing. I love the movie. I will own it when it comes out. And I think it did a really good job following the book. But actually reading the book and getting the extra details here and there about the factions, I started to see what Alli was saying.

The thing about Dauntless is that it represent the kind of person I always wanted to be. The kind of person that I think I could have been if I chose to hang out with those friends of mine more than these friends. And I think, if these factions were real, I would blend in well. I like to be loud, I like zip lines, I like climbing, I wear a lot of black, I have crazy colored hair... I mean, it just continues on. I would blend in well with them. But what about for how I act?

I never really thought of myself as particularly brave. And after a brief conversation about it, I learned that neither does Chaelomen. And after a long conversation about it, I learned my best friend Sara doesn't really see that as a quality that stands out about me. It was kinda heart breaking. I love everything about Dauntless. Everything. I would choose it in a heartbeat. I think I could also fit in with Erudite fairly well, but Dauntless would have been the more natural place for me. And yet, two people who I think know me fairly well wouldn't have even considered it a possibility so much.

It was just frustrating, and I talked to a couple of my other friends, and they think I could be in Dauntless, no problem. For the record, I know the factions are fictional, but the traits are real and asking which faction my friends see me in is a quick way to find out who they think I am. So, I guess it just depends who you ask. But it was helpful for me to see that how I want to be perceived doesn't quite line up with how I am perceived, and that will probably make me try to be better.

Even in just the little things, We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another. It's just beautiful, the things they believe. Overcoming your fears, not letting your fears take control of your life. Shouting for those who can only whisper, defending those who cannot defend themselves. I love it. And the way it all fits together, all the faction and the direction the story took, it was really impressive. It spoke to me almost directly, and that drew me in for the ride, and I cared about what happened in the story (similar to why I love Frozen, actually).

They always tell each other to be brave. Just, "Be brave, Tris," when they have to go through something scary. And Four's instructor always instructed him to adapt. Having a hard time with this? Adapt. Be better. I love it. Those are great things to hold on to. And it's actually a way I instruct my kids when I teach rock climbing, now that I think about it. "Be better, challenge yourself, have some integrity."

And I'm proud that I can love this story with my entire being, and still see its flaws. But the flaws don't hinder the story, the just don't enhance it.

   There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes bravery involves laying down your life for something bigger than yourself, or for someone else. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have every loved, for the sake of something greater.
   But sometimes it doesn't.
   Sometimes it is nothing more than gritting your teeth through the pain, and the work of everyday, the slow walk toward a better life.

Good story. Definitely recommended. I guess a lot of people were mad at the ending and thought that Roth only ended it how she did to get a rise out of people, but I don't believe that. I think it was the way to end it. It was hard, but it was what had to happen. And it killed me. But it was good. It was right.


And now I'm onto the 2nd book in the Stormlight Archives! Yay :) (The first was The Way of Kings, and now it's Words of Radiance. only 8 more books to go! Brandon Sanderson just needs to write them.) ((oh, and in case anyone -coughBerserk- is wondering, I am still reading Song of Ice and Fire. And I still have my place marked in The Blade Itself for Rocky Reads. haha))

Dobby's dead, Dobby's dead, NO!

I saw this on facebook today... It made me really sad. Very cool picture, though, so I thought I'd share.

Let's have a chase now, you and I.

So I've spent the last 10 days reading most of the Mistborn trilogy. I had actually read a couple of the first chapters in the couple months proceeding that, but mostly it was all crammed in just now.

It was incredible. My opinion is that everyone should go out and buy it and read it right now, regardless of whatever else you had planned to do with your life. There were so many parts that caught me off guard, and overall it was one of the best stories I've ever read in my life. It definitely had an unexpected ending. I didn't even know what to expect, yet somehow, while thinking that anything could happen, it caught me way off guard.

My only warning is that the first 5-6 chapters of Mistborn aren't captivating. They're still pretty good and interesting, but I didn't personally get sucked into it until after that. But then I was sucked in, 100%.

Mistborn, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages. By Brandon Sanderson. Check it out.

I was going to read The Way of the Kings next (on the recommend of the bookstore guy), also by Brandon Sanderson. But I think, before I move on to that, I'll read at least one of the five or so books I'm borrowing from Chaelomen. So Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman (short story collection), and then on to Way of the Kings. That one's a continuing series, so I'm kinda excited to get to it. Also kinda dreading it because it's the only book released out of ten... Yay being caught up in a book series!

There are just so many emotions in my head right now.

I just finished Mistborn about 10 hours ago. I stayed up all night to read it and didn't actually go to sleep until about 7 this morning. It was so good. Highly recommended. If the bookstore was open at 3am, I would definitely already own the 2nd in the trilogy (Well of Ascension) and be a good way through it, probably.

It's really interesting, because for most of the book, there's two main characters that you get the point-of-view from, and I really like how well Brandon Sanderson did that. Both characters had really interesting insights and fun stories going on in their life. There wasn't ever a point where he switch POV character and I was sad because now I had to read about something boring.

Very good read. I'm currently really angry at the book, I feel betrayed, but I'm also really happy and hopeful. So, it's just pretty necessary that I get this 2nd book asap. I made a deal with myself that if I cleaned one of the rooms downstairs, I could buy the 2nd book, and then read it. And after I cleaned the other room, I could buy the 3rd one-- Hero of Ages. I foresee my cleaning all night and then going to Barnes and Noble at 9am tomorrow morning when they open to get Well of Ascension.

Seriously, though. Such a good book. Everyone should read it and love it.

It's all ended.

Actually, I guess it all about 8 months ago. I'm a little slower than everyone else. In fact, when the movies came out, I never intended to be one of those weird people who read all the books and adored them and everything. But, alas, I eventually gave in and read them.

And here's why. Movies 1, 2, 3 and 4 make perfect sense. I followed them fine, I understood what was going on in the plot of the Harry Potter world. All was good. Then movie 5 came out. It was so confusing. I managed to follow some sort of general plot, but mostly I was just watching for the cool effects. Movie 6 came out, and I had serious gaps (from movie 5) in my knowledge, but overall I felt like I sort of understood what was going on. I could have never pulled off an intelligent conversation with anyone about what was going on, but I ignored that and pretended like I still knew what was happening.

And then movie 7 came out. Way to ruin everything, Deathly Hallows pt 1. I was just so confused and angry at the end of that movie. I picked up on a couple of details here and there of what happened, but there were so many plot jumps that I had no idea why anything was happening. At all. It all just went straight over my head. So I talked to one of my friend, Ally, about the series, and she filled me on some gaps that just didn't happen in the movies. Things that are pretty essential to know, but couldn't be included in the movies for one reason or another. And it doesn't matter that these things aren't included for most people. Most people have read the books (and if it weren't for my friend Alli and my pretty extensive knowledge of the books she's read, I would be pretty sure I was the last person to read the Harry Potter series). Most people already know what's going to happen, they're just going to the movies to see the movies that have been playing in their imagination on screen.

Anyway, Ally's help with my confusion, although it definitely helped, mostly just gave me more questions than answers. And after enough of my questions, Ally just told me I should read the books, and I agreed. I had been pretty proud that I resisted the Harry Potter books and wasn't crazy and didn't play Quidditch in my spare time or buy wands and memorize spells and get scarves with the colors of the Hogwarts houses on them, or any of that crazy stuff. But my curiosity overtook me, and I started reading...

(Side note-- I had only read the first 3 books when movie 8 came out, and it left me not-confused enough that I stopped reading Harry Potter for a solid 6 months.)

I honestly didn't love the first 3 books. I only read the first 2 because I knew there were probably gaps in my knowledge that I would need for later books, but I didn't like the style of writing. The first couple books are definitely children's books. They've got decent plots and everything, but they were clearly meant for kids around the same age as Harry (who was 11-12), and I was trying to read them as a 19 year old. And I didn't want to be reading a kids book, I wanted these books to already appeal to me as a young adult. I thought the 3rd book was alright, and the 4th book was pretty good. And although I learned a lot from these books, I didn't love the series until I got to book 5.

Movie 5 is the one I remembered nearly nothing about, so reading the book for it was a completely new adventure. I didn't have any experience with it, so I was finally reading a book that was completely knew. I wasn't comparing it to the movie at all. I was just enjoying a new book and a new adventure. Book 6 held up pretty well, too, though I did remember a very loose plot (and consequently, a couple of exciting plot twists). And book 7, though I remembered a lot of the last 3rd (which is what movie 8 was based off of), also held up well because of my constant confusion for the beginning/middle of it.

And now, I can genuinely say, that Harry Potter is an excellent series. I can look back at the beginning books, too, and appreciate how J.K. Rowling matured the writing of the book with the audience. That's a really cool quality that I would like to include in my writing if I ever were to write a long series. That started off with a young child. Though this hypothetical series is not in my plans. :) And, though I didn't cry, I did get teary-eyed when a couple of the characters died. But only 2 of them.

Lastly, though. Really? Can we stop telling me about things I haven't read yet? I have one friend (coughcough ALLYcough) who won't stop giving away things that I don't know yet. I think she likes to see the reaction on my face, and the chances of her being there when I actually read it are pretty slim. But really? Way to ruin the books for me. I took a good 2-3 month hiatus from reading the books because I found out all the characters who die.

And, as a last show of my nerdiness for this blog, here is a list of which houses I would hope to be a part of if I were a wizard going to Hogwarts, in order of least likely to most likely:

I'll teach the lot and treat them just the same.

Hard work

Patience

Loyalty

Fair Play

Pretty much the only thing I like about Hufflepuff is that it's where Cedric Diggory came from, and he turned out to be such a BAMF. Mostly, when I think of Hufflepuff, I think of people who weren't awesome enough to make it into any houses. And they're all puffy and mediocre at magic in my imagination. Haha. That's probably because they're named Hufflepuff. Puff.

We'll teach just those whose ancestry's purest.

Ambition

Cunning

Resourcefulness

I don't hate Slytherins, actually. Though, I sure I hope I wouldn't turn into a dark wizard by being there. :) I believe in my strength to a good witch who came from Slytherin. I also would like to think that I'd be friends with people from other houses if I were in Slytherin. (Though, obviously, since it had me, Slytherin would be the best and we'd win everything.)

We'll teach all those with brave deeds to their name.

Bravery

Daring

Nerve

Chivalry

I feel like most of the wizards in Harry Potter who were good characters (as in, not some sort of villian) were in Gryffindor. Which makes sense, since that's the house the main characters were in. Although there certainly are good character in other houses as well.

Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.

Intelligence

Knowledge

Wit

Truth. Wit beyond measure is indeed man's greatest treasure. And seriously, who would want to just remember a password when you could answer a riddle to get into your common rooms? That would be so much cooler. You would learn!

I <3 Harry Potter. But I'm not signing up for any Quidditch competitions.

And, as a reward to anyone who made it to the end of the blog, enjoy a sweet video that I love very much. I hope you also consider it a reward, not punishment. :)

Time to read Mistborn...

Joy and sorrow are like milk and cookies.

That's how well they go together.

You know those links on the side of facebook for a bunch of crap you don't really care about? Well sometimes, those links are for something I do care about. That's how I got involved with ILP. And that's how I found out:

American Gods is being turned into a TV show!

It's said to air on HBO in maybe 2013. 6 seasons! Neil Gaiman will be the writer and executive producer. How exciting! I think 6 seasons is a long time to spread it out, but hopefully it will be awesome.

On a related note, I'd really like to see the mini series for Neverwhere.

(Anyone confused about joy/sorrow and milk/cookies? It's a quote from American Gods. page 447)

And both of them have typos.

I checked out a couple books from the library the other week, and today I finished the last of them. Supposedly they were both horror books, but I didn't think they were that scary. Maybe I'm just not easily scared? I never really thought that was the case. I wish I could just find a good book that scares the living daylights out of me.

The first one I read was Hide and Seek by Jack Ketchum (which is important to specify, because that's apparently a fairly common book title). Super quick read, only 164 pages. It's told in first person, and it's about this guy named Dave, I think. Maybe it was Dan. The first half is about how he meets these 3 kids (2 girls, one guy) who are staying in his town for the summer. They all become friends, but they're definitely a bad influence on him. Mostly it's just set up for the 2nd half of the book, which is where they decide to play a game of hide and seek in an abandoned and rumored to be haunted (although Dave/Dan starts a couple of those rumors himself) house at midnight.

The scariest it gets, imo, is when he's in the basement looking for one of the girls and he can't see anything. Obviously, since it's supposed to be a horror book, something bad happens to him, so most of the fright comes from trying to guess what's waiting down there for him. But eventually you find out what happened down there in the basement, and then the rest of the read isn't scary, it's just kinda vicious. Overall though, I liked it. I thought it had a good plot and it was written well enough.

My second book that I just finished this morning is called Last Days by Brian Evenson. It's also a pretty short book, though longer than Hide and Seek. It has a really nice writing style to it. The story is told very smoothly, and the beginning hooked me in very well. It's about a cop who gets his hand cut off and then a Brotherhood of Mutilation tries (and succeeds) to get him to temporarily join with them so he can solve a murder. It's really interesting, I imagine that Berserk would like it. Although, under no circumstances would I have called this book a horror. It's kinda creepy in the too-religious-and-cult-like way, since there are these two "brotherhoods" that think it's holy to remove a body part, and one of them thinks the more you remove, the holier you are, but I wouldn't call it scary. The ending gets kinda messed up in a psychotic way. There's a lot of killing and it's very bloody, but there's not a lot of detail in the description of the bodies or the actual act of killing. So the faint-of-stomach could still handle it. Probably.

Next I'm on to reading some of the books that were actually on my list before, instead of getting new ones :)

And congratulations to Maku and Missa. In 15 minutes, they should officially have a house.

I have an addiction.

Books. It's a serious problem. I've been buying quite a lot recently.

And by "quite a lot," I mean 4 in the course of a couple weeks. (And by "I've been buying," I mean I only bought two, my wonderful and awesome mom bought the other two.) Have I read them all? No. I have a rather large list of books that I've been meaning to read since the semester started.

And by "rather large," I mean between 15 and 20, depending on how you count them.

The four books I've gotten recently are:
-Black Water Rising by Attica Locke, which I haven't started yet
-*Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales, I read about 11 of the fairy tales before I got distracted
-*The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, I'm a little more than 1/3 through
-Secrets of the Freemasons by Michael Bradley, I skimmed in the bookstore but have been preoccupied with other books since

(The * means that I've been reading it recently enough that I would be able to continue from where I was in the story versus starting over. However, Bourne Identity is the only one I've read in the past few days.)

And here's the list of books that I've been wanting to read since February or so. Any that I can cut out?
-*A Million Little Pieces by James Frey
-*Arch Enemy by Frank Beddor, which is the last of the Looking Glass Wars trilogy. Really good.
-*Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman
-Harry Potter 4, 5, 6 and 7 by JK Rowling
-Old Man's War by John Scalzi, which has a plot opposite to Ender's Game
-The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card
-The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper, though perhaps I wouldn't read this in one sitting
-Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
-Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman, which is actually a short story collection
-Dancing Wu Li Maters, which I started in 10th grade and thought it was really interesting
-Sorcerers and Seers by Chris Heimerdinger, but I'm waiting until the last book for that series comes out to read it
-Plus a couple of trilogies that Berserk's mentioned that I want to read- His Dark Materials, and The First Law Trilogy.

On top of that, I can't stop recommending books to people, regardless of if they're readers or not. I lent 3 of the most awesome books I've ever read to one of my friends, plus the first Dean Koontz book I read which I liked a great deal.
-The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
-Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
-Velocity by Dean Koontz
-Life of Pi by Yann Martel

And then MJ's also borrowing my copy of The Looking Glass Wars (which is the "true story" of Alice in Wonderland. Or, more accurately, Alyss in Wonderland).

If anyone could find me a job where I can read books and then review them, that would be perfect. You would complete my life.

He's been born!

And by "he," I'm of course referring to the actor who will play Ender.

I should be asleep. I know. But today I was looking at status updates on facebook, and I learned that Neil Gaiman is going to be making an adult version of The Graveyard Book (which I'm really excited for. The children's book was pretty good).

Now I know what you're thinking. Or at least I know what you should be thinking. Neil Gaiman didn't write Ender's Game, so what does he have to do with anything.

Well, the question's been brought up by pretty much everyone who's read it: Will there be a difference between the adult version of The Graveyard Book and the children's edition, or is it going to be the exact same story, just with a different cover. Of course, Gaiman hadn't answered the question (yet) on facebook, so I turned to google to find an answer.

What I found instead was about 4 or 5 minutes of Gaiman reading The Graveyard Book. I've always thought it was cool to hear how the author wanted the tone of the book to be read. So, with my intense love of Ender's Game, I tried finding a snippet of Orson Scott Card reading Ender's Game. I didn't find anything too promising on google, so I turned to youtube.

When I went to type "orson scott card reading ender's game," the suggested search came up for "orson scott card ender's game movie" and that seemed potentially more interesting. What I found was Card talking about the progress being made in the production of the movie, and I'm really excited now :D

Also, speaking of books being made into movies, I'm really excited for Hunger Games to be made into a movie. I approve of the actors chosen for the characters so far.

Grimm Fairy Tales

I found a ton of the Brother's Grimm fairy tales online. I like them :) If anyone else is interested in reading some, they're here.

They're pretty short, but there's a lot of them. 210, to be specific.

Oh, and P.S. I got a seasonal job at Target :) I work on the Sales Floor, and it's been a pretty even mixture of working in Electronics and Clothes. And the people there are very nice. $8/hour, and I get a 10% discount. 15% if I get a red card.

Hunger Games

Has anyone heard of it? It's a book by Suzanne Collins, and I really like it. I was talking to my friend Wally about it, and he told me I should read it, so I went to the library to check it out. All their copies were checked out, though, so I requested it. Then I decided I didn't want to wait that long to read it, and after school the next day I went to the bookstore to start reading a copy there until the library got mine in. I read to chapter 4 and, ironically, had to go home because I was so hungry. Haha.

It was really good, though. I got some money (thanks Dad) and went back to the store and started reading again. This was on a Friday. I read another chapter, then bought it and went home to read it until I had to leave for a Branch Barbecue, then we had CJ's bachelorette party, and I got home around 10:30. I continued reading until I finished it at 4:30.

But it's a really good book. There's 2 more in the series, but they aren't on paperback yet, so I'm gonna wait before buying them. Maybe I'll stop by B&N tomorrow to start reading the 2nd one, though haha.

And, side note, I had a test today in math. It was pretty easy. I may have missed the question about distance, but I think I'm ok on that one. And I didn't get the bonus, but it doesn't matter because our grades can't go above 100%. I was the first done, and it only took me about 30, 35 minutes, and when I turned it in the teacher asked if she made it too easy. I just smiled and left.

Shadow of the Game

In case anyone doesn't know, my favorite book ever is Ender's Game. I have read it 6 or 7 times in the past 4 and a half years. We read it for class earlier this year, actually, and I had read it more times that the teacher had. I know the story front to back, and I could probably tell you every detail about it, if you asked. I have a hard back copy of it which I've underlined things in it and boxed off passages of it. It's (probably more than) a little crazy of me.

Regardless, Ender's Game has a parallel novel- Ender's Shadow. And Ender's Shadow has it's own little series, which I've been reading for the past few weeks.

So, that being said, this post will make more sense if you've read the Shadow Series, and if you haven't, there are slight spoilers, because this post is about why I don't really like the series.

I mean, I think the story line is alright, but I wouldn't read any of these books again. I really didn't like how Bean will be sitting there thinking about possible solutions to a problem or something, and he'll get a random and stupid idea that he'll tell himself can't possibly be true, but deep down he knows it's right. And it is. And this all happens fairly instantaneously. I know he's a super-genius and whatever, but it still seems lame.

But I think the thing I like least about this story line is that it was written years after Ender's Game was, and when Card wrote Ender's Game, he didn't really plan to have a parallel novel and series to go with it. So in Ender's Game, Bean is just a little kid, who is also smart. And Peter didn't get into Battle school because he was too dangerous and aggressive. And Ender's parents didn't have any idea that Valentine and Peter were actually Demosthenes and Locke (although I think that's unlikely, that they'd have no idea).

[[these are my slight spoilers]]
That's how the story actually goes, the end. But in the parallel series, Bean is actually genetically altered, and his condition is going to make him a giant someday. And Peter didn't get accepted because he's not lovable. And the Wiggin parents knew everything all along, they just didn't want to hinder the progressions that Peter and Valentine were making with the world.

I think that if you want to write sequels to your books, that's fine and I hope they do well, but I firmly disagree with altering the original story so you can have your sequels still fit in well with the story. Maybe if you had to change it so much, you should've just written a different story.

And you could argue that there's premises that are vital enough to each story, that Card could've have written the both and not have them come from the same original story, so in effect, Ender's Shadow is the "different story" for Ender's Game. But if that's the case, then I think it was stretching it a little too far to say that Peter wasn't too aggressive for Battle school, since that's actually a really important detail in Ender's Game.

Mmm. Maybe it's just me.