Thursday, January 24, 2008
Clearly my resolution to keep up with posting hasn't worked so far because I'm 12 books behind already. Oh well. The first book I read in 2008 was Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, a Christmas gift from Daisy. I was convinced I was going to hate it based on the reviews I'd read, but I actually loved it. I should have known I would because of my fascination with boarding schools and their insular worlds. Lee, the main character, frustrated me sometimes with her neediness and insecurities, but that was mostly just because she felt like a very real teenager and was probably behaving similarly to how I would have in the same situation. I forget sometimes just how incredibly insecure I was in high school (this will come up again 5 books down the line).
Next I read Dramarama by E. Lockhart, whose books I've been meaning to check out for a while now. I thoroughly enjoyed this story of two friends from a nowhere town determined to make it big when they're accepted at a prestigious summer camp for musical theater and drama. It reminded me a lot of Camp and brought back happy memories of high school theater productions I was in.
I finally gave in and read Twilight and New Moon by Stephanie Meyer. Let me preface this by saying that I read each in an evening because I couldn't put them down. With that said, I found Twilight to be very silly. I couldn't fully succumb to it because every other page I'd either be laughing at the book or at myself for getting sucked in. And the whole vampires can't come out in the day because they sparkle crap? You might as well have them riding unicorns and raising cute and fluffy bunnies too. There was a lot of eye-rolling at that development. I actually liked New Moon better and I couldn't place my finger on why until I got to the very end where the Bella Edward schmoopy show picked back up and my annoyance returned. So there you have it: I'm an unromantic cynic! An unromantic cynic who is considering unethically moving herself to the top of the hold list for the third book. Hee.
Daisy somehow got a hold of an ARC for Susan Beth Pfeffer's The Dead And The Gone, a companion book to the awesome Life As We Knew It, and I impatiently waited my turn in line to read it. Taking place in the same alternate near-future as Life, it follows a 17-year-old teen in NYC who is left to take care of his two younger sisters when his parents go missing following the initial destruction after the meteor hits the moon. This one bring in religion and an urban setting, giving events that could have felt too redundant after the last book (struggle for food, the weather, sickness) a different spin. I made the mistake of going grocery shopping after I finished it and ended up with significantly more canned goods and bottled water than usual.
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Next I read Dramarama by E. Lockhart, whose books I've been meaning to check out for a while now. I thoroughly enjoyed this story of two friends from a nowhere town determined to make it big when they're accepted at a prestigious summer camp for musical theater and drama. It reminded me a lot of Camp and brought back happy memories of high school theater productions I was in.
I finally gave in and read Twilight and New Moon by Stephanie Meyer. Let me preface this by saying that I read each in an evening because I couldn't put them down. With that said, I found Twilight to be very silly. I couldn't fully succumb to it because every other page I'd either be laughing at the book or at myself for getting sucked in. And the whole vampires can't come out in the day because they sparkle crap? You might as well have them riding unicorns and raising cute and fluffy bunnies too. There was a lot of eye-rolling at that development. I actually liked New Moon better and I couldn't place my finger on why until I got to the very end where the Bella Edward schmoopy show picked back up and my annoyance returned. So there you have it: I'm an unromantic cynic! An unromantic cynic who is considering unethically moving herself to the top of the hold list for the third book. Hee.
Daisy somehow got a hold of an ARC for Susan Beth Pfeffer's The Dead And The Gone, a companion book to the awesome Life As We Knew It, and I impatiently waited my turn in line to read it. Taking place in the same alternate near-future as Life, it follows a 17-year-old teen in NYC who is left to take care of his two younger sisters when his parents go missing following the initial destruction after the meteor hits the moon. This one bring in religion and an urban setting, giving events that could have felt too redundant after the last book (struggle for food, the weather, sickness) a different spin. I made the mistake of going grocery shopping after I finished it and ended up with significantly more canned goods and bottled water than usual.
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