17. A Certain Slant of Light | Laura Whitcomb

Completed: 18 May 2012

Summary: Helen is Light. No one can see her. She is trapped, forced to haunt to keep herself from Hell. She is in her Mr. Brown’s class, as usual, when she feels someone watching her for the first time since she’d died. This boy who can see her will most certainly change her. 

Quote: “The library smells like old books — a thousand leather doorways into other worlds. I hear silence, like the mind of God. I feel a presence in the empty chair beside me. The librarian watches me suspiciously. But the library is a sacred place, and I sit with the patron saint of readers. Pulsing goddess light moves through me for one moment like a glimpse of eternity instantly forgotten. She is gone. I smell mold, I hear the clock ticking, I see an empty chair. Ask me now and I’ll say this is just a place where you can’t play music or eat. She’s gone. The library sucks.” 

Review: This book, while most certainly different, is excellent. It delves into the stories of Helen and James, while also giving you stories of Jenny and Billy. It is difficult to go into who Jenny and Billy are without spoiling anything, but they are pivotal to the story. This novel has many stories sewn into one brilliantly written picture, and it ends well, too, unlike many other novels. 

Rating: ★★★★☆

15. Water for Elephants | Sara Gruen

Completed: 11 May 2012

Summary: Jacob Jankowski’s life is turned upside-down when his parents are killed in a car crash. He flees from his life, leaving behind his almost-Cornell-Veterinarian-Degree and joins the Benzini Brother’s circus. It is there that he meets some very interesting characters of the circus, along with August and Marlena. It takes place in a series of flash backs, and relays Jacob’s stories of his life in the circus. 

Quote: “I close my eyes and reach for the far corners of my mind. They’re no longer clearly defined. My brain is like a universe whose gases get thinner and thinner at the edges. But it doesn’t dissolve into nothingness. I can sense something out there, just beyond my grasp, hovering, waiting— and God help me if I’m not skidding toward it again, mouth open wide.” 

Review: I have been very lucky, so far, to have read such amazing books this year. This book is definitely one of them. My big sister made me watch the movie with her (as I originally had no interest) and I fell in love with the movie. I, then, remembered that I had the book and I just had to read it. And I fell even more in love. The book was better than the movie (wow, imagine that) and just UGH. It made me feel things. Pick it up. Read it. It’s worth it. It’s one of few books that I would re-read.  

Rating: ★★★★★

13. Speak | Laurie Halse Anderson

Completed: 12 April 2012

Summary: Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn’t even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that’s not safe. Because there’s something she’s trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth.

Quote: “I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears?”

Review: This is the sort of book that everyone should read. It’s so moving and so beautiful and so painfully heartbreaking. It gives a glimpse into a hurting girl’s life, and her inner struggle to reveal the truth. 

Rating: ★★★★☆

EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE

That’s the one I was missing.

I feel better now.

Reviews to come tomorrow… If I remember.

I’ve read three books since I made my last post… I’M SORRY I’M SO NEGLECTFUL.

I’ll post those reviews soon…

Two days left of high school and no finals!

16. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland | Lewis Carroll

Completed: 11 May 2012

Summary: Young Alice falls down a rabbit hole and encounters many curiosities, from a white rabbit to a Mad Hatter, from a Mock Turtle to a Cheshire Cat. Everything is queer, in the words of Alice. 

Quote: “I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then. ” 

Review: Maybe it’s because I lack class, or because I read this book in under 2 hours on my last day of school surrounded by people constantly moving around me, or because I was fretting over my leaving my last high school class and my favorite teacher ever once and for all, but I really just couldn’t get into this book. I was fairly uninterested throughout the entire thing, and half the time didn’t quite understand what was going on. Or maybe I just missed the point. I just… I honestly didn’t enjoy it. To each his own. 

Rating: ★★☆

14. The Calling | Kelley Armstrong

Completed: 20 April 2012

Summary: In the sequel to The Gathering, Maya Delaney and her friends are forced to run for their lives and for their safety. I mean… There’s not much I can say about this without spoiling it’s prequel. So… uh, yeah. 

Quote: “I’d always thought of myself as an open-minded person. I had no patience with anyone who put down other kids because of their race, religion, or sexuality. But that’s just one kind of open-mindedness. There’s another kind, too, the kind that’s willing to see people for who they really are and admit when you were wrong about them. That’s the part I still need to work on.” 

Review: This book was good. It was a good followup to it’s predecessor, and it flows nicely. It cannot, however, compare to the other books I’ve read recently. There are two very different types of books that I’ve read recently: paranormal and philosophical/thought provoking. In the paranormal, this one ranks high. But all together, not so much.  

Rating: ★★★☆

12. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | Jonathan Safran Foer

Completed: 10 April 2012

Summary: Ten year old Oskar Schell finds a key that belonged to his dad, who died in a tower during the 9/11 attacks. He goes around all 5 of the New York boroughs to find who or what that key belongs to, and he comes across some interesting people across the way. 

Quote: “Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives I’m not living.”

Review: This book… God, this book. It just made me stop and think about everything that I’d ever known or considered, and, in the word of John Green, “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” That was this book. GOD. Read it, read it, read it. 

Rating: ★★★★★

Speak

The Calling

Water for Elephants

Alice in Wonderland

(… I feel like there is one missing between Speak and The Calling. THERE IS ANOTHER ONE. I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS)

11. The Secret Year | Jennifer Hubbard

Completed: 4 April 2012

Summary: Colt and Julia were secretly together for an entire year, and no one—not even Julia’s boyfriend— knew. They had nothing in common, with Julia in her country club world on Black Mountain and Colt from down on the flats, but it never mattered. Until Julia dies in a car accident, and Colt learns the price of secrecy. He can’t mourn Julia openly, and he’s tormented that he might have played a part in her death. When Julia’s journal ends up in his hands, Colt relives their year together at the same time that he’s desperately trying to forget her. But how do you get over someone who was never yours in the first place?

Quote: “Believe me,” he said, pointing his finger at me like a gun, “no good comes from lying about what you really want.” 

Review: From the reviews I’ve read on this book, I feel like I’m slightly alone in my personal review of this book. But oh well. I was… bored. It was predictable, and honestly, I didn’t feel that it went anywhere. Colt gets her journal, sleeps with three different people, it’s just… I felt that it lacked substance. Sorry, Jennifer Hubbard. I just didn’t feel like this was my kind of book. 

Rating: ★★