Amy Does Books

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Across the Universe

A Million Suns

Enclave 

We

After The Giver, I was looking for another dystopian novel and Matched was suggested for me. Its a young adult novel, fairly popular right now, that follows the story of Cassia who lives in a perfect society where everything is chosen for her; her life partner (her match) is chosen for her, her food each day, her job, etc, much like the themes in The Giver, so I was intrigued. As I read on though, I was disappointed.

The novel is less about a dystopian society and more about the main character being torn between the love of two boys, which is a plot really overdone in literature these past three years or so. It was the main theme of Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, The Hunger Games, and several others.

All the main character thought about were the two boys in her life, and all of her actions revolves around these two boys. It becomes boring to read over and over. I mean, its really repetitive. She mentions them every other paragraph.

Sometimes the love triangle theme can work; It was really successful in The Hunger Games, because even though there was tricky love involved, the main focus was on politics and war. In novels like The Hunger Games and Divergent, there is a sense of fear and urgency throughout the story. Those characters are being watched, they are scared of their leaders and other citizens around them, and there are real consequences and trouble for their actions. In Matched, there is none of that urgency or fear. Its considerably laid back for a novel that is supposed to be surrounded by war and lies, and I find Cassie makes up a lot of excuses for herself and for her society. The society itself doesn’t even seem that bad. The only reason Cassie starts to pay attention is because she was meant to be matched to one boy but ends up loving another, and therefore sees it as a flaw in the society, rather than in herself.

Its really annoying to watch a girl obsess over boys and have it be the entire reason the novel exists. It wasn’t even that well written. It was slow paced and really disappointing. Although the novel is part of a trilogy, I’m not even going to bother with the other two novels. Save yourself the money and get something better.

I read reviews about this book for a year before I actually took it out of the library. I’m not sure why I was so hesitant, I guess I was just distracted by other novels I thought would be better. This novel, The Giver, read like a children’s novel. The language was very simple and straight forward, but it held a lot of bigger ideas. If anyone’s read The Alchemist, it was kind of like that.

The story is set in a not-so-distant future where everyone is assigned jobs, spouses, and children, and the society runs smoothly and isn’t terrible. Its kind of nice. Everyone rides bicycles, gets along with each other, and isn’t as wasteful as our society is now. The story is narrated by Jonas, who, when he turns the age of 12, is assigned a career by the elders of his village who watched him from an early age to decide what he would be best at. While his peers receive normal jobs, such as teaching, nurturing children, cooking, etc, Jonas was assigned The Receiver of Memories. Basically he would receive all the memories from the beginning of time, in order to gather wisdom so he may properly instruct his village. He is very overwhelmed by this and afraid at first, because he has no idea how to do this. The Receiver before him is The Giver, one who gives all the memories to Jonas via touch. The Giver is Jonas’ instructor, mentor, and friend. He becomes a grandfather kind of character.

As Jonas receives memories, he becomes burdened and heavy as he learns of sadness, suffering, and human pain. To counter this, The Giver gives him memories of pleasure, such as a nice day on the beach, or a Christmas morning. As time goes on, Jonas becomes more and more critical of his society. He realizes that yes, they are better without the pain and suffering of the people before them,but that in turn they miss out on love, happiness, and the freedom of choice. He conspires with The Giver to change this.

This book was an easy read, and carried themes like pain versus pleasure, the disconnection one feels as s/he gets wisdom and knowledge, the burden of growing up, and the power of raw emotion. I finished this book in a day and really enjoyed it. I especially liked watching the relationship between The Giver and Jonas develop, and how sad The Giver became because he had to share the horrible pain of the world with a poor twelve year old boy. If you liked The Alchemist or The Little Prince, I think you would really like this novel. It carries universal ideas so I think it would make an ideal gift for any person in your life.  

I wrote this just now and I am currently ill with a flu and a little bit out of it, so apologies in advance if my review sounds a bit disjointed or jumpy, I’ll get around to making it nicer later. 

Margaret Atwood branches feminism with science fiction in her novel The Handmaid’s tale, which tells the story of a Handmaid, a woman assigned to a couple to give birth to their children for them; simply put, a Handmaid is a birthing vessel, an object used strictly for her uterus. The novel is as frightening as it sounds, and is packed fulled of issues women currently deal with today.

In this novel, set in a futuristic society, women have essentially four classes: a wife who reigns highest in power among women, a servant who cleans and tidies the house, a Handmaid, who is a birth mobile, and a prostitute. All of these women are controlled by the man of the house, called the Commander. He rules supreme over his household and can go where he pleases in his city, where as women can not. The different classes of women do not talk to each other, and the wives resent the Handmaid’s because of the fact they can have babies, and have sex with their husbands.

The reason Handmaid’s exist is because in this futuristic society, radiation and other factors damaged the bodies of men and women, making them unable to have children. As a result, the population is too low, so the entire society revolves around reproducing. Hardly any babies come to full term, and when they do, they are immediately taken from the Handmaid and given to the wife.

The novel was a heavy read for me, mostly because it overwhelmed with with issues I’m studying in school. It was also hard to see the women in the novel pitted against each other, when it was obvious to me that they needed to stand together in order to resist being oppressed so much. I think this was the point, because the main character who narrates is a Handmaid, and I as a reader could clearly see how messed up her society was but she didn’t act, rebel, or do anything really. She accepted what was happening around her and set out to rationalize it as okay. She made up excuses for the horrible things happening around her, even though her mother was a full out feminist, and her best friend was very radical in her beliefs. This emphasized the lack of action in her. She became a modern Hamlet, so to speak.

This book took me a long time to read, simply because it was so full of powerful images and themes, that I wanted to process it all very carefully. Also it was set in a far away future, it echoed the issues we battle today, and showed me a future that could be all too real if we don’t step up and fight now. Most importantly, women need to stick together and not hate on each other. Its such a big part of society today. Girls calling other girls sluts, bitches, etc, judging each other out of jealousy and such.

We should be able to acknowledge the strength and power of other women without being threatened and resorting to name calling. It reinforces the idea that men can call women sluts, bitches and other crude names. Its a really important thing for me to have strong women in my life, ones that I respect and admire, who motivate me to be a better person.

Anyhow, this was a really interesting and eye-opening read, and I hope you read it too, especially if you are into science fiction and dystopian societies.  

A lot of my friends don’t understand how I can read a book up to twelve times, but I can’t understand reading a book only once. Reading a book once is like looking at someone’s face for just a moment and then never seeing them again. To truly see and memorize all their features, quirks, and strengths, you need to study that face. 

Each time I read the same book again, at come at it from a new angle because I myself change, and therefore my view of the book changes. I grow with experience, with maturity, with questions, and each time I read that book, I see it as if for the first time. I pick out things I may have missed the first time, the same sentence means something entirely new to me.

Reading a book more than once is like looking over the face of an old friend, one who changes and grows before your eyes, who looks at you a certain way and startles you with butterflies in your stomach. Books are alive, are growing like I am too, breathing, maturing, developing, and its up to me to see it and to appreciate it. 

I am currently reading The Giver, We, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Reviews are on the way!

I’m usually not into western themed movies, shows or books, but a friend of mine in my writing class recommended the novel The Sisters Brothers to me. I was not convinced, but after he read aloud a passage from the novel, I realized that the western theme was an underlying part of the novel, and that the central focus was on the characterization and relationship between two brothers.

The novel is set in the 1850s during the gold rush, and revolves around two brothers, Charlie and Eli, who are assassins. Their life centers around blood and gore, and I thought this might bring the brothers together, considering the depth of their occupation, but really the brothers couldn’t be any more different from one another. Charlie is the front man, always in charge, and yet is considerably weaker than his younger brother. Charlie is an alcoholic and through out the novel is generally drunk or hung over, but even so, he is quick minded – but only when he is faced with death. He is incredible at avoiding death. In all other realms, his knowledge is weak. Eli is the smarter brother. Eli is self aware, considerate and quite kind for his profession.

For the duration of the novel, Eli is constantly in thought about if what he is doing with his life is okay, and who he is acting for. Why does he kill people, what got him started in this? Ultimately he tagged along with his older brother to make sure Charlie wasn’t killed, but even so, Eli doesn’t feel right about killing people, and longs for a different life for himself. The problem is he can’t leave his brother.

All of this is revealed through the plot. Basically the two brothers are famed and feared assassins on a mission to kill a man they know nothing about. They question their boss’s motives but carry through anyhow. They get caught up in gold finding schemes and make surprising friends, who make them want to change themselves for the better.

The best part about this novel is that it is a fairly easy read and its hard to put down. Readers follow the brothers as they hit rock bottom, fall even farther, and get back up again. The easy thing to do would be to have the author kill off the characters, or have them suffer through their punishment in karma for the bad things they have done. Instead, the author makes the characters see their faults, and forced them to work through the problem and resolve it once and for all. Its a tough ladder to climb, but the brothers do it. This makes the novel incredible. This has been the first western type novel I have ever liked. Strong characters and stronger morals, I suppose. Lots about God, science, faith or lack of, right and wrong, and mending old relationships. This was a really fun read and I think you’d enjoy it. 

I’m always looking for new books to read so feel free to leave suggestions in my ask box. I like all books, really, and I don’t have many preferences. Plus I like talking to my lovely followers  :)

I picked up this book at the library because my friend recommended it, but to be honest, I wasn’t blown away like I was with Flowers for Algernon. I started The Virgin Suicides yesterday and finished it up this afternoon, but I was left feeling kind of…uninspired, I guess.

It wasn’t a bad book. In fact, it was a beautiful read, it was just really morbid and sad. It follows the story of a group of boys who are obsessed with 5 sisters who live across the street from them, and all of those sisters end up killing themselves in some form of suicide. The reason the boys are obsessed is because not only the story of them unusual, but they were very much in love with the girls. They all range from the ages 13-17, the boys included.

What makes the novel unique is the narrative style. Though the story is told by multiple boys, its one voice throughout; The narrator always refers to himself (themselves) as “we”. There is no seperation, which reflects how there is no real separation between the five girls either. They are always one entity. This entity falling apart represents the suburban neighborhood falling apart.

I couldn’t put the book down because I had to know how the girls each killed themselves, and the boys piece together evidence through interviewing people around the neighborhood and through their careful observations. It seems they spent their entire adolescence watching the girls and fawning over them. They collect photos of the girls, and objects that used to belong to them.

All in all it was an interesting read. The descriptions are sometimes hard to follow because the language is very abstract and poetic, which is pretty, but sometimes it looses the point of the sentence. I guess it works here because the novel is so sentimental and emotionally driven. I think the best part about the novel is getting to know each girl through the observation of the boys, and though they see them as sort of…angelic beings, far away and beautiful, the reader sees through it and picks out details to put a personality to each girl. The ending, however, left me kind of disappointed. It wasn’t bad, per say, but it just kept putting blame on the girls in different ways. Every character was making up different reasons why the girls would kill themselves, when in the end, it seems kind of obvious. It can’t just be because they were sad, it had to be some imbalance in the brain, some trend of teenagers, etc.

I guess I would give this novel a 6/10. It was good, well-written and dark. It has morbid moments and is very much concerned with death. Not only the death of teen girls, but of memory, of childhood, of innocence, of “easy times”, and of freedom. Pick it up sometime, its pretty decent.

I picked up this book at 4 PM tonight from my University’s library, and finished it five hours later. I just can’t believe a book could grab me this way. I’ve been reading a lot lately but nothing has done anything like this to me before. I mean, I feel shaken emotionally, and deeply, deeply heart broken.

Don’t be discouraged, this was the best book I have ever read ever. I want you to read it too, but just prepare yourself for an emotional tornado.

Flowers for Algernon is about a group of scientists who have been doing experiments on animals to increase the animal’s IQ levels. After a while they assume all is well and that the testing is ready to move on to humans. For their first human subject, they choose Charlie, a mentally handicapped man who has no family. The reason they choose Charlie is because he has a strong desire to learn and be smart, believing that he will have more friends if he is smarter. This stems from this neglect from his family; he yearns for approval and love.

Anyway, they conduct the experiment and it is successful; Charlie’s IQ triples in three months, making him a genius. But, as he grows more and more intelligent, he realizes how mistreated he was before, how people ignored and neglected him, and how people laughed at him. He becomes more cynical and doesn’t trust many people, and yet he still yearns for love in friendship.

While he is smarter than any person on the planet, emotionally he is still on the level of a child and doesn’t understand relationships and sex. This is explored often in the novel. Charlie also becomes aware of how he was tested on like an animal, and feels like people didn’t consider him a person when he was mentally challenged still. Pretty heavy themes, but done in a really personal way.

This raises a lot of questions about the value of a person, experimental testing, and how one attains true happiness.

Through out the novel Charlie grows as a person and becomes more and more lonely and sad. He discovers love, he contributes to science and learns about humanity. As he does, my heart become heavier and heavier as he lost friendships and isolated himself, and witnessed how differently people treated him before and after his change. I especially related to his struggles with his family and how they never really accepted him. He just craved their love and approval so badly. By the end of the novel I was weeping at the kitchen table, unable to close the book even though I finished it. I kept reading and rereading the last chapter, just completely shattered and overwhelmed by how far Charlie came and how it still wasn’t really enough but he accepted it anyway.

This book moved me like no other book has ever done before. I really didn’t think I could be held like this. I am sad because I don’t know if I will ever read anything as good as this. How on earth can I top this? What can I read now? I don’t know. Honestly, I just want to read Flowers for Algernon again. And probably again, even after that.  

I was at my University’s library the other day looking for some post-modern poetry for a class, and I saw the bright orange cover of The Catcher in the Rye staring back at me between old dusty books. I stopped what I was doing and just stared at it for awhile, having a sort of conflict within myself. I had a lot to read for school and I don’t have much time, but I’ve never read The Catcher in the Rye and I’ve heard such great things about it. On the other hand I know nothing about it so I wasn’t sure if I would be interested or not. I decided to take it out anyway. I started reading it instead of my poetry books and was taken in completely. I was taken hold of and the book would not let go. I was caught.

The story is narrated by Holden Caulfield, a teenager who is kicked out of school. The plot revolves around him leaving his school and hanging around New York city in a for a few days. The entire novel is just really a few days. What makes the story interesting is that Holden, like myself, is a people-watcher. What I mean by this is that he watches people, he tries to imagine what their life is like, what they do in their spare time, he tries to make a story for them. But, unlike me, he is very critical of everyone around him and comes off as very negative and judgmental. It sounds exhausting, but its okay and easy to get through because he does all his observations with a sense of humor, so it comes off as amusing and funny.

While he doesn’t talk about himself very often, his character comes through by the way he describes the world around him. You can tell he is troubled, as he reveals he is kicked out of schools often, and dealt with the death of his younger brother who he adored. A lot is also revealed through dialogue. While he wanders around New York, he is constantly trying to hang out with people and talk to people. All the conversations end with people telling Holden to “grow up” and to be more “mature”. This says a lot about Holden.

He is critical of everyone around him but at the same time he refuses to acknowledge his own problems and issues, and as the story goes on and the reader realizes these issues, the reader becomes more and more sad for Holden. He is particularly obsessed with not being “phony”, but the people who he describes as “phony” are often mature, adult people.

A reoccurring image of this is in his notoriously famous red hunters hat. The hat is bright red with big ear flaps; very unusual and gets him lots of attention. This hat represents how he strives to be different from people around him, and doesn’t care much what people say about/to him, even if they are trying to help him.

Several times in the novel adults and even his friends are trying to reach out to him, trying to reach through to him, but it just doesn’t happen. Even though so many people try to help Holden, he isolates himself from them, but at the same time is aware of how lonely and sad he feels.

Towards the end of the novel I realized Holden doesn’t want to grow up, but he has already, so he wants, more than anything, to protect children from growing up to fast, especially his little sister, who is adores and admires completely. It is her to ultimately gets through to Holden and sort of saves him from a spiral downwards in his life.

This book ripped my heart out and at the same time filled me with tiny joys. I could relate to him, as many readers do, which is why Holden is such a great hero/anti-hero. He isolates himself and yet he is constantly seeking out companionship. He is lonely but at the same time craves independence. I watched him plummet and then get back up again. I cried and smiled and laughed out loud and yet the ending was bittersweet. I want to start reading it again immediately. This book just really hit home with me. I feel like that weird person who people can never really connect with. I want people to like me, to understand me and be my friend but it just never happens that way. Even so, this book showed me that I can find my own way, even if its a lot different from everyone’s way, and that I too, can move forward.

This book was the best I’ve read in such a long time. So different from anything I’ve read before. I can’t stop thinking about it, even though I finished it a few days ago, it just won’t leave my mind. I really hope you go read it too. I really do.

VAMPIRE DIARIES: A REVIEW

Okay, so this is completely a guilty pleasure that I am almost embarrassed to write about, but here I go. I finished the entire series of the Vampire Diaries so far, and that is around 7-8 books, yeah, a lot. All of them were pretty terrible.

If they were so terrible why did I read the series? Well, it was kind of addicting, only because I truly really adored one character.

The story is about – you guessed it, a high school girl in love with – gasp – a vampire. Of course. The girl, Elena, is popular and beautiful and every single person in her town admires her and loves her completely. Its sickening. She has no flaws at all, and yet she knows she is pretty and to me is very vain.

Basically every novel revolves around some dark entity wanting Elena. They want to kill her, or love her, or destroy her, or kidnap her – each novel is a different “twist” on some creature wanting Elena, and how her friends and vampire lover boy try to save her.

She dies a lot too, but will return as a vampire, or angel, or some other magical being. Its ridiculous how many times she dies and returns even more beautiful than before. Its so annoying. Basically death is never final, well, not for Elena. Which is a pretty messed up message. She also manages to be prom queen and all that junk through out the novel too. Its pretty depressing. 

Not only does her vampire boyfriend love her, but so does his brother! Yeah, so two smoking hot vampires, who are a century old and are smart and talented are both in love with a vain high school prom queen. They both fight over her, she kisses and loves them both, its pretty weird and messed up. 

They are so bad I would say Twilight is better.

The only part I liked about the novels was when they journeyed to other dimensions – especially the “dark dimension” which is essentially a hell where vampires and other creatures live. I liked reading about the “bad guys”.

So if you need to get a high school girl a present and she is obsessed with Twilight, she’ll probably go for this series. And its never ending so she should be set for a while.  

If you actually enjoy literature…NEVER READ THESE. Please. Save yourself the time.