Crazy Week Amid Disaster

I know it's been over a week, but it's also been crazy here! Last week was Girl Scout week, so we had events EVERY NIGHT (FYI I'm a Brownie leader). Ash Wednesday was last week. A huge earthquake and then tsunami hit Japan and thousands of people died. What an awful event! I'm still not quite able to fathom the damage done. I keep looking at the photos and thinking that maybe the world really is ending... Maybe that's why I keep reading books about Dystopias and and futuristic worlds. They make me think that what we have now is not so bad. Maybe more people need to read them so they can recognize when things are heading the wrong way!

The first book I'm going to write about is not a book about a dystopia. It's called The Shadow of the Wind and is by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It is one of the more beautiful books I have read this year. There are so many "deep thoughts" within the pages, it's hard to remember most of them. The story takes us through the young life of Daniel, the ten year old son of a book seller. His father takes him to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time and he gets to pick out a book to protect. The book he picks is called The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. Daniel reads the book and is so taken with it, he tries to learn more about the author and find more of his books. Throughout the book, we see Daniel go through his adolescence and are swept up with him in unravelling the mystery of Julian Carax's life. This book has everything: romance, mystery, horror, murder, crime, intrigue. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time, while others slip out of my memory.

Matched by Ally Condie is a novel about a dystopia. Not to far in the future, the US has been morphed into The (perfect) Society. Everyone has food that meets their nutritional needs, everyone has a job suited to their abilities, and everyone who chooses to gets matched to a person who they will happy with until they die on their eightieth birthday. Or you can choose to be single for the rest of your life. In this society, everything is done for you, and there is very little choice. Cassia chose to be matched and is amazed to get matched to one of her best friends, when everyone else has been matched to people from other burroughs who they have never met before. Everyone who gets matched gets a microcard with all the information of their match on it. When Cassia views her microcard, she see's her match's picture, but then another face comes on the screen, and the face belongs to another friend of hers. Seeing the other boy's face opens up a world of possibilities for her, one being that The Society is not perfect and makes mistakes. Will she choose to accept her match, or will she chase destiny and see where it takes her? I have to admit that the beginning of this book was not easy for me to read. The writing was kind of mechanical and I didn't really get a feel for Cassia. By the end, I realized that's because she wasn't really a person, yet. She just did what The Society told her to do. As the story progresses, Cassia finds her voice and the writing becomes more emotional and easier to read. I really got caught up in the story and look forward to book two! (Yes, it's another series!)

I'm not even going to try to guess what I might write about next time, but I'm sure they'll be good!