Week 2 - Two YA books and a Classic

So, I said last week that I was going to review Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins and Nightlight by The Harvard Lampoon. I also managed to finish The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I guess that's where I'll start. I read The Great Gatsby because I'm going to be teaching it next month in the English class I coteach. It's a book I've been meaning to read for awhile but probably would have never gotten around to without the proper prompting. I did enjoy it. A lot took place in the narrator's (Nick Carraway's) head, and a lot was what he heard. It is interesting how a lot of modern lit focuses on the drama as it is happening. The main character is the person that is going through the drama. Not so in this book. The main character watches a lot of what happens, but most of the real action happens as he is looking back in hindsight. After learning the time frame it takes place in, I got into it a lot more. It is a "roaring 20's", prohibition/bootlegging, jazz era book. Taken as that, it is beautiful.

I talked about the first Underland Chronicles book in my last blog. If you aren't familiar with the series, check it out! In the second book, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, Gregor and his little sister Boots are once again dragged into the Underworld. This time, Gregor must defeat the Bane, a ten-foot-tall, white rat, to save his sister from the other rats who are hunting her and to save the Underworld. But nothing turns out exactly how people expect it in the Underland. Gregor takes another exciting journey through the Underland and the reader tags along, fighting his fight, feeling his pain and enduring all his hardships. One thing that Suzanne Collins excells at in her writing is pulling the reader in and making them feel like part of the story!

The last book I read, Nightlight by the Harvard Lampoon was just too fricken funny! If you liked Twilight, you should totally read the parody! If you hated Twilight, you will love this book! Belle Goose leaves her babyish mom and her travel-street-hockey playing step-dad to move to Switchblade, Oregon, where she meets Edwart Mullen. She detects early on that he is a vampire and she wants him to make her one, too. When she tells her dad she is in love he responds: " ...isn't it a little soon to cut yourself off from the rest of your peers, depending on a boyfriend to satisfy your social needs as opposed to making friends? Imagine what would happen if something forced that boy to leave! I'm imagining pages and pages would happen- with nothing but the names of the month on them!" I almost dropped the book laughing at that point. Later on, Belle almost gets eaten by a real vampire who decides to take her to the vampire prom instead, where the theme is human. Then the vampire starts rattling off the prom themes from former years: "Pimps and their Street Ho's; CEOs and their Office Ho's; GI Joes and their Combat Ho's; Gardeners and their Garden Hoes; Firemen and their Fire Hose..." It's a short book, filled with hilarity... Don't read it expecting to get some kind of greater knowledge out of it, it's just a parody! Enjoy!

Next week:
Matched by Allie Condie
Not sure what else yet, but there's this big controversy going on where three books were put on this top 100 list and then removed and replaced with three "less controversial" books. So, needless to say, I'm trying to get my hands on the books that were removed! We'll see! Happy reading!

New Blog!

Yes, I know it is a month into the new year! But isn't it still a good time to revamp a blog that hadn't been touched in almost 2 years?! (I think so!) I have been reading voraciously (hence the new blog name) for the past few months and will hopefully continue to do so.

I have finished (and started) a few books this week. I'll start with Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins. One of my BFs put me on to The Hunger Games by the same author and those books were SO AMAZING (seriously, if you haven't read them, GO GET THEM NOW!) that I decided to check out her first series. It was a little weird at first, but I got into it pretty quickly. Gregor is a kid from NYC. He has to miss summer camp to stay home and watch his 2 year old sister, nicknamed Boots, and his slightly senile grandmother. On the first day, while he is doing laundry, Boots gets sucked into an airvent and Gregor follows her, dropping thousands of feet, at an alarmingly slow rate. (Does this remind you of anything, yet?) He lands (softly) in complete darkness, finds his sister, and is almost immediately greeted by giant cockroaches who take them to the humans who live down there. Incredibly imaginative, this book sends Gregor (and the reader) on a quest to find his father, who disappeared years before, where he might right giant bats, fight and then ally with giant spiders and then outsmart the giant rats who want to take over the Underworld. I enjoyed reading this book so much that I went out and got the second one (from the library). I'll let you know how that is next week!

Next on the docket was The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I had read a few of his graphic novels, but never a full length novel. What a beautiful book! The imagery was incredible and the story haunting, yet endearing. It is about a boy who gets adopted by a couple of ghosts to protect him from the murderer who killed the rest of his family. They name him Nobody Owens and give him the Freedom of the Graveyard, which enables him to remain unseen by outside eyes and gives him some of the abilities that ghosts have. I enjoyed this book from beginning to end. I fell in love with Bod and sympathized with him as he tried to find a place in our world. My favorite chapter is Danse Macabre...Let me know what you think!

Coming next week:
Nightlight by The Harvard Lampoon
Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane by Suzanne Collins