The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins. Claims to be a young adult book. I say it's just epic. I've heard so much about this series, but stayed a little hesitant… I'm not big on reading fantasy - I've never read Harry Potter! (And don't intend to - don't bother trying to sway me.) Since I've decided to read outside my genre, I picked it up, but I didn't know what to expect when I started. I was blown away. It's like what would happen if Shirley Jackson raised the stakes in "The Lottery," expanded it, and set it in the dystopian world of Lois Lowry's The Giver
. The setting is America, after some sort of rebellious uprising. Instead of 50 states, there are now 13 districts and the Capital - but District 13 has been eliminated due to rebels. Every year, children's names are put in a lottery, and one boy and one girl are chosen from each district to go to "The Hunger Games" and fight to the death. Only one person can win. Hooked? GO READ IT.Catching Fire
by Suzanne Collins. The second book in the Hunger Games series. While it wasn't as fantastic as the first, it was still really good and held its ground. It was far from a let-down. I had some ideas about what would come next, but was pleasantly surprised that only one of those actually happened - and in a different way than I had thought. I can't say what I want without giving away the major plot point, but let's just say… the way it happened wasn't hokey at all. It was completely believable, as much as anything can be in a fictional/fantastical realm. I feel like this book was more of a necessary stepping stone to bridge one and three.Mockingjay
by Suzanne Collins. At first, the style of writing seemed a bit different than the first two, though I can't exactly place why. It is still amazingly good, and I definitely teared up at the end. Crying due to a violent book is a good thing in my mind, because there was no obvious sentimentality tugging at my heart strings - it's just so well-written, you feel for the characters. And maybe I was a little sad it was all over. I'm ready to read them again.Assholes Finish First
by Tucker Max. Let me state that, while I think Tucker's books are funny, I know better than to recommend them to anyone. That being said, if you've read them and you're not a frat boy, let's have a round table discussion.When You Reach Me
by Rebecca Stead. A young adult book. The narrator is very funny, in a deadpan, sarcastic way. I was smiling or laughing at most of the sentences in the first third of the book. Then it starts to get more serious. I'm not sure if this is meant to be a science fiction book - the jacket blurb doesn't mention it - but time travel is involved. It really makes you think. Days later, I was still trying to figure out everything that happened in the book, trying to find logic in it. I don't know if kids would understand it better because it's easier for them to digest these ideas, but there are parts I didn't really follow. Again, this was because I was trying to find the logic behind all of it. It was still a funny read, and it was a Newbery winner so that says something.Rescue
by Anita Shreve. I've read quite a few of Shreve's books before, and usually enjoy them because of the writing style. I picked this book up from the library because it was there and I knew the author. The jacket copy sounded fairly compelling, but the book wasn't really. It was told in two parts - the year of courtship and marriage of a couple, and then the year their daughter is seventeen. The mother is an alcoholic and the father is an EMT, so the heft of the story focuses on those issues and how the daughter is coping with them. It was an easy read, and I finished it so it wasn't bad, but the ending was a flop.Never Tell a Lie
by Hallie Ephron. Read on the nook. A suspenseful mystery about a pregnant woman and her husband and their creepy new house. An old high school classmate comes to their yard sale and never leaves. The husband is accused of murder, and his wife believes he is innocent - until his lies start to surface. Definitely a page-turner - I finished it in a couple hours. It's written very matter-of-factly, like most mystery/suspense, without beautiful language. However, in this case, a lot of the things described (that were fairly crucial to the story) were hard for me to imagine. I'm not sure if it was the language or the way the words were put together, but I couldn't picture a lot of the scenes/happenings, so it didn't seem to fit together too well. There were also some inconsistencies that may have been on purpose, going along with the creepy happenings, but it was never clarified, so I wondered if they were mistakes, or simply never addressed in the resolution.The Center of Everything
by Laura Moriarty. This book, set in Kansas, follows a girl from age ten to seventeen. The story deals with her struggles growing up, being raised by a single mother, trying to decide between religion vs. biology, and so much more that it'd spoil it to mention here. I started this book unsure of what it was about and how it'd be written, but I absolutely loved it. A reviewer on the back cover compared it to To Kill a Mockingbird
, and it could be an updated, different version of that story. It's worth a read, and I ask you to not judge it by its somewhat-girly cover - it's a good book for anyone.
by Lisa See. A good book spanning a few decades of two sisters' lives. We meet them in Shanghai, and experience their hardships as they are forced to come to the United States, pushed into arranged marriages, and deal with many family deaths. It was interesting to learn a lot about another culture, as well as history since the book's scope is from 1937 on. The ending makes me think that there will be a sequel, but overall, the book wasn't compelling enough to make me want to read on.
by Elizabeth Scott. Read on the nook. Yet another abduction book I seem to be so addicted to. This one is apparently very controversial, since it's a young adult book, though it's recommended for ages 16 and up. "Alice" is a fifteen-year-old girl who has been living with her kidnapper for five years. I could tell more of what it's about without giving it away, but I won't. What was most compelling about this book for me was how those five years can make or break someone, how crucial that period is for development. The way it's written really pulls you in, and by the end you're thinking about every man with a little girl you've ever seen, wondering if she was really his daughter, wondering if you should have done something. Amazing book, highly recommended, one I'll definitely re-read.
by Jonah Lehrer. My boss loaned me this book after telling me about it for ages. I always insist I love art and fiction too much to pay attention to science and math, but this book shows that science and art are always linked together. Lehrer takes artists, writers, chefs and musicians and shows how they developed scientific ideas long before the scientists figured it all out. It was easy to get bogged down in all of it, and I usually could only read a chapter an hour, if that. Some of the ideas are really interesting, and the writing itself is wonderful. I had to mark some of my favorite sections to make note of here:
by Gayle Forman. Read on the nook. A young adult book. Style-wise, I'd compare this book to Alice Sebold's 
, but it's about a million times better. Mia is in a wreck with her immediate family, and leaves her body to see everything around her. She sees the friends and relatives who come to visit her, she relives past moments, and thinks what her future would be like if she lives. That's the key to this book - Mia knows she has the choice to fight for life, or to give in to death. It's so heart-wrenching without being overly sentimental, but I admit - I bawled like a baby in many parts. It's just extremely well-done, and I recommend it highly.
by Jandy Nelson. Read on the nook. A young adult book. Lennon, known as Lennie, is coping with the sudden, unexpected death of her older sister, Bailey. She's trying to figure out the mystery of her nomadic mother, who dropped the sisters off with their grandmother and hasn't returned for over fifteen years. On top of all that, her sister's boyfriend, Toby, keeps hanging around the house, which makes it difficult for Lennie to get closer to Joe, the cute new boy who calls her John Lennon. It's a really sweet book, and it was easy to get sucked into Lennie's world right along with her, rather than stay back as a reader and know what is right and wrong for her. Still, it is a YA romance book, so it's full of the kind of love only teenagers could believe in.
by Nick Hornby. A screenplay. It's based on a memoir essay by Lynn Barber, and was adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby. I haven't seen 
, but I'm kind of curious to, now. It's about a sixteen-year-old girl in England in 1962. She starts dating an older man, and it's how her family, friends, and teachers react. The ending was wonderful. The alternate ending was ehh - but that's why it was the alternate! It was a quick read - I read it in two hours, tops, so I'm curious how it would translate on screen - what moments would be expanded and made more important, etc.
