Tuesday, July 31, 2012

D's July Book Wrap-Up

Not that I'm a big supporter of bandwagons, but here's my I-totally-stole-this-idea-from-my-beautiful-sister-S book wrap-up.

Books Read: 8 

Books Abandoned: 0

Books in Progress: 1
Best Book: The Fault in our Stars--John Green
Okay, I've already gushed enough about TFioS (you can read and/or re-read my review of it here) so I will drag on about neither its astonishing figurative language nor the fact that Green struck the perfect balance between comedy and tragedy nor the importance of symbolism. I won't do it. Anymore.

I do feel like Night will be in this place next month. It was recommended to me by my best friend, and he's accurate about the legitimacy of epicness about 99.4% of the time. I already love it, and I'm only a few pages in.

Worst Book: An Abundance of Katherines--John Green
Yes, the best and worst July books are by the same author. Sue me. Seriously though, I had higher hopes for  Katherines. Why didn't I like it? Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it thoroughly. I just felt that Colin, the beyond-nerdy main character, was difficult to relate to even within our own similarities. Quite simply, Colin was that annoying kid from middle school who always tried to outsmart you but never had the right words to do it. Other than that, I loved the methodical structure of the book (many humorous footnotes that taught me a few words and phrases in ten languages) and the humanness found in some of the secondary characters. It really wasn't a bad book, it just couldn't stand up to its rivals this month.


I'm looking forward to Night as well as August's shared read: Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson. I've also got two more books on hold at the library: Looking for Alaska by (who else but) John Green and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Between marching band, which started this week, (ow, four mallet marimba hurts my hand!) and the beginning of school, I won't make any promises to read more books in August than I did in July. However, I can guarantee books of a higher caliber. As you can see, I seemed to be lacking in actual, ya know, challenge.

So long for now!
D

S's July Book Wrap Up

On my other blog, The London Diaries, I post a book wrap up at the end of each month. Since this is a total book nerd blog I thought I might just cross post those wrap ups here as well.

Books Read:  7

Books Abandoned: 1


Books in Progress:  1


Best Book:  Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg
It was actually really difficult to choose a favourite book this month as I loved “We Are All Made of Glue” just as much as “Fried Green Tomatoes” but the latter won the slight edge with its southern charm.  I haven’t actually seen the movie (gasp!) but from what I hear it’s a bit different to the book.  I hope not too much as I plan on watching it very soon!  It read a bit like I imagine Steel Magnolias would read if it were a book (and my GOD I wish it was!).  As a total aside, what the hell is THIS about???!!!

Worst Book:  House Rules - Jodi Picoult
While I did manage to finish this book (only just) it wasn’t Picoult’s best (or even decent) by far.  I just disliked everything about this one.

X
S

Friday, July 20, 2012

D's July Review: The Fault in our Stars


The Fault in our Stars by John Green
Synopsis (as taken from Goodreads): Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 13, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumors in her lungs... for now. 

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault. 

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

D's Thoughts:
Back for more? Great! I've got an amazing book to tell you about today. This isn't a co-read, this is just my opportunity to tell you about one book I read this month that was simply amazing.


How did I find out about this book? Let me tell you, I've been a huge fan of Vlogbrothers for a while. At one point, toward the beginning of the summer, I spent a week doing almost nothing but watching the works of John and Hank Green (mostly Vlogbrothers, but a bit of Crash Course as well). Several of the videos mentioned John's books, of course, and that's when I decided that I had to read as many as I could get my hands on. TFioS just happened to be the first one that I found.
And oh my gosh, was I overjoyed!

There's just so much to love about this book, so I guess I'll just name as many as I can think of and hope this paragraph is coherent. 1) Hazel Grace and Augustus had some of the most thought-provoking conversations ever, and I simply adore things that make you stop and consider your life choices. 2) The flirting in this book isn't gross or way overdone. Boys, take notes. 3) The alternate storyline of Hazel's favorite [unfortunately non-existent] book is actually related to the main plot, and even brings up another one of those huge, thought-provoking moments. Without spoiling it, one of the characters in the fictional book is thought to either be powerful or a complete con. We never discover which, we just have to decide. I didn't realize it until later, but it's a metaphor about the belief in God. When I realized it, it literally blew my mind...okay, misuse of literality (a humorous motif in the book) but nonetheless. 4) The metaphor of stars is gorgeous, but not completely overdone: essentially, Green questions the validity of the famous Shakespeare line, "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Is there fault in fate? The characters seem to think so: “But it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he has Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves.” Is that so? That's up to you to decide. 5) The last line was yet another nod to Shakespeare and his way of ending comedies versus tragedy. While I won't spoil it for you, it's rather brilliant.


Honestly, there wasn't ANYTHING I didn't like about it. The figurative language was gorgeous. The plot was never boring, but it wasn't so jam-packed that I got lost. As one might figure from a cancer book (though this is not just any cancer book, in which the main character overcomes grief to set an example for us all, which is yet another thing I love), I cry just thinking about the last few chapters. The emotional ties the author makes available to the reader are so strong that there have been posts on Tumblr asking people "to call her Hazel, not Hazel Grace, because only Augustus Waters is allowed to call her that". For fiction, it sure feels real.


In my albeit not-so-long lifetime of reading, there have only been four full-length novels that kept me so engrossed that I read the entire book in one sitting. The first was Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata, the second was Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, the third was The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. The fourth, I am overjoyed to say, was The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. On our scale of 1 to 5, though I wish I could rate it the largest infinity of all the infinities, I rate it a 5.

Standout Quotes (there are quite a few!): 


“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?” 

“What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers.” 

"I'm in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you."
“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.”

"I can’t talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbound set...But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade if for the world. You gave me forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.”

And now, my absolute favorite, which has helped me a lot in my own life recently: 
"You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.” 
Album to listen to while reading this book: "The World Won't Listen" by The Smiths

Best wishes,

D

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer

Synopsis (as taken from Goodreads):  Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey.

S’s Rating: ❤❤❤❤ (out of five hearts)
D’s Rating: 
❤❤❤  (out of five hearts)


S’s Thoughts:


Welcome to the first ever “Sister Read” post for our blog, Two Sisters Reading.  You can catch up on what this blog is actually about here on the welcome post.

Well, let’s jump right in!  July’s Sister Read, and our first ever, was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.  It’s a book that I’ve been wanting to read for a long time and finally got around to and it seemed like a good book for D and I to share.

Sometimes a book comes along that sends your heart into your teeth from the first page and ELIC was one of those books for me.  I think by the time I was five pages in I felt like crying.  Like a lot of people, I remember 9/11 vividly.  I remember where I was, what I was wearing and who I was with when the tv was turned on to the news as the second plane hit.  Fortunately I didn’t have a personal connection to the tragedy but like the rest of the country I mourned.  I still can’t watch documentaries on 9/11 without crying and feeling that grief.  Going into this knowing that Oskar’s father died in one of the towers I should have known that I would be teary eyed off and on throughout the book.

ELIC wasn’t an easy read for me, both for the emotional nature of the book but also because it can be a bit hard to follow, especially when it comes to conversations between characters.  Foer doesn’t like using the standard “he said,” “character x asked” and instead just streams it all into the paragraph separating dialogue out with just quotation marks.  It sometimes got  a bit confusing.  

So what did I like about the book?  I liked that it was current and still relevant.  I loved Oskar and all of the Blacks.  Oskar was probably one of the most endearing characters I’ve ever come across in a book; he was honest to a fault but I couldn’t help but love him and his crazy inventions.  All of the characters were unforgettable and so dynamic; Grandma was a tie with Oskar for my favourite.  The pictures throughout the book were also really interesting and well tied in with the story.

What didn’t I like about the book?  I’ve touched on the dialogue bit though I can’t say I didn’t like it.  It was just different, really.  I have to say I didn’t care for the ending too much.  Without ruining it, I felt like Oskar deserved a bit more than what he got.  I also found it a bit odd, implausible even, how the various Blacks interacted with Oskar seemingly off the bat.  It didn’t ring true for me; I just can’t imagine complete strangers speaking so candidly with a child.

Out of five hearts I rated ELIC with four stars.  Other than the ending and the interactions between Oskar and the Blacks, this book was close to perfect for me.  I’ll be honest though, it is extremely rare when I rate a book five out of five.

Standout Quotes:

“I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables.  I thought about my small victories and everything I’d seen destroyed...”
“We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families, and our friends, and even the people who aren’t on our lists, people we’ve never met but still want to protect.  We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.”

Album to listen to while reading this book:  “Begin to Hope” by Regina Spektor




D’s Thoughts:


When S first suggested the book, I was really excited. I generally love books that I think might make me cry. However, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close didn't have as much of an impact on me as I'd hoped.
This might be partially be because I, unlike S, don't remember 9/11. At all. I had turned 4 years old less than two months beforehand, and while S can affirm that I have a ridiculous memory (or at least I claimed to have one when I was younger), I remember absolutely nothing of it. My first recollection of even knowing of the event was when I read a National Geographic Kids magazine about New York City or something of that nature when I was six or seven. I suppose that due to my age, I can't hurt like most of my country. It really would have helped while reading this book.
This is not to say that I wasn't touched at all! Oskar had a unique way of telling his story and showing us how he viewed everything: through inventions and childish hope. One of my favorite things about this book is that the phrase "September 11th" is not used at all in the first two-thirds of the book, and it's only used once toward the end. Oskar was able to tell us exactly what had happened--"the towers fell"--without having to use a worn-out phrase with less of a connotation of grief than the idea of towers falling with hundreds still inside.
So, what was it that I didn't like? The dialogue, as S said, was a bit confusing at times. In addition, the book changes perspective every couple of chapters. The first few times we were introduced to the other narrators, we really had no idea of who they were or how they were related in any way to Oskar's story. Additionally, I didn't really understand how some of Oskar's actions, such as his super-secret-and-not-spoiled activity with the renter at the end of the book, went completely unpunished. There is a drastic lack of anyone acting upon anger in this book, and it feels a bit unnatural.
I would have to disagree with S and, without giving it all away, say that I liked the ending. It is realistic: quite simply, not every journey ends with something spectacular, but I think that the final scene with his mother gave him everything he had searched for: love.

Standout Quotes:
"When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much...I spent my life learning to feel less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness."


"I knew that we were sharing something with our eyes, but I didn't know what, and I didn't know if it mattered."

"I wish I were a poet...I've spent my life observing the universe, mostly in my mind's eye. It's been a tremendously rewarding life, a wonderful life. I've been able to explore the origins of time and space with some of the great living thinkers. But I wish I were a poet."
Album to listen to while reading this book: "Recovering the Satellites" by Counting Crows (A lack of sleep is a huge motif in this book, and "I'm Not Sleeping" is conveniently on this album.)

Well, I suppose that's all for this month! Between our monthly shared books, we will both additionally review one book that we've read independently. Finally, at the end of each month, we will post our "book wrap-ups" (which you can see examples of on S's other blog here) to summarize all that we've read! August’s book is D’s choice and is Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson.
See you soon! S & D

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Welcome Post!!!

Welcome to Two Sisters Reading, though chances are that S will be the only other person to ever read this post. Whatevs. Just in case you AREN'T my sister, you should check out the tabs at the top of the screen to figure out what exactly is going on here.

Tomorrow, we'll begin our first simultaneously-read book. S's choice was Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I hope it's as amazing as it sounds!

Amo te,
D