Sunday, August 16, 2009

50 books a year

So last year I did completer my "50 Books in One Year" challenge.. which was inspired by "italktosnakes" of Youtube. I am also doing the same challenge this year. I got a late start and only read about 9 books by July, and then read about 20 books in July to catch up. Now I am on roughly my 30th book of the year, "going too far" by Jennifer Echols. So far it's pretty interesting, it's doing the typical style of slowly revealing the truth about a character & all that... but the way they are setting it up is different.
I just finished "The Time Traveler's Wife" the other day, and I have to say I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as everyone said I would. Henry just wasn't appealing... he wasn't particularly charming, witty, nice, and so on. He was just sort of there, and then of course sometimes he wasn't. He was mostly a jerk in the "present time" when he was an alcoholic and just slept with a bunch of women and wasn't very nice to any of them. The only thing Clare liked about Henry was Clare. She's what made him likable. It reminded me of John Green ("vlogbrothers" on Youtube) and what he said about Edward Cullen from Twilight... that he's just a vessel for you (the reader) to put your thoughts and feelings etc into, basically he is what you want him to be, without actually having any good personality qualities on his own.
I've been keeping a sort of book report diary on all the books I've read since the beginning of the Summer, which has kept me up with my writing and it's been nice to write by hand and not on a computer. Two of my favorite books that I've read this year are "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins and "Graceling" by Kristin Cashore. Both books have very strong and independent female lead characters and both have sequels coming out this fall, which I am very excited. I recommend both books to anyone who likes a little adventure in their YA fiction.

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