136 posts tagged “book challenge”
Finished Bass Ackwards and Belly Up by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain.
This is really, really similar to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series (and I don't know why the cover has three girls, because there are four). The blurbs on the back of the book take some digs at that series, which is annoying, but anyway, this book was fun. :)
It's about four best friends (Harper, Sophie, Kate and Becca) who are about to start college. Then Harper says she's not going, because she's going to write a novel. Then Sophie decides to go to LA and Kate heads off to Europe. (Becca still goes off to college.) It's basically all about the path not chosen and was very fun.
Finished Bad Girls Don't Die by Katie Allender.
This was incredibly entertaining, although it kept giving me Mary Downing Hahn flashbacks. (If you don't know who that is, acquire a copy of Wait Til Helen Comes. It's for kids, but it's still really, really creepy.)
Anyway. Alexis lives with her parents and little sister Kasey. They've lived in their creepy, Gothic-style home for years but lately, it's gotten strange. Appliances work without being plugged in and sometimes, Kasey doesn't act like herself. She'll use weird phrases (like, "You oughtn't do that") and she'll do things and then not remember them later. Sometimes Alexis will look at her and notice how green her eyes are--except usually her eyes are blue.
So yeah, creepy. The ending felt a little rushed, but it's a fun way to spend an afternoon.
Finished I Know It's Over by C.K. Kelly Martin.
Really good, really sad book.
Nick and Sasha are in the first love stage of adolescence. They're in high school and are basically the kind of couple that makes other people sick.
And then they have sex. Sasha loves Nick, but it was a little more than she was ready for. So they break up.
And then we learn she's pregnant.
A blurb on the back says that this should be read by every teen and every parent and I agree.
It's really easy to assume that things like this don't happen to us/our daughters. (Although now, fortunately, pretty much any of my friends that get pregnant would be greeted with "Congratulations!" and not "Oh, crap, what are you going to do?" and that, my friends, is the glory of being a grownup.)
But they do, and when they do, hard decisions have to be made.
And in a case like this, there isn't a right choice. Every choice is wrong and every choice is hard. I absolutely agree that every teenager (boy and girl) and their parents and relatives should read this and should talk about it.
(Because what you would do in this case is a discussion that should be had before it's you in this case.)
Finished 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher.
This is one of those books where the premise is so brilliant that the execution has little prayer of measuring up. (It was still an incredibly engrossing book and definitely worth the read, however.)
This guy, Clay, comes home from school one day and there's a package on his front step and it's for him. Awesome, right? Except there are seven tapes inside--thirteen reasons why Hannah Baker killed herself. Thirteen specific people who, in one way or another, caused her to lose all hope.
Each person is a story on one of the tapes (both sides of six tapes and the first side of the seventh) and the tapes make their way from one home to the next, in the order they appear. Once he's done listening, he has to send them on to the next person.
(If he doesn't listen or send on, Hannah warns, the secrets on the tape will become public knowledge, because another person has an entire set of the tapes and has been instructed to release them.)
Not surprisingly, this is a hard book to read. It's worth it, though, and it serves as a good reminder that we impact people in ways we may not even be aware of. (Although for the most part, I think we all know exactly how we treat people--and in that case, it's good to keep in mind that what we do has consequences.)
Finished Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg.
It's about Helen, whose husband has just died. Her daughter Tessa (who is an adult) seems to be pulling even farther away from her mom and her writing (she's a published author) isn't going so well. (She's had writer's block ever since her husband died.) Not long after Tom's death, she learned that their retirement fund (which was close to a million dollars) is now more like $50,000. That's not exactly poverty by any stretch of the imagination, but it's also not something she can live on for the rest of her life.
And the worst thing is that he had withdrawn most of the money from the fund without telling her, so she has no idea what he spent the money on or why.
Elizabeth Berg is one of those authors where it seems like every book is better than the one before--the story is richer, the prose seems even more like poetry and the characters are even more vivid.
There's a quote worth sharing on almost every page, but this is my favorite:
"It seems to her that life is like gathering berries into an apron with a hole. Why do we keep on? Because the berries are beautiful and we must eat to survive. We catch what we can. We walk past what we lose for the promise of more, just ahead."
Finished The Awakening by Kelley Armstrong.
This is the second book in a paranormal trilogy for young adults. As backstory, the first book (The Summoning) centered around Chloe Saunders, a normal teenage girl who has just started seeing ghosts. They know that she sees them, and so they can talk to her. Of course, the adults in her life don't believe her, so she gets sent to Lyle House, a sort of group home/school for "troubled teens." Soon after arriving, she realizes that there's something odd about every teen there--they all seem to have some sort of weird power that most people don't have.
In this book, we learn more about what's really going on at Lyle House and about the powers that the main characters have. There is, of course, a big conspiracy. I'm sure the third book will have more revelations, and I can't wait to read it.
For most of this book, Chloe is on the run with fellow escapees Simon, Derek and Tori. Because they are teenagers, some cringe-worthy mistakes are made (although not as many as you'd expect, considering that teenagers are known for being impulsive and not thinking things through). Not surprisingly, the people in charge of the Lyle House are chasing after them, because (a) they have special powers and (b) they're starting to piece together why they were all put in Lyle House to begin with.
While written for young adults, it's also an enjoyable book for older audiences. I definitely recommend this.
Finished Shanghai Girls by Lisa See for the Just4thehelluvit Challenge.
I got this review copy from Random House; it comes out May 26.
I read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan but I hadn't read any of her other books before this one. Snow Flower was definitely amazing, but this one was even better.
It's initially set in Shanghai in the 1930s. Pearl and her younger sister May are "beautiful girls." (They pose for calendars, which enables them to make decent money but is viewed by their parents' generation as basically being two steps above prostitution--and not terribly big steps, either.)
Anyway, their life is still going along pretty well until they learn that their dad has lost all his money (and, incidentally, all THEIR money) and so they've been sold to another family and they have to marry that family's sons. And the wedding will happen the day after tomorrow. And after the wedding, they'll be living in the United States.
So it's basically about having to adjust to a life you never thought you'd have to live.
This book was seriously just fantastic. Lisa See's prose is wonderful and the characters feel like friends by the time the book is over. (I do wish it had been longer, but I think that's just because I loved the book so much.) And like real life, a lot happens that's unexpected, but I didn't think anything strained the bounds of reality.
Everyone should read this. :) (Again, it's out May 26.)
(I feel pretty confident in saying that the people I know who get books for presents should not be surprised to find this one under wrapping paper on their nearest gift-getting opportunity.)
Finished Timothy Keller's The Reason For God for the New Author Challenge.
This book has two sections: reasons not to believe in God (which he then refutes) and reasons to believe in God.
I didn't particularly care for this, because I found some of his reasons suspect. Like, for example, he says, "Well, if you don't believe that Jesus existed, died and was resurrected, explain how the Church managed to flourish." And it's like, well, other religions believe other things that I may or may not agree with, and it doesn't matter if I don't believe, say, that a great flood covered the entire earth and that hence we are all descended from Noah now. I don't need to offer up another explanation.
(That's the first example I could come up with, because I'm not super familiar with Islam or many of the other major religions.)
Ancient Egyptians worshiped cats, and now we know that's not true. So there has to be a better basis than "explain why it isn't true."
But I am still glad I read it because I had an epiphany--it doesn't matter what Timothy Keller says. I have to come to this on my own, and at least I'm thinking about it.
Finished Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell for the New Author Challenge.
Okay, this book was amazing. And I'm going to speak in generalizations now, so I'm not saying this applies to every Christian and/or every church. I DO NOT MEAN YOU. :)
The general gist is that modern Christian churches are more concerned with big, fancy worship spaces and preaching that anyone who does not believe or do x, y, or z is going straight to hell. There are debates about whether or not drinking is okay or dancing is okay, but not debates on how best to serve the communities they are set in.
And Rob Bell argues that this is not okay, because--as Christianity is based around Jesus, so it follows that we should do as Jesus did.
One of the things that really resonated with me is the idea that "taking the name of the Lord in vain" may mean being careful how Christians present themselves. As in, if you're a Christian and you're talking to unbelievers and you use fear, like, "You are going straight to hell if you don't believe exactly what I believe," odds are, you're not going to win over many hearts. And instead of people thinking you're a jerk, they may think, "Well, if that's their God, I want no part of it."
Or, to use an example from my own life (and feel free to skip this paragraph, because I know you've all heard it before), I had a huge problem with organized religious groups for a while after I sat in a friend's church one Sunday and heard the pastor condone "hang a homo day." ("Well, maybe we should," he said.) And the fact that nobody stood up and called shenanigans stunned me. (I didn't; I wasn't stupid--I mean, odds are I was the only homo there, and I already knew where he stood on my life and wellbeing.) And I thought, well, this must be what they all believe. And I was raised Methodist (well, Methodist-ish), so I was pretty sure that wasn't what Jesus was about but His followers? Well. No thanks.
So the idea with this book is that we're called to help people--the poor, the downtrodden, the people who aren't fortunate like we are. And that means even people who don't like us or who judge us. The fastest way to overcome hate isn't more hate--it's to love them anyway.
Or in other words, we should just--to quote those two great philosophers of our time--be excellent to each other.
Bell said that doing this isn't easy and it isn't fun. It's incredibly hard, and it will come at great cost. People will judge you and be pretty mean to you anyway. And you probably won't turn everything around by yourself or all at once. But you need to try anyway.
I really, really liked this book. And I am currently too full in my thoughts to discuss it better. Sorry. You should probably just read it yourself anyway.
Finished Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert for the New Author Challenge.
For the three of you who haven't yet read this (and I think it was an Oprah book, so I'm probably not too far off in guessing how many haven't read it), Elizabeth went through an awful divorce and the painful end to a relationship in fairly short order. She decides to take a year off and spend four months each in Italy, India and Indonesia. She basically says that she wants to be able to balance living in the world and being close to God, so she picks Italy (pleasure), India (prayer) and Indonesia (a balance of the two) to help her with that goal.
This is a really, really good book. I've heard that most people love the beginning and end (Eat and Love, basically) and dislike the middle. This may be because everyone eats and most people love, but how many people really pray? As in more than "Please God" about making a traffic light or not bouncing a check or whatever? How many people really take time out every day to just sort of talk to God and not have it be a list of demands or something? (This is probably not a fair question because, as I meant to add in my earlier post, I am the least religious of most of my close friends and honestly, talking to you makes me more receptive of the God idea than I may otherwise be because, whatever else you can say about me, I don't befriend idiots or naive people so...)
Anyway. I was talking about a book. :)
I didn't think the Pray part was as compelling as the other two sections, but I was still interested overall and I think this book is an excellent springboard into my next few books, all of which are about God.
