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The Broke and the Bookish
5 Books I Loved More Than I Thought I Would
1) Red Rising, by Pierce BrownI was just expecting a cool sic-fi story. I was not expecting an epic journey that would bring me into a whole new fandom. I have casting ideas, fan art ideas, and I even bought official prints from Kickstarter.
2) The Prophet, by Michael KorytaI can't stand football and thought the sport would overshadow the story. But it was a good story about brothers and a murder mystery.
3) Everything, Everything, by Nicola YoonThough a bit predictable, I really loved the way it was written, like a diary with lists, illustrations, and Maddy's little definitions and book reviews. It gave the story a real personal feel. Maddy is a girl I would have been friends with in high school. I'd be friends with her now.
4) Allegiant, by Veronica RothI might be the only person in the world to think the last book of this trilogy is the best one. After reading reviews of people slamming it, I was expecting the worst. But I was glad Roth was bold enough to go there. It is still a happy ending, though bitter-sweet, just not a conventional one.
5) We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel ShriverThis was a great book I couldn't put down. I would stay up some nights till 2 am reading. It is also a story that will have you thinking about it for days or weeks afterward. A few years after I read it they made it into a film (a good adaptation too) and although I didn't do a reread before seeing the film, I did remember the little details. The story really stayed with me.
5 Books I Liked Less Than I Thought I Would
6) The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeymi It took me 11 years to read this from my TBR pile. When I did I was disappointed. I was expecting something more eerie and supernatural and I ended up bored.
7) Divergent, by Veronica RothThis book (series) came highly recommended by friends. I did enjoy this book. However, at first I had some trouble accepting the world they live in. It didn't seem plausible. People do not fit into one mold and that's it. The entire world is divergent. It made sense later on when I read Allegiant.
8) Dorothy Must Die, by Danielle PaigeWhen I read the first four chapters of the excerpt I liked it enough to put it on my to-read list. The character of Indigo was really the one who drew me in. I liked her sass.
Before the novel was released a prequel e-book novella was release, No Place Like Oz. That story felt very rushed, sloppy, and lacked focus of Dorothy's mission.
I hoped that would not be the case for Dorothy Must Die. It stared out well. I still liked Indigo, who first sparked my interest. I did grow to like Amy too. Dorothy, while despicable, was still as one dimensional and bratty as she was in the prequel novella. The other characters were just there and I didn't form any connection to them, except perhaps Ollie, the Wingless Monkey.
This would have been a stronger story had it being a stand alone. As a result the story has a lot of boring filler and with some predictable outcomes.
9) Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëIt took me a while to get used to the style of writing. She gets very wordy. It was close to the last quarter of the book that I didn't have to reread sentences to understand the scene. It takes a lot of brain power to read and I was tired after 2 chapters. So the downside of the book is that it is told through the perspective of the tenant, Mr. Lockwood, and the story itself is from the perspective of the housekeeper, Ellen Dean (Nelly). And the story she tells happened in the past. So because it is told this way we get a lot of telling and not much showing.
Then there is the fact that we are only told what Ellen saw herself or was told by another character. So while you know it's a tragic love story and you see the characters' behaviors you don't really feel it. Here you have Cathy and Heathcliff declare that the other is their soul and reason for existing but I felt ambivalent toward them.
10) Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh This was not an easy book to read but I pushed through and finished. Took me a while to get used to reading the Scottish vernacular Even when watching the film I need subtitles. I also didn't know it was told through individual vignettes from different point of views. Sometimes one of the character's first person perspective and sometimes in the third person. Third person was the easiest to read because only the the dialogue was written in their dialect. And then some characters you can see why they weren't in the movie. Boring and uneventful. And when I got to their vignettes I just didn't care.What got me through was the interesting characters that appeared in the film, reading about their background, psychotic thoughts and the events that I do remember from the film. Basically the movie is way better than the book. The film has the best characters, stories, the best quotes and made an interesting story.
