Cannonball Read!

There is this movie and book review website that I frequently read called Pajiba (www.pajiba.com). Every year, they do something called the Cannonball read, where they challenge readers to read 52 books a year and post reviews. If you read the entire 52 books (or more), they will donate to a college fund for a kid.

This year, they're letting us start a little early, so we have to read 52 books between now and Dec. 31, 2011. So, I'm going to restart my book counter and change the title of my blog so I can start!

If anyone else is interested, here's a link: Cannonball Read

It doesn't officially start until Jan. 1, 2011, so you can sign up before then! But if you sign up earlier, you can get a head start.

Fallout by Ellen Hopkins

I avoided Ellen Hopkins for a while because I wasn't a huge fan of how she writes in verse form. Then I found Crank in a thrift store and picked it up and read it in one night. The books look huge, but they're actually a fast read because of the verse form. And it's not nearly as annoying as you'd expect.

Fallout is Ellen Hopkin's newest YA novel. It's sort of a sequel to
both Crank and Glass, but instead of the main character being Kristina, they focus on three of her children who are now teenagers and have been effected by her drug abuse.

Hunter was the son that Kristina had Crank. His dad raped Kristina and he was eventually adopted by her parents. Now he's 19 and having problems with his girlfriend. Autumn lives with her paternal grandfather and aunt. She is trying to deal with her father trying to come back into her life at the same time her aunt is leaving her to get married. Summer has been passed around between foster homes her whole life until she decides to run away with her boyfriend.

I liked:

-A drug addict would TOTALLY name her kids "Summer" and "Autumn".

-How realistic these characters are. Kristina is still on drugs and it's still effecting everyone in her life, including her children at this point. It's so sad to read, but these characters really come to life.


I didn't like:

-I didn't like Fallout quite as much as some of Hopkins' other novels. It was slightly slower moving, but still very good nonetheless.

Verdict:
4.5/5 stars. Amazing book.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay is the third book in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I picked up the first book after I read the synopsis and it sounded exactly like the plot from the Japanese novel Battle Royale, which I LOVE. It takes place in the future where each year they pick a group of kids from different districts to fight each other in an arena of sorts until only one person is left alive. There are a few differences between the novels, namely that The Hunger Games trilogy are YA books, while Battle Royale is definitely not.

I liked:

- I love the characters. They're so real. The heroine (Katniss...more on her stupid name later) isn't even likable most the time, which makes her more like a real person.

- (POSSIBLE SPOILER) I like when authors have the guts to kill off a fairly well-known character at the end of a popular series. Like Harry Potter. Again, it's more realistic to not have a completely happy ending.

- Speaking of the ending, I was almost really mad with how I thought it would end. Fortunately, Katniss stays true to character and the ending turns out perfect.

- I liked how they handled the love triangle between Katniss, Gale, and Peeta. Gale was her best friend from childhood who was in love with her and Peeta was her partner in the Hunger Games. I liked how they didn't make the romance the main plot, but instead kept it secondary to everything else going on.

I didn't like:

- The name Katniss. Every time I read it, I wanted to call her Catnip. It's just a terrible name. The names in the book are a mixture of normal names (Annie, Gale) and weird, future names (Peeta, Cinna). Cinna makes me think of cinnamon buns.

- I didn't like who Katniss ended up with at the end. I was kinda hoping she'd go for the other option.

At first, I was worried how they were going to keep this series going after the Hunger Games ended in the first book. They threw them back in the arena for the second book, but I wasn't sure what they were going to do with the third and still keep it interesting. The war between the Capital and the Districts was just a good a read as the others.

Verdict?
5/5 stars.

The Lost City of Z by David Grann

When I first picked up this book, I thought it was fiction. Actually, it is about the true story of 1920's explorer Percy Fawcett and the author's attempt to follow his trail into the Amazon jungle. Fawcett was an accomplished explorer already when he took his final trip into the Amazon with his son and his son's friend. They went looking for the legendary "City of Z" and were never seen again.

Also, the Amazon might be the scariest place on earth. It's INSANE how many ways you can die out there - and painfully too. We're talking maggots that infest living flesh, cyanide-squirting worms, and let's not forgot those fun little fish that like to swim into any orifice it can find - like a urethra - usually requiring castration to get it out.

I liked:

-I'd never heard of Percy Fawcett before, so I found his story pretty interesting.

-The author decided to make his own trip to the Amazon to try and follow Fawcett's trail. I liked reading his experiences since he was by no means an explorer. He was an average person - a writer! He had no experience living in the outdoors, but I think the book was made better by his attempt to experience just a tiny bit of what Fawcett and his team did.

I didn't like:

-It's pretty slow at first. The main exploration in question doesn't even occur until more than halfway through the book. Then when it finally picks up momentum with Fawcett's doomed journey and the author's own trek into the Amazon, the book abruptly ends 3/4 of the way through. The last fourth of the book is acknowledgments and book notes. I guess they didn't really have much more to go with since no one really knows what happened to Fawcett.

-I wish they focused more on the exploration to find "Z" instead of all the excessive background information on every explorer for the past 200 years and all the history of maps and cartography. That stuff was pretty boring.

-They didn't give much information on the lost city itself, especially considering it's the title of the book. I would have liked to learn more about it's history.

Verdict?
2.5/5 stars. I only liked about 1/4 of it...I could have done with more adventure and less history of maps.

Bag of Bones by Stephen King

I love Stephen King. But there is a reason that this is one of the very few books of his that I have never read. It's boring. It seriously took me more than a month to finish because I just didn't want to pick it back up. I can't ever just quit a book in the middle, so I toughed it out. But it was rough.

Basically, it's a ghost story. An author (King likes to use authors as characters a lot, doesn't he?) is grieving his wife who died unexpectedly while she was pregnant with their child. He moves into their vacation house on a lake in Maine and learns that he's not the only one living there.

I liked:

-I honestly can't think of anything that I really liked. Mostly it was just meh...

I didn't like:

-I HATED the name of the lake house: Sara Laughs. That is a terrible name for a house and it just made me cringe when I had to read it.

-I was so bored. This was not one of my favorite King books at all.

-The ending was stupid and I felt like I just read the longest novelization ever of an episode of "Supernatural".

-He and his wife thought it would be a good and "original" idea to name their kid "Kia". Like the crappy cars. At least most people that name their kids after cars go for "Mercedes" or "Bentley".

I'd give it 2/5 stars. King is an amazing writer, but I just didn't get into this story for some reason.

Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx

Goodreads.com summary: "Ennis del Mar and Jack Twist, two ranch hands, come together when they're working a sheepherder and camp tender one summer on a range above the tree line. At first, sharing an isolated tent, the attraction is casual, inevitable, but something deeper catches them that summer." Both men work hard, marry, and have kids because that's what cowboys do. But over the course of many years and frequent separations this relationship becomes the most important thing in their lives, and they do anything they can to preserve it."

I liked:

-The movie followed the book almost word for word. I think that is why the movie was so good at capturing the spirit of the story. Since it's a short story (only 64 pages), it translated well to the screen.

-This book is heartbreaking. It's not a traditional love story by any means. For such a short book, I'm shocked at how much emotion could come through the pages.

I didn't like:

-I honestly can't think of anything. It's a quick read and anyone who liked the movie should love the book.

Death Instinct by Bentley Little

Goodreads Summary: "Cathy was six when the man next door killed his wife and himself. She heard the screams. She saw the blood and the bodies. Now, 20 years later, the house is no longer vacant. Someone new has moved in. Something terrible is happening to the neighbors. And Cathy has a secret of her own."

I liked:

-The deaths were INSANE. If you've ever read Bentley Little, he's written some pretty messed up stuff. This book would have been straight up detective/thriller if he didn't throw in the gory murder scenes. They were definitely creative though.

-Very suspenseful in spite of the predictable killer reveal. It wasn't just about who was the killer. I wanted to know why those neighbors were so creepy (although when the full creepiness of them was revealed, it was a little too much) and why Cathy's dad was such a jerk. There were definitely lots of reasons to keep reading.


I didn't like:

-The killer was pretty predictable. I had it figured out pretty early on so I thought maybe they just threw in a red herring to throw us off...but nope. It was exactly who I thought.

-It kind of annoys me when books skip around between too many characters. Like when a chapter ends with a character in a compromising position, then the next chapter starts with a totally different character doing something normal. Then you have to wait a few chapters to find out what happened to the other character.

-I didn't feel like they fully associated the former killings in the neighborhood to the present killings. Why bother alluding to the neighborhood's past then not bother trying to connect it to the present?

All in all, I'd give it 4/5 stars, mainly for the awesomely creative murders.

Audition by Ryu Murakami

"In this gloriously over-the-top tale, Aoyama, a widower who has lived alone with his son ever since his wife died seven years before, finally decides it is time to remarry. Since Aoyama is a bit rusty when it comes to dating, a filmmaker friend proposes that, in order to attract the perfect wife, they do a casting call for a movie they don’t intend to produce. As the résumés pile up, only one of the applicants catches Aoyama’s attention—Yamasaki Asami—a striking young former ballerina with a mysterious past. Blinded by his instant and total infatuation, Aoyama is too late in discovering that she is a far cry from the innocent young woman he imagines her to be." -Goodreads.com

I liked:

-I read it all in one sitting. It was really fast paced and short.

-The book doesn't really get too crazy until the end, but you get JUST enough hints about this lady to realize that something really bad is coming. It had a great slow-building sense of dread to it.

I didn't like:

-This is a typical problem with Japanese books for me, but it's hard for me to tell characters apart because the Japanese names are so foreign to me. So if their names start with the same letter, (like Aoyama and Asami), I tend to get them mixed up.

-Since it was so short (about 200 pages), I didn't get quite the background that I would have liked on the characters. It was still quite good, but I would have liked to find out a little more about how Asami became such a monster.

-I thought it was really arrogant (and kind of stupid) to assume that any of these women he "auditioned" would agree to marry him. Most women I know would be totally creeped out by a guy who held an audition for a fake film just to find a wife. So he kinda got what was coming to him for that stupid idea.

I actually really liked this book though. I'd give it 4.5/5 stars.

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

"The Maze Runner" is a YA book about a boy named Thomas who wakes up in a The Glade with his memory erased. The Glade is a large open area surrounded by huge stone walls and there are other boys inside who came the same way Thomas did, only earlier. Outside of the walls is a maze, but no one can find a way out. The walls only open during the day light and no one wants to be caught in the mazes after dark.

I liked:
-It has a very interesting plot, which made me want to keep reading. I love puzzles and mazes and I just had to see how (or if) they found a way out.
-The plot moved along quickly without a bunch of fluff thrown in.

However, a few things were really irritating.

I did not like:

-I really hated the slang that the author made up for the Glade boys. It distracted from the story and was really stupid sounding (i.e. "Shuckface").
-The "grievers" were really odd and hard to imagine. I like being able to imagine things when I read a book and these were just so odd that it was really hard.
-The fact that I basically finished it because I HAD to know how they solved the maze. It wasn't because I cared about the characters. The characters were pretty boring and unmemorable.

I'd give it a 2/5. Interesting concept, not so great execution.

Cover by Jack Ketchum

This book was really slow, especially for a Jack Ketchum book. The characters were boring to the point that I didn't really care if they died or not. Half the time I'd forget them until he mentioned their name and I'd have to backtrack to remember who they were. That's not good when there is only a handful of characters in the book

It's premise is an ex- Vietnam vet went nuts from PTSD and is living in the woods since he had some problems easing back into society after the war. His wife and son left him and all he has is his dog.

Then we get the most boring group of campers ever. They are all professional adults, when I was expecting a bunch of teens or college kids after reading the back of the book. Some guy is there with his mistress and his wife and a photographer and...I just don't really care. I just couldn't bring myself to give a damn about any of these characters. I don't even know why they were camping.

The vet was an interesting guy, but unfortunately most of the book seemed to be focused on the campers. I'd have liked to see more of his flashbacks to the war and more inside of his head.

All in all, probably my least favorite Ketchum book. It had potential, but didn't deliver to my expectations.

2/5 stars

Brothel: Mustang Ranch and it's Women by Alexa Albert

I'm going back over the books I have already read this year since I just started the blog.

I've been fascinated by Nevada's legal brothel system since watching the HBO series "Cathouse". This book gives an in depth view into the brothels and the girls who work there. The author actually lived at the Mustang Ranch while she conducted her studies.

I liked that it wasn't exploitative or judgmental. It simply gave facts and honest commentary on the day to day workings of a legal brothel. The book covers everything from the history and politics of the brothels to candid conversations with brothel employees and staff.

4/5 stars. I really liked this book and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the subject matter.

Push by Sapphire

This is a fairly short book (less than 200 pages), but a little hard to read since it seems to be written how Precious would talk or write (a mixture of ebonics and illiteracy). Once you get into it a little bit, it's easier to read.

I watched the movie, Precious, a few months ago and was happy to see that it was kept fairly close to the book. However, the book was much more graphic than the movie, which I was surprised to see. I figured Precious's life couldn't be much worse than the...more This is a fairly short book (less than 200 pages), but a little hard to read since it seems to be written how Precious would talk or write (a mixture of ebonics and the fact that she is mostly illiterate). Once you get into it a little bit, it's easier to read.

I watched the movie, Precious, a few months ago and was happy to see that it was kept fairly close to the book. However, the book was much more graphic than the movie, which I was surprised to see. I figured Precious's life couldn't be much worse than the movie. The book elaborates on things that were merely alluded to in the film.

It was hard to read due to the graphic subject matter, but a good book nonetheless.