Cannonball Read IV: Book #42/52
Published: 2009
Pages: 583
Genre: Young Adult/Dystopian
I did not care for this book. There's a fine line between interesting plot twists and "WTF did I just read??". The storyline seems simple at first: In a small Californian town, suddenly everyone over the age of fifteen disappears. Sounds cool, right? Then it starts to seem like a YA version of Stephen King's Under the Dome (which I really liked) when the kids figure out that there is a weird barrier around the town. Okay...still not too bad.
THEN...the kids start developing weird powers. I can also deal with that, although I was expecting more of a straight-forward dystopian novel.
But then the wolves start talking. We have snakes that fly. Some weird entity called "the Darkness" that lives in an old mineshaft. WHAT. THE. EFF? It just got too freaking weird for me. Not to mention the most anti-climactic ending ever. Most of the book was leading up to this big confrontation between the "good" kid and the "bad" kid (who were twins that were separated at birth by the way). Then they BARELY fight and just kind of walk away from each other.
I also didn't care for the characters. I thought they were too cliche (and I wanted to murder the stupid sidekick surfer friend who attached the word "brah" to the end of every sentence). The good guy (Sam) was TOO good and the bad kid (Caine) was too maniacal to even believe (remember, he's FOURTEEN). Everyone was very one-note. The super smart girl, the autistic kid, etc. -- that is basically their entire personality.
I will NOT be reading the rest of this series unless I feel that I deserve some sort of punishment.
Cannonball Read IV: Book #41/52Published: 2012Pages: 608Genre: Young Adult
Ellen Hopkins is one of my favorite YA writers. She doesn't dumb her books down like some YA novels and although she knows how to bring the drama, there is still a sense of realism with these kids and their lives.
Tilt is a companion novel to Hopkins' previous novel, Triangles. Triangles was her first adult novel that was published last year. Tilt reverts back to her normal teenage characters, but this time they're the children of the main characters in Triangles.
This book mainly follows three teens:
Mikayla: A senior who finds out she's pregnant with her jerk boyfriend's baby.
Shane: A gay teen with a tumultuous home life. His 4-year-old sister is dying from a disease she was born with and his parents marriage is on the rocks. Now they are dealing with Shane coming out and his HIV-positive boyfriend.
Harley: A younger teen who becomes infatuated with her older soon-to-be step-brother.
Overall, I liked this book. Some of it seemed a little redundant because it's pretty much the same storyline as Triangles, but from the perspective of the kids. It's different enough to not be boring, but there aren't any huge surprises because most of the bigger things were spoiled if you'd read the companion novel. It definitely could be read as a stand-alone book though.
Cannonball Read IV: Book #40/52Published: 2001Pages: 448Genre: Horror
I can't believe I'm already on book 40 for this year! I'm on much better track than last year when I had to read about 10 books in December to get caught up.
So, The Association is a schlocky little horror novel. I was actually surprised to see that it was published in 2001 because it just screams of cheesy 80's horror. I've read one or two of Bentley Little's books before, so luckily I wasn't expecting a masterpiece.
The plot is pretty simple: a couple moves into a gated community in Utah called Bonita Vista and everything is awesome until the homeowner's association keeps getting increasingly bothersome with their crazy rules. I decided to read this book because I had never really heard of homeowner's associations growing up because I lived out in the country. Now that I live in southern California, I get a kick out seeing some of the stupid rules they come up in the HOA (one place we lived wouldn't let you put up curtains unless the backs of them were white). Fortunately, those rules seem perfectly normal compared to the HOA in this book.
At first, Barry and Maureen are just mildly annoyed by some of the rules (or C, C, & R's, as the HOA in the book calls them). No pets of any kind, no working out of the house (Barry is a writer, so he has to rent an office in town), things like that. They become friends with their neighbors who also aren't too keen on the HOA rules.
Eventually the rules just become insane. Only married couples allowed to live together. No one is allowed to have kids. No residents or visiters that are not Caucasian. People who break the rules or defy the association seem to have a habit of disappearing or dying suddenly.
Like I said, it's a cheesy horror novel. Nothing more, nothing less.
Cannonball Read IV: Book #39/52Published: 2009Pages: 272Genre: Nonfiction
I grew up in a super small town out in the country where currently a meth lab is busted approximately every few weeks. It's sad. I knew people who did meth and I knew people who sold meth. According to this book, when I was in high school was the beginning of the meth epidemic across small town America. It seems to have gotten much worse since I left my hometown eight years ago.
Methland follows the meth problem in the small town of Oelwein, Iowa. Reding paints a bleak picture of this town during the downturn in the economy: drug use is on the rise and employment opportunities continue to diminish. The town is literally on the verge of collapse.
I was hoping to get a background of the drug from this book and I thought the book did a good job of explaining how meth became such a drug of choice for the working class American. I always wondered why it seemed to be much more of a problem in smaller towns rather than large cities. It's actually pretty simple: Anyone can make meth. Literally. Apparently you can make it on your bicycle. You can have a meth lab in a car, a basement, or a hotel bathroom -- even a Walmart (not kidding. I read this in the news a while back. Some lady was cooking meth on a Walmart shelf).
However, the rest of the book falls short. It was actually a little boring in some places as the author gives way too many pages to characters that don't really need it. Such as the local town doctor. I understand that a small town doctor probably has some good insight on the town drug problem, but does he really need 50 pages talking about his family and personal demons? I didn't exactly pick up this book to read about an alcoholic small-town doctor and his issues.
It's a pretty short book, so if you're interested in the history of meth it might be worth a read. Just skim through the more boring parts.
