jennickels (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jennickels) wrote2012-08-28 02:16 pm
jennickels) wrote2012-08-28 02:16 pm
Entry tags:
reading
I've actually been doing it. I used to read a ton when I was a kid (back when there were like 6 TV channels and nothing on for kids before 3pm... we were too poor to have cable back then). My dad would stop at bookstores on his way home from work and bring me 6 or 7 books he thought I might like and I'd devour them in a week.
Now I barely read. I have a hard time concentrating and focusing on the reading. A lot of times I have to reread pages several times.
Anyway, in the past year I haven't read much, not even fanfic. I finally sat down and read the Hunger Games trilogy right before the movie came out. But since then... nothing.
Until the last week. I picked up a book, Divergent, for Meagan but she is reading the last in her James Patterson series and the 2nd Pretty Little Liars so she hasn't had a chance to look at it yet. Since it was just sitting there I started reading it and next thing I knew I'd been reading for like 8 hours straight and only had 150 pages left (the book is over 400 pages). I finished it the next evening. While at the store that day I picked up the second book in the series, Insurgent. I picked that up the other day and finished it in 2 days (it's also over 400 pages). I was telling Meagan about the books and she told me I needed to read one I got her a couple years ago, Life As We Knew It. It's an apocalypse story. So I read that the last 2 days. Unfortunately I don't have the other 2 books in the series.
I've found that I like Young Adult dystopian novels, lol. I don't know why. Maybe because I like dystopian stories but without all the preaching of the adult variety books. In Divergent and Insurgent a lot of the storyline just sounded silly but it was still fun to read. Okay, I admit I also like them because they don't devolve into gratuitous sex scenes. I prefer the fade to black kind of scene but since YA novels are about underaged kids aimed at underage kids...
Life As We Knew It was interesting. It's written journal style from the point of view of a 16yo girl in Pennsylvania. It starts at the end of the school year when her biggest worry was swim meets and not getting asked to the prom. Then a meteor crashes into the moon pushing it closer to the Earth. Obviously this is bad. And things just go to well. The coasts all flood from tide changes, earthquakes hit all over the world. Gas prices skyrocket until gas runs out. There's no electricity, the grocery stores run out of food and with no gas people are stuck where they are. Volcanoes erupt everywhere blocking out the sun creating a nuclear winter and all the crops die.
The narrator (Miranda) and her family (her mother and 2 brothers) stay at their house where they have stockpiled food and wood (that they chop down from the woods behind their house). They go from thinking things would blow over before the end of summer to being trapped in their house with food running out. People start to flee to the south and west, thinking it's better there. Miranda's father and pregnant step-mother live in another city and decide to go to Colorado. They get stopped at the Kansas border because they've closed them to anyone that doesn't live or have family in Kansas.
It gets cold real fast and is below zero in September. When their well water runs out they shut off the heat (conserving what little heating oil they have) and move into their sunroom where thier wood stove is at. Then it starts snowing which completely isolates them from the town.
A killer strain of the flu kills just about everyone in town. Miranda is the only one in the family to not get it but she pulls the others through. But after they recover they run out of food. She's already eating only a few times a week as is her mother. Their both going to die and soon so Miranda sacrifices herself so her younger brother might get a little more time. She goes to town to wait to die but finds a flyer that interests her. She goes to the city hall like it says and finds the mayor there giving away food to anyone left in town. They take her home on a snowmobile and now they have a chance to survive the rest of winter.
It was pretty intersting. Meagan thought it was scary. She internalizes things too much. She loved the Hunger Games and The Giver and has admitted an interest in dystopian novels. She loves to read about societies after everything has fallen apart. But she can't deal with reading about the end of the world. It scares the crap out of her. When we first told her we were moving to West Coast she started freaking out about tsunamis (we're too far from the coast to worry about them, there's a whole mountain range between us and the ocean). Then she found out that the town we live in was in the foothills of Mount St. Helens which she had just learned about in school. VOLCANOES!!! She was hysterical by then, crying and screaming that she wasn't going to move. Any time she hears about a natural disaster she thinks it's going to happen to her. She went ballistic when we had a tornado warning in Chicago right before we moved. Especially since I wouldn't stay in the basement with them. After being scared of tornados all my life I was actually at a stage where they didn't terrify me and I wanted to watch the storm (it was wild, but no tornado).
So, yeah. Meagan: no apocalypse stories but loves dystopian ones, Me: now tagging YA apocalypse/dystopian novels to read, lol.
Now I barely read. I have a hard time concentrating and focusing on the reading. A lot of times I have to reread pages several times.
Anyway, in the past year I haven't read much, not even fanfic. I finally sat down and read the Hunger Games trilogy right before the movie came out. But since then... nothing.
Until the last week. I picked up a book, Divergent, for Meagan but she is reading the last in her James Patterson series and the 2nd Pretty Little Liars so she hasn't had a chance to look at it yet. Since it was just sitting there I started reading it and next thing I knew I'd been reading for like 8 hours straight and only had 150 pages left (the book is over 400 pages). I finished it the next evening. While at the store that day I picked up the second book in the series, Insurgent. I picked that up the other day and finished it in 2 days (it's also over 400 pages). I was telling Meagan about the books and she told me I needed to read one I got her a couple years ago, Life As We Knew It. It's an apocalypse story. So I read that the last 2 days. Unfortunately I don't have the other 2 books in the series.
I've found that I like Young Adult dystopian novels, lol. I don't know why. Maybe because I like dystopian stories but without all the preaching of the adult variety books. In Divergent and Insurgent a lot of the storyline just sounded silly but it was still fun to read. Okay, I admit I also like them because they don't devolve into gratuitous sex scenes. I prefer the fade to black kind of scene but since YA novels are about underaged kids aimed at underage kids...
Life As We Knew It was interesting. It's written journal style from the point of view of a 16yo girl in Pennsylvania. It starts at the end of the school year when her biggest worry was swim meets and not getting asked to the prom. Then a meteor crashes into the moon pushing it closer to the Earth. Obviously this is bad. And things just go to well. The coasts all flood from tide changes, earthquakes hit all over the world. Gas prices skyrocket until gas runs out. There's no electricity, the grocery stores run out of food and with no gas people are stuck where they are. Volcanoes erupt everywhere blocking out the sun creating a nuclear winter and all the crops die.
The narrator (Miranda) and her family (her mother and 2 brothers) stay at their house where they have stockpiled food and wood (that they chop down from the woods behind their house). They go from thinking things would blow over before the end of summer to being trapped in their house with food running out. People start to flee to the south and west, thinking it's better there. Miranda's father and pregnant step-mother live in another city and decide to go to Colorado. They get stopped at the Kansas border because they've closed them to anyone that doesn't live or have family in Kansas.
It gets cold real fast and is below zero in September. When their well water runs out they shut off the heat (conserving what little heating oil they have) and move into their sunroom where thier wood stove is at. Then it starts snowing which completely isolates them from the town.
A killer strain of the flu kills just about everyone in town. Miranda is the only one in the family to not get it but she pulls the others through. But after they recover they run out of food. She's already eating only a few times a week as is her mother. Their both going to die and soon so Miranda sacrifices herself so her younger brother might get a little more time. She goes to town to wait to die but finds a flyer that interests her. She goes to the city hall like it says and finds the mayor there giving away food to anyone left in town. They take her home on a snowmobile and now they have a chance to survive the rest of winter.
It was pretty intersting. Meagan thought it was scary. She internalizes things too much. She loved the Hunger Games and The Giver and has admitted an interest in dystopian novels. She loves to read about societies after everything has fallen apart. But she can't deal with reading about the end of the world. It scares the crap out of her. When we first told her we were moving to West Coast she started freaking out about tsunamis (we're too far from the coast to worry about them, there's a whole mountain range between us and the ocean). Then she found out that the town we live in was in the foothills of Mount St. Helens which she had just learned about in school. VOLCANOES!!! She was hysterical by then, crying and screaming that she wasn't going to move. Any time she hears about a natural disaster she thinks it's going to happen to her. She went ballistic when we had a tornado warning in Chicago right before we moved. Especially since I wouldn't stay in the basement with them. After being scared of tornados all my life I was actually at a stage where they didn't terrify me and I wanted to watch the storm (it was wild, but no tornado).
So, yeah. Meagan: no apocalypse stories but loves dystopian ones, Me: now tagging YA apocalypse/dystopian novels to read, lol.
no subject
I don't know if you've heard of the Gone series by Michael Grant? It's about everyone over the age of 14 or 15 disappearing from the town and how the kids cope running everything by themselves. It was interesting. I think the series is still ongoing though, I only read the first two I think. Probably not for Meagan though, there was some stuff that freaked me out, lol.
no subject
no subject
This might be a silly question but do you have a library near you? That's where I got Life As We Knew It and it's sequels from.
IDK if you want recs or not but some other books I've enjoyed are: The Maze Runner, Blood Red Road, Delirium, Under The Never Sky, & Ship Breaker. I'm not going to say they're all perfect (sometimes the teenage angst is a little much for me) But I was entertained.
no subject
But I liked that part. I liked learning about how the society functioned (as little as they told you in that book). Although there were a few points where I couldn't shake the idea that Tris was way too much of a Mary Sue, lol. She was way too good at everything. But I got over it. And the plot... didn't make much sense but enough that I could follow it and I didn't really care about the plot holes. I know my kid wouldn't have even noticed because they just don't delve that deeply into things (usually, there's always the exception). It was a fun read.
Our library is really small and has very little selection. The section for young adults is like 1 case with 4 shelves and those shelves aren't very wide and not even filled all the way. Meagan wanted to take out The Tale of Despereaux and they didn't have it. They had only 1 of the 7 Harry Potter books and none of the Hunger Games (probably were checked out if they ever had them). I've looked for popular books on their website and seen that you have to order them from another library in the network. And anything knew is has a waiting list months and months long.
I miss the Chicago Public Library system.
Still I might look on their site and see if they don't have copies of the other books so I can have them sent here.
Some of those other ones you mentioned I was looking at.
no subject
Did your library end up having the books? I do that sometimes (having one library send a book to another). It takes a little longer but it's a really nice feature. I had to wait awhile to get Insurgent. I thought I'd put the book on hold pretty fast as soon as I saw they had it but I ended up being like 35th in line, LOL. Fortunately the line moved a lot faster than I expected.
no subject
I ended up putting the other two books for Life as We Knew It on hold. I just got a call from "Libraries Pub" but I didn't answer it. I guess one of them came in. And I was going to go to the library today to get some writing done.
Meagan also put a book on hold. It's about the only way to get to read anything because our library is so small. The bigger libraries in Vancouver has many more books.