The Book Thief

The Book Thief
Markus Zusak

552 Pages

"Don't make me happy. Don't fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this. Look at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don't want to hope for anything anymore. I don't want to pray that Max is alive and safe. Or Alex Steiner.
Because the world does not deserve them."

Nazi Germany. Death is very busy. The first time he meets Liesel Meminger is when her brother dies. Standing beside his freshly dug grave, Liesel rescues a small black book, The Grave Digger's Handbook from the snow, her first act of thievery. Her mother drops her off with her new foster parents, and though Liesel sends her many letters, she never hears from her mother again. Liesel grows to love her foster parents, especially as her papa teaches her to read. As a Young Nazi, Liesel attends a march, and rescues a book from burning flames. Soon after, her family takes in a Jew, tempting fate by hiding him in their basement. Liesel joins her best friend Rudy in brilliant stealing sprees, and officially becomes the Book Thief when she takes books from the mayor's library. Her life has been tough, but it only gets worse from there.

This book was just absolutely amazing. I had heard so many raves about this book, I had to read it. Being told from the point of view of Death was absolutely genius on the part of Zusak. It brings the whole situation that Liesel was going through into perspective, instead of just her immediate feelings. I loved the foreshadowing, the stuff put in there that was even more than foreshadowing. I would say it was "spoiling" the story, but it wasn't. It actually made me even more anxious to get to the end, and even more devastated when it did actually reach the end. I cannot wait to go see the movie.

Pages this Semester: 7964

"It's the story of my life... And time is frozen."

-One Direction

Shiver

Shiver

Maggie Stiefvater

390 Pages

"For once in my life,
I was here
and nowhere else."

When Grace was a very young girl, she was attacked by the wolves. She didn't fight, but for some reason the wolf with the yellow eyes stepped in, saving her. After that, even when she couldn't remember the attack, she felt a connection to that wolf, watching at the window for it every winter. 

Sam was a wolf, but he was also a boy. When the air became cold, he would turn. Even though he didn't know who the girl was when he was wolf, he stared at her from the cover of the trees.

After the wolves attacked a popular high school boy, seemingly having killed him, a group of angry men set out to kill the wolves. Grace steps in, not wanting the wolf she considered hers to be killed. When her wolf is shot, he changes into a boy, making her crush on the wolf into a tangible thing. The two fall quickly in love, and fight to find a way to keep Sam from returning to his wolf form forever.

I was actually very disappointed in this book. Maybe I built it up too much in my mind, but it ended up being a lot less amazing than I had imagined it would. It is mostly just an "Oh, I love you, don't leave me" kind of thing, which honestly kind of annoys me in a lot of books. I think the subplot with Sam's pack members might have saved it a little, but overall it wasn't a great story, and I probably won't read its sequel.

Pages this Semester: 7412

"Hard to accept the end of a story 

that won the villain against heroes."

-Toba Beta

The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone

Stephen King

428 Pages

"Because things like this you can only say once. And you either get it wrong or you get it right, it's the end either way, because it's too hard to ever try to say again."

When Johnny Smith was a young boy he fell and hit his head hard ice skating. He shook it off, though, not really giving it another thought. When he was older, spending his days as a teacher, he began seeing a coworker, Sarah. They went to a carnival, and Johnny played one of those con games, where you bet your money on a wheel. He couldn't explain it, he could just feel which number the wheel would land on, and he beat the con man out of hundreds of dollars. On his way home, John's taxi was hit by a teenage driver, and he spent five years in a coma.

In the beginning, this novel seemed to jump around a lot. It followed the lives of three different people that seemingly had no connection to each other. But, as it went on, it made a lot more sense. I think the mystery of the different characters definitely made the novel, and although I didn't like it initially, the story wouldn't have been nearly as good if King had been more straightforward. It wasn't my favorite novel of his, but I definitely liked it a lot.

Pages this Semester: 6750

"love, no one cares about the stories they're not in. we'll fade out to whispers..."
-Matt Nathanson

Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Will Grayson Will Grayson

John Green and David Levithan

310 Pages

"i never hoped for everything to get better- only for one thing to get better. and it never did. so eventually i gave up. i give up every single day."

Will Grayson lives by the rules: shut up and don't care too much. His best friend is the gay giant, Tiny. Other Will Grayson is a depressed boy, living with his mom in an old house and secretly online dating a boy he's never met, Isaac. I guess you could call it fate that brought the two of them together. Other Will Grayson was supposed to be meeting Isaac, but it turned out that Isaac was just a cruel trick by his no-longer-friend Maura, and Will Grayson was hanging out while his friends enjoyed an over 21 concert. Will introduces Will to Tiny, and Will finally has the courage to come out to his friends and mom. Tiny discovers that love should be more than himself, through writing, directing, and starring in his own play. And Will discovers that, despite shitting up and not caring, he still has emotions, he's still falling apart a little.

Oh. My. Gosh. Two of my most favorite authors ever, collabbed on one single novel... I just.. The feels! (Totally kidding, though, I don't talk like that.) This was just one amazing novel. The contrasting views of the characters, but the parallels portrayed in their views, gave it so much meaning. I want to just list a bunch more quotes now, but I won't... I really really really want John Green and David Levithan to collab again, because they were able to write so well together, and I would read it in a heartbeat.

Pages this Semester: 6322

"Do not lose hope- what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story."
-Neil Gaiman

Paper Towns

Paper Towns

John Green

305 Pages

"... at some point, you gotta stop looking up at the sky, or one of these days you'll look back down and see that you floated away, too."

Quentin thinks he had been given a miracle, living next to Margo Roth Spiegelman. After they discover a body together, Q feels a bond between him and Margo, but soon after, a window closes between them. It stays shut until the last month of their senior year, when Margo enlists Quentin's help in a possibly law-breaking scheme. After the night is over, Quentin feels like everything will be different between them, but when he gets to school the next day, Margo has mysteriously disappeared. He goes on a journey to find where Margo has gone off too, and discovers that he doesn't know who the girl is behind the window.

Despite the fact that this was way different from John Green's two best novels (in my opinion), The Fault in our Stars and Looking for Alaska, I thought this was a really great novel. There was so much depth to it, and I think the mirror-versus-window theory is applicable to anyone's life, even my own. I also liked the many quotes John Green included from other authors, like Emily Dickinson's "Forever is made up of nows."  The end was great, because it was happy, but also it wasn't, because that's life, you know?

Pages this Semester: 5923

"But how could you live and have no story to tell?"
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Doctor Who: Prisoner of the Daleks

Doctor Who: Prisoner of the Daleks

Trevor Baxendale

249 Pages

"It's not how you feel that matters. It's what you do despite how you feel."

The Doctor shows up on this planet, gets curious (dang that curiosity) and begins to look around, very quickly becoming locked in a cell. He fears he will be trapped there forever, but a team of Dalek hunters show up after just over three days and free him. After an attack by the Daleks, resulting in the death of one of the party of hunters, the Doctor slowly pieces together what he can gather of the Daleks plan to take over the universe. He, along with the band of misfit hunters, put aside their differences, working together to save the world from the evil that is the Dalek.

Overall, I really did like the story line. It was really fast paced, a lot of action, with just a hint of romance that you can't see until it just sneaks up on you. I was quite disappointed, however, with the lack of humor from the Doctor. That really is his charm, you know, and without it the novel was just missing something. There were a few moments where I was like 'yeah, there's my Doctor', but not nearly enough. The story did do a better job of communicating the terror of the Daleks, though, than the show ever has.

Pages this Semester: 5566

"Awful story, of course, but those are the ones that last the longest."
-Stephen King

An Abundance of Katherines

An Abundance of Katherines

John Green

228 Pages

"You can't live with the idea that someone might leave... You're not being a good friend or a good boyfriend or whatever, because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you."

Colin is a child-prodigy turning teenage-nothing, and that thought scares him. He has just been broken up with by the nineteenth Katherine he's dated, and that, combined with his nothing-ness, is too much for him to handle, so he and his best friend Hassan head out on a road trip, trying to figure out... Life. They end up stopping in a dead town, where Colin works to become more than a prodigy, works to find out there are more than Katherines.

This wasn't my favorite John Green novel, but I did still like it a lot. I like the confusion that Colin has about growing up, about being extremely intelligent as a child, but not knowing where that will take him in the future, if anywhere, because sometimes I feel a lot like that. (I'm not saying I'm a child prodigy or anything, because I'm definitely not) Just, the uncertainty of the future, and the need to be something really spectacular is so relateable. And I just think of the very last line, because it's how I want to feel too...

Pages this Semester: 5031

"Authors never include the whole story; they just get to the point. Colin thought the truth should matter as much as the point, and he figured that was why he couldn't tell good stories."
-John Green