A-Z Marathon! Streams to the River, River to the Sea by Scott O'Dell

We're on O, just to clarify.

I read this book for required reading a few years back and can tell you that it sucks.
For one thing, it's one of those books. You know, the books with the crappy covers that you have to read for Social Studies class and dissect. In addition to all of that fun, the book is painfully boring.
Any time I see a girl from the 1800s or something on a book cover, I run. Anne of Green Gables. Run. Little House on the Prairie. Run. Jenny of the Tetons. RUN.

*A little historical background.
So, long before you and I were born, America was just 13 colonies. Being 'murican, we wanted more. So we met up with Spain and Great Britain and got some land. It was all cool. Then USA and France met up and talked about the war in France, and the USA bought a bunch of land that France had for 16 million dollars, or something. This was the Louisiana Purchase. The president at that time said, "You know, there could be aliens out there or something. We should probably send someone to check." So he got Lewis and Clark, and LnC got a group together and they went to go EXPLORING! They came up a river one day and set up this cute little fort and Sacagawea was there. They started talking and they were like "Hey! Could you join the expedition?" and Sacagawea was like "Totally!"

This book is about how Sacagawea was captured by Minnetarees and taken to another tribe. She tried to escape the tribe and got stranded on an island. This guy named Charbonneau "saved" her and claimed her as his own. Then, they meet up with Lewis and Clark and they GO ON AN ADVENTURE! Also, Charbonneau reproduces with Sacagawea and gives birth a little bit before going on the expedition.
Charbonneau doesn't give birth, just to clear that up . . .

The book was just not interesting. It was like reading a textbook that only contained 3 facts and it was repeated over in over, and then they threw in a love triangle!

It's hard to completely explain why I hated this book, so I'll give you a scenario:
Imagine that you're reading the dictionary. Outside. It's required reading for class.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, SPLAT. Bird poop on your book. The feces seeps through the pages, contaminating every single page. It's required reading, though.
So now you have to literally read crap. Then, you have to analyze the crap. And write papers about crap. And take tests about crap.
That was my reading experience.

This isn't the worst book I've ever read, but I hated it enough to come up with that beautiful story above.

Books to Burn/Book Talks: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

**To view spoilers, drag your mouse over the empty space between"<SPOILER>...<SPOILER>"

BOOK TALK HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANoFqxz0oHY

Where do I begin . . .
I have just finished The Book Thief.
To sum up my reading experience, I waited 550 pages for a plot and didn't get one.

Let me just purge my thoughts onto this blank page. Maybe you can sort them out for me.

The Book Thief is about a girl named Liesel who stole about three books and learned to read.

Just . . . I really am happy for you if you liked this book, and maybe I missed something, but I did not enjoy this book.

Okay. It's easier for me to sort my thoughts with bullets and it's more fun for a lot of people on the internet to read things that way.

• The writing style was beautiful. It was very difficult to get used to, but once you get used to it, it's really poetic and dramatic. However, some of the word choices were very strange (a breakfast colored sun) while others worked very well. The metaphors and other figures of speech were definitely very different than anything I'd ever read before. I just flipped open the book to a random page and found very interesting sentences.

-Papa apologized. "It's quite pathetic. I realize that." "Better than nothing," Max assured him. "Better than I deserve--thank you." p 208
-There was a constant urge to speak both expressions, spurred on by the affliction of guilt. p 208
-It was much the same as the way he left his family in Stuttgart, under a veil of fabricated loyalty. p 208
-To live. Living was living. The prices was guilt and shame. p 208
-She denied his existences. His rustling hair, his cold, slippery fingers. His tortured presence. p 209
-Drizzle came down in spades. p 209
-Dead leaves were slumped on the road. p 209

I mean, Markus Zusak should become a poet.

• The narrator. This book was narrated by Death. He freaking annoyed me. I was okay with him until p 241. You know what happened on p 241? <I suppose it's a SPOILER> HE FREAKING TELLS YOU THAT RUDY DIES. The big finale where Rudy dies is the only thing that would have given the book some sort of plot. But I was spoiled BY THE FREAKING AUTHOR. Maybe the author was just like "Oh, goodness. My ending is so great that I just can't keep it to myself." NO. JUST DON'T. <SPOILER> In the beginning, when the narrator kept on butting in, it irked me a little, but I got used to it. Then, with all of the dictionary definitions and the spoilers, I was just like . . .
  
• The plot. There was none. I don't think that someone learning how to read while hiding a Jew in their basement is much of a plot. There is only one moment in this book when I was thinking "Yeah! This is awesome!" That was when Liesel punched the kid who was making fun of her in the face. Then, you know what happened for the rest of the book? Nothing.
• The ending. Don't worry, if I tell you, it won't matter because DEATH FREAKING SPELLED IT OUT ON PAGE 24FREAKING1. But, it wasn't much of an ending. Yeah, it was realistic I suppose, but even with Death pretty much telling us what happened, it just came out of nowhere. <SPOILER> A bomb just comes out of nowhere and kills everyone but Liesel. Fantastic. <SPOILER>
  
• The characters. I liked Rudy. He was interesting. The whole Jesse Owens thing gave him a personality, and he was interesting. I liked his character. But the dreaded page 241 . . . ugh. Also, I imagine him like a normal, blonde haired dude, even though Death insisted that he looked like an anime character with lemon hair.

Liesel felt a little flat-ish, but I can appreciate that most of the people around her have died and she doesn't act like a complete Saumensch.
I liked Max. He was really nice and cool and I loved his drawing and I loved how he fought Hitler in his . . . dreams. But his arrival didn't really give the book a plot. On the back of the book, it says that "When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up and closed down." But it was just like "Yay! We're hiding a Jew in our basement! Let's feed him soup for 300 more pages!"
I liked Hans. I liked Rosa, much more than I thought I would, minus her constant swearing. I liked a lot of the characters, minus Hitler, but it didn't give the book a plot or anything.

• I liked all of Max's drawings. Pages 223-236 and pages 279 and 280 and pages 445-450 were by far my favorite pages, and they are the reason that I would rate this book 3 out of 5 stars. Those pages added to the story, especially page 280, which despite looking like it was drawn by a not-particularly-talented sixth grader, felt really powerful and stirred up more emotions inside of me than the sad ending of this tragic book did.
• The reviews of the book. I can completely see why people love this book. I totally understand. But The New York Times called this book "BRILLIANT and hugely ambitious . . . . It's the kind of book that can be LIFE-CHANGING." But you know . . . I don't think it is. This quote was really one of the reasons I was excited to read this book, but I felt nothing. The ending didn't make me cry, I didn't cry at all during this book. It didn't change my life. I just kept looking at the bottom of the page to see how close I was to being done with this book.

All in all, I didn't hate this book and I'm not going to burn it because it was expensive. But I didn't enjoy this book. It was just kind of . . .

Yay! I'm going to read this book!

Yay. I'm reading this book.

Still reading . . .

Still reading . . .

Ugh. It's over.

Yeah. I'm sure that some people will like this book, but . . . not me.

 

A-Z Marathon! Books to both read and burn simultaneously: A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket

I read this entire series. Twice. This series just makes you want to kick yourself in the shins multiple times, and curl up somewhere warm and happy while reading it.

I read this series in fourth grade, back when my tastes in books were much different. These books are special to me, though, because The Bad Beginning was actually the first book I had finished in under six hours and stayed up way past my bedtime reading. So, I'll just talk about the series a little bit and why I want to burn the books and display their beautiful covers on my shelves all at once.

• It was so painfully frustrating. My hands are clenching into fists as I'm typing this. These books genuinely put me in a bad mood. Everything was so inconvenient. I don't like when a book is like "I have this crazy plan and it just might work" and then the plan works. I also don't like when a book goes "I have this crazy plan and it just might work" and then at the very end it doesn't work, and all of the build up was for nothing. That happened in one of the books in this series. Also, the adults never understood a single thing the Baudelaire (I read these books in fourth grade, so to this day I still feel the urge to say "Bod-eh-lare") children said. All of these adults lived inside of some sort of mental box that restricted them from actually being sensible and seeing the danger in other people. Count Olaf has a freaking eye tattooed to his ankle. His house is a mess. He hangs out with a gang of theatre people. He's a pretty sketchy person, but do any of the adults care? No. And when he's a in a disguise? The mental box creeps up towards the adults and swallows them whole. The adults only know until it's too late, and nothing good ever happens to the Baudelaire kids. Nothing.
• The first few books are repetitive. Without revealing too much, the second, third, fourth, and parts of the fifth and sixth books in the series are retellings of the first book. After those books, the series takes a turn as the Baudelaire kids begin to take on problems bigger than their own.
• The narration was interesting. I don't know how I really feel about it to this day. The narrator became a character himself, but it made the writing so casually that I almost didn't like it. I believe that in book two, there's an entire page of the word "never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever." I think that one "ever" would get the point across, so I'm kind of surprised that none of Lemony Snicket's editors said "You know, this is a serious book, so maybe we should shorten it a little."
• The backs of the books used to just crack me up. Go to your library and read the back of one of the books in the series. It's hilarious.
• The language. The author used some interesting word choices for the titles. Let's just review the titles.

-The Bad Beginning. A normal title, though it made me apprehensive to start the series.
-The Reptile Room. Okay. This book will be about lizards. Cool.
-The Wide Window. I'm sensing a pattern.
-The Miserable Mill. This was my least favorite book in the series. The title might give you indication.
-The Ersatz Elevator. *le dictionary* (of a product) made or used as a substitute, typically an inferior one, for something else. Okay.
-The Austere Academy. I'm very familiar with the word now, but back in the olden days when I was young, it was such a large and strange word to me. A better title: The Aggravating Academy. The Annoying Academy. The Stupid School. The Frustrating Faculty. The Infuriating Institute.
Sorry. This book just made me so angry.
-The Vile Village. One of the best books in the series, FYI.
-The Hostile Hospital, also known as the book that pumped fear through my veins.
-The Carnivorous Carnival. This one annoyed me. AMBIDEXTROUS PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE TOO!
-The Slippery Slope. I finished this one in a day as well.
-The Grim Grotto. Not my favorite in the series, but still good.
-The Penultimate Peril. Also known as: That book with the chapters that can be read out of order.
-The End. I have a problem with the title of this book. Did you see the pattern in the previous books? Now, I know that The End is a phrase and that it's sort of okay, but I have so many problems with this title. You know how people say to never end anything you write with "The End." That's what Lemony Snicket did, and it didn't turn out so well.

All in all, I enjoyed the series, hated the series, loved the characters, wanted to stab the characters, and felt so asdfghjkl;' at the end of the series with emotions and thoughts about the series that I, to this day, cannot possibly put into words.

All this being said, if you don't mind children's books, I recommend this series.

Books to Burn: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

This is the Great Illustrated Classics version, an I'm not sure if it's any different from the actual Alice in Wonderland. However, I can say with complete certainty, that I strongly disliked this book. With ever fiber in my being.

For starters, what was the plot? Alice falls down a rabbit hole. A bunch of unexplained, strange, and extremely unclear things happen.

When I was eight, I wrote a ten page book that made no sense. There was no plot, one thing would happen and then in the next page I completely forgot about that detail and it altered the plot immensely. The characters were strange and would be very hard to picture if it wasn't for the clip art pictures I attached to the document. This book was only slightly better than mine.

I didn't understand the book at all. For one thing, it was so different from the movie. The movie was probably not even based off of this book. Even so, I liked the movie better. Because at least the movie made sense. Also, I didn't appreciate this book. You know when you finish a good book and you just think "That was satisfying. It was wonderfully written and changed my perspective on life. I appreciate the author for creating this masterpiece." Well, I DID NOT APPRECIATE THIS BOOK.

Also, I hated Alice's character. It didn't even sound like a kid was talking. I understand that this book was written quite a while ago, but I'm pretty sure that kids from the 1860s did not speak like fifty year old British noblemen.

If you've read any of my other reviews, you'll know that I don't like repetition of words. Well, there was some repetition here, because everything was "peculiar." I loved the word the first time I read it. I practiced saying it out loud and liked the sound of it. After about the tenth time, I felt very tempted to cross the word out of my book.

So . . . I didn't like this book. However, I am open to reading other editions of the book in hopes that there's possibly a better version of the story that makes more sense. I also know that this book has been speculated to death and that it might have some major political undertones, but in my opinion, Alice in Wonderland is a book filled with nonsense.

Feel free to disagree with me in the comments below.

Books to Burn: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I want to literally burn this book.
This book has gotten a lot of positive reviews on goodreads, and it has a medal, and people genuinely think it's the best book ever. I personally don't think so.

I don't feel like it had a plot. I feel like the entire book was a plot hole.

The word play made it hard to understand. You had to rethink everything in the book, and that means that you can interpret it in many different ways. Maybe I'm not smart, but the way I interpreted it, it had no plot.

When this was assigned to me for fifth grade reading, I was excited. "Phantom! It'll be a scary story then!" I was really let down when I learned that it was about a kid named Milo who was just really bored.


Here's my rewriting of the story:

A kid named Milo is really bored, then he gets a magic car which takes him to a magic land. The magic land isn't perfect, so due to some stupid rules and stubborn characters, he has to go on a meaningless quest that honestly should have been shorter. Then Milo somehow finds out the meaning of life in the last ten pages so that the reader doesn't feel gypped. The end.

I would burn this book, but I would feel sorry for the flames.

Books to Burn: Allegiant by Veronica Roth

**To view spoilers, drag your mouse over the empty space between"<SPOILER>...<SPOILER>"

I'm actually not going to burn this book because it looks too pretty on my bookshelf, so . . .
For those of you who don't know what Allegiant is, it is the final book in the Divergent trilogy. The first book, Divergent, was great, even though it's not really a book I would typically read. I think I enjoyed the second book, Insurgent, more. Allegiant was a bit of a let down, though.

The book was poised to be super awesome with lots of action, but it wasn't. I have nothing wrong with an author not writing a traditional "hero saves the day and has a happily ever after" book, but I just didn't enjoy this book.

<SPOILER> I didn't have a problem with Tris dying. It was kind of a meaningless death, but I don't think that's where the author made her flaw. I think the flaw was with the whole genetic damage and genetic purity thing. If genetic damage doesn't actually really affect someone, then why would there be a one hundred year war about it? Honestly. World War I and II didn't last that long. I just found so many elements in the book confusing and weird and unnecessary. Everyone is so sad that Tris died, but that honestly made the book slightly better for me. The author didn't do the traditional thing. I wish I could say it surprised me, but someone spoiled me while I was reading Insurgent. But I imagine that if I found it out on my own, I would have liked it. It made the book more interesting and less predictable. <SPOILER>

One thing that I didn't like about the book is how the author executed having two POVs (points of view). I couldn't tell the two voices apart, which really bothered me. I would be reading and suddenly Tris would be taking about how beautiful she is, and then I would have to reread the chapter from Tobias's point of view, which annoyed me.

So, this book wasn't completely terrible. I had to finish it to get some sort of resolution, though. The epilogue is beautiful, though. I thought that was a terrific way to wrap up the book. However, I wasn't a fan of most of the stuff before that . . .

I did enjoy most of the series, though. It was interesting. I don't say I would regret reading it. I just feel like this book wasn't as amazing as I wanted it to be.