Digit wrote:Once when I was on a flight from the Philippines back to the states, one of the in-flight movies on the flight from Narita Japan to Detroit, MI was What Women Want and one of the characters (I think Mel Gibson's) was named Nick, and in the Japanese dubbing, every time someone called Nick, yelling Niku with a Japanese accent, my seatmate chuckled. I learned that Niku is Japanese for "meat."
I read all of Specials and half of Extras today. My sis- and mom-in-law are both disgusted with me for being such a fast reader. My favorite mocking comment was, "Well, maybe I'll just go read War and Peace in an afternoon." And even better was when I told Yellow that and he mused, "Maybe I should do that." I think they would die a thousand deaths if he did.
Dragon Lady wrote:I read all of Specials and half of Extras today. My sis- and mom-in-law are both disgusted with me for being such a fast reader. My favorite mocking comment was, "Well, maybe I'll just go read War and Peace in an afternoon." And even better was when I told Yellow that and he mused, "Maybe I should do that." I think they would die a thousand deaths if he did.
I think I'm slower than you, but friends and family alike are similarly astounded at how I snarf down books too. I'm on a break from recreational reading right now, but I have been pulled into the library a couple of times to browse the shelves...
And the whole War and Peace in an afternoon thing reminded me of this.
"If you don't put enough commas in, you won't know where to breathe and will die of asphyxiation"
I think the only young adult novel I've ever read was Donald Duk for an English class I took in college. Surprisingly, there's even a page on Wikipedia about the book.
Dragon Lady wrote:I read all of Specials and half of Extras today. My sis- and mom-in-law are both disgusted with me for being such a fast reader. My favorite mocking comment was, "Well, maybe I'll just go read War and Peace in an afternoon." And even better was when I told Yellow that and he mused, "Maybe I should do that." I think they would die a thousand deaths if he did.
What do you think of the series? I like Uglies and Pretties a lot, but I thought Specials was quite repetitive without much new thrown in there. And Extras was just . . . different.
I liked Uglies and Pretties. Pretties was a little hard for me to get into, because it was really hard for me to see Tally as a bubblehead. It just seemed like a totally different character. Which, in a way, she was. And I really struggled with the whole Zane/David thing. Because I like them both. And I feel like her decision at the end was made based on her current brain-state and I wonder if she would have chosen differently had the story played out differently. Specials I liked and hated. I liked being able to see what made the Specials different. I had wondered. I liked watching the Smoke still out-trick them. I hated seeing Tally like that. It's really weird reading a trilogy where you have the same character with three completely different personalities. And I had a hard time trying to figure out how she would react to things. I thought the whole "start a war in a society who looks so far down their noses at the Rusties for having wars" was a little hard to believe. Really? Two cities go to war (supposedly) and the rest of the world just sits and watches? Even though that's what they had been working to overcome for 300 years? And I hated that Tally never got changed back to her normal self. I understand her reasoning, but I think her normal self would have objected to her special-brained self.
As for Extras… it was different. The first half I enjoyed. I thought it had great potential. I thought the whole point system was a little unbelievable, though. Didn't they look at Rusties and how some people were special just because they were famous as rather ridiculous and hard to believe? And then they fashion an entire society around earning face-points? Doing everything possible to become famous? Perhaps if it were just merit points, I would have been fine with it. But the face points just seemed a little forced and unrealistic to me. But needed for the entire plot to work. Other than that, though, I really liked the first half. The second half I didn't like. It felt way too forced. I hated the way Tally was portrayed. And perhaps it's just because we're seeing her through someone else's eyes—someone who thinks she knows Tally's story, but really doesn't. The second half really just felt like the author was trying to add onto his fame, but didn't have the quality story to do it. It was just an afterthought that was rushed for deadlines. If it were a movie, I'd say it probably would have gone straight to VHS.
Also, I thought there was great potential for a story after how Specials ended. I think he could have done a fantastic job of Tally and David fighting the rest of the world. But instead he chose to only bring that in as a secondary story and it doesn't seem realistic. Why has Tally shed so much blood? What has she been doing? And why in the world is she and Shay working together? I left the 3rd book expecting to find those two on opposing sides in the next book. Not so much. I feel let down from the potential I saw.
I just didn't like the reset button for Tally every book. It made her journey to find herself and make her own path meaningless and by Specials it was just old.
"If you don't put enough commas in, you won't know where to breathe and will die of asphyxiation"
Dead Cat wrote:I just didn't like the reset button for Tally every book. It made her journey to find herself and make her own path meaningless and by Specials it was just old.
Especially since she didn't really find herself. She's still got her brain rewired.
Dead Cat wrote:I just didn't like the reset button for Tally every book. It made her journey to find herself and make her own path meaningless and by Specials it was just old.
Especially since she didn't really find herself. She's still got her brain rewired.
I agree. It just didn't feel right to leave Tally stuck in Special mindset.
I just started reading A Dog's Heart by Mikhail Bulgakov. For those of you that like Soviet literature with a satirical sci-fi edge to it, you may want to check it out. I'm really enjoying it so far -- more than I enjoyed Master and Margarita, to be honest.
I'm rereading Beauty by Robin McKinley. She is a fabulous fantasy writer- I read her books first in late elementary school/junior high, so they are accessible for young teen readers but well enough done that they are still very enjoyable. And I don't say that about every book I used to love. I adored The Work and the Glory when I was in junior high and I honestly lost count of how many times I read those books. But I went back to read them again in college and while it was fun (especially while I was living in Nauvoo), I was kind of wincing at Gerald Lund's phrasing. But Robin McKinley I still love. She does great retellings of fairy tales, like Beauty, Outlaws of Sherwood, and Spindle's End (Sleeping Beauty).
Wisteria wrote:I'm rereading Beauty by Robin McKinley. She is a fabulous fantasy writer- I read her books first in late elementary school/junior high, so they are accessible for young teen readers but well enough done that they are still very enjoyable. And I don't say that about every book I used to love. I adored The Work and the Glory when I was in junior high and I honestly lost count of how many times I read those books. But I went back to read them again in college and while it was fun (especially while I was living in Nauvoo), I was kind of wincing at Gerald Lund's phrasing. But Robin McKinley I still love. She does great retellings of fairy tales, like Beauty, Outlaws of Sherwood, and Spindle's End (Sleeping Beauty).
I LOVE Beauty! It's one of my all-time favorite books! If you like Robin McKinley, I'd also highly recommend The Hero and the Crown and the Blue Sword. They are both very well written (she won a Newberry medal for one of them). You might also want to check out some of our previous discussion of her earlier on this thread if you didn't see that already (we found she also has some books that aren't as great of reads).
I just now, as in not five minutes ago, finished my second-ever reading of J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey. I picked it up off the shelf a few nights ago for bedtime reading, but it snuck into the daytime, too. And by golly that's a good book. Hooboy.
Once, when I went to my very first Board party and met my fellow writers, I mentioned that I loved J.D. Salinger. Whistler said she loved him, too, and lent me a binder full of his short stories. I held onto it for maybe a year and never read them. Regrets.
