Category Archive: The Book Shelf Reviews

So, if you read my Twitter, you might have seen this tweet over the weekend.

Th1rteen R3asons Why is the most depressing book I’ve read in awhile…

Which is, by the way, entirely true.

Th1rteen R3asons Why starts off with the main character – Clay – getting a box in the mail. That box is full of cassette tapes. Curious, he goes out to the garage, and using an old player, starts listening to them.

The voice he hears isn’t some singer, no news clips, or anything. Instead, he hears a dead girl’s voice.

Earlier, Hannah killed herself. And these tapes, which are to be sent to people – each person has their own side of the tape, and they’re then to mail them on – who had a role in why she killed herself.

The book follows Clay as he painfully listens to the tapes. He doesn’t think he belongs there – he liked her. He tried to help her. So why, why on earth, was he part of the reason she killed herself?

The narrative quickly (and sometimes confusingly) flips back and forth between Hannah’s tapes – all in italics – and Clay’s own thoughts. It’s a mixed up mess, which describes Clay’s mind just as well.

This is apparently Asher’s first novel, and I’m hoping we get more by him. It’s a compelling read – I couldn’t put it down – and a quick one too. We’re given thirteen stories, all of them leading to the end that we know happens. You want to say “Clay! Save her!” so many times, especially during his story, but sadly, we can’t.

Pick it up on Amazon, and read it ASAP. Really good book.

So, today I finished Darren Shan’s epic, Cirque du Freak. The first eleven books were riveting, the typical type of book that you just can’t put down. I love them without a doubt, they paint a perfect picture of our protagonist who really does go through a lot more hell than he deserves.

What I don’t like is how the series ends. Not at all. I felt – and after reading some other reviews – feel extremely cheated by how he just wiped everything out, so that it doesn’t matter at all.

I won’t go into too much detail in case people haven’t read them yet… but if you do, I would almost suggest stopping after you read Part 1 of book 12. It ends on a sad note, but it’s much better than what you get if you continue to read.

Why? Because it doesn’t make sense. Darren Shan’s entire view of fate/destiny (Des Tiny hehe) gets completely and utterly warped and it loses it’s entire connection… I can’t believe it happens, to be honest.

So I’ve read a few books since I last really talked about ‘em.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
So, this I ended up reading during my lovely Kicked-Out-Days. And since I had a LOT of time to kill… I read a lot. Heh. So I got through the entire story really fast.

It was a… sad and beautiful story. There was that underlying feel of pure love just emulated through the entire story. I felt so bad for Claire when he wasn’t around, and for Henry when he is stuck dealing with little Claire… it was undeniably cute.

And not pedo-creepy either, like Stephanie Meyer managed to add into Breaking Dawn.

I will admit I cried at the ending. It was horribly depressing, especially after all that happened. From the moment that Alba was introduced, it… it just got more and more sad, knowing what was going to happen.

The narrative was interesting, especially since we kept switching around between the two of them. Though, at times it did get a little confusing, especially when there were a lot of time jumps. That could have been done a bit smoother, I think. But still, a glorious masterpiece that will stay with us for awhile longer.

Slam by Nick Hornby
Slam, however, will not stay with us forever. It’s not a masterpiece. It’s not going to be in the league of The Scarlett Letter or anything.

BUT BUT BUT I fucking LOVE it. The narrator (Sam) is so much FUN! He’s psychotic and funny and just a plain, boring teenager.

It’s been awhile since I read it (beginning of December) but it’s still sticking around, because he’s such an interesting character.

So, basically, he gets with a girl, gets her pregnant, and then starts having this creepy flash-forwards to what happens. And this is all explained by conversations with a Tony Hawk poster.

Here’s the Amazon review
*Starred Review* For Hornby, author of About a Boy (1998) and High Fidelity (1995), the move from adult to young-adult fiction represents more of a natural progression than a change in course. So it should come as no surprise that he has written an accomplished teen novel featuring a character whose voice hits its groove at the downbeat and sustains it through the final chord. Sam is a disarmingly ordinary 15-year-old kid who loves to skate (that’s skateboarding, to you and me). But then he is blindsided: his girlfriend gets pregnant, and he lands in the middle of his mum’s nightmare (she had Sam when she was 16). This may sound like an old-fashioned realistic YA problem novel, but it’s a whole lot more. Sam, you see, has a sort-of-imaginary friend: the world’s greatest skater, Tony Hawk, whose poster Sam talks to when he has problems. And the poster talks back, maybe, or maybe Sam is just reciting quotes from Tony’s autobiography. And is it really Tony who is “whizzing” Sam into the future for glimpses of what is to come? With or without Tony’s help, Sam gives us the facts about his very eventful couple of years, but as he reminds us, “there comes a point where the facts don’t matter anymore . . . because you don’t know what anything felt like.” Which is where Hornby comes in. We know exactly how Sam feels—even when he feels differently from the beginning of a sentence to the end—and it feels just right: a vertiginous mix of anger, confusion, insight, humor, and love. Ott, Bill

Sam is so immature but he does his best. It’s just so cute. :3 ♥

Here’s a review that i liked ♥

About a Boy by Nick Hornby
So after I read Slam, I was uber excited about Nick Hornby. I figured that if he wrote Slam and I loved it so much, I should love anything else by him, nene?

Well, I went and grabbed About a Boy… not nearly as engaging. Has a weird adult that acts like a kid and a misfit kid that just doesn’t get the world. It was kinda… well, boring and not very fun.

…and that’s all I’ve actually gotten through! I have a lot of backed-up stuff to work on now, including some of the Cirque du Freak books, and a few new series that I want to get started on. Wahhh…