Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Teen Angst? Naaah... by Ned Vizzini

First things first: if you haven't read anything by Ned Vizzini, get off my blog. Like now. This way, you can speed to the nearest bookstore and buy up all three of his books.

This is Ned:


One of the major reasons that I think Ned is so cool is that I messaged him and he answered me a couple of weeks better, answering everything in detail. That's pretty cool for an author to do, because they are so busy. Anyways, Teen Angst? Naaah... is his autobiograpy.
It's pretty cool because there are little mini-stories in the book. Each of them are interesting. I loved every one, but I have to say that my favorite story was Cable Access Says No. It's pretty funny because I was like, did he REALLY do that? It made me laugh so hard. But what's really cool about the book isn't just how funny it is, but that it is from when he was in high school--like me. I guess it's just pretty neat to see that even your favorite authors had to suffer through high school.

Anyways, reviewing an autobiography is kind of tough for me because I hardly ever read them. If I were you, though, I would invest in this one. It's so good I want two copies. It's so good I want to punch a sheep, for no apparant reason except for how good this book is. It's so good that I want to end this blog post so that I can go read it.


Friday, February 11, 2011

Beastly by Alex Flinn

With the Teen Readers Book Club over at Goodreads.com, we are reading Beastly throughout February. I finished it a little early so that I could read more books on my personal list. There were things I loved, things I didn't like so much, and things I hated.

Kyle Kingsbury is not a good guy. He lives for himself and nobody else, treating women like objects. When he is nominated for Homecoming King (was it homecoming? Correct me if I'm wrong--it's been a while), a girl calls him out on it. When he fakes an appology later, he asks the girl to go to the dance with him. But it's all a lie. When some people realize how he is, somebody turns him into what his inner self is--a beast.

Positives: Pretty good story, interesting enough characters, and something small yet unexpected at the ending.
Negatives: TypeOhs (maybe it was just the version I read, but there were lots of them.), unrealistic situations (Of course, it IS a fantasy, but come on...), and a few others that would give stuff away.

Read Beastly at your own risk. The typohs and other negatives made the book seem a little bit unprofessional to me. But that's just me.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

The Scorch Trials

Sorry I haven't been updating as much as I'd like, I've got stuff to do. I've recently read The Scorch Trials by James Dashner.
While I was entertained by the book and I thoroughly enjoyed it, I didn't think that the book was nearly as strong as The Maze Runer. Especially the beginning, the book was sort of dull. I didn't feel that it was really interesting until it was nearly 3/4 over, and I got bored with it often.

Dashner's writing is good, don't get me wrong, but the story he is writing in this book was just a little uninteresting at first. You can see how that would be a letdown when The Maze Runner was very eventful.

Overal, I would give this book about a 7 out of 10, because it's still really good. I just am judging it based on The Maze Runner, and I feel that the series got a bit worse with this one.