My Guest Post on JR Wagner's blog

Hey, guys, I recently wrote an article on what it's like to be a teen writer in todays world for JR Wagner, author of the upcoming book Exiled. You should check it out, and also just check out the rest of his blog because it's really cool. Here's a link to my post.
http://whatisthenever.blogspot.com/2012/01/teenon-teen-writing.html?showComment=1326926017603#c6755686746556397281

Thanks for reading!

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer at 12, Hazel was prepared to die until, at 14, a medical miracle shrunk the tumours in her lungs... for now.

Two years post-miracle, sixteen-year-old Hazel is post-everything else, too; post-high school, post-friends and post-normalcy. And even though she could live for a long time (whatever that means), Hazel lives tethered to an oxygen tank, the tumours tenuously kept at bay with a constant chemical assault.

Enter Augustus Waters. A match made at cancer kid support group, Augustus is gorgeous, in remission, and shockingly to her, interested in Hazel. Being with Augustus is both an unexpected destination and a long-needed journey, pushing Hazel to re-examine how sickness and health, life and death, will define her and the legacy that everyone leaves behind.

My Review: John Green strikes again with this amazingly humorous and somehow still heartbreaking tale of Hazel Grace Lancaster. The characters, namely Hazel and Augustus, are brilliantly created. They are much like Green's other characters (that's a good thing) in that their thought processes are very clever. I mean, Green's characters are the kind of characters that you actually give a shit what happens to them. That's what makes his books so amazing, above all of the other reasons, like the perfect prose and hilarious jokes. You really can't let this up-and-coming author get past you, because I honestly can't tell you how much I love his books. And I mean, that cover is awesome. I love it. I read this book in as close to one setting as you can while still eating and sleeping. I have a very short attention span, so that's saying something. Readitreaditreadit. Go. Now. I have nothing bad to say about this amazing book.

The Why Cafe by John P. Strelecky

In a small cafe at a location so remote it sits in the middle of the middle of nowhere, John--a man in a hurry--is at a crossroads. Intent only on refueling before moving along on his road trip, he finds sustenance of an entirely different kind. In addition to the specials of the day, the cafe menu lists three questions all diners are encourage to consider.  Why are you here? Do you fear death? Are you fulfilled. With this food for thought and the guidance of three people he meets at the cafe, John embarks on a journey of self-discovery that takes him from the executive suites of the advertising world to the surf of Hawaii's coastline. Along the way he discovers a new way to look at life, himself, and just how much you can learn from a green sea turtle. 

I really went back and forth on whether or not I liked this book...the writing is not bad, and it's a very slender volume that, if you wanted to, you could easily read in one setting, but I did not do this. I don't feel like this was a failure on my part as a reader. The book was by no means riveting...it was one of those books that makes you think you should feel good about yourself, but the real problem I had with it was the plot...it just wasn't interesting, and that was because once the main character is at the cafe, all that really happens is he gets asked those three questions that are on the back of the book. There's no real conflict, I mean he gets confused about the questions, but I don't really count that as conflict, and then there's this really out there magic element that I'll let you see for yourself, but it wasn't quite explained in the book. That was because the character wasn't supposed to know, but come on, you can't just have characters read other character's mind and the other character is only minorly weirded out by it, and just takes it with a grain of salt...Right? I mean, if somebody READ YOUR FREAKING MIND, you wouldn't just be like what??? Oh well. No, you'd be like What the FUCK? Did you just read my MIND? You can't just throw that in there and then never say anything about it again! Sorry, that bothers me sooo much. I really wanted to looooove this book, but at the end, it's just another book that I didn't love, but I didn't hate. It was just 'meh'.

And maybe this simply isn't my kind of book, because I seem to be in the minority here. But this is my honest opinion.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

From GR:  Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him -- something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn't she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd's gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.

Upon finishing this book, I asked myself two questions.
1. WHY THE HELL WAS THIS AMAZING BOOK SITTING ON MY SHELVES FOR A HALF A YEAR BEFORE I PICKED IT UP?!?!
2. HOW THE HELL WOULD I HAVE SURVIVED IF I HAD READ THIS WHEN IT FIRST CAME OUT AND I COULDN'T READ THE NEXT ONE RIGHT AWAY AFTERWORDS?

Luckily, 1. I did get around to reading it, and 2. I read it now, and last week I found the second book used but in perfect condition in Joplin for 4 bucks. Yeah. I'm a beast.

I don't want to overexplain this book. All that I can tell you is that I just sat down in a chair and read the last 200 or so pages and when I was done I was like oh...three hours just passed? Huh.
And you know, it was worth it.

Read this book. It's exciting, interesting, creepy, heartbreaking, and altogether amazing. Just...read it. Don't let thiis one pass you by. I'm serious. It's worth every penny.

Books that I have on my shelves

Okay, so if you're anything at all like me, you have approximately 30 billion books on your shelves that you haven't read, and at least 1 billion of those you probably never will read, but I just thought I would tell you what book I have on my shelves that are begging to be read, that way if I never get around to it, they will at least get a little nod here. So here they are:
Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick
Rot & Ruin by Jonathan Marberry
The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness
Gone by Michael Grant
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
The Other Side of Dark by Sarah Smith
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Incarceron by Catherine Fisher
Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeiffer
City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
White Cat by Holly Black
Caught Between the Pages by Marlene Carvell
Five Flavors of Dumb by Anthony John
Night by Elie Weisel
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Girl who Loved to Run by GP Schultz
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larsson
Cujo by Stephen King
Blaze by Stephen King
3 of the 4 Bachman Books by Stephen King
Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King
A Farewell to Arms by Earnest Hemingway
Everyman by Philip Roth
Blackbox by Nick Walker

Phew! That's a lot of books. So, you ask, why aren't you reading right now?
Because, silly blog reader, I am the world's most ridiculous procrastinator! Don't question me!

The Realm of Possibility by David Levithan

How to describe this book...
It's about a bunch of people.
Who go to the same school. And they talk about stuff. So much is covered in this book, such as eating disorders, boys who feel the need to be big and strong, sex, homosexuality, and all that jazz. There are 20 different voices, one for each 'chapter'. Basically, the reason this gets such a low rating is that the characters would each talk for about ten pages (which, in verse, isn't very much.) and then it would move on to the next character without me having any attachment to the character at all. Honestly, you don't have much of an emotional connection with any of the characters by the end of the book. Really, the only character names I even remember out of the 20+ are Jed, Daniel, and Pete. That's not a very good ratio. That's because I didn't care about any of the characters at all - the three mentioned were just in the book more often, so I remembered their names.
I thought after reading Will Grayson squared, I would see how this author functioned on his own, and I will try another of his books because I really want to read Love is the Higher Law because of its subject matter, but I now see that John Green is the force that pushed WGWG to the awesomeness that it is. Not Levithan.
So right now, I'm lowering my eyebrows in a suspicious glare at David Levithan. We'll see how I feel about him in a little while, after I've read more of his work.
2/5*

International Covers #2 I Am Number Four

'Murica.

France.

Germany

Italy

Portugal.

They're all pretty cool, IMO. Which do you like best?