My Father's Dragon

           Ruther Stiles Gannett's My Father's Dragon: best kids' book ever or THE best kids' book ever? I was browsing through my bookshelf when I came across the other two books in the trilogy--Elmer and the Dragon & The Dragons of Blueland. As soon as I saw the front cover pictures, a flood of memories came pouring into my head. Dax, who was on Skype with me at the time, can attest that my various, "ooohhhhsss" and "aaaahhhhsss" got pretty annoying as I relived the memory of my three favorite childhood books EVER. 

          What's not to love about these books? They're chock-full of adventure, friendship, and FREAKING DRAGONS. The first book, My Father's Dragon, follows the narrator's "father" as he rescues a dragon on a remote island. The book is written in third person and refers to the main character as, "my father". The second book, Elmer and the Dragon, changes in narrative voice. This time the narrator refers to the main character by his name (Elmer). In this book, Elmer and his dragon get stranded on an island with a bunch of talking birds. (Hey, it's a children's book...) They have to help the birds find a buried treasure that had been hidden on the island. The third book, The Dragons of Blueland, is set around the dragon's family, who are being threatened by humans. The humans want to take them away to a zoo or circus, and Elmer and the dragon must stop them. 

         If you ever have children, I would HIGHLY recommend getting them these three books. Heck, I would even recommend reading them as an adult/young adult. There's something about these books (as I'm sure you'll agree if you've read them) that makes them special, and gets you excited about reading. 

Flashback!

Recently, there hasn't been a lot of time to read. Schoolwork and ACT prep has taken over my daily routines for the past couple weeks. Every so often, I get a few more pages done with American Gods by Neil Gaiman on my Kindle but no major progress has been completed. Speaking of Kindles, what are your opinions on e-readers? I got my Kindle as a Christmas gift from Andrew Han's family and it was intended to be a family gift but I was the only person who knew how to use one, so it became my property. I think it's an interesting alternative and I do like how you can store a gazillion books on one tablet but I still prefer the original versions. Much longer battery life.

Anyway, that wasn't the point of this blog. I've decided to call upon childhood reading memories and write about one of my favorite series ever, The Alex Rider Series by Anthony Horowitz. This series focuses about a teenager by the name of Alex Rider who is also a spy for the British Intelligence Agency, MI6. Each book focuses on a different adventure he has, ranging anywhere from the Swiss Alps to sunny Miami, Florida. Up till now, the author has written nine books in this series, eight of which I've read. I just put the 9th book on hold at the library so maybe I'll review that at a later time.

Obviously, it would take much too long to review every single book in this series (although that would definitely be a lot of fun), so I'm going to go for an overall gist type of thing. Basically, there is a boy named Alex Rider who was unknowingly trained by his uncle to be a spy all his life. One day, his uncle was assassinated and Alex decided to find out why. Thus began the career of a teenage spy. In every book, Alex sets out to investigate a certain person or company based on MI6's suspicions and he usually ends up fighting for his life against incalculable odds and whatnot. They're not exactly mind-blowingly creative, but they definitely were a lot of fun because who hasn't dreamed of being a teenage spy?

Keep in mind, I started reading these books in... oh I don't know... 5th grade or so, and my tastes have probably matured somewhat. Still, if you're looking for something to serve more as a distraction than heavy reading, I would recommend this series. Even if you find yourself thinking, "I definitely saw that one coming..." I'm pretty sure there'll also be parts where you think to yourself, "Oh, that'd actually be pretty cool!" Have fun!

The Little Book

Stan "Wheeler" Burden is a the definition of his a "father's son". His father's life, which was lost WWII, is basically what dictates Wheeler's life. He went to the same prep school as him, played on the same Harvard baseball team as him, and was an all around brilliant person, just like his father. "The Little Book" is partly a book about how Wheeler rebels, and makes himself different. After needing one more strike to get a perfect game in a game against Yale, Wheeler takes off all of his clothes, sets them on the mound, and walks away. He drops out of Harvard and joins the music scene, ending up becoming an extremely popular rock star. Now, the real story starts. In 1988, when Wheeler is in his late 40s, he is suddenly transported back in time to late 1800s Vienna.

In Vienna, he meets his father, who has been transported back in time from the 1940s. His father, on the verge o death, was being tortured by the Germans when he woke up in Vienna. The two of them end up meeting Wheeler's grandparents (his father's parents), Sigmund Freud, Hitler as a child, their favorite teacher in prep school, and various other famous people.

I HIGHLY recommend reading Seldon Edward's The Little Book. It's a great mixture of fiction, romance, non-fiction, and realistic fiction that will fascinate even the least diligent of readers. If you decide to read it, try to take all the historical information for granted. If you think something is true historical fact, make sure you look it up before you argue about it with Mr. Sutton. There's a lot of made up stuff thats weaved in with the factual stuff. If you cannot STAND slow books, I don't recommend this book to you. At times there can be long, somewhat boring dialogues that seem to serve little purpose. Especially the scenes with Sigmund Freud. ESPECIALLY those ones. I'm not the sort of reader that likes slow-paced books, so it was surprising to me that I liked it. I highly suggest at least giving this book a try; it's extremely good if you get into it.

Bartimaeus!

Okay, first of all, isn't that just a really cool name? I remember when I was a kid, we used to have these quiet writing sessions in 3rd grade. I would spend a portion of my time writing fantasy stories (that usually made little sense) and the other half making up names for the characters in these stories. For some reason, I just really really liked a name that could roll off my tongue. But that's besides the point. Basically, I picked this book up, once again, based on the cover art.

Oh silly me, I've forgotten to say the title. It's called The Amulet of Samarkand and is part of the Bartimaeus trilogy. The plot revolves around this boy called named Nathaniel and the spirit he summoned, known as Bartimaeus. The books are all set in London, though in different time periods. Now, as I have mentioned before, historical fiction and fantasy are both favorite genres of mine, so you can imagine how much I loved this book when the author decided to combine them both. Basically, there is a world of magicians that call on spirits from their own world in order to do the magician's bidding. Nathaniel is young and inexperienced and he summons a old and powerful djinni, Bartimaeus, to take revenge on a person who wronged him in the past. The plot is very complicated and has several twists near the end, so it would take a while for me to explain. However, the main problem that arises in this book is that Bartimaeus figures out his master's birth name--a fatal mistake throughout the entire world of magicians. Nathaniel has to figure out a way to solve this problem of he's totally screwed.

The book starts out with a scene about halfway through the intended story and then works its way backwards to tell the full story. I'm sure you've read books like that before. Sometimes, it works out nicely and sometimes it leaves you utterly confused as to what's happening. In the case of The Amulet of Samarkand, it would be the former. It flows well and the breaks made to change to the past all make perfect sense.

Another interesting aspect about how the author, Johnathon Stroud writes is the way he switches from point of view nearly every chapter. Again, this style works for some books but not for others. However, I think it really added a nice effect for these books because climactic scenes from multiple perspectives added a lot of interesting angles that you would not have noticed otherwise. When the book is told from Nathaniel's perspective, the author switches to third-person narration but changes to first-person when it's from Bartimaeus. Also, when it's told from Bartimaeus's perspective, he always adds interesting little footnotes with either personal quips or remarks or bits of historical information added with a slight fantastical twist. Trust me, you'll understand what I mean if you read it.

Anyway, long story short: good book, definite recommendation if you have interest in fantasy novels and historical fiction. There are a few parts that are a bit of a drag to read, but there's no shortage of action scenes if that's what your looking for.

The Knife of Never Letting Go

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I'm sure it has been a torturous two weeks waiting for me to write another blog post. I've decided to grace you with my presence one last time before the quarter ends. Now that you've read the opening paragraph, go ahead and scroll down. Make some comment about how the book sounds interesting, if only you had enough time to read it. Get that comment grade up to an A! Chances are you've only got a couple days before the quarter ends.

Now that those comment fiends are gone, let's get on with the book review. I've read a couple books since last week, including City of Thieves, The Little Book, and Prey. But today we're going to talk about Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go, the first in a trilogy.

The Knife of Never Letting Go starts out from the perspective of a boy named Todd. It's written as if it's his diary, and he's not very literate. If you've ever read books like Wuthering Heights where the dialogue is written as it sounds, you know how annoying it is to read broken English. His broken English isn't even consistent. Sometimes you can barely understand what Todd is trying to get across, and other times he sounds like a normal narrator.

Don't let the somewhat annoying narration stop you from reading The Knife of Never Letting Go, though. It's an extremely unique and interesting book. The book is set on an unnamed planet, a couple years after the first wave of settlers arrived. Todd lives in a small village inhabited by only men. He's told that all the women in the town died from a disease. Everyone (or at least Todd thinks it's everyone) on the planet who didn't die from the disease can hear each other's thoughts. As you can imagine, this causes lots of mayhem and confusion. Todd's parents are killed, and he ends up running away. In the wilderness, he finds a girl named Viola. He finds out that Viola and her parents' were scouting out the planet for the second wave of colonists when their pod crashes, killing both of her parents. Men from Todd's town have started to follow him, so the two of them run away together.

I won't give anything more away to avoid spoilers, but I highly recommend this book. If you like a good love story that isn't narrated by a girl (stupid girly emotions), this book is perfect. At times it can seem slow, but it's well worth getting through to the end, because there are LOTS of plot twists. LOTS!!!

I am the Messenger

So, after about 3 blog posts of stalling, I have finally gotten around to posting about I am the Messenger. I think there's actually a pretty good reason as to why it took me so long. Generally, if I really like a book, I'll finish it within a matter of days, regardless of length. This book has taken about 4 or 5 weeks. Not a very good sign. To be fair though, school has just been awful lately and I've been staying up late and getting an average of 6 hours of sleep a night so I haven't had very much time. Still, I am usually fairly generous in my critiques of book but this book has managed to gather a larger amount of complaints than normal.

The premise of I am the Messenger is about this guy named Ed Kennedy who is just a very mediocre guy. He's not very good at anything but not totally awful at everything either (except sex. He mentions that he's terrible at sex)--he's just a regular Joe. He works as a cabdriver in a relatively small town, has three close friends, one of which he is hopelessly in love with, and a very smelly old dog named the Doorman. Early on in the book, he tells the readers that cards play an important role in his life--he would often have his friends over to play cards and he would soon discover how important cards would become.

One day, he discovers a single playing card in his mailbox, the Ace of Diamonds. On it were three streets. Thus begins Ed's story as he goes to these various locations in order to help people. Each case contains a different person and each person has a different problem. As you might imagine, he receives the other three Aces, each slightly different in terms of clues and Ed continues to go around his town and help people.

The plot itself is really not bad at all. I like how it works out and the process is very suspenseful at times. However, the bad part is the author's writing style. Zusak is a good writer and his style worked beautifully for The Book Thief but for some reason, it just didn't click with me in this book. The short brief sentences that made his descriptions so powerful and emphatic just didn't seem to work as well for I am the Messenger. Keep in mind, this is just my opinion--many of my friends say that they loved this book and thought the writing worked fine but I just simply didn't enjoy it as much.

Also, there were several points in the plot in which I thought to myself, "How the hell is that even possible?? Nobody would ever react like that! Come on!". Perhaps the author realized this and only added it to add to the dramatization of the scene but I generally have a problem with unbelievability when it comes to realistic fiction.

That being said, I don't think that this is a bad book and isn't necessarily a waste of time to read. It has an interesting ending and certainly a very engaging plot line. I'd classify it under the category of "good time passer" but not exactly a "must read before you die". It's up to you. Good luck.

The Road

It's not often that I come across a book that I can't say anything negative about. There's usually something in a book that I find repetitive, annoying, or just plain boring. Cormac McCarthy's The Road, though, is in a completely different spectrum. In my previous blog posts I've tried to inject some humor into my writing, but doing that here wouldn't be appropriate. The Road is simply the best book I've ever read. 

The Road starts out extremely drearily. It's set in a post-apocalyptic world. Nearly everything is dead. The few remaining humans have devolved to cannibalism. The Road follows a father and son who, after realizing they can't survive another winter so far north, are travelling south. It's eventually revealed that the mother committed suicide right after giving birth to the son, a while before the beginning of the book.

I didn't expect to like The Road when I first started reading it. It isn't action packed. It's simply beautiful and moving.  

My favorite part of The Road is how little background information McCarthy gives you. The reader is given no details about the cataclysmic event that caused the world to become so lifeless.. The father and son's names are not given. This all leads to a sense of cloudiness and confusion, which fits very well with the post-apocalyptic theme.

There isn't much more you can say about The Road. It's simply an amazing book. I don't want to give anymore plot details, lest I give anything away. I realize this post is extremely short compared to the others, but that's merely because there is so little rant about with The Road. Go out and read it right now. Trust me, it will change your life.