Eight Books, Three Ideas, and One Big Conundrum

Ever had one of those days where you feel like you're just beating your head against the wall?

Well, that has been my state of mind since last summer. I've really overdone it this time, and I've picked a total of eight books to read for this project, one of which is easily over a thousand pages long.

I've also been trying to decide which of my novel ideas to focus on, but I have not been able to choose. Perhaps I'll leave the choice up to anybody who decides to read this. Here, I'll give you a basic log line for each of them.

1: The City of Gears - Grieving her brother's suicide, a young woman manifests suppressed psychic abilities, and unearths a deadly secret behind her brother's death and the gears of the city itself. . . (Near-future, Science Fiction, etc.)

2: Seven Swords Saga - A young orphan boy stumbles upon an ancient legacy and finds himself in the middle of a vicious war to claim the legendary power of the Seven Swords of Cordaire. (High Fantasy, Adventure, etc.)

3: Into the Dark - Haunted by nightmares of his father's murder, a young man tries to put an end to his visions by tracking down a dangerous serial killer who he believes holds answers to his dark past. (Modern Psychological, Mystery, etc.)

One of these days, I'm actually going to finish one of these ideas. Which one do you think I should work on? Which intrigues you the most? Which one do you find boring? What could I do to make the story less boring? Thanks in advance.

And that's all I have for tonight. And with that, I bid you all farewell, and good night.

Friday

So, according to this test, I am an Idealist, specifically a Healer.

http://www.keirsey.com/4temps/healer.asp

Most of the time, tests like these never work for me. But this one fit me spot on. I've never been a very social kid, and as a kid, I was a huge dreamer. Fortunately, my parents never degraded this way of thinking, and actually nurtured it very well. I do have a strong sense of right and wrong, but due to my nature, I've never really been one to physically voice my opinions, for fear of rejection. Finally, the test fit me perfectly with this line, "They have a gift for interpreting stories, as well as creating them, and thus often write in lyric, poetic fashion."
Absolutely perfect. I must say, this test had me pleasantly surprised.

This Week in Reading

The Hollow by Jessica Verday
Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker
The Overachievers by Alexandra Robbins

This week: 206 pages

Favorite Sentences and/or Passages (in no particular order)

1. "I am living life," I responded wearily. It felt like suddenly every muscle in my body had been stretched to the limit. "I'm still getting up and going to school, aren't I? I'm still doing my homework and eating my vegetables, aren't I? I'm still getting showered, getting dressed, putting on my shoes. . . If I'm still doing all these things, then I'm still living life. But it will never get better. No matter how many prom committees I join, or college brochures I shuffle through or. . . " I looked down at the vials in my hands. "Or how many new perfumes I make. This knot of coldness will always be inside of me. Always." (The Hollow)

2. On his bedroom desk, next to his computer, Sam's last souvenir of the season taunted him: a rock he found on his last day at the beach in Martha's Vineyard. On it someone had scrawled a saying, reminding him of what he assumed was his close friend Julie's philosophy, an attitude Sam hoped to emulate. Sam's hardest working friend, Julie meant more to him than she realized. "Life just is," read the ink on the rock. "Go with it. Grow with it. Live and let live." Yeah, well, easy for the rock to say. The rock wasn't stuck with seven hours of homework. (The Overachievers)


3. Burn this Book. Go on. Quickly, while there's still time. Burn it. Don't look at another word. Did you hear me? Not. One. More. Word. . . . Why are you waiting? It's not that difficult. Just stop reading and burn this book. It's for your own good, believe me. No, I can't explain why. We don't have time for explanations. Every syllable that you let your eyes wander over gets you into more and more trouble. And when I say trouble, I mean things so terrifying your sanity won't hold once you see them, feel them. You'll go mad. Become a living blank, all that you ever were wiped away, because you wouldn't do one simple thing. Burn this book. It doesn't matter if you spent your last dollar buying it. No, and it doesn't matter if it was a gift from somebody you love. Believe me, friend, you should set fire to this book right now, or you'll regret the consequences. (Mister B. Gone)


First of all, I never posted about Mister B. Gone. So let me fill you in.

The premise is rather simple: a demon has been trapped inside the book, and the book essentially serves as his memoir of his life. He will taunt the reader periodically to burn the book, that he will haunt them, even kill them if they don't. A very different kind of book, that will have you tearing through it. Hopefully you won't be burning it. *wink wink*

If you remember from the post about The Hollow, I said that I was struggling with getting through it. The passage above is what helped me keep going, and even managed to bump my rating up to a 7.5/10. The action has even started to pick up a bit. I still have problems with Caspian (romantic love interest) being a little "flat", but we'll see if that changes. My girlfriend has told me to keep reading, that I will like it if I can get through the rough patches. Let us hope that holds true.

The above passage from The Overachievers caught my eye at first for the humor. However, the more I read it, the more I truly understood it. For some students, simply living life and taking things slow is a challenge, and many struggle to actually find time to sit down and relax. From what I have read so far, these kids are not what I expected all. Between a kid whose parents watch his every move, and a girl who can't get into the college of her dreams even with a perfect SAT score, they are nothing like I thought they would be. I highly suggest this book for anybody who has looked at a kid who has three school activities and is in AP class after AP class, and says, "Pfft. What a nerd." For we can never truly understand the workings behind the scenes of their lives.





If you have any suggestions for books I should read, leave me a comment below! Thanks for stopping by!

The Overachievers: What We Don't See

They are in every high school in the United States.

They are the kids who normal students envy.

They are the ones who can juggle three after school activities and still manage to receive distinguished honor roll every year.

Any sane person would ask themselves, "How do they do that? I can barely handle my Chemistry class, let alone anything that is AP."

But what we don't see is the lives behind these students. What we don't see is what drives them to be who they are. We don't know if they are perfectionists at heart, we don't know if they have parents who frown upon an A-, we don't know them for who they truly are behind their perfect, if slightly hectic, appearance.

This book is an attempt to portray the lives of these students, and how they struggle to find themselves in the midst of high school life.

On another level, this book addresses the education system of the United States, and how high school has changed over the years. In the 90's and earlier 2000's, high school was simply about narrowing down your choices so that if you go to college, you would know what you would want to do.

Now, high school is nothing more than a stress inciter, filled with tests and overly-rigorous standards that grossly over-prepare students for college.

Some might argue that this is a step forward, but when students become more and more driven to become perfectionists, the standard that is education will fall hard. People in and of themselves can only be so perfect. Nobody in his or her own right is truly perfect.

And yet, some people, parents especially, can't see that. One of the characters, nicknamed "AP Frank", has a mom who has pretty much laid out his entire life plan for him. We've seen the stereotype before, typical "Tiger Mom" kind of stuff. But when you see the harsh reality, it really makes you feel for the guy, and how he struggles to decide what he wants to do with his own life.

All in all, a very interesting book to read, a book that will leave you re-thinking your opinions about those people that have five or six AP classes and have to carry around a backpack the size of a small boulder.

The Hollow: At a Glance

Imagine this. Your best friend has just disappeared. It is rumored that she has committed suicide or overdosed on drugs. Nobody in your small town even seems to care, as life seems to go on as if nothing ever happened.

That is the situation in which Abbey finds herself.

Grieving the death of her best friend, Kristen, Abbey struggles to go on with life as normal. Some part of her still believes that Kristen is still out there, that she has just gone missing and will show up eventually. But she is beginning to lose hope. Little things here and there cheer her up for a little bit, but then she falls right back into her depression when she remembers the memories her and Kristen made together.

Then the romantic heart-throb enters, Caspian. He is everything a girl can imagine, and Abbey is in a state of constant blush whenever she is in his presence. He makes her forget about all of her sadness, no matter what it is.

The book itself reads easily so far. However, it is not flawless. Typically, I shy away from stories like this for two primary reasons:

1 - The main "hottie" guy character always seems to fit into the same archtype: Mysterious, dark and brooding, and all in all, absolutely blank. I'm aware that this what some girls turn to these books for, since real guys are jerks, but alas, the stereotype is quickly becoming overused. Darn you, Edward.

2 - The author tends to pad out the page count with page upon page of unnecessary detail. Don't get me wrong, detail is amazing. Detail is what brings the readers in. But when you pile on EVERY fine detail, the reader will get bogged down on the intensity of what is being given to them. In my experience, I've always lived by one rule: Give the reader just enough to lay the bones of the scene, and the reader's imagination will do the rest. Give too much detail, and the reader won't want to read all of it, and might find themselves skipping paragraphs. Just take one look at a Charles Dickens novel, and you'll get my point.

Despite these setbacks, I will continue to read this book, and see if it will get any better. Right now, I'm rating it as a 6.5/10, for the two reasons I stated above. We'll see if that changes anytime soon. I'll keep you posted.