this month i
paper towns, by john green (this is a young adult book that abby and aaron recommended to me, and i loved it. it's a perfect description of what 17 year old boys are like and has a very compelling story line - the cool girl in school disappears and the nerdy next door neighbor and his friends try to track her down. i'm a person who associates certain books or movies or podcast episodes with what i was doing when i read/watched/listened to them. i'll associate this book with lying on the living room couch in the condo where we stayed over spring break - the door open to send in the ocean breeze / gale storm. i have another john green book out from the library, looking for alaska, but i was told by abby and aaron that it's sad and i wasn't ready for sad after i read the next book [below]. so i'll get to that soon, hopefully!)
extremely loud & incredibly close, by jonathan safran foer (this book was VERY good and i would highly recommend it. it is also VERY sad - i was talking to the librarian at my school about it - she'd checked the book out for me and said she wanted to hear what i thought about it when i was done. when i returned it, i told her i couldn't read it before going to bed because it made me too sad and then i couldn't fall asleep. she was shocked - this hadn't been her reaction. but for me every character was profoundly hurting - the grandma, the grandpa, the mom, the narrator, even the mom's new boyfriend when they get around to telling us about him. everything from BEFORE was happy - before 9/11 [yes - this is a 9/11 book] and before the bombing of dresden [there are some flashbacks, so thank goodness i'd read slaughterhouse five so i knew what the hell was going on]. everything from AFTER was sad. the narrator, who is 8 [this doesn't make the book any happier, as sad children are the saddest thing of all] talks about having "heavy boots," a phrase i love. this book really made an impact on me - foer is an amazing writer. i've added his first book, everything is illuminated, to my list. so, while this book is sad it shouldn't stop you from reading it, as it's definitely worth it.)
a wrinkle in time, by madeleine l'engle (i read this book as a kid and was recently talking to nora who said she'd just re-read the series and loved it on the re-read. i, um, didn't have the same experience. i actually wondered, as i finished the book this month, why i'd liked it in the first place. i mean, it was fine and all, but really didn't make much of an impact on me. and there were some weird religious undertones that i did NOT remember. so...just a fair experience re-reading this.)
The weird religious undertones were WHY I loved the re-read - there was so much I didn't pick up on when I was 11! Not to say I loved the theology, but I loved the "catching new things" part of it. And the third book - "A Swiftly Tilting Planet," I believe - I actually really loved on the re-read, which was satisfying since I'd been bored.to.death by it when I read it as a kid.
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