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imperfectletter118. The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
This was a great little book recommended to me by a friend. I'd somehow never read it before and she insisted that I read it. It's quite adorable and fun to read (as well as play along with the game mentioned in the title). I think that probably the best part of the book is how Ellen Raskin wraps up the story at the end of the book. It's something authors try to do and many aren't very successful. Raskin, on the other hand, does it extremely well. It's a fun, entertaining little book.
119. Skinned by Robin Wasserman
I just finished reading this book and, to be perfectly frank, it broke me. As in the same way that Life As We Knew It, Thirsty and especially Feed broke me. In my opinion, it's an exceptional story that deals with what it means to be human, which is cliché but true. The story is, at it's very basic level, quite simple. Lia's in an accident and she wakes up to find that she's not herself. She's sort of a cyborg (though the term is never used in the novel) with her own conscious. Her ability to learn, grow and survive in her new surroundings make up the bulk of the story, but in the typical 'coming of age' way that we're used to. What makes this book so good is not just the fact that Wasserman is an excellent author, but the fact that we're going through all of the difficulties Lia's going through as she goes through them -- we suffer as she suffers.
Wasserman draws us into the story through Lia's emotions (or lack of them) and she keeps us interested and invested by showing us just how much Lia changed from the person she was before the accident -- a Lia that we don't know, because we come into the story after the accident. Another thing Wasserman uses to her advantage is the flashback. We learn about Lia through this, through the way her family, friends and boyfriend behave around the 'new' her. I think this is an extremely effective plot device, though it was used more than to just further the plot.
Others have said that this book is like Westerfeld's Uglies series and another book with a similar plot to Skinned that I haven't read yet. I have to say that this book is much, much more adult that the Uglies series and it's much darker in many ways. Skinned is, as Scott Westerfeld says on the cover, really about finding out who we are inside. There are several moments in the book where Lia must figure out what she is -- and like all of us, she doesn't really know for sure. The book that Skinned did remind me of was MT Anderson's Feed. It's a book that focuses on what is and isn't real, about love and loss and what it means to be human -- just in a different context. Wasserman's book is an excellent addition to the YA science fiction genre.
120. The Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer
I think this probably was the best book of the series so far. I found myself not so much caught up in the story as the characters themselves. I think Colfer does a good job with his character study (of a sort) of Artemis and how he's changed over the books. Probably the most interesting parts involved Artemis looking back on the person he used to be as well as when he thinks about how much he's changed. His relationship with Holly changed as well and I thought that Colfer did a fine job exploring that relationship without going too far into some sort of happy romantic ending.
120 / 120 new reads. 100% read!
This was a great little book recommended to me by a friend. I'd somehow never read it before and she insisted that I read it. It's quite adorable and fun to read (as well as play along with the game mentioned in the title). I think that probably the best part of the book is how Ellen Raskin wraps up the story at the end of the book. It's something authors try to do and many aren't very successful. Raskin, on the other hand, does it extremely well. It's a fun, entertaining little book.
119. Skinned by Robin Wasserman
I just finished reading this book and, to be perfectly frank, it broke me. As in the same way that Life As We Knew It, Thirsty and especially Feed broke me. In my opinion, it's an exceptional story that deals with what it means to be human, which is cliché but true. The story is, at it's very basic level, quite simple. Lia's in an accident and she wakes up to find that she's not herself. She's sort of a cyborg (though the term is never used in the novel) with her own conscious. Her ability to learn, grow and survive in her new surroundings make up the bulk of the story, but in the typical 'coming of age' way that we're used to. What makes this book so good is not just the fact that Wasserman is an excellent author, but the fact that we're going through all of the difficulties Lia's going through as she goes through them -- we suffer as she suffers.
Wasserman draws us into the story through Lia's emotions (or lack of them) and she keeps us interested and invested by showing us just how much Lia changed from the person she was before the accident -- a Lia that we don't know, because we come into the story after the accident. Another thing Wasserman uses to her advantage is the flashback. We learn about Lia through this, through the way her family, friends and boyfriend behave around the 'new' her. I think this is an extremely effective plot device, though it was used more than to just further the plot.
Others have said that this book is like Westerfeld's Uglies series and another book with a similar plot to Skinned that I haven't read yet. I have to say that this book is much, much more adult that the Uglies series and it's much darker in many ways. Skinned is, as Scott Westerfeld says on the cover, really about finding out who we are inside. There are several moments in the book where Lia must figure out what she is -- and like all of us, she doesn't really know for sure. The book that Skinned did remind me of was MT Anderson's Feed. It's a book that focuses on what is and isn't real, about love and loss and what it means to be human -- just in a different context. Wasserman's book is an excellent addition to the YA science fiction genre.
120. The Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer
I think this probably was the best book of the series so far. I found myself not so much caught up in the story as the characters themselves. I think Colfer does a good job with his character study (of a sort) of Artemis and how he's changed over the books. Probably the most interesting parts involved Artemis looking back on the person he used to be as well as when he thinks about how much he's changed. His relationship with Holly changed as well and I thought that Colfer did a fine job exploring that relationship without going too far into some sort of happy romantic ending.
