Best Books Of March

Here are the best books that I read this month. The summaries and pictures come from Goodreads, and the reviews are mine.

 

The Book Thief – Markus Zusak

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

My review: The narrator, Death, tells the story of an orphan, Liesel Meminger, and several families living outside of Munich during WWII.

This is by far the best book I've read this year. It's the kind of book that makes you sit in stunned silence for a few seconds after finishing it. The story is a familiar one, but the writing is poetic and beautiful. There were several times where I stopped and reread sentences or whole paragraphs because I liked them so much. This is some of the most interesting writing I've ever seen in a young adult book. The strangeness of the language totally fits Death, the strange, nonhuman narrator.

I do understand the negative reviews that this book gets. It's experimental, the narrator is extremely intrusive, the writing draws attention to itself, the book is hard to read quickly, and the story isn't anything new. However, none of that bothered me. I thought this book was fascinating.

 

 

 

The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson & The Olympians Book 1) – Rick Riordan

I read most of the books in this series this month, and I loved the entire series. The first book wasn’t my favorite, but I don’t want to spoil the series if you haven’t read it, so I’m only posting the first book here.

Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school... again. And that's the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy's Greek mythology textbook and into his life. And worse, he's angered a few of them. Zeus' master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.

Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus' stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. But to succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.

My review: This book is fun. I enjoyed it a lot, and I know that I would have gone nuts over it if I had read it as a ten-year-old instead of as an adult. The author has a wonderful sense of humor. There were several literal laugh-out-loud moments. Percy is a very likable character, and I think a lot of kids can relate to his struggles with school and his conflicts with his obnoxious stepfather.

My favorite element of the story was the fact that the characters' "disabilities" were actually strengths or coverups for something awesome. The wheelchair was actually hiding the fact that the man in the wheelchair was a centaur, ADHD helps kids become great warriors, that type of thing. I thought it was clever, and it sends a good message to young readers.

This book is very similar to Harry Potter, so if you liked those books, you might like this one. For adult readers, a lot of the plot twists are predictable. I was always a few steps ahead of the characters. They kept making the same stupid mistakes over and over (and over). Young readers probably won't notice this as much as adult readers.

If I had to pick something that I didn't like about the book, it would be the editing and printing. There were very obvious typos and errors. The words on some of the pages were blurred or smeared. The ink had bled through the paper in some places. It made me very happy that I'm not dyslexic. C'mon, Disney, if you want to publish books, you'll have to do better.

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All The Things = 24 books. (It just keeps growing.)

I’m currently reading: The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson & The Olympians Book 5) – Rick Riordan.

On Bad Book Reviews

I made the meme myself this week instead of stealing it from the Internet. Aren’t you proud of me?

I spend a lot of time on Goodreads because I actually enjoy reading book reviews. I’m fascinated by the fact that people can have massively different reactions to the same book, and I truly appreciate reviews that are detailed and thoughtful.

Sometimes I come across a bad one-star review. I don’t mean a negative review of the book. I mean a bad review. These one-star reviews are often sarcastic and mean-spirited. Instead of just stating the reviewer’s opinion, they attack the author, the characters, the book, or the other reviewers. They use phrases such as, “I hate this book,” “The characters are stupid,” “The writer doesn’t know how to write,” and “People who like this book must be dumb.”

These reviews are irritating and sad. I skip over as many of them as I can. I know that some of them were posted because the reviewer wanted to be irritating and get a reaction from people, so maybe bad reviews say more about the reviewer than the book being reviewed.

For people who aren’t attention-seeking trolls, there are ways to write a good negative review. I think the best way is to state your opinion and back it up with evidence from the book. Be specific. Be detailed. If you stopped reading, say where you stopped and why. If you liked something about the book, include that in the review. Don’t take quotes or the actions of the characters out of context. Remember that just because you disliked the book doesn’t mean that the book is bad or that people who like it are dumb. Just because you disliked the author’s writing style doesn’t mean that the author doesn’t know how to write. Just because you disagree with the characters’ decisions doesn’t mean that the characters are stupid.

Remember to be kind. You can be kind while giving a negative review. I’ve seen it done a thousand times. The anonymous and impersonal nature of the Internet makes it possible to say things in reviews that you’d never say in person, but that doesn’t mean that you should say those things. All of the authors who I know read the reviews for their books. Even if they don’t respond to the review, they are reading. In most cases, the author has spent years working on the book that you’re reviewing. They’ve given up time with their families, spent countless hours writing and rewriting the same scene over and over, brought the book to an editor or writing workshop and had it picked apart, and stayed up all night to put it back together. This book is important to the author. If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t have written it. So, most of all, remember that there is a human on the other end of your review. Be kind to that person.



Why Do Bad Books Get Published?

I’ve been reading a lot of Goodreads reviews lately, and I’ll often come across one that says, “This book is horrible. How did it ever get published?”

So, why do bad books get published?

In my opinion, it’s rare that a bad book gets published by a traditional publisher. (Self-publishing is a whole different animal that I’m not going to deal with here.) Usually, the staff at traditional publishing houses knows what they’re doing, and they reject the bad books. Books that are poorly written, confusing, boring, etc. are rejected.

I can hear you saying, “But I’ve read traditionally-published books that are poorly written, confusing, boring, etc.” I encourage you to go on Goodreads or Amazon and check out the rating frequency for the book that you think is bad. Does the book have more 4-5 star ratings than 1-2 star ratings? If the book has more than a few ratings, I’m betting that the majority of them are 4-5 stars. That means that most readers enjoyed this book and didn’t think that it was bad.

Why did you think the book was bad when so many other people loved it? Probably because you’re not that particular book’s target audience. For some reason, the book just didn’t work for you. That doesn’t mean that the book is bad, it just means that the book isn’t your type of thing, and that’s okay. I hate a lot of books that everyone else loves.

The Twilight series is a good example of books that people either love or hate. Some people believe that the series is about a strong, determined woman who wants a family and will do anything to protect that family once she has it. Other people believe that the series is about a weak woman who doesn’t think that she can live without her abusive boyfriend. There is plenty of evidence in the text of the series to support both of these views, so neither one is incorrect. The Twilight series has way more 4-5 star ratings on Goodreads than 1-2 star ratings. A lot of people must be reading the series the first way. Can you really argue that a book is bad and shouldn’t have been published if it’s working for so many people? Publishers want to publish books that work for the majority of people because that’s how they make money.

You can make a strong argument that the Twilight books are bad because they’re poorly written, but how much should the quality of the writing factor into a publisher’s decision to publish? Are other elements of the book more important than the writing? You can also argue that the books are bad because the main characters are poor role models for young people, but is it really a book’s job to be a role model for young people? I don’t know the answers to these questions. If you have an opinion, I’d love to hear it in the comments.

Do books that are almost universally hated ever get published? Yes, occasionally. The people who work at publishing companies are human. They make mistakes. They sometimes misjudge a book’s appeal or have a hard time getting a book to its target audience. However, I think it’s fairly rare that a book published by a large company is universally hated. The staff is usually very talented at finding good books and getting them to the public. If they weren’t, the company wouldn’t be in business for very long because nobody would be buying their books.

For more information on this topic, check out this video by fantasy author Brandon Sanderson.

Best Books of February

Here are the best books that I read this month. The summaries come from Goodreads; the reviews are mine.

 

 

Expecting Armageddon: Essential Readings in Failed Prophecy – Jon R. Stone (editor)

The expectation of an end to time and the yearning for a millennial paradise have been recurring themes in Western religious thought. But when we speak of "expectation" of the world's end we are mindful of the fact that generation after generation of millenarians have been disappointed. Their endtime hopes and prophecies have not come true. What happens, one might ask, when prophecies fail? Does failure spell the end of the very movements that embrace such expectations?

The aim of this anthology is to gather together in one volume the essential research from the fields of sociology and psychology that seeks to answer this intriguing question as first raised by Festinger in his 1956 work, "When Prophecy Fails." Cross-cultural and comparative, this collection chronicles forty years of research into failed prophecy and response to the attending cognitive dissonance it produces that is at once timely and informative.

Review: I loved Festinger's When Prophecy Fails, but I was skeptical of his hypothesis that groups respond to the cognitive dissonance caused by a disconfirmed prophecy by increasing proselytizing activity. Based on my own reading, increased proselytizing after a disconfirmed prophecy is fairly unusual. This book examines the other ways that groups respond to disconfirmed prophecy. The essays in this book are a lot dryer and more scientific-sounding than most of the Festinger book, but if you found that book interesting, you might like this one.

 

 

Close Range: Wyoming Stories – Annie Proulx

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling author of The Shipping News and Accordion Crimes comes one of the most celebrated short-story collections of our time.

Annie Proulx's masterful language and fierce love of Wyoming are evident in these breathtaking tales of loneliness, quick violence, and the wrong kinds of love. Each of the stunning portraits in Close Range reveals characters fiercely wrought with precision and grace.

These are stories of desperation and unlikely elation, set in a landscape both stark and magnificent -- by an author writing at the peak of her craft.

 

Review: These stories are realistic, gritty, beautiful, and amazing. Having grown up in Colorado, I was familiar with the setting of this book, but I've never seen it described this well. Annie Proulx has a gift for using language precisely. I can see why she has won so many literary prizes.

All of these stories are about tough Wyoming ranchers. None of the characters are likable, but most of them are fascinating because of their flaws. The most well-known stories in the collection are "The Half-Skinned Steer," which was featured in the anthology Best American Short Stories of the Century, and "Brokeback Mountain," which became a movie.

"Brokeback Mountain" is the strongest story in the collection. I also liked "The Mud Below" because it seemed more straightforward and less sparsely-written than the other stories. I liked the humor in "The Blood Bay." I had a hard time picking favorite stories because I liked them all. This is one of the best short story collections I've read in a long time.

 

 

Divergent – Veronica Roth

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.
 

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are--and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, Tris also learns that her secret might help her save the ones she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

 

Review: This book was entertaining. I stayed up way too late over the last few nights to read it. It's quickly paced with a ton of action, and I was pulled into the plot right away.

While I liked the action, the majority of the book was action and not much else. The characters spent most of the story training for battle, and then they got to put their skills to the test at the end of the book. The pulse-pounding action scenes will keep you reading, but the number of action scenes doesn't leave much room for character development. You can only learn so much about the characters by watching them fight. It took me a really long time to get a sense of Tris's personality. Four is an intriguing character and has a lot of potential, but I don't feel like I know enough about him to care about his relationship with Tris. Most of the other characters seemed like cardboard cutouts who were created just to die. I didn't feel anything for them when they died because I didn't feel like I knew them.

There are similarities between this book and The Hunger Games, especially in the beginning. I didn't like this book as much as I liked The Hunger Games, but I'm still looking forward to reading the next one. I have to know what happens.

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All The Things = 16 books with many more on the way.

I’m currently reading Insurgent by Veronica Roth.