Show Me 5 Saturday: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

From That's A Novel Idea and Find Your Next Book Here

1 book I read: Fahrenheit 451

2 words that describe the book: Dystopian literature

3 settings where it took place or characters you met:

Guy Montag - The main character, a firefighter in the future whose job it is to set fires, not put them out. He spends most of his life going along with the sentiment that books are evil and should be burnt, but meeting a young girl who moves in next door begins to change his perspective.

Captain Beatty - The ultimate government patsy, he enforces the rules to a T. He suspects Montag's leanings almost before Montag knows them himself, and he executes his orders.

Clarisse McClellan - A 17-year-old free-thinker who moves in next door to Montag. Her conversations with Montag, centering around thinking and talking instead of passively having things fed to you, are what gets Montag to rethink his way of life.

4 Things you liked and/or disliked about it:

I liked how I could actually (frighteningly) picture this world coming into existence. We're really not that far off from this possibility, which is scary.

I didn't like how it seemed to take a long time for Montag to make his mental "switch," but once he did, it all went lightning-fast. It just seemed like a big build-up for a super-quick payoff.

I liked Captain Beatty, as reprehensible a character as he is. He's the personification of censorship, and he does a good job putting the fear of God into those around him.

I liked (No, LOVED) the ending. Such an amazing concept. I think more people need to put this into practice right now, because it almost seems like we're losing a lot of crucial books to a lack of readership.

5 Stars or less for your rating?

I'm giving the book 5 stars. An absolute must-read.

The Whys and Wheres: Personal library

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge; 451 Challenge

Review: Sea Glass by Anita Shreve

Title: Sea Glass

Author: Anita Shreve


Pages: 376

Source: The library where I work

Rating: 10/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge; 451 Challenge

First Sentence: "Honora sets the cardboard suitcase on the slab of granite."

Summary (From book flap):

It is a house on the beach. Honora doesn't mind renting -- despite its age and all its flaws, the old house is the perfect place for a new marriage. She and Sexton throw themselves into their new life together. Each morning, Honora collects sea glass washed up on the shore, each piece carrying a different story in its muted hues.

Sexton finds a way to buy the house, but his timing is perfectly wrong. The economy takes a sickening plunge, and as financial pressures mount, Honora begins to see how little she knows this man she has married -- and to realize just how threatening the world outside her front door can be.

Like those translucent shards that Honora finds on the beach, Sea Glass is layered with the textures, colors, and voices of another time. There is Vivian, an irreverent Boston socialite who becomes Honora's closest friend even as she rejects every form of convention. McDermott, a man who works in a nearby mill, presses Honora's deepest notions of trust -- even as he embroils her in a dangerous dispute. And there's Alphonse, a boy whose openness becomes the bond that holds these people together as their world is flying apart.

My Two Cents:

This was my first experience with Anita Shreve, and I can definitely say it will not be my last. Unfortunately, the rest of my book club didn't feel the same way. Of the four of us who were able to make it to the meeting, two hadn't finished it and one didn't like the book. Oh, well.

Shreve's writing is really high-caliber. She paints a picture, not only of the people about whom you're reading, but also of the times. I felt as if I was really there on the beach, at the strike rallies, etc., when she described them. On the back of my copy of the book, she's compared to Edith Wharton and Henry James. I can't speak much for the James comparison (I've read so little of his work), but when it comes to the ability to make the reader see the time period and the characters, she's on par with Wharton.

I thought that the situation in which Shreve set this novel -- on the cusp of the Great Depression and in the midst of a labor strike -- was great. It really brought together characters from all social levels, from Vivian on the top all the way down to Alphonse and McDermott on the bottom, together and showed them reacting to things they had never experienced before.

With the exception of Sexton, I can't think of a character I didn't like. I think I saw some of myself in Honora, a woman who just wants to keep her nice home and have her quiet life and her husband. Vivian made me laugh often, and I loved how she finally hits her stride and steps outside her normal experiences to get involved with the striking workers. McDermott had to grow on me a bit. I didn't like him at first, but I really came to like and admire him as a character. My favorite character, though, was Alphonse. He's the little boy that everyone wishes they knew and I felt so sorry for him. He was, as someone at my book club said, the only character who had no control over his situation. I spent the entire book hoping things would turn out well for him.

The only problem I had with this book, and it was very minor, was that the chapters flipping among all the different characters for each chapter was a little disarming at first. It's not an unusual route to take in narrating a novel, but it just took a bit longer for me to get used to it because there were so many characters who had their own chapters. But, once I got past that, it was a really easy read.

Review: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Title: Water for Elephants

Author: Sara Gruen

Pages: 331

Source: The library where I work

Rating: 9/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review challenge, 451 challenge

First Sentence: "Only three people were left under the red and white awning of the grease joint: Grady, me, and the fry cook."

Summary (From Goodreads):
Though he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski's ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Memories of a world filled with freaks and clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and passion; a world with its own narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death. The world of the circus: to Jacob it was both salvation and a living hell." Jacob was there because his luck had run out - orphaned and penniless, he had no direction until he landed on this locomotive "ship of fools." It was the early part of the Great Depression, and everyone in this third-rate circus was lucky to have any job at all. Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, was there because she fell in love with the wrong man, a handsome circus boss with a wide mean streak. And Rosie the elephant was there because she was the great gray hope, the new act that was going to be the salvation of the circus; the only problem was, Rosie didn't have an act - in fact, she couldn't even follow instructions. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.

My Two Cents:
From the prologue on, I was hooked on this book. I would have finished it in less than one work shift, but I had those annoying things called patrons who kept walking through my door, so I couldn't!

I loved having Jacob as a narrator, but I liked him best when he was his current self rather than his 1930s-self (Make sense?). He was a feisty, hilarious old man who didn't want to take any guff from anyone, but who was also stuck in a situation where he had to "just do as he was told." But he wasn't all witty quips and snippy remarks; he was also profoundly sad that his family seemed no longer to have time for him, and he was genuinely excited that the circus was rolling into town.

One of the things I liked the most about Water for Elephants was the vivid portrayal of everyone on the circus -- from the lowest of the stagehands to the general manager himself, from the midget clown to the enormous elephant. Whether it's an accurate portrayal of what circus life was like in the 1930s or not, Gruen brings a whole new world to life, a world I'm sure many of us have wanted to see. How many people can attend even one circus and not wonder what it would be like to travel with them?

While some reviewers have called the ending "inevitable" and "obvious," I truly didn't see it coming until the very end. Perhaps I was just too caught up in everything else going on to think about how the book was going to end, but I'm glad that it did end that way. There were much more depressing ways this book could have ended, and we've had enough depressing endings floating around lately to fulfill my taste, thank you.

I would recommend this to anyone who's ever pondered running away with the circus, or anyone who likes vivid descriptions of people and settings. 

Review: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike

Title: Rabbit Is Rich
Author: John Updike
Pages: 432
Challenges: 451 Challenge; Read 'n' Review Challenge

From Wikipedia:
This third novel of Updike's Rabbit series examines the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a one-time high school basketball star, who has reached a paunchy middle-age without relocating from Brewer, Pennsylvania, the poor, fictional city of his birth. Harry and Janice, his wife of twenty-two years, live comfortably, having inherited her late father's Toyota dealership. He is indeed rich, but Harry's persistent problems — his wife's drinking, his troubled son's schemes, his libido, and spectres from his past — complicate life. Having achieved a lifestyle that would have embarrassed his working-class parents, Harry is not greedy, but neither is he ever quite satisfied. Harry has become somewhat enamored of a country-club friend's young wife. He also has to deal with the indecision and irresponsibility of Nelson, his son, who is a student at Kent State University. Throughout the book, Harry wonders about his former lover Ruth, and whether she had ever given birth to their child.

My Two Cents:

While Rabbit Is Rich is much better than Rabbit Redux (See my review of that here), both in characterization and story, there's just something about the sequels to Rabbit, Run that irks me.

Where Rabbit was disturbing in an overly voyeristic and sexual way in Redux, I found him to be much more enjoyable this time around. He was actually funny and somewhat sympathetic, something I hadn't felt for him since Run. In fact, I actually liked Rabbit this time around.

Nelson, his son, however, I wanted to slap across the room and into next Tuesday. He was whiny, lazy and spoiled. I had to keep reminding myself that he was 23 instead of 13 because he acted as if he was nothing more than a put-upon teenager (You all know the type!). He quits college because it doesn't "do anything" for him, and thinks he can just come home and work at the car lot his grandmother and parents co-own. Janice and Bessie, her mother, try to push Rabbit to give Nelson "a place" there, because it's what Janice's father would have wanted, even though he is nowhere near ready for the responsibility. He whines, complains and bullies his way onto the car lot against Rabbit's better judgment, and eventually Rabbit's skepticism is rewarded.

Updike is still that fabulous, present-tense writer he's always been. I especially liked his description of Janice and Rabbit's plane ride to the Caribbean.

I know this is supposed to be an "everyman" kind of novel, and the characters aren't supposed to be heroic or really even likable, but I still have a hard time with a novel in which I hate nearly every character (With the exception, this time, of Rabbit). It just doesn't do much for me.

My rating: 6/10

Reviews: The Lightning Thief and The Book Thief

Note: I am writing two reviews in one post today because they fall into the same category in the Take Another Chance Challenge.

Title: The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 1)
Author: Rick Riordan
Pages: 400
Challenges: Take Another Chance Challenge (#9 - Same Word, Different Book); Read 'n' Review Challenge

From School Library Journal:

At the outset of this fast-paced tale by Rick Riordan (Hyperion/Miramax, 2005), it would seem that Percy Jackson is just another New York kid diagnosed with ADHD, who has good intentions, a nasty stepfather, and a long line of schools that have rejected him. The revelation of his status as half-blood offspring of one of the Greek gods is nicely packaged, and it's easy to believe that Mount Olympus, in modern times, has migrated to the 600th floor of the Empire State Building (the center of Western civilization) while the door to Hades can be found at DOA Recording Studio, somewhere in LA. With his new friends, a disguised satyr, and the half-blood daughter of Athena, Percy sets out across the country to rectify a feud between Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. Along the way they must cope with the Furies, Medusa, motorcycle thug Aires, and various other immortals. Mythology fans will love this take and kids who haven't been inculcated with the Classical canon will learn aspects of it here while having no trouble following a rollicking good–and modern–adventure.

My Two Cents:

This book was such a refreshing change from a lot of young adult literature; it was a HUGE breath of fresh air. Most young adult books either have pathetically one-dimensional characters (I'm looking at you, Twilight) or their characters are stereotypically awful kids (Gossip Girl, et al) that no amount of great storytelling is going to make up for it.


Riordan, however, manages to not only make Percy Jackson, a demigod (But I won't tell you whose son he is!), a likable character with just the right amount of teenaged sass (He knows who to mouth off to, but shows proper respect to his mother), but he also tells an enthralling story filled with hilarious allusions to Greek mythology.


The writing here is also solid, neither talking down to the target audience nor too over their heads, and Riordan sucks you in from the very beginning. I can't wait to read the rest of the series.


My rating: 8/10


Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Pages: 550
Challenges: Take Another Chance Challenge (#9 - Same Word, Different Book); 451 Challenge; Read 'n' Review Challenge


From School Library Journal:

Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.

My Two Cents:

Wow. This was one powerful book.

When I first began reading it, I had read several glowing reviews touting this book as "life-changing," but I wasn't so sure. I was intrigued, especially since the book is narrated by Death, so I kept plugging along.

Then, I fell in love with Liesel. She is one of those adolescent characters who is wise beyond her years and that I always wish I had known when I was a kid. She is strong, mostly by virtue of her situation, and her tenacity pays off when she learns to read and write through a series of late-night sessions with her foster father, Hans.

Hans is another character I simply adored. He has a deep-reaching kindness in his heart, a love of music and a tender nature that anyone would be lucky to have in a father or friend. He's also one of those people who is so committed to doing what is right, he is willing to put himself and his entire family in danger by harboring a Jew in his basement.

I could gush all day about the characters in this book, or Zusak's unconventional narrative style, but I am still in a little bit of shock from the incredibly emotional ending. I kid you not, I was sitting in the library with tears streaming down my face, choking back sobs, as I neared the end of this book. It's that good.

My rating: 10/10 

Review: The Giver by Lois Lowry

Title: The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
Pages: 192
Challenges: Take Another Chance Challenge (Challenge 4: Prize Winner Book - Newbery Medal, 1994); 451 Challenge; Read 'n' Review Challenge


From Publishers Weekly:

In the "ideal" world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children's adolescent sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community's Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are "released"--to great celebration--at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also "released," but with no fanfare. Lowry's development of this civilization is so deft that her readers, like the community's citizens, will be easily seduced by the chimera of this ordered, pain-free society. Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment--the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory--he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society's collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world. With a storyline that hints at Christian allegory and an eerie futuristic setting, this intriguing novel calls to mind John Christopher's Tripods trilogy and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Lowry is once again in top form--raising many questions while answering few, and unwinding a tale fit for the most adventurous readers.

My two cents:

I don't know why I waited so long to read this book. From what I can tell, this book came out when I was in either third or fourth grade, and I would have been in the perfect target range for this book. I read Number the Stars with my class in fifth grade and loved it, but I don't know what kept me from reading The Giver as well.

This is one of those books that everyone should read. It has so many lessons on things we should never take for granted, but often do; on the importance of memory; and on how one person's bravery can change the world.

I will admit: I was crying from around page 50 on. I had a feeling that "releasing" wasn't as joyful and great as it was made out to be, but that made it no less shocking when Lowry finally shows us a release. I think I bawled for five minutes straight, put the book down and tried to regain my composure before someone asked me what was wrong.

The best juvenile and young adult books speak not only to their target audience, but also resonate deeply with adults. This is definitely one of those books. I now want to purchase a copy and keep it in my house for when I have children. No one should miss this book.

My rating: 10/10

Join with Me!

I just officially joined my first online book challenge, and I'm so excited!

I've joined the 451 Challenge.



This challenge, in the spirit of the "book people" from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, presents a list of books which, from what I can tell, provide essential ideas which should be passed down from generation to generation.

From the looks of it, this will be a fairly easy challenge, as the levels are pretty attainable:

Spark - read 1-2 books from the master list
Ember - read 3-4 books from the master list
Flame - read 5-6 books from the master list
Blaze - read 7 or more books from the master list

You're allowed to re-read books and to cross over with other challenges. Judging by this list, I've got a lot of them either on my already read and favorited list on Goodreads, or they're on my to-read shelf and sitting on my shelves here at home.

I can't wait until Jan. 1!

Update:

Here's the list of books I either own or have here at the library that I plan on reading (some of them, that is!):

1. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Kahled Housseini
2. Atonement by Ian McEwan
3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4. Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
5. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
6. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
7. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
8. Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice
9. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
10. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
11. Night by Elie Wiesel
12. Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
13. Sea Glass by Anita Shreve
14. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
15. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
16. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
17. The Giver by Lois Lowry
18. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
19. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
20. The Iliad by Homer
21. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
22. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
23. The Stand by Stephen King
24. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
25. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Whew! I'm tired just looking at that list!