Sunday, May 27, 2012

Back to Reading like a Fiend

After finishing the Hunger Games trilogy I swooped onto J. Maarten Troost's second book Getting Stoned with Savages.  I was hoping for some more laugh-out-loud writing...like Sex Lives but, well, MORE.  I was, sadly, disappointed. Getting Stoned was funny, and Troost's writing had the same tongue-in-cheek-sort-of-ironic tone that I so enjoyed, but the stories just didn't strike me in the same way.  I don't know that I would recommend it, either.  I tried his third book, Lost on Planet China and I remain halfway through.  I'm not sure that I will get past the halfway through marker.Once I finished Getting Stoned  and gave up on Planet China, I picked up a much anticipated book.  Jenny Lawson's (aka, the Bloggess) Let's Pretend this Never Happened.  This book was literally the funniest book I've read in...well....a really really long time.  I haven't laughed out loud that hard and long since reading Sh*t My Dad Says,  and, frankly, I think Let's Pretend is funnier.  I tried reading some of it to Brad and found myself laughing so hard I couldn't finish the sentences.  Her outlook on life is so amazingly offbeat and her writing style make me want to be her best friend.  (seriously, Jenny, if you read this, call me!). 
I was sad to finish Let's Pretend, so I moved on to some teen fiction.  I started Maggie Steifvater's Lament on Wednesday, Finished it on Friday, started the sequel Ballad on Friday and finished it today (Sunday). 
These stories, about musical genius teens who are able to see and interact with the Faerie world.  Obviously, the fey are troublesome and manipulative and the teens have to be brave and save themselves while getting really tangled in love affairs with members of the faerie community.  Granted, this is definitely teen fiction, but I've really enjoyed the stories.
Finally I read The Giver by Lois Lowry.  This is actually a book I read in grade 9 (yikes) but my friends and I were talking about books we liked in highschool and I remembered enjoying it but I couldn't remember much about it, so I took it out from the library online and read it today.  Still just as good as I remembered.   The book is about a 12 year old in a futuristic world who is given his "assignment" for the rest of his life to be the "receiver" of the memories of all of the world so the society doesn't need to know or deal with them. 
Moving on...well, I'm not sure what I'll move on to next!  Thinking maybe the fifty Shades of Grey series.