Dustlands #3 by Moira Young

This week I finished the Dustlands series. It is about a girl, her twin brother, younger sister and other friends that team up to defeat the evil leader. It is a dystopian series featuring a teenage girl (which I am tired of), but this series is really different and cool.
I liked the entire series and this book. As with most series, the first one was the best, but the other two were pretty solid. My main complaint was that some of the plot lines from the second book didn't flow very well into the third one, so although I read the previous book pretty recently I got confused at the beginning. The characters' personalities continue to develop and the writing style is consistently good. I recommend this series.

Dustlands #2 by Moira Young

This week I read the second book in the Dustlands series. I can't remember the actual title because it is really generic, but I really like this series. It is about a girl who had to rescue her brother and now they are trying to defeat this evil guy. That is not very descriptive, but it is a generic teen dystopian novel so that about sums it up.
I actually like this series because the main character is cool and it is written a little differently than most books of this genre. The story seems consistently good and it seems like it was planned well, so all three books connect. To learn more about the first one, see my previous post.

Blood Red Road by Moira Young

This book is about a girl whose twin brother is kidnapped. She and her little sister have to figure out who took him and get him back. She makes friends along the way. It is a dystopian novel (kind of). She is cool. It is written how she speaks, and at first that's annoying, but it's actually cool and adds a lot to the story.
This book is pretty good. The story is very interesting and it was a fast read. The characters are good. My main complaint is that there are some story elements that seem really cheesy and incredibly stupid. Their futuristic world didn't seem well-developed enough to support the story. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes that genre. I'm a little tired of futuristic novels with teenage heroines, but this one was different and good.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

This book is about a kid named Charlie who is a freshman and he is a loner until he makes friends with a bunch of seniors. He learns life lessons. He also likes to read old books that his teacher gives to him and write essays about them.
I really liked it. The story was told in a diary format, which I don't usually like very much, but in this case it worked really well because the main character had a distinctive voice, which really added to his character. His personality seemed really developed, but some of the other's didn't. There were a lot of characters that had almost no dialogue and were just mentioned in passing, so it was a little hard to keep track of them. The story, rather than being a plot that the entire book was based around, was more of just an account of the events of a school year, and while there was a problem and it was resolved by the end, the book's structure was unusual. I really liked this book.  It has some mature content, but it would be fine for anyone in our class. I would recommend it.

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

This book is about a girl who has red hair and dresses really weirdly and an Asian guy who likes comic books. They are both weird. It is set in the '80s. I will not say anymore. I am afraid of spoilers.
I loved this book. All of the characters were very well developed, and it felt like the author wasn't writing about teenagers in that unflattering or inaccurate way that some authors do. Even though it was set in 1985, the timeframe didn't detract from the story or distract the reader. The writing style was great and the plot and sub-plots were very cool and seemed complete by the end of the book. There was a surprise ending. I recommend this book to anyone in our class. It has a little mature content.

Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper

This week I read a book (see title of post). It is about a girl with cerebral palsy who is actually really smart and wants to speak and go to classes that are at her academic level. She deals with people who are stupid. Things happen.
I usually try to stay away from books involving diseases or disabilities because I find them incredibly cliche, and when people find out that you're reading something thought-provoking they want to have these deep, miserably uncomfortable conversations with you. I have no idea why I chose this. The writing style was okay, but that wasn't my main problem with it. The plot was very confusing. The author was trying to tell the reader that this girl is intelligent, but she tried way to hard and the book ended up redundant. I thought the main plot was going to be how she got this computer to help her speak, but that was only part of it. There was an entirely different plot. This was perhaps the most annoying thing about this book: I googled the author, and she was 57 when this was published, and it's told from the perspective of an 11 year old. She used incredibly dated slang and phrases and altogether tried way too hard to sound "young and hip" as my mother would say. At least she did a pretty good job of giving the reader a picture of the challenges of living with CP and parts of it definitely were thought-provoking. I think that this is more of my opinion, so I would recommend it if you want to form your own.

Slice of Life 31/31

I drag music onto the playlist, scrolling down and clicking on albums.
"That one," says my sister.
"NO," I reply. "That makes me want to pull my hair out."
"Ok." A sigh. My brother appears in the doorway.
"Do you have another copy of the packing list?" he asks.
"I'll print one." We are going on a road trip tomorrow, and I'm helping them prepare. It takes a ton of effort to get my family out of the house, especially because we have three dogs, a leopard gecko, an outdoor pond, an aquarium and an endlessly confusing system of trash cans and light switches which I haven't even mastered yet. It took three hours to instruct our house sitter. Tomorrow is the last day of our Slice of Life challenge, and I don't want to count on remembering to do it on the road. It's been fun, and I liked all of the writing practice. Sometimes it was definitely a challenge to come up with something about my life that was worth writing about. I am proud to have posted all 31 days, so I'll post this last one and pack with my brother, who has been incessantly asking if I'm ready yet.