Books and Sensibility

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Book Review : Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

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  • Release Date : 2006
  • Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  • Pages : 337
  • Genre : Science Fiction/Survivalist/Contemporary

I picked this book up for my book club 
not knowing anything about it. I was interested in it because it was
discussed as being Dystopian and I hadn’t read a Dystopian in a while.  However, I found this less Dystopic and more of a small-scale survivalist story. This isn’t the story about how a teen is going to save the end of the world.
. . But how she is going to survive it.
Life As We Knew It will have you thinking twice about what it means to survive and the importance of family. A great read if you are looking a more realistic ‘end of the world’ YA novel.

Life As We knew It
is the gripping tale of a family’s survival in the midst of a global disaster. Told through the diary of 16-year-old 
Miranda, each day presents the challenges that come with daily survival for  her brothers and Mom after a surprise astrological
event changes the world as they knew it.

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The Page 69 Challenge – Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore

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  • Release Date: October 2, 2012
  • Pages: 304 Pages
  • Genre: Adult Fiction
  • Publisher: Farrar, Staruss and Giroux (MacMillian)

I  discovered the page 69 theory from the Books on The Night Stand podcast, but I guess it’s been circulating the bookternet for while. The theory states that the litmus test for if you will like a book can be found by reading page 69. Well, challenge accepted.

 

 

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The Sense List: February Faves

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   A Monthly List of YA Bookish News

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Book Review: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

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  • Release Date:  September 2009
  • Pages: 479
  • Genre: Dystopian/Science Fiction
  • Publisher: Candlewick (US)

In his debut YA series, Patrick Ness, takes us to Prentisstown; an isolated settlement where the thoughts of men, boys and animals( known as the Noise) are constantly broadcast  for everyone to hear. Women don’t give off the Noise, but that’s no matter because there are no more women. They were all killed by the virus that created the Noise. Or so 12-year-old Todd Hewitt, the youngest boy in Prentisstown, has been lead to believe. Weeks away from turning thirteen and becoming a man, Todd has to run for his life and discovers nothing is at all what he knew.

I picked up and put down this book a couple of times, I really had a to adjust to the setup. Right from the first page Todd’s dog Manchee is talking to him which was just weird, but I kept coming back because I had heard amazing things about this novel. Then it turned out the meat of this book falls into my least favorite category of YA  fiction, the “kids in the woods” variety. I just can’t get into the survivalist fiction, these stories never do it for me. But the world and questions Ness built into the story kept me so captivated that I was racing to the  the end.

 Also, that cliffhanger.

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Jess’ Impressions : The Fault In Our Stars by John Green

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I did it! I’m on a mission to read the most hyped YA books and I finally made it to TFiOS. I’m not going to review this in the traditional sense, but here are my impressions and thoughts on one of the most buzzed books of the last 2 years.

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Book Review: Anna and The French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

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  • Release Date: December 2, 2010
  • Publisher: Dutton (Penguin)
  • Pages: 372
  • Genre: Contemporary

This book has been on my to-read list since I saw this video where John Green practically gushed about it. I finally bought it in 2012 and its one of those books that sat on my shelf for  so long I forgot about. I ended up picking this out of the TBR book jarand I figured it was about time, especially since book three in this series comes out later this year. 

The titular Anna is the daughter of a Nicholas Sparks expy who decides that for Anna’s senior year she is going  to The School of America in Paris, an American boarding school right in the city of love. There she joins up with a close knit group of friends and Étienne St. Clair, the American boy with a French name and English accent. Yes, you read that right.

Now, I’ve read a lot of contemporary YAs and Anna and The French Kiss hits all the usual marks:

Girl who is pretty, but doesn’t see it ? Check

Nice, hot guy, everyone likes ? Check

Mean girl ? Check

References to literature and philosophical concepts that call back to the plot ? Check

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