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) Despite being stylishly written, this book fails to capture the attention of the reader. There's hardly any emotion or suspense in the tale. It's an okay story with a unique message and plot, but I had to force myself to finish it as opposed to desiring to.
The setting is an older time in a small town in Canada. The story separates between the grown version and child version of the main character, Kate. It describes the tragedy of her childhood and how that has shaped her and her siblings growing up. Kate becomes a professor in microbiology/zoology, where she studies pollutant affects on pond/marine life. She has a serious boyfriend, but is having trouble opening herself up to him. Past events in the story reflect on this issue as well as a relationship problem with her brother.
Overall, this is well written, but lacks any characteristics to make it an engaging read.
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) This isn't anything at all like the other Vizzini book that I had read prior,
It's Kind of a Funny Story; although this has the same creative but down-to-earth writing style, the narrative itself was very fictional.
It's based around your average geeky, shy, middle-school guy who finds being 'Cool' to be of the utmost importance. He finds out about this new, underground technology called the "squip". Squips are pricey, but they help the consumer reach their highest current life goals. For the main character, Jeremy, his goals are to be 'Cool' and get the girl he likes, Christine. Most of this seems to be coming together nicely, thanks to the squip. But in the very end, malfunctions occur and chaos erupts.
It's a cute story, but seems very novice compared to Vizzini's other book.
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) The main character is a 'lazy', sarcastic girl named Jane. The story follows her throughout her life and examines her interaction with her family and friends.
The worst problems Jane faces, she creates an imaginary enemy to blame them on, named Bubba. She writes letters to Bubba and keeps them in a folder she's shown to no one. Most problems are all typical of her age and have to do with her own actions.
One day, Jane receives a letter in the mail from Bubba. How can an imaginary entity write back? And he wants to meet! Too weird.
Overall, this book explores some of the typical troubles associated with growing up and finding ones' identity. It's cute but a bit young and typical.
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) This story surrounds a very unfortunate girl, (street name: "Maybe",) who is now living her life on the streets. Her previous circumstances involved daily abuse, including being 'ironed'. To top it off, Maybe has a skin condition called
vitiligo; it gives her patchy, almost spotty skin. (It's the same disease that Michael Jackson had.) However, maybe that's kind of a blessing for a young girl living in dark, dangerous alleyways.
Anyway, the story goes on to journey through ill-fated circumstances that occur within
Maybe's "tribe" of other street kids. Unrealistically, everyone but Maybe eventually dies. Well, actually one or two go back to their spoiled families, but the majority die.
I guess the purpose of this novel was to discourage runaways and to always seek and take help. That's good and all, but this came across a bit too preachy. I guess it's an okay read, but definitely not my preferred choice or something I'd recommend.
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) This follows a high school jock, Scott, who is obsessed with himself and baseball. Life is going fine until he finds out his best friend is gay; the same best friend that has just moved in with him after being kicked out of his own house. Scott doesn't know what to do or how to handle it. He's so homophobic that he wants to be tested for AIDs after touching some of his friend's blood. Much of the town is semi-homophobic, but there are a lot more homosexuals there than most people know. Scott soon finds this out, along with some things about himself. He also finally gets closure on his parents' divorce.
It's alright, nothing new or obviously original. Lots of baseball references. Nothing more than an 'okay' read. This author can do much better.
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) You would think a mere 100-page, large-font and huge-spacing book would be a cinch to proofread, but apparently not. This book contained more spelling mistakes, typos, and grammar errors than my fourth-grade essays. And not too much more content.
The story follows a fifteen-year-old Canadian prankster who gets in big trouble for pulling an 'unforgivable' joke on the vice principal of his school. He is then suspended and expelled. His parents further punish him by sending him to live with relatives over the summer. There, he works in their kayak business and continually gets into more trouble with his jokes. In spite of this, he falls in love with the whales that frequent the harbor. Soon, he tries to quit pulling pranks, and instead focus on the whales. However, to help the endangered whales, he pulls one last prank that sets the conclusion of the story.
I read this about an hour; it was an hour wasted. The plot is alright, it's the lack of detail and effort that annoyed me the most. I felt like I was reading a very poorly composed children's book without the pictures.
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) Despite being stylishly written, this book fails to capture the attention of the reader. There's hardly any emotion or suspense in the tale. It's an okay story with a unique message and plot, but I had to force myself to finish it as opposed to desiring to.
