Get Lost in Literature

"Everything that's born has to die, which means our lives are like skyscrapers. The smoke rises at different speeds, but they're all on fire, and we're all trapped." This is the second year in a row that I have cheated with letter X and gone with 'Ex', but I bet I'm not the only one who has so maybe that's okay. Even 'Ex' was hard to find a book that suited my reading tastes. I considered Douglas Preston's  Extinction  but found the main character unlikable after the first few chapters, and there was Excavation  by James Rollins which I just wasn't in the mood for. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, chronicles Oskar Schell's search for answers. His father dies on 9/11 and Oskar is the last one to hear his father's voice leaving him feeling both guilty and grief stricken. He plays tambourine and keeps a scrapbook, makes up inventions and bruises himself when he feels bad. But when he finds a key hi...

  "He's always wanted to be a person with a legacy in this world. Henry is undoutedly, determinedly that. It's a little intoxicating." Alex Claremont-Diaz, First Son of the United States, hates Prince Henry. Henry is a cold, stuck up robot according to Alex who is passionate, flirtatious, and ambitious. After Alex and Henry get in a shoving match at Prince Philip's Royal Wedding, they are forced by their families to spend time together, to convince the paparazzi that they are actually best friends. It's a story of love at first fight. This is a first for me... I've read romantasy because I like fantasy, but I've never read a novel that was intended to be romance and romance only. I picked this book up from the library after seeing the trailer for the movie. I figured if it was a movie it had to be good, right? I was surprised to find I wasn't disappointed. This book was cute.  Told from Alex's point of view it opens with a fair amount of animus...

  "What's done in the dark always comes to the light." Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones Today's review is short and to the point. I don't really feel the need to summarize the book as it's blurb is pretty accurate, except where it calls Skeet's dog his "prize pitbull." The dog, China reads as her own unique character, same as the kids her fight and loyalty run strong in her blood. But for those of you who've never heard of it, this is about a family living in rural Mississippi. It's about the kids who rule the household as the father drinks himself into a stupor, at a time when Hurricane Katrina is coming ashore to tear their worlds apart. The opening chapter is kind of weird, detailing the dog giving birth, but afterwards, I couldn't put the story down. The bond between the children runs deep, which is good thing because the father is not Father of the Year. His kids take care of him, rather than the other way around. The hurricane bar...

“You want to know what weakness is? Weakness is treating someone as though they belong to you. Strength is knowing that everyone belongs to themselves.” ― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing SPOILER ALERT!  I couldn't make myself cut down my review to avoid them. I feel like this book should be taught in schools. It's basically about the birth of racism in America. It starts in Africa, where villagers on the Gold Coast strike a deal with the Europeans. The locals are willing to facilitate the trade of other Africans from other villages in exchange for payment. Effia and Esi, two sisters who will never meet, are unfortunately worlds apart. Effia will marry into a life of luxury, while Esi will be sold into slavery. I couldn't really figure out how to review this book, without giving spoilers. I had a US History teacher lecture once on slavery: He said during the days of slave trade, a black woman had more value to a plantation owner than a black man because a woman could be used to make mo...

  "Straight away he raced, with Dolly, panting and frothing, one leap behind; nor could she gain on him, so great was his terror, nor could he leave her, so great was her madness." Call of the Wild by Jack London If I could only take 5 books with me to live on a desert island, this book would be top of the list. There has always been something about this book that calls to me like a wolf in the night. This is the story of Buck, pampered pet, stolen and sold into a life of toil in the wild North. And as he is introduced to the "law of the primitive," that a man with a weapon is a dangerous thing, and a fair fight becomes a thing of the past as survival of the fittest becomes paramount, he begins his transformation from the picture of domestication to a feral creature of the wilds. Jack London has been gone a long time, but his stories of the Yukon live on. Pitting man against nature has been a constant theme in his works and in this story, we learn about it through ...

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Tales from the Jazz Age   by   F.Scott Fitzgerald I've got a lot to say about this book. First, I'd like to say, this was a pain in the ass to rate. F. Scott Fitzgerald is a fine example of why classic literature is classic... These stories should be able to hit the full mark easily. They didn't for reasons stated in my  hack job  rant, but in case you missed that or don't feel like reading it, let me reiterate. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Tales of the Jazz Age , as produced by Seedbox Press is a hack job. There are dialogues that merge into narration, words and phrases dropped from sentences leaving gaps in paragraphs, missing punctuation, and character conversations merged into block paragraphs of chaos. I was happy to get such a collection at a bargain price until I realized the reason they offered it had more to do with its poor editing and formatting. If you're a Fitzgerald fan or h...