3rd Mersenne Prime

Feed is certainly not your typical dystopic novel. It's hysterical, serious, alarming, sad... altogether a satirical masterpiece. MT Anderson has put together a scary theory of what our world is coming to and he has you laughing the whole way through. When you begin the book, the language is shallow and unintelligent and almost forces you to quit reading but it quickly becomes obvious that Anderson is trying to prove a very real point. The world is becoming dumb. We all live in our little media driven, electronically created bubbles that have allowed us to forget what learning is. Our minds don't need to retain information since computers hold all the knowledge of the world. Reading and writing are practically myths and an extensive vocabulary is a thing of the past. Every other word used is "Like" or "dude", even coming from the mouth of an adult. Anderson makes a great show of how easily we can become tied up in slang by using random, everyday words with definitions we are not accustomed to. The internet and technology are literally eating away at us, leaving us motionless and faceless consumers. It all comes down to what we buy and how much we spend. Things that once belonged to the people are now trademarked by large corporations (i.e. School™,  Clouds™).

Lunar Month

I could not have chosen a better time to read this book... or a worse. It's a great time because of the cliche I was able to use for book number 30. On the other hand... seeing as last weekend was supposed to be the beginning of the end of the world and we've had nothing but monsoon-like weather for over a week... it was a very bad time to read this book.
I have been reading a lot of very scary, disturbing dystopians lately. But none has been as scary as this one. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer is the most realistic book I have read recently. Maybe the idea of a meteor being able to knock the moon off it's axis is ridiculous but... maybe it isn't... who knows what could happen in this world. And of course the tsunami's, storms, volcano's and other natural disasters that occurred are not very far from all the crazy stuff that has been going on in the world today. When I started the book, it seemed very young and immature, then by the end of the second chapter I was hysterically crying. For a while it was a bit boring and slow moving but there is only so much you can write with this kind of a story, and even while it was slow, it was still completely devastating and far too easy to place yourself into the plot. As I reached Winter, I realized that the author started the book out sounding so young on purpose, she wanted to show how much Miranda was forced to grow due to the circumstances.
Despite the fact that it was slow moving, it was a very exceptional book. I'm not sure my emotions can handle reading the next book in the series right now, so I think I will try another for now and come back to it later.

Alice Marvels is hosting an amazing book giveaway...http://www.alicemarvels.com/spring-giveaway

Floccinaucinihilipilification

I'm still trying to process my 29th book. I know I loved this book and I know it will go down as one of my all time favorites, but I cannot put my thoughts together to describe it. I should have known from the beginning that would love because every time I would see something about it, I would pass it by. It didn't appeal to me at first, second, third.... glance. I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover but I always do, and I am almost always right. I can just about always tell if I will enjoy a book by looking at it's cover. But there are times when I have been wrong... I passed Twilight up for a year before giving in and buying it and then it sat on my shelf, unread, for a few more months. It still hadn't become the crazy obsession around the world, when I first read it, but it did become an obsession for me. I'm sure there have been others as well, but none stick out in my mind. Divergent didn't seem like something I wanted to read. I hadn't even read the description on the book before deciding to push it aside. Then one day I was going through my list of debut authors to read this year (I do one for each month) and decided my May book didn't sound exciting enough so I started looking at others and I realized that Divergent was definitely the book I wanted to read in May.

It was more than I thought it would be, and written by a 22 year old, unbelievable! It reminded me of a mix of The Giver, The Hunger Games, Matched, and Harry Potter (except instead of houses in a school, people are sorted into factions). The whole point of the story is that people are forced to choose one faction, one way of life, one basic personality characteristic... when in reality, all 5 factions are inside each person. Everyone is Divergent but have had it drilled into them everyday since birth that you can only be one. I have fully fallen in love with both Tris and Tobias. Wishing I could be like Tris and wishing I could be with Tobias. Every character had it's own personality, no one blended into the scenery, not even the characters who wanted to.
Through every chapter my stomach was in my throat, not only during the action packed scenes but also every time Tris and Tobias got close to each other. It was very hard to put this book down.

Reading over what I just wrote I realize it does the book no justice. I still can't seem to process my thoughts on this book. There is no word on when the next book will be coming out, not even a title to it yet. But it has been optioned for a movie, I hope they make it well.

Domino Effect

I was a bit disappointed by Token of Darkness by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. It didn't live up to her typical standard of writing. One thing I always loved about her YA books, is that her writing was never young, everything she has published has been so beautifully written and easily enjoyed by adults and young adults both. This book just felt very immature. The idea was interesting but also too complex, it was hard to really put any sense to what happened. Good fiction is when the unbelievable becomes believable.
This is not only my 28th book of the year but also from my Whats in A Name challenge, filling the spot of A Book With Some Type of Evil in the title.

Three Cubed

Another dystopian, another potential future to contemplate. It's always been said that one day the world will be run by computers and robots. Robin Wasserman's series brings that theory to a fictional reality. Yes, I realize the term 'fictional reality' is nothing but an oxymoron but so are the main characters in Crashed, living machines. Could something like this be in store for us one day. Actual immortality, downloaded again and again into different bodies, unable to ever actually "die", but forever being made up of nothing more than wires, mechanics and synflesh. Could we ever really be content to not feel, to only process? No longer any need for food, heat, plumbing, electricity is only necessary to recharge your "body". I must admit the idea of being able to fall asleep with just the push of a button is very tempting, especially on nights when I lay awake listening to my husband and dog snore while I stare at the ceiling. But the idea of no longer being able to really feel the soft fur on my dogs back or the passion of a long kiss from the man I love, those are things I don't believe I could live without.
This series is very well written and interesting but it is a bit slow moving and because of that the books are taking me a little longer to read than I would like. I think I'll read something else before I move onto the final book in the trilogy.

TB Conspiracy

I find it interesting that this book came out around the same time that Bin Laden was finally killed and that I happened to be reading it on the day I found out. Memento Nora is about the world after 9/11. It should not have taken me this long to read a book with only 184 pages but I have been real busy.
After the attack on the WTC, more and more attacks kept occurring, creating an America where things are much more controlled and monitored by the government. The biggest change in the country is the addition of TFC, Therapeutic Forgetting Clinics, where people are urged to visit after any kind of disturbing or traumatizing event so they can take a little white pill and forget the bad memories and go back to being "glossy". Gives a whole new meaning to the "morning-after pill". Though it isn't mandatory to forget, it is greatly recommended especially since there are bombs going off all over the place. Of course there is a bit of a twist, something that is being hidden, the real reason the government wants you to forget, but isn't there always?
I have to admit.. I'm a sucker for a happy ending, but in some stories a happy ending would only ruin the point that the author is trying to convey. The ending in Memento Nora is necessary for the story to have the effect it is intended to have. The only thing I was unhappy with while reading this book is that the author made it so short... I feel like there is so much more she could have done with it.
Angie Smibert is another of my debut authors of 2011.
This book only confirmed my current fear... that this is only the beginning. Most people seem to feel as though the death of Osama is the end of a terrible thing, when in truth, it is just the beginning of a string of more terrible things to come. There are a lot of terrorists out there that are going to want justice for their leader's death and they aren't going to take it lightly. Now is the time to fear.