2014 Reading: Messenger

Yay! A storyline that actually follows the book before it!

And Jonas! Finally found out what happened to him, damnit. But I would like to know where the other people in Village came from. I suppose that is going to be in the next book. (I hope).

This one was a little different in its storyline because in stead of the society that oppresses its people causing them to uprise or escape to freedom as with the last two books, it was all a matter of a person and their inner feelings and wishes. Sort of like society today, where we have all the advantages, but then we begin to turn the eye of negativity on ourselves and find fault.

A little bit of Faustian voodoo going on here, people selling off their souls, or the deepest selves, for material things as well as outward beauty and strength where before, those kinds of things had no great importance in this new village of broken people.

I hate that Matty died. I hate that he had to sacrifice himself for everyone else. The rest of these books have sacrifice, no doubt, but the main characters have always survived somehow and have gone on to make things better. I wish that there would have been some other way to save everyone, but I didn't write the book so there you go.

I like to hope that Jonas went on to marry Kira and were finally happy.

But now I have one more book left to go in this series and I guess we'll find out what other questions will be answered and what new ones pop up.

2014 Reading: Gathering Blue

Being a big fan of The Giver, I was both excited and fearful when approaching this book. I know the movie is going to blow so hard and it will make me weep on the inside for literature's sake. BUT, I wanted to keep an open mind. At first, I didn't know any books existed that were considered companions to The Giver, but then I found that the only way they are related is a sense of post-modern life dictated silently by a government-type monster who keeps everything hidden from those who live in that society.

I liked the book. It was a nice short read (unless you are horribly good at procrastination, which I am) and the writing is just fantastic.  

I like the way Lous Lowry talks about color. Both in this book and in The Giver, color plays a very important role in the societies that she creates. In this book color tells stories, but you find out that those stories are dictated by those that run things behind the scenes. Certain colors, in this case blue, mean hope for the future, especially for the main character.

There are two more books that are considered companions in this series so I think that those two books will be next in the list.

2014 Reading: Touch

I had never heard of this book or this writer before, but I wanted something small and light to come after I Know My First Name Is Stephen and this one sounded kind of interesting.

The back cover of the book made it sound like this kid, who is a hacker, was going to use his skills on the computer to find out that his dad was maybe a secret agent for the government and who was now in trouble and had to be rescued or something.

Nope.

Turns out his computer skills were completely unnecessary and all he does is find out that his father has been touching his step-sister inappropriately.

The end.

Meh.

2014 Reading: I Know My First Name Is Steven

Ever since reading A Child Called 'It' and the other books about childhood abduction/abuse, I had been on the lookout for other books on the subject that peeked my interest. I saw this book as a possibility and went through a pretty rough ordeal to get it in the first place. No where around here had it, none of the library systems I troll around had a copy, and I finally had to resort to looking in far-away systems to see if ANYONE had it in the whole state. My first request for the interlibrary loan was denied (no reason given), but I tried again and finally got a copy from... somewhere. I have no idea.

I took my time reading the book because I knew that I wasn't going to be able to just skim through it. (And it totally wasn't because I've been lazy or anything like that, nope...)

It really makes you think about your own mind when you hear about something like this happening. If you were suddenly pulled from the street when you were 7, told that your parents could no longer take care of you so they gave you to someone that you've never seen before in your life, and then for the next 7 year this new "parental figure" sexually molests you repeatedly (along with your school friends)... what do you think you would be like at the end of all of that?

In some ways, he began to trust the old man. He confessed, after everything had come to an end, that he was thankful that the man had taken care of him...

I just...

I don't really know how one responds to something like that. And then, it being the 70's-80's, the parents thought that he didn't need any profession (read: psychological) help! You don't come out of something like that without having SOMETHING to discuss with a doctor. It may have been a sore subject that he would just as soon forget, but everyone should know that you CAN'T keep something like that in the back of your mind for long before it bursts out in some form or another (as it did with his drug use and tragic death in a car crash) that can be more harmful than the thing itself from which the person is trying to hide.

OH! AND THEN, to put one last candle on this marvelous cake of happiness, the boy's older brother (speculatively, because he was jealous of all the attention the brother was getting when he was finally returned home) became a serial killer.

One. Big. Happy. Family.