Wednesday, February 20, 2013

What I Read Wednesday

Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories
I think I've mentioned before that I really don't like to read short stories. Every time I get a book of short stories, I always question what I was thinking. In this case, I was thinking that I liked the title. Fortunately, this book proved me wrong and I loved it. Loved it. The stories were all supernatural in some form, whether they were silly supernatural or creepy, they were all unreal in some aspect. My favorite story involved a bunch of dead Presidents who came back as horses sharing the same barn, all trying to figure if they were in Heaven or Hell and how they were remembered in history. What I loved is that the stories were laid out in a way that you had the silly supernatural like the aforementioned ones after some of the stories that were more unsettling, so the book kept up a good pace. Whether or not you enjoy short stories, I'd recommend this one.

The next few books were all in the same series and all Young Adult dystopian lit, so I apologize if you're not interested in either. I just happened to tear through this series!
The Maze Runner (Book 1)
I've wanted to read this for awhile after seeing my students with it, but I just haven't gotten around to it. Last weekend, we were in the children's section of the library with the boys and I walked past it on a shelf while taking Tommy over to the puzzles. I reached out and grabbed it before I could put it off any longer. Through the first half of the book, I was pretty ambivalent. Truthfully, sometimes in dystopian lit, the slang words made up for a post-apocalyptic world can annoy me and this book was really heavy with it. But then I got into the story of Thomas and the rest of the boys in the maze and it started to remind of Lord of the Flies with a twist. I was hooked and requested the rest of the trilogy from the library before I was done with this one.

The Scorch Trials (Maze Runner, Book 2)
Sequel to the Maze Runner. It's really hard to talk about a sequel because I don't want to give anything away. I will say that I loved this more than the Maze Runner. It was grittier and you got a better idea of the forces behind the maze in the first book. You also got a better look at the world outside the maze. While book one was pretty narrow, this had a wider scope. What I really like about these books is that throughout it all, you're not really sure what is what and who is on the right side--or what the right side really is.

The Death Cure (Maze Runner Series #3)
The final book in the Maze Runner trilogy. As with the last book, I preferred this one to the first in the series because it shows you a wider world and it's also a lot grittier than the first. I liked it, though parts of the ending were a little muddled. Overall, the ending worked for me.

The Kill Order (Maze Runner Prequel)
This is the prequel to the Maze Runner that explains how the world gets to the situation that leads to the maze. Although none of the characters from the Maze Runner are in this book until the very end, I still enjoyed seeing the world before and the explanation of all the events that led up to everything that happened in the trilogy. Although this doesn't give anything in the trilogy away, I'm still glad that I read it after the trilogy.

What are you reading?

2 comments:

One crazed mommy said...

I guess everyone is trying to catch up on all the great books that have been listed. :) I haven't started anything new - just finished The Bloodletter's Daughter, which was an interesting read. I just looked at my Amazon Wish list, and I already have 84 books on there!!! That will take a while to get through, especially since I keep adding to it each week. :)

Brooke said...

sounds like you really took a liking to that series!