Review: Carrie

Carrie by Stephen King

My rating:

4 of 5 stars

Carrie White has been bullied her entire life, and the fact that her mother is a victim of religious mania doesn't help her situation. The story starts when she gets her first period in a locker at school. Her classmates reaction is to throw her tampons and Kotex. At this moment of the narration, Carrie had already won my heart.

I felt a terrible pity for her. First because ones first period is not a grateful experience; second because getting it while your classmates are seeing you must be very embarrasing; and thirdly because the fact that they laughed at her was completely humiliating. I might hate some people, but I would neverhumiliate them like this. How dare they do this to a girl that hadn't even done anything to them?

Anyway, after this horrible experience, she gradually begins to discover and control her TK powers... until they reach a climax at her prom night.

The narration follows two storylines. One is the “present”, which is written by ways of newspapers, interviews and books; and the other is the “past”, in which the events of the prom and Carrie's school life is narrated in an omniscient way.

Bullying and its consequences is the main theme in the book. I've never approved bullying. For me, bullying is cowardice. Making fun at people is not okay; and laughing at them to the point of ruining their lives is even worse. You don't know how that person's life is. 

The main emotion I felt while reading this was anger, not horror. I mean, the prom night was scary, but the book in general was not. I was angry because of what Carrie's classmates did to her, angry at Carrie's mother, at Carrie's teachers etc.

I was surprised at how fast-paced and easy to read this book was, and also, at how incredibly short it is. I mean, comparing it to SK book length standards, it is a miniature. I also have to consider the fact that this was SK's first published book, but anyway, it was short (and my enjoyment for it made it feel even shorter). Oh, but do not get fooled. It may seem short (and it is), but it was a powerful read.

This book will leave you feeling anger, sadness, pity and horror at the same time. The first emotion is left by Carrie's tormentors, and the other three by Carrie herself. The fact that it left me feeling like that made me like the book even more, because if I am completely indifferent after reading something, it means I will rate it with 2 stars, but this is definitely not a 2-star book.

Truly recommended.

Review: Revival

Revival by Stephen King

My rating:

5 of 5 stars

But who is screenwriting our lives? Fate or coincidence? I want to believe it’s the latter. I want that with all my heart and soul.

Jamie Morton's life is about to be changed when a new pastor – Charlie Jacobs - gets to his town. Charles Jacobs is a singular man, really... except he likes to play with electricity. Everything is normal with him until one day his beloved wife and son dies. That's when things get messy in his life. He stops believing in God and he starts to take his little experiments more seriously.

Religion is the theological equivalent of a quick-buck insurance scam, where you pay in your premium year after year, and then, when you need the benefits you paid for so—pardon the pun—so religiously, you discover the company that took your money does not, in fact, exist.

The book is narrated by Jamie. I was kind of surprised when I saw it was 1st person POV, because I was accustomed to SK's flawless omniscient narration, but it did well for me. In fact, I think I liked it better, but that's mainly because my favourite kind of narration is 1st person, past tense POV.

It has a really slow start, but trust me when I say it is worth all the wait. Jamie starts the book by telling us how he met his “fifth business” and from there he tells us his entire life up until the point in which he meets Jacobs again, which is when things started to get... let's say... interesting.

This is how we bring about our own damnation, you know - by ignoring the voice that begs us to stop. To stop while there's still time.

You'll never look at life and death the same way after reading this book. I'm not going to spoil people who haven't read this, but trust me on that. I read the same thing in many reviews and all I though was “please, a damn book is not going to change my view of religion and death”. How wrong I was.

The writing and characterisation was as perfect as ever. All the characters were flawed and realistic and well-developed. No complaints about that. As for the writing... as I said, it was amazing. Vivid descriptions, with passages in which the narrator seemed to ramble (only later you would discover the ramblings were necessary) and start talking to you, easy to read, etc.

Something happened. Something, something, something.

I'm not going to get over this book any time soon. Right now, I'm going to try to go to bed and I just know I'm gonna have a very philosophical night. Tomorrow I'll probably wake up in an existentialist crisis (another one), but you know what? It's totally worth it. If my Twitter feed tomorrow is filled with philosophical, nonsensical, depressed ramblings, Stephen King is to blame.



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Review: Interstellar

Interstellar by Greg Keyes

My rating:

4.5 of 5 stars

So, let's put things clear from now: If you haven't watched the movie, go do it before you read the book. I mean it.

That said, I'll proceed to review this thing the same way I review all books...

Earth is dying and there's no hope for it. There are only two possibilities of saving the human race: a) Send a group of astronauts to look for a new home, or b) send that same group of astronauts with lots of frozen human embryos that would be humanity's only hope. Between that group is Cooper, a farmer who once was a great astronaut... but he saving humanity means he will probably never get to see his children again, and with that, he leaves a broken Murph (his 10-year-old daughter) behind too.

I got all the feels while reading this. Same as with happened with the movie. Seeing all the characters struggling with their choices and what they were going through was really sad. The messages Tom (Cooper's other son) left (and that he heard after the failed Miller's mission) were particularly heart-breaking.

Character development is also great. You get to understand Cooper more. He can sometimes make you laugh, other times he makes you want to punch him, at others he will warm your heart, but mostly, he will make you feel sad, lonely and afraid. I was afraid for him during the entire book. I knew the story, yet I got to feel a lot while reading it.

Murph was another amazing character. She grows during the book and you can feel the differences between her 10-year-old self and her thirty-something self. Both are incredibly intelligent, but the latter one misses the innocence and faith the younger one had.

The story follows the same it did with the movie, but I understand things better now. The relativity things are better explained, for instance. And of course, the parts that make you think are inside the characters' heads, and that you can only get by reading the book.

And now, I'm going to admit one of my greatest fears: Space. Yep, I'm afraid of that. I admire astronauts for their courage in leaving Earth. I honestly could not. I'd rather die here than live out there. This movie scared the hell out of me in that sense (and I experienced the same while watching Gravity). The wormhole scared me, the size of the universe scares me, relativity scares me, time scares me, the black hole scared me... Basically, I couldn't be a physicist (I stuck with chemistry).

In the end, even when this book was great, I have to admit the movie was better. Maybe that's because I watched the movie first, and this book is in fact based upon the movie, but I liked the movie better. While you can experience all the feels better by reading the book, you cannot replace those amazing effects and music.

...

Pre-reading:

Yesterday, my father, my brother and I watched this movie at home and we all three have something to say: It blew our brains and it made our feels explode.

I don't know whether I'll read this book or not, but one thing is for sure: I frigging loved the movie. Like, really, really loved it. The movie is, by far, one of the best I've seen in a lot of time.

It made my feels go crazy, it blew my mind, it was so realistic... In summary, it was brilliant. The cast was great, the effects were amazing, the music (by the Zimmer King) was astounding. The director, Christopher Nolan (the one of the amazing Batman trilogy), did an amazing job. I tell you, this one was an epic movie.

Space things have always caught my attention, but I've also been terribly afraid of them. And this movie made all that feels go to heaven because of how realistic it was.

If you haven't watched that movie, go and do it now. If you have, tell me so we can talk about it. I know this is not a review about the book, but I needed to say all that.



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Review: Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace

My rating:

1 of 5 stars

Is not his the law, Eye for eye, hand for hand, foot for foot? Oh, in all these years I have dreamed of vengeance, and prayed and provided for it, and gathered patience from the growing of my store, thinking and promising, as the Lord liveth, it will one day buy me punishment of the wrong-doers?

Who's in for a revenge tale set in the first century a.C.?

Ben-Hur is a man who's perfectly happy. He has a mother and a sister who love him, and he's friends with a Roman, and that puts him in a position of privilege. All is well until one day he killed a Roman governor. It was an accident, but no one believes him. He's desperate, yet he can do nothing.

But wait, he has a friend – Messalla - who can help him. Too bad he betrays him and sends him to the galleys in a life sentence.

Obviously, Ben-Hur is angry. His life has been completely ruined. He will never get to see his family again because the passage to the galleys is a one-way ticket.

By some turns of events – call them fate or luck - the ship in which he worked sank and he managed to get out and save a governor. Saving that governor gained him a great price: Fortune. Now, with money, his hatred turns to a desire of revenge and he's willing to make Messalla pay for what he did.

All of the above may make the book sound like some epic tale of revenge, perhaps as epic as The Count of Monte Cristo. Well, it wasn't.

Let me tell you how the book starts: Part 1 of the book is a complete recollection of Jesus' birth. It's even more detailed than in the Bible. Well, to be honest, that would not have been so bad if it weren't for the writing.

The writing have me many, many headaches. It was T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E. Look at this passage, for example:

A moment they looked at each other; then they embraced—that is, each threw his right arm over the other’s shoulder, and the left round the side, placing his chin first upon the left, then upon the right breast.

Do you think it's necessary that amount of detail? I mean, I understand they hugged, but I need not a description of how a hug is. That's excessive. Now imagine 500 pages of descriptions like those. A nightmare, isn't it?

Not only is the writing like that. The author also assumes the reader is stupid. I couldn't find the quote, but there's a line at the beginning in which the author basically says: “I know you don't know anything about history, so I'll tell you something: Before Jesus was born, time was not measured by how many years had passed since his birth. That's because he didn't exist yet.”

Isn't it a little obvious? If the man who's used as reference for measuring years has not been born yet, how can you use his birth as reference? It's called logic, Mr. Wallace. You don't need to be an historian to know that.

Also, the writing was bland, boring and stiff. Here's your proof:

“What has happened? What does it all mean?” she asked, in sudden alarm.

“I have killed the Roman governor. The tile fell upon him.”

Doesn't it feel a little... lacking of emotion? I mean, if you kill someone important by accident, would you be so calm? Ben-Hur is supposed to be afraid, yet that passage doesn't make him sound like that. If anything, he sounds bored, like “Hey, look, the tile fell upon the Roman governor and I killed him! Bah, YOLO. Who cares?”

There's this one too:

Malluch looked into Ben-Hur’s face for a hint of meaning, but saw, instead, two bright-red spots, one on each cheek, and in his eyes traces of what might have been repressed tears (...)

No emotions, right?

Then, Wallace kept addressing the readers. I don't have a problem with that, but in this case, I hated it. Why? Because he did it in almost every page. I'm going to show you the ones I had enough patience to look for:

The reader who recollects the history of Balthasar as given by himself at the meeting in the desert will understand the effect of Ben-Hur’s assertion of disinterestedness upon that worthy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Show me Ben-Hur is disinterested. I want to feel him disinterested. I don't want you telling me. Here's an advice for you, Mr. Wallace: Show, not tell.

He fell to thinking; and even the reader will say he was having a vision of the woman, and that it was more welcome than that of Esther, if only because it stayed longer with him (...)

No, you cannot tell what I was thinking at that moment. In fact, when I read that line I was wondering what the dinner was going to be.

If the reader will take a map of Greece and the AEgean, he will notice the island of Euboea lying along the classic coast like a rampart against Asia, leaving a channel between it and the continent quite a hundred and twenty miles in length, and scarcely an average of eight in width.

See? I was so damn tired of it after 20 pages! And this block has more than five. Hundred. Pages!

There's also the religious plot. I thought it would not bother me, but in the end, it did. I'll show you why:

Exhibit A: “Who's Jesus?”

Where was the Child then?
And what was his mission?

Yes, Wallace made a big mystery about Jesus. I said he assumes the reader is stupid. Here's one example of that: He tries to thrill the reader into the mystery as to who the Mesiah is. Please, you don't have to be Catholic to know who's the great Mesiah in that religion. Everyone knows that!

Exhibit B: “Believe in God, or else you go to Hell.”

This was not a revenge tale. This was a redemption tale. I knew that from the beginning because I've watched the movie thousands of times (and the name of the book makes it obvious) and I know the story as I know my house, so I didn't expect to get angry at that. What got me was that basically, the message Wallace gives you is the one I wrote as exhibit B: If you don't pray, then you're a bad person. We all know that's not necessarily true. But I'll stop talking about that here.

At the beginning of this review, I said this could have been EPIC. And indeed, it had all the chances of being so; I mean, it's a REVENGE tale. I love those, so I was expecting to like this, but what I got was an overdose of BOREDOM. Really, you could change the name of the book to "Ben-Dull: A Tale of Tediousness".

In the end, this book was bad. I do not understand why it has such a high average rating (and with more than 40 thousand rates). I don't get very suspicious about high ratings when we're talking about classics, but this book has made me learn the lesson: That a book is a classic doesn't mean you can trust the hype.

Oh, and may I tell you something else? The movie was better.

The movie better than the book. Can you believe it? No, of course you can't. It's always the book better than the movie, but trust me, that's not the case with this book.

Now, pay attention to the following quote. It's the ending paragraph of the book:

If any of my readers, visiting Rome, will make the short journey to the Catacomb of San Calixto, which is more ancient than that of San Sebastiano, he will see what became of the fortune of Ben-Hur, and give him thanks. Out of that vast tomb Christianity issued to supersede the Caesars.

If you go there, make sure you thank Ben-Hur, or else, Wallace can get angry.

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Review: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

My rating:

5 of 5 stars

There's no way to properly review this thing, so I'm just gonna tell you how I met the Harry Potter series...

There was a little girl named Vanessa who always wanted to do the contrary to what people wanted her to do. If she had a chore to do, she would do it as long as they let her alone. If mom or dad or one of her brothers or her sister or anyone in her family told her to do it, she would immediately refuse, because she takes no orders. She's her own boss.

As she was like that, then if something was popular, she would not do/read/watch/whatever it. Well, there was this particular little series that everyone had read. It had movies and everyone loved them.

Do you know what she did? She promised herself she would never read them. She had already watched the movies (the ones that were out) and she rather liked them, but she would not touch the books, because doing so would mean she was just like everyone else, and she was special (yeah, I was that arrogant).

Some years later.

October 15th, 2011.

It was a gray day and it was her brother's birthday. Mother wanted to gift his son something that he would enjoy, but not videogames or stuff like that. She wanted something with more educational value - say, a book.

Mother knew Vanessa's brother liked the HP movies (up until the sixth one), and as there was a book fair at his school (which was mine too), and the books upon which the movies were based were there. She bought the first and gave it to his son for his birthday.

Some of her mother's friend had also given Vanessa's brother several of the other boks in the series. It seemed as if they had planned the whole thing.

Of course Vanessa thought there was a hidden purpose there. She thought her mother had bought the books so she wouldn't resist on picking them (I told you I was arrogant, didn't I?).

She was wrong. That was not her mother's purpose, but in the end, Vanessa couldn't resist the pull. She wanted and didn't want to read the books.

Wanted them for some reasons:

· She had always been intrigued by them.
· She was the reader in the house. She couldn't stand the fact that her brother (who hated - and still hates - reading) was going to read more books than her (don't even tell me).
· A "friend" of hers was bragging she had read the HP books in less than one week and she wanted to prove her she could do the same.

Didn't want them for some reasons:

· Reading them would mean she was a common girl (I was an insufferable 13-year-old girl - don't blame me).
· She would break her promise if she read them.
· If she read them, she would do what everyone else wanted her to do, and as you know, she hates being told what to do.

After a long time of deep philosophizing (aka one day), she decided she would read them. What could be the worst thing to happen?

It turns out she loved the first book. Her reaction upon starting it was something like this:

After that, she wanted the next ones. She borrowed the books from his brothers and read them all up to the 5th one (those were the ones we had) in one week. She felt sorry for not doing it any sooner.

...

Yeah, I was and still am like that. I'm really glad I decided to read the books. I've just re-read this, and I can only say that it was even more awesome the second time around. All HP fans can agree with me on that.

They all have amazing plots, fantastic character development, writing that improves over the books, great story and wold building, etc. What else can I need?

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Review: All the Rage

All the Rage by Courtney Summers

My rating:

5 of 5 stars

You know all the ways you can kill a girl?
God, there are so many.

Do you know what haphephobia is? It's the fear to physical contact. I suffer from that. I don't feel comfortable when people try to hug me or touch me – not even by my family. It started when I was 11 years old.

I moved from the country I was born in November of 2007. The next year, I was the new girl at school. It didn't help that I was 2 years younger than everyone and that I was from another country – worse even, there's a lot of hatred towards my country. The kids in there loved to play jokes on me, for example, asking me out and invading my personal space and hugging me even when I didn't want to.

I never spoke up.

The next year, in 2009, I was again the new girl. And again, I was 2 years younger than the rest of the group. They thought that since I was younger, then I also was inferior. The same jokes were played. Once, I remember, I was in a break when a group came to me. I was alone. I had no friends. I thought they came with good intentions. I was 13, for god sake!

It turns out they didn't have good intentions.

I was sitting on a bank, and two guys from the group took places next to me, so I was in the center. They started with the same things I was so tired of, just this time, they talked about their dicks and how they knew I wanted to touch them.

I was scared to hell. I didn't know what to do. The girls that came with them were just there giggling. I wanted to plead to them, to make the guys stop, but they were just laughing. Thankfully, the bell sounded and it was time to go to classes. But in the way to our classrooms the guys still took me by the hands and they led the way.

For 4 years I was victim of the same things and I never spoke. I never spoke because I felt hated. I've always felt hated. Every time I asked my parents' help with something, they ignored me. They've always ignored me. In fact, just last week I was in a deep depression because literally everyone in my family told me they were happy I was gonna turn 18 this year because they would officially be rid of me.

Maybe this anecdote is not making sense and it's not such a horrible experience, but with every page I read of this book, I could not stop myself from thinking about that. I know I didn't suffer that same things Romy went through in this book, but I understood her.

She's had a difficult life. She was raped and no one believes her. And to make things worse, people not only think she's a liar – they also make fun of her and play horrible and cruel pranks on her. So obviously she feels there's no use for her to speak up. No one is going to take her seriously after all.

and how do you get a girl to stop crying?
You cover her mouth.

And the name of the book is simply perfect: All the Rage. Indeed, I was angry most of the time while reading this book. The things that happened to Romy were unfair and the people surrounding her were being awful.

At least not everyone in the book treated her like that, though. She had a wonderful mother and a great boyfriend who stops when he's told to stop – as it should be.

The themes addressed in this book are strong, but they're addressed in the correct way. Like, you get to feel how being a girl really is, that a victim of rape is not a weak person, etc. Courtney Summers is certainly a great author. She's now beaten my list of my favorite authors.

I'm not going to spoil you any more details about the book. I'm just going to say that you seriously need this book in your life. Every girl needs this book in her life.

Time passes or it doesn't, but it must – because it has to.

This was my second Courtney Summers book and it was better than the first. She's now in my list of insta-buy authors. We need more authors like her because she's great.

#ToTheGirls



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Review: All You Need Is Kill

All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

My rating:

5 of 5 stars

War. Terrible war. Humans vs a race of aliens called Mimics. It's been going on for years now and it seems to go forever - with the odds for humanity growing slimmer with each day that passes. This is the world in which Keiji Kiriya, a Japanese recruit, lives.

Today is gonna be his first battle, and to make him feel even worse, he gets injured.

I'm gonna die on a fucking battlefield. On some godforsaken island with no friends, no family, no girlfriend. In pain, in fear, covered in my own shit because of the fear. And I can't even raise the only weapon I have left to fend off the bastard racing toward me. It was like all the fire in me left with my last round of ammo.

That's when he meets Rita Vrataski, the Full Metal Bitch.

I’d heard stories. A war junkie always chasing the action, no matter where it led her. Word had it she and her Special Forces squad from the U.S. Army had chalked up half of all confirmed Mimic kills ever. Maybe anyone who could see that much fighting and live to tell about it really was the Angel of Death.

She's the most famous soldier of the war. Her abilities in killing Mimics cannot be outstanded by anyone. Too bad the odds were not with Keiji that day, because in the end he died... only to wake up the day before his battle and feel as if all had been a dream.

I remembered the whole thing. I was nervous about it being my first battle, so I’d decided to duck out a bit early. I had come back to my bunk and started reading that mystery novel. I even remembered helping Yonabaru up to his bed when he came staggering in from partying with the ladies.

Unless—unless I had dreamed that too?

Again he goes to war and dies and wakes up in the same way he did the previous time. Over and over again.

So long as the wind blows, I’m born again, and I die. I can’t take anything with me to my next life. The only things I get to keep are my solitude, a fear that no one can understand, and the feel of
the trigger against my finger.

Rita Vrataski and Keiji Kiriya may easily be one of the best cast of characters I've read about. None of them is perfect. Keiji is not fearless, for example. He's terrified of death and he's not afraid of telling you that. He also feels alone quite most of the time, and things have never gone the way he plans. He had motives of his own for enlisting in the army.

I liked being inside his head. His narration was easy to follow and it was highly enjoyable. It was funny at some points and I connected with him very fast, which is something that influences a lot in my rating for a book.

I was weak. I couldn’t even get the woman I loved—the librarian—to look me in the eye.

I also loved how he grows as a character thorough the book. At the beginning he is no other than a normal guy you could find on the streets, but once he grabs hold of his “ability”, he starts training to become the soldier he dreams to be.

Pretending to be a hero slain in battle was one thing. Dying a hero in a real war was another. As I got older, I understood the difference, and I knew I didn’t wanna die. Not even in a dream.

The other character I mentioned, Rita, was by far my favorite, though.

The Americans called Rita the Full Metal Bitch, or sometimes just Queen Bitch. When no one was listening, we called her Mad Wargarita.

Right now, I can't remember the last time I read about such a kick-ass character. She's strong, brave, she doesn't like people messing with her and she hates Mimics with all her soul. Like, she has a very personal reason to hate them.

If she had a bad headache, she’d go apeshit, killing friend and foe alike. And yet not a single enemy round had ever so much as grazed her Jacket. She could walk into any hell and come back unscathed.

Her backstory has just as amazing as herself too. And she's a well developed character as well. I feel like there should be more books with these kind of characters: Strong, badass and confident. And even when she has all those things, she's just a normal girl – no special snowflake.

Rita’s only other distinguishing feature was the red hair she’d inherited from her grandmother. Everything else about her was exactly like any other of over three hundred million Americans.

And don't even get me started on the writing... “Full Amazing Writing” would be the perfect words to describe it. You can feel everything. Full load of feels all over the way. Some times I couldn't help but laugh out loud, some others made me a little sad, others kept me at the edge of my seat because the action was very intense. In summary, I felt, which you already know is something I consider important hile reading a book.

You can’t learn from your mistakes when they kill you. These greenhorns didn’t know what it was to walk the razor’s edge between life and death. They didn’t know that the line dividing the two, the borderland piled high with corpses, was the easiest place to survive. The fear that permeated every fiber of my being as relentless, it was cruel, and it was my best hope for getting through this.

My only complaint for this book is that it didn't last longer. Really, I started it at 3 pm this day and I ended it at 10:30 pm. I finished it in 7 effing hours! Never could I stop myself from reading it. Now I just wish to go back and read it again, for entertainment's sake and because it also had some really awesome quotes I'd like to re-read.

Truly recommended.




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