Overdue Book Reviews: Part One

I've read a lot of books lately and I have yet to review them, and that needs to be rectified. And so, it shall be rectified in this post.

In this post series, I'm going to review the following, and the ones in purple are the ones I will review in this post:

What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell
Feed by M. T. Anderson
1984 by George Orwell
Night by Elie Wiesel
Death By Bikini by Linda Gerber
Death By Latte by Linda Gerber
Death by Denim by Linda Gerber
Dead Is The New Black by Marlene Perez
Dead Is A State of Mind by Marlene Perez
Dead Is So Last Year by Marlene Perez
Stolen Voices by Ellen Dee Davidson

What I Saw And How I Lied
Synopsis: When Evie's father returned home from World War II, the family fell back into its normal life pretty quickly. But Joe Spooner brought more back with him than just good war stories. When movie-star handsome Peter Coleridge, a young ex-GI who served in Joe's company in postwar Austria, shows up, Evie is suddenly caught in a complicated web of lies that she only slowly recognizes. She finds herself falling for Peter, ignoring the secrets that surround him . . . until a tragedy occurs that shatters her family and breaks her life in two. As she begins to realize that almost everything she believed to be a truth was really a lie, Evie must get to the heart of the deceptions and choose between her loyalty to her parents and her feelings for the man she loves. Someone will have to be betrayed. The question is . . . who?

This book is probably one of the best books I've ever read. Evie is a good and believable character and [MINI SPOILER AHEAD] she only does one dumb thing, and in the end it all makes sense and there was actually purpose behind Evie doing that dumb thing [MINI SPOILER OVER].

The entire thing is extremely believable and well-written and there's some awesome character development, and everything Ms. Blundell writes feels real. You really do feel with the character. Not only that, but this is no standard chick-lit novel. It has very deep meaning, and I highly recommend this book. There's a reason it got a National Book Award.

9.8 Stars Out of 10.

Feed
Synopsis: Identity crises, consumerism, and star-crossed teenage love in a futuristic society where people connect to the Internet via feeds implanted in their brains. For Titus and his friends, it started out like any ordinary trip to the moon - a chance to party during spring break and play with some stupid low-grav at the Ricochet Lounge. But that was before the crazy hacker caused all their feeds to malfunction, sending them to the hospital to lie around with nothing inside their heads for days. And it was before Titus met Violet, a beautiful, brainy teenage girl who has decided to fight the feed and its omnipresent ability to categorize human thoughts and desires. Following in the footsteps of George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr., M. T. Anderson has created a not-so-brave new world — and a smart, savage satire that has captivated readers with its view of an imagined future that veers unnervingly close to the here and now.

The end of that synopsis pretty much sums up my thoughts on the book. It's pretty realistic. Don't read this book, though, if you're a word-prude. The F-word and Sh-word comes up at least one time for every page.

However, it really does make you think. It's well-written, but not in the same way most books are well-written, and it works for this book, because it's placed in a time of intellectual decline.

8 stars out of ten.

1984
Synopsis: Orwell's final novel, 1984, is the story of one man's struggle against the ubiquitous, menacing state power (“Big Brother”) that tries to dictate nearly every aspect of human life. The novel is a classic in anti-utopian fiction, and a trenchant political satire that remains as relevant today as when it was first published.

It's a futuristic novel, but has none of that crazy technology that's in other futuristic novels. It's really interesting, and believable.

Warning: Do not read this book if you are not a patient reader. It spends a little while describing settings and people, and spends no time explaining what exactly is going on, at least not in a straightforward manner.

This may be described as a psychological thriller, or perhaps even a romance.

I was completely intriuged by it, and I loved the ending, though most people wouldn't.

8.9 Stars Out of 10.

Yours Quite Untruly,
Nadia