ajsterkel's reviews
812 reviews

Sixteen-year-old Tessa has decided to stop her treatments for leukemia so that she feels well enough to enjoy her last few months of life. She makes a list of things that she wants to do before she dies, including having sex, doing drugs, committing a crime, becoming famous, and falling in love.

The title tells you how the book ends, but the story is not predictable. Tessa's list is so unusual that you never know what she's going to do next. This book is beautifully written. I especially like the end where reality is mixed with thoughts and Tessa's instructions to her family members. I also like the unconditional love that Tessa's family and boyfriend have for her. She treats them horribly, and they never give up on her.

The author did a great job of showing the complicated emotions that surround death, but the realistic emotions also made it difficult for me to connect with Tessa. In the beginning of the book, she is so angry, and so ungrateful, and so selfish that I disliked her immediately. She does get a little better at the end of the book, but it's not enough for me to like her. I really hate her pessimistic friend, Zoey. The younger brother is inconsistent and often acts much younger than his age.

This book's greatness comes from the effect that it has on the reader. It makes you think about what you want to do with your life. It makes you grateful for your relationships. It makes you appreciate the everyday things. Most of all, it makes you happy to be alive. 

The 5 stars are for Curt. He is a fascinating and complicated character. I really appreciate that a drug addict/criminal character is written so complexly. He isn't just a semi-homeless drug addict, he's also a punk rock god, a friend, and a realistic human. He's not a "bad guy" or a cautionary tale. The author just let him be himself. That's awesome.

The book's narrator, seventeen-year-old Troy, is a self-conscious fat kid. He meets semi-homeless Curt while trying to come up with an un-funny way to commit suicide. Curt immediately decides that Troy will be the drummer in a new punk rock band, even though Troy doesn't know how to play the drums.

The book is very well-written and has some funny moments. The characters behave like realistic teens and twenty-somethings. The plot is a little slow, and Troy is not as complex or interesting as Curt, but Curt more than makes up for all of that. The book is worth reading just for him.

I didn't think it was possible, but this book is even more ridiculous than Go Ask Alice. Do people really believe that this is a real diary? If you've read this book and Go Ask Alice, it's pretty obvious that they were both written by the same person. To make it worse, the whole occult/witchcraft/satanism aspect isn't even believable.

This book is the diary of "Jay," a sixteen-year-old who kills himself after becoming interested in the occult. I did know a little about this book before I read it. There was a real "Jay" who killed himself because he was depressed. "Jay's" mother gave his journals to the "editor" of Go Ask Alice and asked her to publish them to raise awareness of teen/childhood depression. The "editor," Beatrice Sparks, used a few of the real diary entries and made up the rest, including all of the entries about the occult, witchcraft, and satanism. The book was marketed as nonfiction. When the people in "Jay's" very small, very Mormon town discovered that the book was about him, the town turned against his family.

The whole time I was reading, I was thinking about the real "Jay's" family and how Beatrice Sparks took a tragedy and made it worse. Not only is this book silly and alarmist, it's heartbreaking for all the wrong reasons.

This is one of those books that I can't review without spoiling everything. I knew the plot and the ending before I read, and I think I would have liked it even more if I hadn't known those things, so I'm going to try really hard not to spoil it here.

This historical fiction novel is the story of two best friends, Maddie and Julie. Julie is captured by the Nazis in France during WWII, and it's up to Maddie to save her. Julie narrates the first part of the book, and Maddie narrates the second part. The book is sold as young adult, but it isn't a typical young adult book. The characters are a bit older than most YA characters. The book is denser than most YA books and takes some time to get through. That being said, it's totally worth reading. In fact, I stayed up way too late last night because I didn't want to put it down and go to bed.

I can see why this book has won so many awards. It deserves them. The book is intense, clever, intricately plotted, and well-researched. The characters are complex and very likable. It never felt like the author was trying to manipulate the reader in to caring about the characters. I cared about them because they felt so realistic.

I really appreciate how the author handles Julie being tortured. It's brilliant. The torture is shown with small details and short passages instead of in long scenes. The torture isn't melodramatic or graphically described. It's not the main focus of the story. The small details that the author gives about the torture are much more effective than big graphic descriptions. There are also some surprisingly funny moments. It gives the reader a good sense of Julie's personality and shows how she's coping with captivity and being tortured.

I did have a few issues with the book. It requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. Maddie and Julie seem to go from acquaintances to best friends quickly and without much explanation. There are a lot of abbreviations and technical terms. That makes the book feel more realistic, but all of the details about planes and radios and radar made my eyes glaze over. That's probably my problem more than the book's problem.

I can see why so many people are madly in love with this book. It is very good. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes historical fiction or books with strong female characters.


 

The first word that comes to mind when I think about this collection is "depressing." These stories are intense, weird, and creepy. They haunt you and keep you thinking about them long after you finish the book. It takes a very talented writer to do that. The stories blend horror elements with realistic literary fiction to create something truly eerie.

The characters are lonely, scared, and confused. They don't quite understand the world around them and can't comprehend the terrible things that happen. They feel unsettled, and that causes the reader to feel unsettled, too. The characters are people who kidnap, kill, and abandon children; widowers who receive messages from the underworld; businessmen who drink too much; children who have to deal with the sudden deaths of family members; and parents of two-headed babies. The characters go to a lot of funerals.

My favorite stories are "Stay Awake," "Long Delayed, Always Expected," "St. Dismas," and "Thinking of You in Your Time of Sorrow."

"Stay Awake" is about the parents of a two-headed baby. "St. Dismas" is about a man who kidnaps and then abandons his ex-girlfriend's child. Both stories are sad and frightening. 

"Thinking of You in Your Time of Sorrow" is about the death of a child, but it is also about small-town gossip and the mixed feelings that surround an unwanted pregnancy. I've read stories that are similar to this one in the past, but the use of second-person narration sets this one apart.

"Long Delayed, Always Expected" is about a woman whose ex-husband has brain damage. It raises interesting ethical questions about having a sexual relationship with a severely brain-damaged person.

Some of the stories in this collection aren't as strong as the others. There were a few times when I wondered where a story was going, and it ended up not going anywhere. There are also a few typos ("you're" instead of "your," a space in the middle of a word, etc.).

But overall, this is a very strong short story collection. I enjoyed it.

This collection of linked short stories centers around Olive Kitteridge, a retired math teacher and mother of a grown son. The stories examine Olive from every angle. She is the main character in some of them and briefly mentioned in others, but they all show the impact that one woman can have in a small town.

Olive is a complex and fascinating character. She is big, loud, blunt, and opinionated. She is self-centered, abusive, judgmental, unkind, and manipulative. She refuses to apologize for her mistakes. She eavesdrops and talks behind people's backs. Many of her students were afraid of her. She is independent, strong, funny, and in control. She is amazingly perceptive and willing to help anyone who needs it. She loves her husband and son fiercely. She is a very realistic human being.

Like most short story collections, I did get bored with a few of the stories. I also felt like a few of them went over my head. The author was saying something deep that I wasn't quite getting. However, the majority of the stories are brilliant. This book is entertaining and beautifully written. 

The stand-out stories for me are "Pharmacy," "A Little Burst," "A Different Road," "Ship In A Bottle," and "Security."

In "Pharmacy," Olive's husband develops a crush on the plain and unassuming (and complete opposite of Olive) young woman who works for him in his pharmacy.

In "A Little Burst," Olive's only son gets married to a woman who Olive does not like, and she finds small ways to make the woman's life difficult.

In "A Different Road," Olive and her husband are held hostage in a hospital bathroom by a gunman, but the argument that they have while trapped in the bathroom is the most traumatizing part of the experience. I love the humor in this story. It's tied with "Security" as my favorite in the collection.

In "Ship In A Bottle," an eleven-year-old girl knows where her older sister (one of Olive's former students) has gone, but she doesn't tell her crazy mother.

In "Security," Olive goes to visit her son for the first time in years and ends up causing trouble in the airport security line.

I have to warn you that many of the stories in this collection are depressing. The characters' emotions are raw and realistic. But, if you don't mind that, this is a great collection.

Well, that was depressing.

I've read enough WWII novels to know that they don't usually have happy endings, but this one blindsided me. Possibly because it was in the young adult section of the bookstore, and the endings of young adult books are usually more hopeful. Maybe I missed it, but I couldn't find much hope in this.

This book is about nine-year-old Bruno. His family moves from Berlin to "Out-With," and he makes friends with a boy who lives on the other side of a big fence.

Depending on how you look at it, this book could have a lot to criticize. Is it historically accurate? No. Are the child characters realistic? No. Are there believability problems? Yes, tons of them (such as the hole in the unpatrolled fence). Is there English wordplay that wouldn't translate to German? Yes, tons of it. Is the writing style unusual? Yes. Is the author heavy-handed with delivering his message? Yes.

None of that bothered me because I didn't see this book as historical fiction. It is a modern-day fable. Like many fables, it is told from a third-person omniscient viewpoint, so there is distance between the reader and the characters. The reader is a helpless observer, just like Bruno is a helpless observer. Like many fables, there is wordplay and repetition and simplistic language. The moral is made very clear: no group of people is better than any other group of people. By using English wordplay, not being historically accurate, and not using the name of the camp, the author shows that the message applies to the entire world and not just to Nazi Germany. People are being treated inhumanely all over the world, even today.

This is not historical fiction. This is a work of art. In my opinion, the best artwork is controversial and makes people think. Successful artwork sparks passionate responses. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas does that. I love the juxtaposition between Bruno's innocence and the horrors being committed on the other side of the fence. Other people will disagree, but I think that this book is a brilliant work of art.

I can't review this book without telling its secrets. It's better if you know nothing about it before reading. I can tell you that it's about a girl named Cadence and her three friends who spend every summer on a private island.

I can tell you that the writing style is strange, fragmented, and beautiful. It gives a very eerie feeling to what could otherwise be a fairly boring story. The narrator has an interesting way of over-describing her emotions. When her father leaves their family, she says that he pulled out a gun and shot her, and her heart flopped around in the dirt. A less talented writer wouldn't be able to get away with that. The reader knows from the first page that the narrator is a little weird and probably unreliable.

Everybody in this book is a liar. They lie to each other as they fight over the grandfather's money. They lie to society by making themselves appear perfect. The narrator lies to herself about what really happened when she was fifteen.

I did have a very hard time getting interested in this book. I spent over half of it just reading because I like the way it's written. Cadence is whiny and not very likable. I didn't care about her or her friends.

The second half of the book is much better. I started to like Gat. It was interesting to see a rich, perfect family being torn apart by greed and pettiness. The bond between Cadence and her friends got stronger as their families tried to pull them apart. The book addresses the issues of racism and classism. The characters are privileged and ashamed of being privileged.

Then came the twist at the end. I was expecting a twist from reading the book's summary, and the promise of a twist was one of the things that kept me reading through the slow beginning. The twist showed me that I did care about the characters. Or, at least I cared about Gat. The twist isn't anything mind-blowing. Endings like this have been done before. However, it works for me. It's sad and strange, and I love it.

This book is adorable. Eleanor is the new girl in school, and the first person who she meets is a boy named Park. What follows is probably one of the most realistic teen romances that I have ever read.

Neither of these characters is perfect. Their bodies aren't perfect, their minds aren't perfect, their lives aren't perfect, and their romance isn't perfect. They are both awkward and unsure of themselves. They have misunderstandings because neither of them are great at communicating. Neither of them have much experience with romance. Sometimes the relationship moves quickly, and at other times it's painfully slow. The romance is realistic and handled well by the author.

If I had to find things to criticize, Eleanor's stepfather was stereotypical, and I never really understood what her mother saw in him. The constant point-of-view switches were slightly distracting. I loved seeing the romance from each characters' point-of-view, but I wish that the sections were longer so that there was less switching back and forth. 

I really enjoyed this book. I'm glad that I randomly stumbled across it in the bookstore.

It's so difficult to review a book when you have such a personal connection to it. I have a feeling that a lot of people have a personal connection to this book.

Fifteen-year-old Craig is like a lot of teenagers. He's stressed out, failing to keep up with the demands of a tough school, and feeling the pressure to succeed in life. After he stops taking his depression medication, he ends up in a psychiatric hospital.

This is going to sound a little weird, but Craig is the most realistically depressed fictional person I've ever read about. Admittedly, I haven't read many books about severely depressed people, but I can tell that the author had a deep understanding of depression and anxiety. At the beginning of the book, Craig is a very relatable character. A lot of people have been in his place.

This book is different from other books about mental illness that I've read. In those books, there is one event that causes the character to become mentally ill. This book isn't like that. Craig isn't depressed because he's traumatized. He's depressed because he has depression. He has school-related stress, but he can't point to one single traumatizing event that caused the depression. He has a nice family and lives in a good neighborhood. I like that aspect of the book. Sometimes illnesses just happen to people. The illness isn't anyone or anything's fault. 

The rest of the book isn't as good as the first part. The romances aren't very interesting. Craig's voice doesn't feel as honest or authentic in the second half of the book. Sometimes the book tries a little too hard to be funny. In the edition that I read, there are noticeable typos.

The first part of the book more than makes up for all of that. I love this book.