ajsterkel's reviews
812 reviews

This is one of my favorite young adult books ever. I wish I could give it six stars. It's so sad and so hilarious and so dark and so hopeful. The author doesn't shy away from anything. The illustrations and characters and plot are wonderful.

This novel tells the story of Junior, a Spokane Indian teenager, who leaves the reservation to attend an all-white school in a small town. Life at a white high school is hard, but it's not as hard as dealing with the violence, poverty, and alcoholism on the reservation.

I don't know how to review this book because I love it too much. The book is fascinating because the average American doesn't know much about life on an Indian reservation. I knew a little about reservation life because I've read a few other books about reservations, but none of them were as in-depth as this one.  None of the Native Americans who I know in real life live on reservations. This book is eye-opening. It's interesting to see how other people live.

If I had to find something to criticize, there are a few things that are mentioned and then dropped. There is a character with an eating disorder. The disorder is mentioned once and then nothing happens with it. I wondered why it was mentioned at all. Junior's brain damage didn't have much effect on the story. It mostly made me wonder if a kid with Junior's health problems would be allowed to play high school basketball. What if he got hit in the head during a game and started having seizures again? Could the school get in trouble for that?

Those issues are so minor that I feel bad for bringing them up. The point of this review is to tell you to go read this book. Right now.

This novel in short stories is written by ten different authors. The royalties from the sale of the book benefit Amnesty International. All of the stories revolve around a photographer named Gee. The stories range from realism to magical realism to science fiction. Like all short story collections, some of the stories are more successful than others.

These are some of the stand-outs for me:

"Jason" by Eoin Colfer is about Gee's grandson, Jason, who considers selling his inheritance to buy a ticket to Tobago to meet his birth father. This story is funnier than it sounds.

"Lev" by Deborah Ellis is about a teenage boy who is serving time in a Russian prison.

"Min" by Tim Wynne-Jones is about a girl who becomes involved in a photography project that ends up changing her life. This is the best-written story in the collection.

"Jiro" by Ruth Ozeki is about a young boy who lives in poverty in Japan after his older brother loses his legs in WWII and is unable to support the family. This is my favorite story in the collection. It's deeper and more complex than many of the others.

None of the stories in the collection are awful, but most of them are pretty bland. I'm usually a fan of magical realism and science fiction, but I didn't think those stories worked in this collection. They were possibly too constrained by the overall story and themes of the collection.

This book is a quick read and benefits a good cause. There's nothing mind-blowing in it, but it's an entertaining way to pass a few hours.

It's hard to explain how much I hate this book. Hate isn't even a strong enough word for how I feel about this book. Reading it made me sick and angry, and I wouldn't have finished it if I didn't need to read it for school.

This novel is about a psychopath, Hannah, who kills herself and blames thirteen people for it.

I couldn't sympathize with Hannah at all. Her depression is not believable, and I did not understand why she made the tapes. The only character who becomes a better person after hearing the tapes is Clay, and he doesn't even deserve to be on them in the first place. The other characters on the tapes are shoving each other in the halls and throwing rocks at houses. If Hannah wanted to teach people to be nicer to each other, most of the characters seem to have missed the message. Her tapes just make her seem vengeful. The people who hurt her can't defend themselves or apologize because she's dead.

I can't get over what she did to Clay. If she wanted him to know her reasons for killing herself, couldn't she have written him a note? Did she have to torture him by making him believe that he had something to do with her death?

I know that hating this book puts me in the minority, but I could not get past Hannah's brattiness. I disliked her so much that I wouldn't have finished the book if I hadn't been forced to finish it.

This book is so awesome.

When sixteen-year-old Pattyn starts questioning her religion and disobeying her abusive father, she is sent to live with her aunt on a rural cattle ranch. On the ranch, Pattyn meets an older boy who changes her life forever. Burned is written in a mixture of formal and free-verse poetry.

This book is intimidating because it's written in verse, and it's a thick book. Don't be intimidated. The poems are very easy to understand, and the plot is pretty simple. The book is actually a quick and entertaining read. 

I had a hard time finding things to criticize about this book, but a lot of people criticize it because of its portrayal of Mormons. There are abusive families, abusive communities, and abusive churches within every religion. This book is not about Mormons. It's about Pattyn and her experience as a member of an abusive religious community. I thought the author did an accurate job of showing religious abuse.

Even though this is a book of poetry, it has all the elements of a great novel: complex characters, an intriguing premise, suspense, action, fast pacing, romance, and a twist ending.

I already knew about some of the twists because I read reviews before buying the book, but there are so many twists that you won't see all of them coming. This is a very interesting book. I can't wait to read the next one in the series.

Annabel's life seems perfect from the outside. She has a nice family, a nice house, popular friends, and a job as a model. But, her life is changed forever after she is assaulted and humiliated at a party. She becomes a social outcast. Fellow outcast, Owen, gives her the encouragement she needs to speak her mind and tell her secrets.

If you read a lot of YA fiction, this book is extremely predictable. You'll know instantly what happened at the party, and you'll know how the book ends. YA authors really need to start being more creative.

Spoiler

Rape isn't the only bad thing that can happen at a party. Speak is a wonderful book, but we don't need a thousand clones of it.

I found the flashbacks about Annabel's sisters a little frustrating. The sisters are nowhere near as interesting as Annabel and Owen. I was tempted to skim the flashbacks to get back to the main story. I didn't think that the sisters or the "mean girl," Sophie, were as well-developed as some of the other characters.

Owen is the best part of this book. He is awesome. It's great to see a complex teenage character who has interests, imperfections, and strong beliefs.

Finally, I thought the end of the book dragged on too long. There are a lot of storylines that needed to be resolved, but I think it could have been done more quickly. Since the book is predictable, I got bored with the end.

This isn't a horrible book. It's well-written, and most of it is entertaining, but I wasn't blown away by it.

Anyone who is interested in young adult literature needs to read this book. Speak is one of those novels that changed everything. It inspired a lot of copycat books and is required reading in many middle and high schools.

Speak is about Melinda, a freshman in high school. Her old middle school friends will not speak to her because she called the police about their party the year before. As the book progresses, the reader learns that something very bad happened to Melinda at that party.

I love the fragmented way that this story is told. The pacing is a little slow, but Melinda's voice more than makes up for the slowness. Melinda is funny and authentic. Many teenagers (including me as a teenager) have the same attitude that she does toward high school. She hates it and doesn't take it too seriously. The humor is wonderful and surprising. I love this book. I'd recommend it to everybody, especially if you are interested in quality young adult literature.

This book is both intensely fascinating and difficult to read.

Wintergirls is the story of Lia, an anorexic teenager who feels responsible for the death of her bulimic best friend.

Even though I never felt a connection to Lia, her story was interesting enough to keep me reading. I loved the mixture of reality and Lia's imagination. I also liked the fragmented structure of the book. I've read a few other books about eating disorders, and the way that this one is written sets it apart from the others.

I would have enjoyed this book more if I had liked Lia. Maybe she was meant to be unlikeable, but I didn't feel anything for her. She was so selfish and self-absorbed. That might be realistic for a person with an eating disorder, but it was difficult to read about a character who I disliked so much. I was actually happy when her parents called her out for her selfishness. And, this might make me sound horrible, but I wasn't upset when she almost died. She was so miserable that I wondered if death was the only thing that could make her happy.

Normally I love books that have a quirky style and a lot of poetic language, but I think it was too much of a good thing in this book. I thought the crossed out words and some of the descriptions were a little distracting and didn't add anything to the story.

Elijah was the best part of the book for me. I thought he was a very well-developed, realistic, and believable character. He added some much-needed humor. I also loved seeing a young adult book where a girl meets a boy and a romance does not develop.

I didn't like this book as much as I like some of the author's other work, but it is still a story worth reading.

It took me about three weeks, but I finally got through this giant book. As far as classics go, it's actually pretty good. It's a lot more readable than many classics. I didn't have to rely too heavily on Google to tell me what was happening in the plot.

Middlemarch is a complex story about marriage, politics, gender roles, and gossip in a small English town in the early 1800s.

The first few hundred pages are very slow, but the pace picks up a lot toward the end. The last few hundred pages are great. There are a lot of storylines, and it is impossible to predict the endings to all of them. My favorite storyline was Lydgate/Rosamond. I felt so sorry for Lydgate. He is a realistically flawed character, and he tries very hard to do the right thing, but life just isn't easy for him. I also liked Dorothea/Ladislaw and Fred/Mary. A few of the other storylines are boring and sometimes confusing, but this book is still worth reading for its fascinating and realistic characters.

In 1800s England, a lonely man adopts a child who changes his life and teaches him about the kindness of his neighbors.

I've read several of George Eliot's books, and this one is my favorite (so far). It's not very long, the plot is fairly straightforward, and there aren't a ton of characters. Compared to other British classics, it's an easy book to understand.

I don't have too many complaints about this novel. The biggest challenge for me was reading the dialect. There is a lot of dialect, and a few times I had no idea what the characters were saying. Also, like Eliot's other novels, this one takes a while to get going. But once the story does start moving, it's easy to get caught up in it.

If you are new to reading classics, I'd highly recommend this one.

This is a strange little book. It is the story of a poor Reverend in a small English town who causes a scandal when a spoiled Countess moves into his house. The book is more like a collection of incidents than a cohesive story, especially in the beginning.

I didn't enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed George Eliot's other works. Like all of Eliot's books, the plot of this one takes a long time to get going. Unfortunately, the book is so short that it's over as soon as it gets interesting. The beginning was very tedious for me. There's not much of a story, and there are a ton of unimportant minor characters who are described in excruciatingly boring detail. The end of the story is way better than the beginning.

My favorite parts of the book are when the narrator talks directly to the reader. Even the narrator admits that the characters are boring.