Dilemma

Hi Readers!  First of all it took me like an hour to figure out how to spell dilemma so there's that.   It's been one of those weeks where I am so far behind I feel like I am going backwards.  I have so much I need to get done and so much I want to get done and then in the end all I want to do is curl up and
read.  So this week I have an insane amount of homework and studying to get done and our AC is out.  As my house is currently sitting at 89 degrees I decided to head to my local Barnes and Nobles to study and utilize their AC.   Of course as soon as I walk in I have to force my self to a table and to open my backpack and take out my homework instead of browsing the books.  Seriously I don't think people understand how excruciatingly hard it is to study in a bookstore/library.  I did buckle down and get at least half of my stuff done and decided to come home and take a break.  I also have a whole stack of books waiting to be rambled about, but instead I have to go get back to studying...boo :-(  Hopefully I will get a good one up soon.  Anyways thanks for listening to me babble :-)  Happy Reading Everybody!

No AC!

Soooo...our AC broke...and since we are now proud home owners we get to deal with it all by ourselves...yay.  This wouldn't be to bad as a) I really like the windows open and b)  I pay the electric bill, but it's been in the upper 90's plus humidity. Normally I would just run away to the fire station...but the AC is out in the bunk rooms.

Melting Book

Just how hot is it?  Well everything is melting...especially me!  Plus side is that reading does not require a whole lot of energy (technically neither does studying...but who wants to do that) so if you need me I will be stuck to my couch with a pile of books and ice...or at the bookstore...cause you know...AC.   Happy Reading Everybody!

Job Hunting

Just when I get my life under some sort of semblance of lesser chaos, all sorts of things like to get turned on their head.  What that means for me is back to job hunting...which is so not my favorite thing.  See I find job hunting to be tedious and boring, there are plenty of jobs in my field, its just the lather rinse repeat business of typing all my info over and over, attaching my certs over and over,

staring at jobs wondering if I actually already applied for this job or not...over and over.  To break up the tedium I have made a deal with my self.  For every job I apply to, I get to read one chapter of my book...so far I'm up to 4 applications and about 10 chapters...yeah not so good at putting down the book lol.  Anyways if anybody needs me I'll be the girl with the computer in front of her face and a book in her lap.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Melting Tingling Alice

Dear Baby Sis, please don't read this post, love your Biggest Sis.  Ok now that is out of the way, today we are going to ramble about The Collector's Society by Heather Lyons, the first in a series also called The Collector's Society.  I'm going to tell you two things right off the bat.  One I did not really like this book.  Two I am in a very small minority as the reviews on this thing show it to be insanely popular and well received.  Why is this?  I'll tell you but first, as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

Alice has returned from her third trip to Wonderland as a 25 year old woman.  She checks herself into a mental institution to try and essentially detox from her adventures in the hope that she can rejoin a normal Victorian English society.  All of this gets blown to pieces when she is invited by a Mr. Brom Van Brunt to join an organization known as the Collector's Society.  The only information she is given is that without her help Wonderland will be destroyed.  She agree's and they step through some sort of doorway into modern day New York City.  Here Alice meet's a host of characters that give her absolutely no information about anything, which is fine because Alice does not share anything either.  After a bit of not sharing back and forth Alice meets Finn Van Brut...formally known as Huckleberry Finn.  She falls in instant lust, melting every single time he so much as glances her way...which happens quit a bit.  Alice (and the reader) finally find out that the point of the Society is to find the catalyst for each Timeline.  A Timeline is a world that comes to life somehow when a book or series of books, or an author becomes widely read and loved.  Apparently each Timeline has a catalyst that if destroyed will destroy the Timeline...I'm not sure in anyway shape or form how this works, or why it works, or how it was discovered, or how a Timeline can disappear when the books are still around and loved, or well all kinds of stuff that makes no sense but is never explained.  Anyways the Society sends agents (who are usually characters or related in someway to the characters in other Timelines...it all gets very meta)  into the Timelines to collect the catalysts to keep them safe from some sort of villain that for some reason is destroying the Timelines.  The majority of the first two thirds of the book however is taken up with Alice keeping some sort of secret from everybody including the reader, while also melting and having the little hairs stand up on the back of her neck every time Finn is so much as thought of.  Finn (who is an impossibly stand up guy) seems to reciprocate the melting and the tingling and the secret keeping.  So pretty much we have a very repetitive secret romance going for a really long time.  Eventually the book picks up a bit when we FINALLY get to Wonderland.  We discover that Alice was made the Queen of Diamonds and fell in love with the White King.  Because of some sort of screwed up Wonderland politics, Alice agreed to leave Wonderland in the hopes of alleviating the suffering of her people.  Alice, Finn and a couple of their friends (Victor the son of Dr. Frankenstein and Mary Lennox of The Secret Garden) go to Wonderland to get Alice's crown which is the catalyst for this Timeline.  They enter a Wonderland in the middle of a brutal war and eventually meet up with the White King who aids them in their quest.  There are some moments between Alice and the White King, but she makes a choice to stay with Finn in the new world she is now part of.  They bring the crown back and melt and tingle some more and we never figure out anything else because that is what the next books are for.

In case you didn't pick up on it, I did not really like this book.  In general it felt like a rote romance book with a potentially couple of good idea's thrown in that suffered from execution issues.  I'll go through what bugged me the most, and then tell what parts I did like.  To start with the book was in first person, so we were stuck in Alice's head, which was problematic for many reasons.  First off, she did not know ANYTHING so we didn't either and we only got an extremely limited view of what was going on in this new world.  This works if the character learns and discovers as they go, but that was not the case.  Second of all, even though we are stuck in Alice's head, we are not even privy to her thoughts and secrets so pretty much we spend the vast majority of the book with vague, yet overly dramatic phrases meant to keep everything in the dark.  This is one of my biggest pet peeves when an author drags out a supposed secret or bit of information for no other reason then to try and keep you reading.  This is especially aggravating when the secret finally gets revealed and really is not that big of a deal.  There was nothing that got revealed that made me gasp out loud.  The romance drove me absolutely batty.  I am not a huge fan of romance novels in general, mostly because they all feel like the same book to me and at least on the romance side to me this book was no exception.  Alice was supposed to be this strong kick-ass character, but she spent the majority of the book alternating between dramatically declaring to herself that she does not want to have any sort of human contact with Finn and melting and tingling and going weak kneed every time Finn is even mentioned.  This happens over and over and over and over and the worst part is the author uses pretty much the exact same phrasing in every angsty encounter.  Even worse, when they finally get together and have sexy time...well lets just say it was so tame and bland and repetitive that I would let my eight year old nephew read it (ok not really, but you get the point). Finn was waaaaaay to perfect to be of any interest to me.  He was always doing an over the top good guy thing, with his only real flaw being his getting super angry when those he loves are hurt, seriously I don't see the appeal.  The White King was a much more interesting and complex character and I would have loved to spent more time with him.  Ok let's move on.  Getting away from Alice for a few minutes the premise of the book could have been pretty cool except for the fact that I still don't really know what it is.  It felt like the author had an idea about using characters from different books to create a society to protect books, but let it get to complicated with no real world building at all.  We never really get a good explanation for anything.  There were a couple of parts I did enjoy.  I liked it when Alice wasn't getting all angsty and just had conversations or some very witty one liners.  What I really liked was the time spent in Wonderland, I really wish the author had pretty much skipped everything else and just written this future Wonderland.  I like the idea of Alice as an adult and the potential adjusting from Wonderland back to her home.  This idea would have been plenty for a really great book.  I am most definitely in the minority in my feelings on this book, the vast majority of the reviews have been very positive and glowing.  I am thrilled that so many people love.  It's books like this that prove my point that not every book is for every person and just because everybody else loved it, doesn't mean I have to.  Nor does every book I love have to be a home run for anybody else.  Overall I give this book 4 out of 10 cups of tea and recommend to anybody who enjoys romance, or some potentially good ideas.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Tech Problems 'Cause Why Not

It has taken me about 35 minutes to get this little post up, so this is what we get, boo :-(  Super crazy week on top of it all, so posting will be a bit sketchy for the rest of the week.

 Will hopefully soon be back to normal (wow syntax not my thing today).
Happy Reading Everybody!

Serum City

Well the curse of the second book strikes again.  Just finished reading Insurgent the second book in the Divergent trilogy and I have to say right up front, it was mostly pointless.  So many of the issues I had with the first book were just made worse by this second one and a lot of what I enjoyed in the first one was completely missing in this book.  Oh well let's get on with this shall we?  As always so many SPOILERS AHEAD!

When we last left our main girl, the Divergent Tris, she was escaping a mind controlled Dauntless slaughter.  Tris along with fellow Divergent, and current eternal love Tobias (also known as Four), his abusive and squirlley father Marcus, her Abnegation turned Erudite turned whatever brother Caleb and a couple of others make it to the Amity compound.  There they are welcome with if not exactly open arms, they are at least fed and clothed and given a bed.  Turns out that Tris is suffering from a bit of post traumatic stress syndrome from killing her friend and watching her parents die, this manifests itself in an inability to use a gun and a bit of a suicidal bent. This of course sets Tobias off in some sort of anger pattern, instead of trying to understand and help his girlfriend, he spends most of his time giving her non-helpful ultimatums about bucking up and getting over it.  Stuff happens and Tris overhears a conversation about some sort of mysterious information that Abnegation was trying to get out to the general public, but along came Janine (the Erudite leader who orchestrated the whole violent overthrow) who decided that the information should not be given out.  After a bit of an altercation, Tris is "punished" by being given a serum that makes her super peaceful and it is

revealed that everybody in Amity (probably unkowingly) eats a bread that is infused with this peaceful serum.  Amity holds a meeting and decides that they depend to much on Erudite to piss them off so they refuse to take sides.  Dauntless/Erudite storm the Amity compound and the group makes a run for it. The group makes it back to the city and find themselves with a group of factionless led by non other then Tobias's mother...yep not dead...though her story is a little sketchy.  She either ran away and abandoned Tobias, or was exiled by Abnegation, or something.  They find out that there is a high percentage of Divergents within the factionless and that they are understandably unhappy with the way things are run.  They leave the factionless and end up with Candor where more serum is given, in the form of a truth serum where everybody has to spill their guts about stuff that has nothing to do with anything in order to partake of the safe haven within Candor.  Tris admits she killed Will (even though she had no choice) and Tobias admits his dad beat him on a regular basis. Tobias is pissed that Tris kept a secret from him, but refuses to own up when Tris calls him out on his own secret keeping.  Tris and Tobias hook up with some of their Dauntless buddies before once again the traitor Dauntless/Erudite once again storm a compound.  This time they only kill random Divergent, everybody else gets a dart that injects a transmitter into their system, once again turning the non-Divergent into potential mindless soldiers.  Somewhere in here Tris decides to turn herself in to Janine for further testing so that Janine will quit killing people.  During her captivity Tris discovers that her brother is a traitor and has always been on Janine's side.  Tobias tries to come to her rescue but it takes an old enemy Peter to actually get them to escape.  Tobias, Tori and some other guy are elected Dauntless leaders after all the other leaders are either killed, captured or turned traitor and decide to ally themselves with the factionless to storm the 

Erudite compound and destroy all of their computers and gathered knowledge in an attempt to stop what ever it is they are trying to do.  Tris agrees to go with Tobias, but secretly makes plans with Marcus and a few others to try and retrieve whatever information it is her parents died for.  More chaos, more angst, more shooting.  Tris ends up in the security portion of Janine's secret lab and runs into another simulation...kind of.  She makes it to the inner sanctum only to find Tori holding Janine at gunpoint.  Tris tries to make Tori understand that they can't kill Janine until they get the info from her computer, but Tori doesn't listen and kills Janine.  Tobias comes in and agrees with Tori that Tris is a traitor (that was a lot of T's in that sentence), but Tris again calls him out on his bull headedness, reminding him that he is the one who said he loved her for her, and that the first time it was tested he bailed.  Tris is taken captaive, but Tobias actually listened and got Caleb to help him get the info they were looking for.  Meanwhile the factionless showed just how dumb everybody else is by getting all of their weapons, meaning to take over.  Before...or during...or after this happens the screens flick on and a video plays, showing images of violence and death and then a women saying something about locking everybody in the city to refind their humanity...but the problem was human nature...but the solution was the Divergents who were the epitome of human nature...and the Divergents should be set loose on the rest of the world to help them.  And that my friends was the end of book two.

As you have probably guessed this was not my favorite book.  So very many issues, so very few answers, but lets start with the good stuff so you know I actually read it with an open mind :-)  I think my favorite parts were any time Christina was on the page, she is by far my favorite character and seems to be the one who has the most realistic head on her shoulders.  She was pissed at Tris when she found out about Will, she eventually forgave Tris, but it took some time and not all at once, when faced with facts she thinks about them and makes her own decisions about things, and she is pretty funny. I loved it when Tris called out Tobias on all his double standard stupidness, especially at the end, I wanted to jump up and cheer.  I also appreciated how Tris was affected by all the death, not only of her loved ones, but the ones that she killed.  It goes so against her upbringing and she has had so little time to adapt to the Dauntless way of life that this seemed an appropriate reaction. Also I love the tree on the cover of this book. See there was a little bit of good stuff.  Now on to my issues.  My biggest issue is the same one I had in the first book, how the heck am I supposed to believe that humans only display one trait.  How am I supposed to believe anything the author says when she contradicts herself on the basic premise of the books.  We are told that Divergent's are

Divergent because they display more then one trait...but we are shown over and over and over confirmed non-Divergent's who regularly display more then one trait.  On that same line of thinking, any transfer would have to be Divergent by definition because they were raised in a different trait, but nobody suspects truth telling Christina of being Divergent...but Tris is because she knows how to be selfless?!  Makes no sense.  Does this mean any time anybody tells the truth that isn't in Candor they are automatically Divergent?   How many times does one have to hold open the door for another person in a faction not belonging to Abnegation before they are hunted down?  How does one distinguish between peace loving Amity and selfless Abnegation as many of the defining features are similar?  The factionless pose another interesting angle to this whole Divergent business as it appears that most of them could be considered Divergent, now I will give the author some credit for saying that there is a high percentage of Dauntless in the factionless.  That leads me to the ending of this book, I was warned that this is not most peoples favorite book, but the bombshell at the end is worth it. I did not think the ending was all that spectacular, I had suspected from the beginning that their was a reason behind the locked fence with nobody knowing what was outside it, so not really a bombshell.  The idea that this little experiment was because humans were too violent...well...we already are.  I thought it was funny that as the images of violence were flashing on the screen all I could think about was that is exactly what was happening inside the city, so no progress there.  I did not get what the experiment was, or what it was supposed to do, I was 

feeling of the nonsensical frustration I got when I was reading The Maze Runner series where the premise was just because and did not serve any real purpose.  The video stated that the Divergent's were supposed to have flexible minds, which to me means the people who were part of the experiment were drugged or something into strict factions (which may be backed up by all the serums that were used in this book) and that when people developed a resistance and became normal then they were ready to...do what I don't know. If the whole reason that the world got uncontrollably violent was human nature...then why do they want people who have proven to be the definition of human nature to be their saviors?  I don't get it.  Ok enough kvetching, I obviously have problems with the premise and a lot of the cool world building and Tris's development that I made the first book readable and almost enjoyable were very much missing in this book. I have heard rumor that the next book is much better...I sure hope so. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.  I give this book 5 out of 10 serums.

What did you think of this book?  What type of serum do you think we need to use on a regular basis?  What is the deal with second books?  Does anybody know Candor's function in this society?

Blech

Not feeling so hot today, I hate that.  Oh well guess I just gotta concentrate a little harder on germ squashing!

A Sick Day for Amos McGee