Category Archives: Books

I’m a big fan of author Tim Winton’s books, having read “Dirt Music” (2001), “The Turning” (2005) and “Breath” (2008), but his new one “Eyrie” tested me a bit and I wasn’t sure if it was ever going to get off the ground.

It’s a story about Tom Keely, 49, a disillusioned environmentalist who lives in a downtrodden high-rise building overlooking the harbor of Fremantle, Australia. He’s divorced and been disgraced in some incident that’s forced him out of his job as spokesman for an activist group. It’s a bit sketchy what’s happened but suffice is to say he used to be on the TV news and was a prominent somebody but now he’s unemployed and his wife is gone. Meanwhile his sister and mother worry about him since Tom spends his days in a drug and alcohol haze, looking back on his life, angry at the world and becoming more broke by the minute. He’s also prone to sleepwalking, feinting spells and often doesn’t remember these episodes.

But eventually Tom runs into a neighbor from his childhood days who incidentally is living in his building. Gemma was the beauty from back then whose Tom’s parents generously gave refuge to, but she’s 44 now and taking care of her six-year-old grandson, Kai, because her druggy daughter is in prison. Tom forms a bond with them, helping Gemma on her work nights by watching Kai who’s a strange, shy, intelligent boy who worries Tom with his dreams about death.

But it’s when Kai’s meth-addicted father starts blackmailing Gemma for money and threatening Kai that things turn dicey. Tom is pressed into action that he hasn’t been capable of in eons. But whether they’ll be safe from the meth-punk, you won’t know till the very end.

“Eyrie” paints a vivid picture of disillusionment and place, the past and the present: the high-rise and the harbor in Fremantle, Tom’s childhood and current unwell state. But the story’s plot doesn’t seem to pick up until after page 200. For awhile, I wasn’t sure anything was going to happen in it. At the beginning it was just Tom going in and out of his apartment, drifting off to sleep, or listening to the building’s noises. I couldn’t take it much longer. So I was thankful for Gemma and Kai’s appearance and the novel’s last 100 pages when things indeed speed up.

Thank goodness. The second half with the meth-blackmailer dad are pretty gripping. Although the characters aren’t that likable, particularly the foul-mouthful Gemma who isn’t very grateful to Tom, I was into it by then and wasn’t sure how or if they’d escape. The ending turned out to be pretty abrupt (I had to read it over a few times), but it seemed real.

Judging from comments on Goodreads etc., other readers were either big fans of “Eyrie” or were really disappointed in it. Funny how that happens, such a wide dichotomy. I’d say I didn’t care much for the first half and liked it more in the second half. But overall, I didn’t think it his best book. From those I’ve read, I liked his books “Breath” and “The Turning” better. I’ll still read whatever he writes next. I haven’t read his 1991 novel “Cloudstreet” yet, which many say is his finest. I’m excited though that Tim Winton’s coming to our town’s book festival in October. Wow, now that’ll be good. I’ll have to get him to sign all my copies of his books.

How about you — have you read this author before or do you plan to? Continue reading →

Thomas Wolfe once wrote that you can’t go home again. I know what he means, but part of me says why the heck not. This week I’ve been back visiting my folks and roots again (see photo above), which I always really enjoy. I grew up in Southern, California, but my adult, married life is in Canada now, a world away. In between, I spent years in Texas, Colorado, Washington state, Virginia and D.C. All these places were great, but there’s so many memories in one’s hometown; is there not? I feel younger, and healthy here, too. What about you — do you still enjoy going back to your hometown?

This week I intend to finish Kate Morton’s thick-ish novel “The Forgotten Garden” on the plane back tomorrow as I have no time to waste with piles to read. I read her book for my book club, which we’ll discuss on Tuesday. It’s sort of a light, summer read but quite enjoyable nonetheless as Morton spins an engaging tale about family secrets.

Meanwhile, I picked up two used, nonfiction books on sale here that look devourable. First, the 2010 biography of “Cleopatra” by Stacy Schiff, which I’ve wanted to read since going through a Rome phase sparked off by our trip there last fall. That was followed up by the “Rome” TV series from 2005 and 2007, which we spent the winter watching on DVD. Who doesn’t want to know more about Antony and the mysterious Cleopatra? Yes, count me in.

I also got J.R. Moehringer’s 2005 memoir “The Tender Bar,” which I’ve heard raves about for years. It seems a juicy read. Someone wrote he’s the “best memoirist of his kind since Mary Karr.” Hmm. Is this true? Have you read “The Tender Bar”? I recall Mary Karr’s “The Liars’ Club” being bleak but I’m hoping “The Tender Bar” is sweet and a bit funny, too. We’ll see.

Until next time, happy reading. Continue reading →

This was my first time reading Lois Lowry’s 1993 award-winning, young adult novel “The Giver.” It’s a slim book, which is coming out as a movie in August, starring Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes, and even Taylor Swift among others. I was curious about the book and had to check it out. Perhaps a few of these older novels such as this one and “Ender’s Game,” which have recently been made into movies, are trying to follow-up on the coattails of the young-adult movie audiences for “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent.” The young-adult medium is sure the rage these days, though perhaps it’s always been pretty popular.

The movie trailer of “The Giver” appears to expand on the book and take some liberties with it. It gives off a sort of “Handmaid’s Tale” creepiness, too. And like that novel, and “Brave New World,” “The Giver” takes place in a utopian society in the future where things are tightly controlled, restricted, and not at all what they seem.

The community in “The Giver” has taken away hunger, war, suffering, unemployment, and sickness but has also eliminated color, music, and love. A selected handful of “Elders” control whom people marry, which children and jobs they get, and when they will be “released.” Choice has been restricted, and life follows a “Sameness” plan, where even people’s capacity for memories is eliminated and borne instead by a “Receiver of Memories.” He alone knows the past, but is now an old man who is called upon to train a successor.

Jonas is the eleven-year-old boy selected to be the next “Receiver of Memories.” But as he trains with the old man (the Giver) he comes to realize from the past the possibilities of what life once was. He’s able for the first time to see color and feel warmth, and becomes disillusioned with his family and the community for how it is. Ultimately it’s when he discovers a hidden chilling truth about what’s going on, that he decides to hatch a plot to change the “Sameness” and escape the community’s pain-free, sterile world.

It’s an interesting little book, which spookiness has stayed with me for awhile after. It’s not that “The Giver” necessarily blew me away with its storytelling or its message but its cautionary tale of such a colorless society is simply and straightforwardly told, and I followed Jonas eagerly to the depths of his journey of discovery. I’ll be looking forward to see how the filmmakers handle this utopian-turned-dystopian tale. Judging by the old man (the Giver) on the book’s cover, I haven’t exactly been able to picture Jeff Bridges as him, but we will see. As long as the movie captures some of the book’s eeriness and forewarning, it might just work.

What about you — have you read this Newbery Medal winner? And what did you think? Do you plan to see the movie? Continue reading →

I feel a bit fortunate for a few reasons to have come across Eric Lomax’s WWII memoir “The Railway Man,” which was an education of sorts to me. In it he describes his experiences as one of thousands of prisoners-of-war who was forced to work on the ghastly Thailand to Burma railway, which was known as the Railway of Death because so many thousands perished working to build it.

Apparently some of “The Railway Man” was written after Lomax returned from the war and the rest was finished decades later. It was first published in 1995 and though it won a couple of awards in the U.K., I had not heard of it until this year when the movie of it starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman was scheduled to be released. The movie’s distribution was limited so I haven’t seen it yet, but from the trailer I’ve seen, it seems to take some poetic license and depart from the book in a few ways.

It’s interesting that Eric Lomax who was Scottish only recently died in October 2012 at age 93 while the film was still in production. His wife though came to its premiere at the Toronto film festival last September and apparently received a standing ovation.

In his book, Lomax describes joining the British army at age 19 in 1939 and eventually being sent to South East Asia where he’s captured by the Japanese army with thousands of others following the surrender of Singapore in 1942. Along with a handful, he’s sent to work in the railway’s workshop repairing machinery for the tracks. But later he and five of the men are swept up after their hidden self-made radio is found and Lomax’s drawn map. He’s interrogated for weeks by Japanese soldiers, beaten up, tortured and confined to imprisonment in squalid conditions.

The scenes of his prisoner-of-war experience are quite vivid, and you get a sense of his inner thoughts about the uncertain, scary situations he endures. I didn’t know about the forced labor on the Burma Railway so the memoir is an eye-opener to that and to the brutal prisoner-of-war camps under the Japanese military.

What’s quite remarkable is that not only does Lomax survive WWII, but many decades later at age 70 he decides to confront his demons about the war, as well as his post-traumatic stress, and his avoidance of seeing Japanese people who he hasn’t faced since 1945. The end of his memoir is a journey into his turnaround, as he seeks professional counseling and falls in love with a woman he meets who becomes his second wife. Eventually with her help, Lomax reaches out to meet one of his torturers during the war who’s still alive in Japan. At first Lomax seeks revenge but soon realizes the man has suffered as well and tried hard to make amends over the many decades. The reconciliation between the two that follows is quite extraordinary some 50+ years later.

It’s a story of humanism, healing and forgiveness in the face of utter brutality that’ll likely stay with me. I plan to follow it up later in the year with the nonfiction award-winning book “The Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand, which is similar in its setting and topic. My husband has read it and I know it’s quite earth-shattering. The movie of which is coming out at Christmas.

For now, I’ll be glad knowing that Eric Lomax received some peace towards the end of his life. I’ll look for “The Railway Man” movie, though the trailer made me think the memoir would be much more of a love story than it actually turned out. Lomax talks about his wife and remarriage in the book but he doesn’t delve into it as fully perhaps as the Hollywood version. Also in real life, Lomax was considerably older (in his 70s) when he finally returns to Japan to meet his former enemy, who he’s no longer out to harm. Regardless of when it was, he was incredibly brave to do so.

What about you — have you read either of these books or any other prisoner-of-war accounts? Continue reading →

We had a fun time on our bike trip along British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island, which ended on Sunday. We had only one day of rain, and enjoyed smooth roads, good company and pretty scenery. If you ever get a chance, bike touring is a great way to see parts of the world. I think I’ve taken at least one multi-day bike adventure each year for the past 15 years now, and it’s always been illuminating and invigorating in some way or another.

I highly recommend it, and you don’t have to be a bike pro to enjoy it either. I am no pro, just a bike riding enthusiast.

On the trip, I finished Kathleen Winter’s 2010 novel “Annabel,” which was discussed at my book club on Tuesday night. It’s another of those excellent reads that I likely wouldn’t have picked on my own. Chalk it up again to a good book club to broaden one’s book horizons. It definitely gets you out of your usual book-selection mold.

“Annabel’s” about an intersex child (born with both male and female genitalia, which is very rare) in 1968 in a small town in remote coastal Labrador. The child’s parents play traditional roles in the town’s hunting culture; the father is a trapper who spends months away in the wilderness and the mother works around the house. The father decides the baby, who undergoes surgery, will be raised as a boy (Wayne), though the mother secretly wishes the child were a daughter (Annabel). The parents don’t tell the child he was born intersex until something happens much later. Eventually Wayne moves away and stops taking his masculinity medications and begins to accept himself as he is.

It’s a novel that explores gender issues and empathizes with seeing beyond male/female-ness to the humanness of a person. It’s a character study into Wayne, his parents, a trusted neighbor, and the culture into how they view and cope with his intersex situation. I was convinced by the realness of the story and the feel of the town in Labrador. His parents surely have their troubles over his ambiguous circumstances but seem to evolve about it with time. I felt for Wayne and just thought he would’ve acted out more sometimes against the circumstances. He seems so calm in the face of the inner and outer turmoil when at times I felt like it might have been good to scream or throw something off a cliff or fight back against a bully.

It’s a very well-written book though and I felt like I was right there in the characters’ shoes so to speak, as they all go through a transformation of sorts. No wonder it was on the short list for both the Orange and Giller prizes. I definitely will look for the author’s next book once it comes out.

Meanwhile, I’ve picked up “The Railway Man” by Eric Lomax about his life during World War II when he was captured by the Japanese Army and forced to work on the Burma-Siam railway. Lomax died in 2012, but his story is now out as a movie with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. I plan to see it once I finish the book.

What about you — have you heard or read either of these books? Or what are you keen on reading these days? Continue reading →

Is this book cover cool or what? Kudos to Eric White, its creator. I was lured to this sci-fi novel because of all the good words going on about it on blogs and book sites. It’s been quite the success story. First the author Andy Weir self-published “The Martian” on his website for free in 2012, then he put it on Kindle for 99 cents, and later it was picked up by Crown publisher for six figures and put out again in February of this year. The movie rights for it have already been optioned, and Matt Damon is being rumored for the main role. Wow! Not bad for a first-time author.

Truth be told, I’m not normally a science fiction or space reader, but the synopsis caught my eye. It’s about an astronaut (Mark Watney) whose crew is on a mission on Mars when a violent dust storm hits. Watney’s suit is pierced and he’s flung unconscious out of the crew’s reach. Thinking he’s dead, the others lift off, ending their mission and stranding Watney behind with no way to signal Earth that he’s alive.

Holy smokes, it’s a bleak situation, but Watney’s no quitter. He puts his mind to work on how to survive and reconnect with NASA. And here I thought Robert Redford’s character in the recent movie “All Is Lost” was resourceful, but in that regard Watney leaves him in the dust (so to speak). Watney’s quite the engineer-astronaut-botanist phenomenon. He’s a math-physics nerd but a smart-ass too. He’s got gumption, which apparently doesn’t hurt if you’re left on a totally inhospitable red planet.

“The Martian” drew me in at the start. I absorbed the dire situation as if it were the missing Malaysian airliner whose puzzle needed to be solved. Where in the heck is it? And what would happen to Watney? Being a reader of epic Arctic and Everest survival tales, I pored over this one like a bat out of hell.

Some of the novel takes place on Earth within NASA as they grope with what to do, the other half takes place on Mars as the resourceful Watney tries to overcome his circumstances. It makes for an interesting back and forth.

“The Martian” though is loaded with technical details, which in my opinion gets excessive at times. It’s almost as if the author were adding all the equations and physics suppositions to show how smart he is. On the one hand, it’s great having a lot of scientific details in the novel to make it seem real, but the constant equation set-ups clogged it up at times. In places, it sort of felt like reading a textbook instead of an action thriller. My mind fuzzed over some of the scientific and math thought processes, and the middle of the book sagged for me, as Watney carried out a lot of tests for his proposed rescue plans. No wonder I gave this book to my husband to read first; he’s an engineer he probably liked all these endless details.

But luckily “The Martian” picks up towards the end. And how it all plays out is worth sticking around for. I imagine the movie of it could be quite riveting. Despite the excessive details, I’m still amazed about the author’s knowledge of space and that he made “The Martian” into such a believable tale. It might not be for everybody, but if you’re a nerdy fan of the final frontier and such, you’ll inevitably like this one, too. Continue reading →

I’ve been AWOL for about two weeks from blogging. I went “Divergent” so to speak. I traveled to the Washington, D.C. and the Northern Virginia area for my adult “spring break,” visiting old friends from when I once lived there and seeing some sights. It was a really fun trip. To the left is a photo of the National Gallery of Art, where I saw an interesting exhibit, a portrait of American life, from the photos Garry Winogrand took from the 1950s to his death in 1984. Check out the exhibit if you get a chance.

Then after getting back home our dog Stella became ill and had to go to the emergency vet hospital, which turned our world upside down. After 3 1/2 days of care there, it appears luckily she’s going to be okay to our great relief. She had tested positive for exposure to an antifreeze-type of toxin, which we don’t know exactly where she was exposed to, but we are taking all precautions and have taken our car to get checked for any leaks. We are so fortunate to have her back from what was a life-threatening situation. I think my anxiety went through the roof, but we were very lucky and now she’s back home being her regular Lab self. Oh thank goodness!

I did read “Divergent” while flying back and forth from D.C. Surely, Veronica Roth’s 2011 dystopian young-adult novel made for a good airplane/spring-break-kind-of read, even though I’m typically not a frequent YA reader. It’s got action, suspense, a little love story and an easy reading level. (Maybe too easy?) Am I the last one to have read this bestseller? Probably. I plan to see the movie of it soon, but I haven’t seen it just yet. The movie took in $56 million on its opening weekend, which isn’t too shabby but is nowhere near “The Hunger Games” box-office haul.

If I were to compare the “Divergent” book to “The Hunger Games,” I’d have to say that I found Suzanne Collins’s book better written, but I still enjoyed “Divergent” and found it somewhat similar; they both have 16-year-old protagonists who must undergo enormous physical challenges in a post-apocalyptic world. “Divergent’s” premise though seemed rather hokey to me that people were divided into factions based on their predispositions to Candor, Erudite, Dauntless, Abnegation and Amity. On their way to building a utopia it seems the survivors must have forgotten their heads, believing that by separating people by character would solve society’s problems. (Good luck with that.) But what the heck, I was going to go with it.

The book gets good though when Tris goes off to undergo the initiation process for the Dauntless (brave) faction. The dueling cliques that form between the initiates and the training scenes are some of the best, as Tris jumps in and out of trains, hurls down a wire from the top of the old Sears Tower, and goes through exposure therapy and simulations to try to eradicate fears. The training reminded me a bit of the book “Ender’s Game.” Though along the way Tris falls for her trainer, which isn’t in that one.

And of course, she has a secret and isn’t solely Dauntless. The ending is an action page-turner as the Erudite faction tries to violently take control and Tris is one of the few who can stop them. I look forward to seeing how the movie handles the book. One movie critic I read said the movie is “more satisfying than the bestseller that inspired it.” Could it be true? Have you seen it and what did you think?

On top of “Divergent,” I just finished “The Rosie Project,” which is a romantic comedy that I read for my book club. We are going to discuss it on Tuesday, so I will gather my thoughts about it and write more later. I did mostly enjoy “The Rosie Project” and thought it was clever. It’s about a socially-challenged man’s search for the perfect wife. By the time Rosie comes along she’s so wrong according to his criteria but so right for him regardless. The story’s both funny and charming.

What did you think? Have you read this one? Continue reading →

Well the polar vortex ended last Friday and a glimpse of spring has arrived today in western Canada with 55 degree weather. That translates into Miami temps for this time of year here. We’re loving it for sure!

I’ve been meandering a bit with my reading, but just finished Ann Patchett’s nonfiction book of essays called “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage,” which came out last November. My sister gave it to me for Christmas. I love the title; it makes you want to know if she’s being real, or if she has some secret cornucopia of knowledge about marriage. I was sure I would devour the collection in no time at all, but I’ve been enjoying it this past week more slowly like a glass of fine wine. I find there seems to be more to absorb in nonfiction and it takes me a bit longer than a novel to get through, generally speaking.

But I liked reading it slowly as it’s a great book and I would highly recommend it, especially to people who are interested in writing, or in the aspects of a writer’s life. It’s quite personal and the combined 22 essays flow together almost as if you were reading a memoir. There’s chapters on just about every facet of Patchett’s life including her childhood and family, how she became a successful writer and co-bookstore owner, her divorce and eventual second marriage, and her life in Nashville. It’s all there: her loves, losses and how writing has always been her mission in life, which she’s worked very hard at doing both as a journalist and as a novelist.

The way she writes these essays it’s almost as if you know her and she’s telling you like she would a friend, candidly and confiding. She’s often funny and self-effacing. The essays are a genuine treat to read, her descriptions and observations reveal truths about life in various episodes. I was lured into them eagerly like a bee to a bonnet. It made me wonder if Patchett’s actually a better nonfiction writer than she is a novelist. This collection made me think so. Granted, I have read just two of her novels so far, one of which “State of Wonder” I liked quite a bit; the other “Run” I didn’t care for that much. But I’d like to read her novel “Bel Canto,” which I’ve heard is her very best.

Meanwhile this nonfiction collection knocked it out of the park for me. I especially appreciated her essay “The Getaway Car,” which gives useful advice if you’re interested in writing, and a candid perspective on being a writer. I also found interesting her foray into becoming a bookstore co-owner, which she writes about in “The Bookstore Strikes Back.” And the title essay “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage” about the long road to love she found with her second husband is a poignant piece that might remind one that sometimes you don’t realize the really good thing or person you’ve got till they’re (almost) gone.

I enjoyed about all of the essays in this book. She even writes about her very dear dog Rose in “This Dog’s Life” and “Dog Without End,” which made me happy being such a dog lover. I guess only one essay “The Mercies” about the former Catholic nuns who taught her school and befriended her I found a bit convoluted and didn’t draw me in as much as the others. But on the whole, I was quite taken with this volume and will keep it to reread pieces again in the future.

What about you — have you read this book or others by her? Or do you plan to? Continue reading →

Wow is Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake” from 2003 a wild, dark read. I had been bemoaning the choice of it which a member of my book club selected for us to read this month. I had put it off and put it off till the last possible minute, not wanting to read another dystopian futuristic novel full of gobbledygook and destruction. And the first 200 pages I stayed bemoaning it, but then I latched on to the story and the last 150+ pages flew by quickly. Now I’m looking to read her two others sometime in this trilogy: “The Year of the Flood” (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). So much for bemoaning it; I ended up enjoying its strange imagery and story.

I guess that’s what’s great about a book club; you read selections you might not otherwise read and it broadens your reading scope. I’m glad now to have read “Oryx and Crake” although it’s not necessarily an easy read. It challenges you in ways. It’s often harsh-mouthed and graphic, critical and over-the-top, but that’s Margaret Atwood for you — strong in her convictions, especially concerning science, the environment, and politics.

But how can I explain “Oryx and Crake,” which Atwood disputes as science fiction and calls speculative fiction because she says it doesn’t deal with “things that have not been invented yet.” Set sometime in the future, it’s about a survivor named Snowman (originally named Jimmy) who’s seemingly the last human on Earth after a virulent pandemic strikes the world. He’s left to dodge unfriendly predators and weather conditions and take care of some bioengineered humans his friend Crake once pioneered. He has painful memories of what transpired on Earth and how everyone died.

The narrative shifts back and forth from his present bleak state as a survivor to decades earlier when Earth was populated and Jimmy met his very intelligent friend Crake in grade school in the secured compound where their families lived. The story follows their lives thereafter in college and then getting jobs in corporations and their love for the same girl named Oryx, who they first saw on a porn website. I didn’t say this story would be normal, did I?

It’s a world in which biotech firms like Crake’s are creating super pills and experimenting with genetically engineered humans, and where global warming and overpopulation have taken a severe toll, especially on the pleeblands outside the secured compounds. The narrative leads up to what happened on Earth and the roles Jimmy, Oryx and Crake play. It’s suspenseful in a “Walking Dead” kind of way as the doomsday unfolds.

Although at first I feared the novel would be too dense or strange, I got into after awhile with Snowman (Jimmy) as the narrator. It turned out not to be too hard to understand or wacko. Its underlying message of the destructive direction our society is headed gets a bit heavy at times but not so far-fetched as not to be believed. Who’s not to say humans will hasten their own demise.

Apparently Atwood was in the midst of writing “Oryx and Crake” around the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, which made her stop for a few weeks. No wonder: its negative scope. By the end though I was entangled in its web and left wanting to find out more in book two. I’m sure “Oryx and Crake” will make for an interesting discussion for my book club this Tuesday evening.

How about you — have you read this novel or any of this trilogy? And what did you think? Continue reading →

Yes, I finally got on the ball and read John Green’s 2012 young adult blockbuster “The Fault in Our Stars.” I’m probably one of the last in blogger-land to have done so, and it came at a good time when I needed a quick, easy read after some of the denseness of the last novel I read and another dense one for my book club to follow.

And yes, I’m in the majority when I say I really liked “The Fault in Our Stars” and it’s a wonderful, stunning read. Even though it’s sad about two high school kids who have cancer who meet at a support group and fall in love, it’s also very beautiful and moving without being overly sentimental. Author John Green captures the teenagers and their dialogue seemingly to perfection. And the characters, Hazel and Augustus, express plenty of sardonic wit and intelligence to keep the story from falling into a depressing or cheesy hole. Green brings these characters to life and I really felt they were real people by the end who I knew and would miss.

“The Fault in Our Stars” is a book about living and dying and questioning whether one has meaning. It makes you feel what it’s like to be in a cancer kids’ shoes but it also gives them dignity and humanness too. I also liked the book’s side plot of Hazel’s quest to try to contact the author of her favorite book to find out what happened to its characters after an ambiguous ending. The quest takes Hazel and Augustus on a whirlwind adventure to Amsterdam where their connection blossoms.

I rarely read young adult novels but this one was really worth it, even though a tissue or two was required. It’s hard to really say too much about the story, other than to just rush out get the book and read it, which you must if you haven’t already. It’s made me want to read all of John Green’s other novels, too. I’m a convert now to his talent.

And I’m already thinking of the movie adaptation of “The Fault in Our Stars,” which comes out June 6. I’ve seen the trailer and I’m a bit worried it won’t be able to capture the right tone without being cheesy or fake-ish like the book does. Uh-oh. Will it live up to the book? Will the actors meet the expectations for the characters? The odds are against it, but I’ll likely see it anyways. It’s quite amazing that Shailene Woodley will play the lead roles for both upcoming movies “Divergent” and “Fault in Our Stars.” Wow she’s on a roll. I thought she was quite good in the 2011 movie “The Descendants,” so we will see if she can rise to these roles as well.

What about you — what did you think of this novel and do you plan to see the movie? Continue reading →