Top 5 book Characters I Hate!
In this post I’ll be sharing the top 5 book characters I dislike the most, all the way down to number 1, who, if you’ve seen a specific one of my older posts, you can probably guess. Keep in mind, these are not just characters that I dislike because they are mean to another character or they’re a bad person in general. That could be one of the reasons, but it’s probably going to come down to who gets on my nerves the most. 5. Maya from Far from the Tree by Robin Benway I absolutely loved this book, but Maya’s character nagged me a little bit. She was really childish and immature (I guess you could defend her by pointing out that she’s the youngest child, but she was 15, which is an age that one should have some level of maturity at). Maya tended to overreact to things, or say the wrong thing at the wrong time. She was confused about her family drama and broke up with her girlfriend because she was overwhelmed about it, even though her girlfriend was willing to talk with her about it and support her. I understand, but she did it so harshly and without warning. Also, I don’t like the way Maya treated Lauren. She acted like she was older than her (even though they were only six months apart or something) and she used that as an excuse to boss her around and be mean to her. 4. Maeve from This is Not a Love Scene by S.C. Megale I read this book fairly recently, and it was okay, but I just never clicked with the main character, Maeve. She’s not the most likable character— I don’t know if it was because I didn’t really like her particular sense of humor, or how brash she was, or how awkward and forced she made everything with the guy she was interested in, Cole. I find it interesting that books can make the reader have a positive or negative physical reaction, but I felt like I cringed (like actually cringed and had to stop reading) way too many times with this book, because of something Maeve did or said. I think she tried too hard to best friends with Mags, when 70% of the time, it seemed like Mags had no interest in being her friend. I felt bad for Maeve because she ignored all of the red flags that popped up with Mags (for example, if she was really your friend, why would she date someone who hates you?) Similarly, I think she pushed Cole into hanging out with her, and she didn’t let their relationship progress organically. Also, her obsession with elderly men creeped me out a little bit. 3. Penny Lee from Emergency Contact by H.K. Choi I enjoyed Emergency Contact when I read it at the beginning of the year, but looking back, Penny’s character was kind of annoying. In some ways, I sympathized with her— she’s really anal and probably has OCD. But at times, she’s very aloof and she comes off as insensitive. She also had the tendency to not say how she really felt and then just let the whole situation explode because she refused to deal with it. Like how she held a grudge against her mom, and refused to talk to her, and she left her mom in the dark because her mom didn’t know why Penny was so angry. It’s almost like Penny blamed herself for what happened, but she was projecting that blame onto her mom. I know it’s hard to tell someone a secret like that, but Penny caused her mom so much stress and was just taking her feelings out on her. Other than that, I felt like Penny was selfish and not a good friend to Jude. It was almost like she was emotionless for the entire book, and she didn’t care about anyone’s feelings but her own. I even feel like her feelings for Sam seemed kind of fake, and based solely on weird little idiosyncrasies he had or his looks. 2. Clara from The Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo This book overall was subpar, and a little shallow, but just entertaining enough to keep me reading until the end solely because I wanted to see what would happen. Clara, the main character, really annoyed me. I found her little prank at the beginning of the book to be unnecessary and immature, AND I thought her character arc was a kind of unbelievable. I know that it’s possible for enemies to become friends like her and Rose did, but it seemed sort of unnatural. And her first date with Hamlet made me cringe. He took her to this fancy restaurant just so she could goof off and be immature by throwing food at the other patrons.To be honest, the storyline seemed like a 15- year old Wattpad writer came up with it. NONE of the characters were very complex at all, especially Clara. Nevertheless, I did feel bad for her when she found out the truth about her mom, but not THAT bad, because she had acted like such a brat up until that point. 1. Margo Roth Speigelman from Paper Towns by John Green In the two years since I finished this book, no other character has been able to get on my nerves like Margo Roth Spiegelman did. Margo was definitely one of the reasons why this book was so unbearable to read (for me at least). I didn’t realize how awful this book was until Part 3, when they skipped their GRADUATION (you know, the ceremony that celebrates how far you’ve come in the past four years, and acknowledges all your hard work in high school? The one where you get your diploma? Yeah, that one) to go after Margo. They literally drive for hours and hours to find her squatting in an abandoned strip mall, living amongst the rats and asbestos and being filled with teen angst because she is (in John Green’s words) “a balloon” and she isn’t content with having two parents that love her, feed her, clothe her, and give her a roof over her head (one without asbestos). And when Quentin sees her he thinks it’s gonna be this big happy reunion where she thanks him profusely for caring enough to find her, but this girl had the audacity to be rude to Quentin and his friends, who spent countless HOURS that they will never get back trying to track her down after she left all of those cryptic clues. Quentin’s friends (who have at least one ounce of sense) leave after she blows them off, but Quentin stays, still hopeful that he’ll get his thank you kiss for coming to rescue her. And yes, after she explains her obsession with “paper towns” and opens up to him about the nonsensical reasons she left home, they kiss. She even invites him to come with her on her on her journey to her next abandoned strip mall, but he finally realizes that she’s kinda crazy, and they part ways at the end of the book. So. All that for nothing. Quentin did all that for a kiss from his ungrateful childhood sweetheart. I could go on and on about Margo and her little paper towns, but I won’t because I think you get the point.
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Just a little observation….
Throughout my 4 (almost 5) years of teenhood, I've read an array of YA Romance novels. Some I loved, some I deemed mediocre, and others I loathed. Despite their quality, all of these novels had something in common. The plot structure. The only thing that changes with each one of these books is the characters and setting, and maybe the endings a little bit. The formula usually goes as follows:
I think it’s interesting how these authors are getting away with writing essentially the exact same story over and over again. Sure, the plot, subplot, setting, and characters may be different, but the “arc” of the relationship is always the same. This past summer, I finally finished Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice, a book I had kept picking up and putting down for the last few months. Honestly, the main reason I read the book was because I was curious about the movie. I can’t even remember how I heard about it. I think I was on goodreads or something and I saw a list of books everyone should read before they die, and I’m pretty sure that book was on it. I read the synopsis and I was intrigued, so I tracked it down at 2nd and Charles. After that, it sat on my shelf for a couple of weeks, because I couldn’t find time to get into it. But once I did, I couldn’t put it down. Sure, it was a little tough to get through some parts, but for the most part, it was a great book.
There was only one problem: I had no way of watching the movie. It came out in 1995 and doesn’t regularly air on television. It’s not on Netflix, or Hulu, or any of those free movie sites with a ton of pop up ads. Then, miraculously, I found out it was going to be playing on a movie channel ONCE at midnight on a weekday in July. I had no idea why it was coming on like this out of the blue, but I recorded it and watched it when I finished the book, and I wasn't disappointed. I thought it was going to be really scary and gory, but it wasn't at all. I guess some people—like Oprah, who left the theater 5 minutes in when she saw it at the premiere—might think it is, but it wasn’t all that disturbing to me. There were only a few differences between the book and the movie. The first, most obvious difference was probably the most detrimental. In the book, Louis’ brother’s death causes his depression and ultimately leads him to accept Lestat’s offer to become a vampire. In the movie, that whole situation is glossed over and Louis’ brother becomes his wife, who died in childbirth. It’s mentioned really quickly at the beginning of the movie, and then never touched on again, when in reality, the death of his brother haunts Louis for the rest of the book. Similarly, Lestat’s blind father is never mentioned, and in the book, he was an important symbol of the humanity Lestat once possessed. Also, they kind of skipped over the part where Claudia and Louis are traveling all over Europe and they encounter mindless vampires that are more like zombies, who try to kill them. The movie just says they didn’t find any other vampires in Europe, until Louis meets Santiago in France. Also, after the fire at the theater, the movie suggests that Louis wanders the world alone, when in the book, Armand acts as his companion, until Armand finally tells the truth about what happened the night they left Paris and Louis leaves him. In the movie, Louis finds out what happened before he left Europe, and he refuses to spend eternity with Armand. I think my favorite scene in the movie is when Claudia kills Lestat. The special effects made look awfully realistic. Apparently, it was filmed using an animatronic model that would “wither” as Lestat bled out. That’s not even why I like the scene— it’s just performed really well. Kirsten Dunst portrayed Claudia excellently, and she made the character so memorable. Also, they couldn’t have cast a better person than Tom Cruise to play Lestat. He brought the character to life, which must have been a challenge, because he’s the villain that everyone loves to hate, and he’s a character with so many layers. I haven’t compared a book to a movie in a while, so I think I need a new system to rate these with. I’ll give the book a standard rating on a scale of 1-10, and then I’ll judge the movie on the same scale, considering accuracy to the subject material and general overall quality. So I give the book a 7, and I give the movie a 7 as well. Now that we’re all back in school, the freedom to read books that we are actually interested in has mysteriously disappeared. Fortunately, before I started rushing to finish the summer reading assignments that I didn’t do, I found the time to squeeze in just one last interesting book: The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller.
I saw it at the library, read the book jacket, and got it on a whim, and I actually ended up really liking it. The book is about a high school junior named Matt, who longs to run away from the small-minded people in his small town, until his rebellious older sister, Maya, beats him to it. Matt vows to find out what (or who) drove Maya away, even though she assures him that she just needed a break. Matt guesses that the trio of bullies from the soccer team at school hurt her, so he tries to infiltrate their group and figure out what they did. Getting close to them is harder than he thought it would be though, because of Matt’s crush on one of the boys, Tariq (even though Matt suspects he did something horrible to Maya, because he picked her up the night she left). But it doesn’t matterー Matt can block out his feelings for Tariq and find out what happened to his sister using the superpowers he gets from starving himself. Yes, that’s right, skipping meals gives Matt a sixth sense, or so he thinks. In fact, he’s so good at it that he decides to write a guide to doing it, which he calls The Art of Starving. Because Matt believes that eating food makes him less sharp and alert, he avoids eating at all costs, and his mom grows suspicious, so Matt has to come up with creative ways to get rid of his food at mealtimes. As Matt gets weaker and weaker, he gets closer to finding out what actually went down the night his sister left, but another huge secret blindsides him in the process. That’s pretty much the most I can tell you without spoiling the entire thing. It was a really great book, and even though the tone of it was mostly melancholy, there were a lot of funny parts. The book is written in Matt’s perspective, and he is an excellent narrator. He’s so self aware and observant. When Matt first discovered his “powers” I thought the whole book was getting a little crazy, but I think that that was his way of coping with the fact that he felt abandoned by his sister, and perhaps the hallucinations he was having were from undernourishment? If you look at it that way, the whole thing makes sense, but the information he’s able to gain from having the powers, and the way that others are able to notice the effects of them, confuses me. I think this was the author’s intent, because in the end, even Matt is confused about the whole thing. Anyways, this book was good, and I didn’t hate the ending as much as I usually do, because I guess I understand why the author did what he did. If you want to know what I’m talking about, I suggest you go read it, because I honestly couldn’t put it down. Rating: 8 (1 is the worst, 10 is the best) Check it out on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25978892-the-art-of-starving?from_search=true Last week I read Say No to the Bro by Kat Helgeson. It was recommended to me by a friend at a time where I really needed something to read, so I got it from the school library.
The book is basically about Ava Vanguard, a girl who moves to a new school during her senior year after her dad is offered a job as a football coach at his old high school. All she wants to do is fly under the radar and breeze through her senior year, but because this is a YA fiction novel, nothing can ever go according to plan. Our other main character is Mark Palmer, your typical all-american boy. The star quarterback of the football team at Ava’s new school who is headed for Notre Dame next year. Obviously, those two meet and start dating, but their relationship becomes complicated due to the Prom Bowl, an annual event where the 15 hottest girls in school are auctioned off to the highest bidder as prom dates, to “raise money.” Yes, you read that correctly. A human auction. Hold on. It gets worse. (Oh and I’ll probably include spoilers in this review because it’s kind of necessary, so if you don’t wanna know what happens just stop reading here and I’ll go ahead and tell you not to read this book. But if it sounds like something you’re interested in, by all means, go and read it. I usually try not to spoil things incase you wanna read them, but in this case I didn't care for the book that much and I don’t want you to waste your time like I did. See how nice I am?) Ava is drafted into the Prom Bowl as a “Wild Card”ーbasically that one not-so-attractive girl who gets thrown in just for laughs. What self respecting person wants to be involved in something so shallow and, arguably, misogynistic? So, predictably, Ava tries to get out of it, but guess what? Mark and his best friend Cody are basically running the whole thing. And when Ava asks her Dad if she can back out, he tells her it’s a tradition and that she needs to just participate and not stir up trouble or throw the competition. Meanwhile, Mark wants to take Ava to prom, but he is broke and can’t really bid on her, so he decides to ruin her chances of being bid on by someone else by sabotaging her at each of the Prom Bowl’s events throughout the school year. The first two events are not that badー a talent show and a fashion show (at the former, Mark arranges for the lights to shut off during Ava’s performance, and at the latter, he has someone poor a slushie on her dress). But the third event was downright insane. All of the remaining girls (Ava included, I don’t know how she lasted that long) were invited to a “Girls Gone Wild Party.” The girls are forced to drink alcohol at an unhealthy rate, make out with each other, and strip, all for the entertainment of the entire male population at their school. While Ava is taking her clothes off against her will (because she considers it better than chugging beer or kissing her competitors), Mark is nowhere to be found, so he doesn’t step in and save her. The insane mob of boys ends up pulling her clothes off for her, which is deeply disturbing.Things get pretty wild (see what I did there?) when one girl hits her head because she drank too much beer and the cops show up. Mark is scared of losing his scholarship, so after he miraculously reappears, he and Ava dip, even though she insists that they should stay with the unconcious girl and wait for the ambulance to arrive. When everyone returns to school and news about the incident spreads, administration gets suspicious as to who facilitated the party and what really went on. Mark and Ava feel really guilty, even though nothing can be traced back to them, and, technically they are not responsible for that girl almost dying or throwing the party. Also, neither of them drank at the party, so they really have nothing to worry about. Nevertheless, they both feel a strong urge to turn themselves in. I know it’s good to be honest and everything, but what they did was stupid. They went to the principal together and said that they were at the party but they didn't drink. Ofcourse, she didn't believe them, and they were both suspended for something they didn't do because they felt like they deserved. And this stupidity causes Mark to lose his scholarship. In the end, Prom gets cancelled and everyone hates Ava for some reason (these kids care SO much about prom). Some of the kids meet up at the park on what was supposed to be their prom night, and even though they basically broke up and are about to go to seperate colleges, Ava and Mark dance together or whatever, and that’s how it ends. In conclusion, this book was pretty unrealistic and stereotypical. I cannot believe I wasted time reading it, and I also can’t believe I wasted time writing this review, but then again I feel like it’s my duty to warn whoever visits this blog about books they should never read. Rating: 4 This week I read Dear Martin by Nic Stone. It’s on the HRRB list for next year, and it’s the first one I’ve read so far.
Dear Martin follows 17- year old Justyce McAllister as he navigates his senior year at Braselton Prep in Atlanta, GA. Throughout the year Justyce writes letters to Martin Luther King Jr. as a part of his “Be Like Martin Project”. Justyce started the project with the intent of finding a way to deal with the racial tension and racial profiling he experiences at his predominantly white school. Justyce feel like an outsider at Bras Prepー he is one of 8 black kids in the entire school; and the full scholarship he received to attend after middle school makes him an outcast in his neighborhood too. After being arrested by a white police officer despite his innocence, Justyce becomes fed up with the injustice (get it?) and tries to open the eyes of those around him and find ways to change his community by bettering himself. That’s kind of all I can tell you. This book was a page turner and it was considerably short, so I finished it in two days. But, you probably already know what I’m gonna say next: I didn’t like the ending. Only this time, not only did I feel like I should have gotten more, I felt cheated. I felt like the characters got cheated, if you read it, you’ll understand why. Other than that, this book was enjoyable and its topics are very timely. I give Dear Martin an 8.5 on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the worst, and 10 being the best. 3/19/19
Over the past few weeks I have been reading Emergency Contact by Mary H.K Choi. It was on my To-read list for this year, and I was very excited to read it when I received it as a gift for Christmas. As you can probably tell from the title, it is a romance novel, but after finishing it, I honestly don’t think it deserves such a generic label. The book’s two main characters are Penny and Sam. Penny is straight-laced, straight A student starting her freshman year of college; she longs to get away from her “immature” (Penny’s words, not mine) single mother and start perfecting her writing skills. Sam is a twenty something (I actually forgot his age, I think he’s like 21 or something) aspiring film director. After becoming estranged from his mother, he starts to live and work in a coffee shop near the local university (hmmm…. I wonder if the other main character attends that very same university…). He is working to put himself through film school, and is still hung up on his ex girlfriend, despite their toxic relationship. By a strange turn of events, Sam and Penny meet and begin texting, and they fall in love (or do they?) and you get the rest and blah blah blah. Sorry if I’m being vague, but I don’t want to give too much away, and almost every detail is a spoiler somehow. Honestly, I just finished this book last night, and I can’t say I was totally blown away by it. And that’s okayー I won’t love every single book I read. Don’t get me wrong though. I liked it, but just not as much as I thought I would. One thing this book excelled at was breaking away from being just another YA romance novel. In some ways, it felt more mature and realistic. I also liked that everything wasn’t perfect. The characters said the wrong things at the wrong times, felt self conscious, and showed real growth at the end. Their imperfections were perfectly imperfect, if that makes any sense. And of course, I HATED how it ended. I mean, it was nice, but I wanted more, as usual. So many questions I had were unanswered. Looking back though, I realized that leaving some things up in the air like that makes it more realistic. In real life, not every loose end will always get tied up. Also, everyone knows that adding more sappy fluff at the end ruins the book’s overall vibe. Even so, I was still LIVID when I turned the last page and saw the acknowledgements. That always irks me. I think I’m gonna start rating each book I review in some capacity, to give you a better I de3a of what I think of it. So I’m giving Emergency Contact a 6.7 on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the worst, 10 being the best. 2/28/19 I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, but when I read a book, I like to cast actors for each character. I try to think of a famous person from a TV show or a movie that I like, and I imagine them playing the role of a certain character. I know it sounds weird, but when you read as much as I do, it’s nice to keep your thoughts in order that way. It makes it more like your own personal movie, where the author writes the script but you get to cast the characters according to their descriptions in the book. Anyway, while I enjoy my own interpretation of a book, sometimes I’m curious to see what Hollywood’s interpretation might look like. Here are 3 books I hope get turned into movies soon, with my preferences for casting and stuff included: 1. The Selection Series by Kiera Cass I love this series. I recently read the whole thing for the second time, and I loved it even more. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s basically a dystopian, royal version of The Bachelor/Bachelorette, complete with petty rivalries, public unrest due to a negligent monarchy, extremely complicated love triangles, a caste system, and teary eliminations on every page. Okay, so maybe not on every page, but with 30+ contestants to choose from, you’ve gotta do mass eliminations, and there will be tears. I really want to see this book become a movie because I feel like they could do so much with it (if they cast it right) and it has such a loyal fanbase. It almost became a CW (the network that brought us The Vampire Diaries and The Carie Diaries, two of my favorite shows) series a few years back, but it didn’t work out. I think someone already bought the rights for it, and I heard it was coming, but I don’t know if that’s true. All I know is, that when it does come out eventually, they better not mess it up. Cast preferences: I honestly don’t know who they should cast as America, the main character, but I want her to be a natural redhead because America’s red hair in the books is iconic! 2. Scythe by Neal Schusterman Ya’ll are probably sick of me talking about this book, but if you read it, you’ll understand why. It is hands down one of the best books I have read in a while, and it has so much potential to be an amazing movie. I did a little digging and found out that Universal already has the rights to Scythe. In fact, they had them before the book was even published in 2016. There is no information on who the cast or the director is yet, but the fact that Universal is doing it is comforting. I am 80% sure they will do it justice, so we’ll see! Cast preferences: I always imagined Elle Fanning as Citra, but I’m pretty open to anyone being in this cast (as long as they’re good) 3. The Program by Suzanne Young I. Love. This. Book. I could talk about it all day. It was so clever and well written. It's a little morbid though, because it is set in a world where suicide has become an epidemic that targets teens. In order to prevent this, teens who attempt suicide or look even the slightest bit depressed are removed from society and placed into The Program. In The Program, patients go to therapy sessions where they are encouraged to talk about the events from their past that triggered their depression. Afterwards, they take a pill that slowly deteriorates their memories of those events until they are completely forgotten. Basically, teenagers live in a pressure cooker, because they can't show any emotion unless it's happiness and they are constantly being watched; your parents will turn you over to The Program if they see you cry, because they would rather you forget everything than die. It's a page turner and I really hope they make it a movie soon, but there is currently no news on whether or not it will happen. Cast preferences: I don't really know, but something tells me that if they make this movie, I probably won't like the cast. They need to be really convincing actors because this book is very dramatic. You may be wondering: Where do you keep your books? What does your bookshelf look like? What’s in your personal collection? (You probably don’t care but I’m going to tell you anyway.) I actually just got this tall bookshelf from Ikea in January. Before that I had this really small one, and I kept alot of my books in another room. Here are 5 things on my bookshelf right now:
Last week I finished my first book of 2019, The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach (I started some books in 2018 and finished them in 2019, but this is the first book I started and finished this year). I saw it in the library at school in early December but I waited until after the HRRB competition to read it. This book came out in 2016, so it isn’t very new, and probably not hard to find. In the reviews, it was compared to The Fault in Our Stars. If you have read my review of Paper Towns, then you can probably guess how I felt about that. After finishing the book, I agreed that it had some comparisons to The Fault in Our Stars, but I decided that I liked it way more than that book.
Anyways, here is the premise: 18 year old Ivan Isaenko has spent his entire life at the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children in Belarus. He was left there as an infant and has never known who his parents are. To make matters worse, Ivan was born with one arm and three fingers (though it is not explicitly stated, the audience can infer that Ivan’s lack of limbs is a result of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster a year before his birth). Compared to his non-verbal peers at the hospital (whom Ivan refers to as mutants) Ivan is the most lively, and he often finds himself craving intellectual conversation. The only person that fulfills this need is Nurse Natalya, who brings him books and has cared for him since he was a baby. Nothing ever changes at the hospital, and Ivan would know, because Ivan knows everything about everyone and everything there. That is, until Polina, a klepto cancer patient, arrives with a ticking timer on her existence. The two bond and eventually fall in love in the days leading up to her death. And no, that is not a spoiler— on the very first page of the book Ivan says Polina is dead, and then he relays their last days together. I actually really like how it was set up, because you know Polina is going to die before Ivan even introduces her, because he is writing what happened after it happened. The story is told from Ivan’s point of view— he is a very funny and straightforward narrator, and I enjoyed his description and vast knowledge of the hospital. Apparently (and I say apparently because I am still quite unsure, and I will explain why) Ivan is a real person, and this book was a translation of his writings from his time at the hospital (at least that’s what it says in the author’s note). To be honest, this makes the book that much more intriguing. The thing that made me say “apparently” before was the fact that when I googled ‘Ivan Isaenko’, I didn’t find anything. Perhaps Ivan Isaenko is a fake name used to protect his privacy, but certain details in the book make me highly doubt that. Nonetheless, Ivan and Polina’s love story is surprisingly raw. Stambach does not omit the awkward moments in their relationship, nor does he romanticize their initial interactions in a “it-was-love-at-first-sight” kind of way. Then again, maybe this is because the story is told by Ivan himself, and he is truthful to a fault and unbelievably frank. Overall, this book was captivating, shocking, and kind of funny too. Although it documents a dying girl’s scattered emotions as she tries to make sense of her place in the world, its truths about the meaning of life and love leave the reader with a smile on her face, even if there are tears in her eyes. (By ‘her’ I don’t meant me, because I actually didn’t cry this time!) |
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