About Books Blog 17: Prom

Author: Laurie Halse Anderson

Genre: Young Adult

Favorite Line

"Something is always broken. Most things can be fixed."

Summary

Ashley Hannigan could care less about prom. However, the rest of her urban high school is bending over backward to make it the perfect night. Including Ashley's best friend Natalia, who heads the prom committee. When the schools faculty advisor gets busted for stealing the prom money, the hopes of the students are crushed. Natalia ropes Ashley into saving the school's most magical night out of absolutely nothing. Can prom be saved? With the help of Ashley's friends and family perhaps it can.

What I Thought Of This Book

Prom was a fun, funny, fast read. The lead character Ashley had a since of humor that is similar to mine. Her family was wacky in an adorable way. Her friend Natalia's grandmother cracked me up. I think the only character I disliked was Ashley's boyfriend. I kept hoping that she would dump him.

The best thing about the book is how Anderson set up these great hilarious scenes with groups of characters. It gave you the feeling that you were in one of those great 80's coming of age films. Even though the book isn't remotely set in the 80's, it still gave me a Pretty In Pink meets Sixteen Candles meets Cinderella vibe.

I loved that the book was comprised of very short chapters. It made it not only easy to read, but easy to find time to read. I didn't have to worry about if I could finish a chapter before I had to work on something else. 

Prom left me with the feeling that all the Laurie Halse Anderson books I've read do. I felt all warm and fuzzy after finishing it. Her books always make me say, "Everything is going to be okay in the end. Even if you have to go through trials and tribulation to get to that point." This is why Laurie Halse Anderson is one of my favorite YA writers. I have a goal to read all her books. However, that has yet to happen, because every time I get close to reading most of them she seems to write a new book. Haha.

Facts I Found Interesting

Darn there are absolutely no interesting facts for this book. I looked and looked. Oh well, just know that the book is plenty interesting.

The Movie

No movie yet. I bet you could make a pretty adorable film out of it. It would probably be wacky fun.

Music To By

Favorite Albums

Sadly, I didn't listen to a lot of albums while reading this one. I was going through a short phase where I just wanted to read in silence. I did listen to Volume 1 and 2 of the Glee Soundtrack near the end of the book. I think that would have been my favorite albums, even if I had listened to tons of music. First of all Glee is set in a high school. Thus, it is perfect for stories about high school students. Secondly, it has several songs that center around working together and staying strong when facing adversity. Which is exactly what Ashley, her friends, and family needed to pull off this prom.

On another music related note. The author stated in her acknowledgments that she listened to Beethoven, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, Eminem, Norah Jones, and Sting while writing Prom. Well, there was the interesting fact I was looking for earlier.

Prom Playlist

Basket Case - Green Day

A Little Help From My Friends - Across The Universe Cast

Lean On Me - Glee Cast

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - Cyndi Lauper

Let Go - Frou Frou

He Wasn't - Avril Lavigne

Jump - Madonna

Dancing With Myself - Billy Idol

Brothers and Sisters - Coldplay

Let's Dance - David Bowie

You Can't Always Get What You Want - Glee Cast

My Prom review as promised. I'm actually not sure what book I'm going to do next. I'm not sure which book I'm going to finish first. I'm thinking it's going to be Scarlett, but we shall see.

Book Talk

Well, I had to cancel dance classes tonight because of snow. It's weird sitting at home when I would normally be teaching or driving home from work. This little break has left me very relaxed. Thus, I thought I'd use my relaxed state to blog a bit.

I've been wanting to talk about my adventure into reading more than one book at the same time. I said once that I preferred to read one book at the time. As soon as I said that I wondered why that was. I decided to try reading a couple books at once and see what happened.

What inspired me to try it at this time was the fact that I'm reading The Stand. While the book is turning out to be awesome, the hard back extended version is rather cumbersome to carry around. It got rather heavy in my dance bag/purse. So when I bought the novel Scarlett I thought I use that as my travel book, and leave The Stand at home to read. After that I got the opportunity from Red Telephone Books, to read a review copy of a YA/Sci-Fi novel called The Prophesy. So I am currently reading 3 books. Technically, I'm reading 4 because I occasionally read a bit of New Moon now and then.

I've found that I like reading multiple books. You get to exposed to more than one genre at once. Which is awesome. Have you ever found that when you read several books in the same genre it becomes difficult to enter another? When your reading more than one book you don't get that problem.You can also change books, when you want to look at some different characters, or you hit a slow point in the story.

Well that's all folks. Wait no it's not. I was thinking I'd like some suggestions for book related blog posts I can do between reviews. I'd like to post more often, but I'm just short on ideas of what to do. Does any one have any ideas? Thanks. Oh yeah, one more thing. I might be able to get my Prom review out this weekend. Yes! Stay shiny all!

Short Dramatic Rant

Okay, I just had to rant right now. I had to set my blog comments on approval, because someone kept putting inappropriate and porn type links in my comments. This so upsets me. Some people just have no respect. That's all I really have to say. I know this isn't book related at all, but I just had to rant about how much this bothered me. Grr! 

About Books Blog 16: Hannibal Rising

Author: Thomas Harris
Genre: Suspense

Favorite Line

"Hannibal had entered his heart's long winter. He slept soundly, and was not visited by dreams as humans are."

Summary

I'm using the one on the back of the book. I just don't think I could summarize this one well.

Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck. He seems utterly alone, but he has brought with his demons with him.

Hannibal's uncle, a noted painter, finds him in a Soviet orphanage and brings him to France, where Hannibal will live with his uncle's beautiful and exotic wife, Lady Murasaki.

Lady Murasaki helps Hannibal to heal. With her help he flourishes, becoming the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France.

But Hannibal's demons visit him and torment him. When he is old enough, he visits them in turn.

He discovers he has gifts beyond the academic, and in the epiphany, Hannibal Lecter becomes death's prodigy.

What I Thought Of This Book

I know what you're thinking. The girl who in her last review complained about the amount of cursing, decides that the next book she should read is Hannibal Rising. A book about the early years of Hannibal Lecter, a psychopathic, cannibalistic, serial killer. What can I say. I'm random that way.

As much as I had wanted to read this book, I wanted to avoid it. That fact is, you have to be in the mood to read about the lives of fictional serial killers. Most of my concern came from glimpses of Hannibal's early life supplied by Thomas Harris' novel Hannibal. I knew from reading Hannibal, that Lecter's younger sister, Misha, met with an extremely unfortunate death. I was not particularly anxious to read about Misha's death, or any descriptions of cannibalism. You'll be glad to know that neither of these things are graphically described. All things referring to cannibalism are only implied. Thank goodness for that.

Your probably wondering why I even read the novel if I was so wary of it. Well, the answer is Thomas Harris. I love Thomas Harris' writing style, and have read almost all of his books. He has a way of describing thoughts, emotions, and small details that amaze me by being both simple yet complex. He comes up with interesting character quirks, and his books always have exciting action sequences.

Even though I knew I would like the writing style, I was surprised at how much I truly enjoyed the book. I don't know what I really expected the novel to be, but I didn't think it was going to be such a great revenge thriller. I really got wrapped up the journey Hannibal takes to exact revenge on his sister's murders. I don't condone revenge in real life, but it is a exciting story element for fictional people.

I think another reason why it appealed to me, was because I find what makes serial killers tick a subject of interest. I'm totally into psychological profiler and true crime shows. I've aways considered Hannibal Lector a rather interesting character. Thus, I found it intriguing how Harris explained the way his mind worked.

The author also was actually able to make you almost feel for Hannibal and root for him. I know that sounds weird, but is a little sad. I mean eight year old Hannibal Lecter was a child prodigy, who loved his little sister, and loved animals. He could have grown up to be a fairly decent Lithuanian Count if not for his unfortunate childhood trauma. If you've read many of these types of stories you'll know, that super genius plus psychological trauma equals well... rather unpleasant things. The dude still deserves to be punished, (which never seems to actually happen in any of the books), but a least you know he wasn't born an evil psychopath.

Overall, It's a great book if you like suspense with murder and mayhem. If you don't like that type of thing, or are squeamish, I'd say it's probably a good idea to stay away from it.

Facts I Found Interesting

You know what I'm going to link you to Wikipedia. The facts I found interesting, don't really make much since if you haven't read any of the previous books involving Hannibal Lector.

Hannibal Rising On Wiki

The Movie

I haven't seen the movie yet. I had the opportunity to once, but choose not to watch it. As I said before, you have to be in the mood for that sort of thing, and I wasn't that day. Plus, I really wanted to read the book first. I'm sure I'll see it eventually. The from the trailer I can gather that movie seems very close to the book. This may be, because the book was allegedly written, only so it could be a base line for the film. The acting, and cinematography seem very well done in the trailer. I read some reviews on IMDb, and many of them spoke well of the film. That's all I can say about it since I haven't actually seen it for myself.

Hannibal Rising Trailer

Music To Read By

Favorite Album

I loved, loved, loved Origin of Symmetry by Muse. Something about the instrumentation fit the mood of the story. I can't explain it. The title of the album also seem to fit in a way. Since Hannibal has a genius caliber mind, the book often refers to mathematics. I think there is also a quote in the book somewhere referring to symmetry.

Hannibal Rising Playlist

Nocturnes: C Sharp Minor- Chopin

Fever Dream - Tyler Bates
New Born - Muse
The Dominoes Fall - Dario Marianelli

Attack - 30 Seconds To Mars
Ghost (Piano Trio) - Beethoven
I'm Looking Through You - The Wallflowers
This Night - Black Lab

Yay! Another review finally. I apparently the holidays and going back to work, threw me off of my update plans. I've had this review on my computer for weeks now. Thank you for your patience with my incredible procrastination.

Next About Books Blog: Prom by Laurie Halse Anderson