Showing posts with label Rainbow Rowell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rainbow Rowell. Show all posts

Monday, January 12, 2015

book reviews: Sense and Sensibility and Attachments

My first review of this year is about the last books I read in 2014: Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen and Attachments by Rainbow Rowell.


Sense and Sensibility is the first book I read by  Jane Austen, this famous author that I was planning to read for since I watched the movie: "The Jane Austen book club". (I love this movie so much).
Back to the book, Sense and Sensibility is a romantic fiction book, that follows the life and loves of the Dashwood sisters: Elinor and Marianne. Elinor represents the sense in the book, while Marianne represents the sensibility.
Reading classics is always difficult for me, the only thing that helped me with this book was the dialogue, I wished there was more of it. 
On the whole, I was glad that I made it and finished reading this book. I'm planning to read another book by Jane Austen this year, I need to find out why people like and admire her writing so much.    

Now to Attachments by Rainbow Rowell.


Attachments is the third book I read by Rainbow Rowell, and again I wasn't disappointed, I liked this book as much as Fangirl and Eleanor and Park
So Attachments is a contemporary book, the story is set in the late 90s about this guy called Lincoln who fell in love with a women just by reading her e-mails and so he tries to confess his love to her. 
I enjoyed so much this book, the story was cute and funny, the only thing I didn't like was the ending, I felt it was so rushed just like the ending of  Fangirl

Those were my last books for 2014, I wish this year would be full of good books too. 

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Book reviews :Will Grayson,Will Grayson-Eleanor and Park


In this post I’ll be reviewing books written by two of my favorite young adult authors, Rainbow Rowell and John Green.
Let’s start with John Green:

                       

So Will Grayson, Will Grayson is the third book I read by John Green, after Looking for Alaska and The fault in our stars, and my first book by David Levithan. The book is collaboration between the two writers. 
The story has two main characters, there is John Green’s Will Grayson which is the narrator of the odd-numbered chapters, I liked him best because of his genius two rules, we, him and I, kind of have the same principles in life, kind of, and there is David Levithan’s Will Grayson the narrator of the even-numbered chapters, which I thought was mean but I changed my opinion on him after I got to know him better through the book. I picked this book basically because I wanted to know more about the books written by John Green. 
Before starting reading I didn’t check any reviews on the book in the internet, the thing that I normally don’t do, and I didn’t know that there was two narrators, which was so confusing at first, I didn’t recognize there was two Will Graysons until the meeting of the two in that weird shop, I kind of felt stupid it was obvious that they were different personalities, they lived in different places, and had different friends. The weird thing was that I lost all interest in finishing the book after that the things became clear to me; I don’t know how I managed to finish it? 
I think the main reason for my sudden disinterest in the story was that the it become all around Tiny (Tiny Cooper is the best friend of John Green’s Will and the love interest of David Levithan’s Will.) and the two Wills become secondary characters, they were still narrators but Tiny was all they were talking about, and things become not that interesting for me to follow, that’s when I noticed that the same thing happened to me when Alaska died in Looking for Alaska  and when August died in The fault in our stars those two events made me care less about how the books will end, I don’t regret reading all those books I enjoyed reading them, it’s just that the end of the three books was not as fun or as interesting as the beginning of them.

I liked this fanart about Will Grayson, Will Grayson so I wanted to share it:




The second book I read is Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell:

                        

I loved so much Fangirl my first book by Rainbow Rowell, I couldn’t help not to read another book by her, so I picked Eleanor and Park and I wasn’t disappointed, I loved it so much.
The book tells the love story of those two high school students, park: a cute Asian boy (he is half Korean), and Eleanor: the new girl at his school. They met at the bus school when Eleanor sits next to Park, I loved how slowly their relationship develops and how they discover their mutual love for comics and music, I loved how awkward they felt around each other. There are other aspects that made this book so interesting:
1. The story takes place in 1986, with no cell phones or internet, if they wanted to talk they needed to meet, and because of Eleanor's family that wasn’t easy.
2. The narrator speaks from the point of view of both protagonists which gives a full vision of what they both felt.
3. The characters were so real, they dealt with the some big issues, they made me realize that there are poor people also living in America.

For me the book was perfect, beside the little shock in the end. the end of the book was so confusing for me, I’m not a native english speaker and my level in English is modest, so I kept rereading the last chapter thinking maybe I missed something ,or maybe I didn’t understand the meaning well, or my version of the book is not complete, but no that was the ending, and after some thinking the love story between Eleanor and Park  did end.
Eleanor took the decision of sending a postcard to park after a year of not answering his letters, for me that was an end to their love story maybe happy, maybe sad we don’t know it was up to what Eleanor wrote on that postcard and how Park would react to it, but what did upset me was that I wanted to know what happened to Eleanor’s family; her mom, her sister, her brothers what happened to hers stepdad ( I really wanted him to end up in jail), I wanted to know more about Park's parents, their story especially his mom's story (actually I liked Park’s parents more than I liked Park). well all in all I wasn’t prepared to this kind of end, which made me sad but that didn’t stop me from reading another book by Rainbow Rowell because I just love her writing.

I think as I made it clear I’m done with reading for John Green, maybe in the far future I will think about reading again for him, as for Rainbow Rowell I will not feel happy until I finish reading all of the books she ever wrote.