Trump Goes to Dover to Receive America's Fallen from Syria Suicide Blast
Trump Goes to Dover to Receive America’s Fallen from Syria Suicide Blast
Four Americans were killed in Manbij, Syria when a suicide bomber detonated his vest near a restaurant. At least 16 people were killed in the blast. The four Americans have been identified. On Saturday, President Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan traveled to Dover, Delaware to meet with the families of the fallen and honor them during the dignified…
Every You, Every Me by David Levithan & Jonathan Farmer
Rating: 4/5
"When you say someone looks ‘haunted,’ it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the ghost or about the person who’s seen the ghost.”
A haunting, mysterious book that explores the hazardous nature of being a teenager with a mentally ill friend. I loved the format of the chapters with the comments struck through and the integration of the photos. An innovative way to tell a difficult story.
Jonathan Farmer reviews Carl Phillips’ latest collection
“But Phillips insists on registering the cost of going so far—and that choice dramatizes, in turn, the forces that compel us to incur the cost nonetheless. The world of beauty he moves into is frequently self-destructive or destructive of others. He consistently finds loveliness in things like fog and ruins, sites of damage or effacement that seem to glorify what’s been erased.”
Read the entire review here. Carl Phillips’ Reconnaissance is available here.
Today I finished the book Ever You, Every Me by David Levithan there are also photos in this book that help move the story along the photography by Jonathan Farmer. When I first started reading this book I was kinda confused about one of the main characters Ariel. The relationship between Ariel and Evan I can relate to kind of. But not as serious I can relate to Evan when he started to fall apart when he lost his best friend and his love. But Evan starts to find photos in his locker and places he goes to often the some are photos of him some of Ariel and some of both of them this begins to drive him crazy he doesn't know who to talk to so he talks to Ariels ex-boyfriend jack he was also getting photos and it was upsetting so they go on the hunt for the photographer.
This is a really good book and is an easy read but has a lot of the word slash out thingys. It is from Evans point of view. Some moments he is on the verge of a metal breakdown sometimes he is having one. Read it maybe. Recommendation are accepted. Please recommend books to me.
Every You, Every Me by David Levithan & Jonathan Farmer: A Review
“You don't know me. You know one me, just like I know one you. And you can't know every me, and I can't know every you.”
'ello everyone, it's Talia again! Back with my bookathon list :)
just to clarify, I read Fangirl and I'll Give You The Sun before this, and they were so amazing that I can't write a review b/c i'd be hella prejudiced and give the book like a bajillion zillion stars or something along the line
OKE. Back to business of the book review. This is a really short book, but it's very, should I say, intense? Like its by no means gripping-edge-of-seat intense, but in the im-at-the-edge-of-sanity kind of intense.
It was a mess of a book that I gave 3.9 stars to.
so as usual, here's the blurb:
In this high school-set psychological tale, a tormented teen named Evan starts to discover a series of unnerving photographs—some of which feature him. Someone is stalking him . . . messing with him . . . threatening him. Worse, ever since his best friend Ariel has been gone, he's been unable to sleep, spending night after night torturing himself for his role in her absence. And as crazy as it sounds, Evan's starting to believe it's Ariel that's behind all of this, punishing him. But the more Evan starts to unravel the mystery, the more his paranoia and insomnia amplify, and the more he starts to unravel himself. Creatively told with black-and-white photos interspersed between the text so the reader can see the photos that are so unnerving to Evan, Every You, Every Me is a one-of-a-kind departure from a one-of-a-kind author.
Thanks for the blurb, Goodreads. And oh yes, this is a photographic novel.
Ready? Let's roll!
let me start out with this literary device that this book employs.
while this exact technique made shatter me annoying, it makes Every Me, Every You a confusing, mind blowing mess.
The protagonist, Evan, is probably depressed. He's very eccentric, and he keeps striking out his thoughts and replacing them with a more acceptable, less depressed, less guilt ridden words that he probably presents to other people. The strikethrough gets really annoying and headache-y at times (a lot of times) , but it serves to show how confused Evan is, how guilty he feels.
Now, the best friend they were talking about. This girl named Ariel.
She's psychotic, obviously, and so is Dana (we'll get back to Dana later). She's not well. She wants to die, but she also wants Evan to save her, and when he does, she gets angry at him. Talk about being bipolar.
I don't mean psychotic in the insult sense, but she is probably diagnosed with some kind of a mental illness, being bipolar for one, maybe a schizo the other.
The thing is, we're not even sure what happened to Ariel until like after the halfway point. Did she suicide? Did she just disappear? (she was taken to a mental facility)
Maybe it's just me, but Ariel is like poison to Evan. He loves her, but he's not in love with her per her request. She's like toxic to everybody around her in one of her moods. She'd say hurtful things and all and, i dont know , she disturbs me. Even more than Evan does.
Jack, is an asshole. He doesn't seem like he cares at all, like his life is just peachy. Reading from Evan's perspective makes Jack seem like a total asshole, but if you look at it from a normal perspective, he's exactly like how most of us would react. We'd try to forget and move on. So I guess I could say that he's excused?
Dana, there's something wrong with Dana. She feels as if she should avenge Ariel being taken away, because Ariel was her best friend and they understood each other.
I wonder if it's all in her head, or does she get high off Ariel's pain and confusion. But Dana does all these things with the creepy photographs and emails and she's such a creep and her motive is shitty and i dont even know how the hell she went unnoticed for so long but eh
Katie just pops into the story out of nowhere, like Levithan decided he needs more character, but she serves her purpose well, just that she wasn't in the story since the beginning and one does wonder why would she want to help Evan and Jack.
The plot was brilliant up until the ending. It was so anticlimatic. I half expected it to be Ariel herself, or something more, i don't know, epic. (however anticlimatic that was, it can never be as anticlimatic as the Blood of Olympus, it was such a let down honestly-sorry, getting off track here)
The pacing was average. It wasn't fast but there were a lot of times that it felt too slow. Sometimes Evan's entire chapter was stroked through and that was really hard to read and all and sometimes his inner monologue, though interesting and quite intriguing, was too much.
All in all, it's a good, intense book, but didn't quite live up to his other works ( I only read Everyday, so my judgment might be a little off)
I changed my mind I give this book a 3.7, just for the anticlimatic ending.
"I wondered if we all just kept changing, or splitting off. I wondered if I didn't meet anyone new, if I didn't talk to anyone else, would I stay the same me?"
