#popsugar 2018

[curlyhairedbibliophile]

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas || Book Review

POPSUGAR Reading Challenge | A book with a problem facing society today

Synopsis | Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor black neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil, at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, Khalil’s death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Starr’s best friend at school suggests he may have had it coming. When it becomes clear the police have little interest in investigating the incident, protestors take to the streets and Starr’s neighborhood becomes a war zone. What everyone wants to know is: What really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does - or does not - say could destroy her community. It could also endanger her life.

REVIEW

Once upon a time there was a hazel-eyed boy with dimples. I called him Khalil. The world called him a thug. He lived, but not nearly long enough, and the rest of my life I’ll remember how he died.

Aside from a great twist or premise, I always find myself drawn to books with beautiful or interesting covers. With the sole image of a young black girl holding a sign in a sea of white space, The Hate U Give always drew me in, but it was yet another one of those situations where I promised to come back to it and something always took precedence. I didn’t know much about the story when I heard there would be a movie, but context clues from the cover gave me an inkling so I checked out the trailer when it came across my radar to see if it was something I could get into. The emotion and subject matter left me stunned and I immediately went to the bookstore to get a copy so I could dive right in.

The Hate U - the letter U- Give Little Infants Fucks Everybody. T-H-U-G L-I-F-E. Meaning what society gives us as youth, it bites them in the ass when we wild out.

The thing that stands out to me the most about this story is how real it feels - which makes me wonder in the back of my mind if that’s the reason it took me so long to rip the bandaid off and read it. So much of this is going on the news now in a never-ending somber cycle that it felt as if I was just reading another headline, not living in the pages of a fictional story. The inspiration and connection to Tupac was very clear here, just as it is if you apply it to our current social climate. Reading and watching so many of these stories is both heartbreaking and terrifying; put that together with the exhaustion that then turns into anger when nothing seems to change and you get a lot of the actions portrayed in both this story and real life. I could see everything playing out in my head - the road stop, the court proceedings, and definitely the protests and the aftermath, which were the most triggering of all.

I’ve seen it happen over and over again: a black person gets killed just for being black, and all hell breaks loose. I’ve tweeted RIP hashtags, reblogged pictures on Tumblr, and signed every petition out there. I always said that if I saw it happen to somebody, I would have the loudest voice, making sure the world knew what went down.

Now I am that person, and I’m too afraid to speak.

I felt a strong gravitation to Starr. Having also split time in two environments and being too much of one thing for one and not of enough of one thing for the other, I knew her struggle of not only just trying to find her footing and where she belongs, but struggling with if and when to code-switch and to what degree. It was great to watch her find her voice in all of this and embrace her identity and position. Much like the tragedy and hurt of everything going on around her, everything close to her also felt real. One of the things I loved about Angie Thomas’ writing throughout the course of the story was how grounded it all felt and how much I could relate. Her family unit was painted especially strong, given all of the odds against them, and I really appreciated the smaller moments that provided light breathers in the midst of heavier situations. 

Sometimes you can do everything right and things will still go wrong. The key is to never stop doing right.

As much as I avoided this for fear of the feelings it would bring back up about the current state of things, I’m so glad I finally did. The fact that I had so many emotions but still managed to finish with a feeling of hope is a great testament to what I believe truly works within the pages of this story. Now that I’ve absorbed the full story, I look forward to seeing in brought to life on screen, even if it may slightly change through transference of adaption. This is definitely a story we need, no matter the form, and I’m excited for the new people it attracts.

Rating | 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Goodreads

[caityandcandice]

[the-scarlet-archer]

Caity Lotz witn Candice Patton (via instagram story)

[thereadingtrashqueen]

Ik was Alice - Melanie Benjamin Alice I Have Been

Before I say anything else, I'd like to point out that this book is historical fiction. Fiction.

This means I'm aware that this book isn't 100% factually correct, and it also means that it doesn't have to be. If you want to read a book that is only facts, read a biography. I've seen too many people complain about things that were wrong or made up to not mention this. This review also contains spoilers.

I have so much to say about this book, I apologize for the length of this review.

This book left a huge impression on me, and it's been on my mind constantly since I started reading it. I hadn't intended to finish the book last night when I noticed it was 10pm already and I hadn't read a word yet, but I ended up finishing it anyway as I just could not put it down. The writing is just incredibly good; and I'm saying that about a translation. I cried twice, which is not something I do easily and which is something I definitely did not expect to happen when I picked up this book.

My expectations were simple: Was Carroll really the pervert/paedophile people on the internet make him out to be? How did everything affect Alice?

I discovered Alice was based on an actual Alice when I read the comments about Carroll, and it intrigued me. When a few days later at work (I work at the library) I came across this book, it felt like fate. I read it immediately after Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and I'm glad I did. I think that if I read it the other way around it would have altered my opinion. I want to reread them now with the new knowledge, but I'm in no hurry.

Please note that I am talking about this book and its story as if it were the truth. It just makes it a whole lot easier, but know I am aware of the differences.

I don't know where I stand on Dodgson. I started off feeling incredibly uncomfortable whenever he was around Alice, and how Melanie wrote Alice's thoughts. The photo and how it was taken didn't help matters. But as I read on, and Alice grew older, I started to realize that times were different back then. You can't read this book and judge it by 21st century standards. Rumor has it Dodgson asked for Alice's hand, but nothing has been confirmed, so we don't know. The book also doesn't give an answer to that, but if Alice was 14 or 15 at the time, that would have been perfectly acceptable. And Alice certainly really liked him back, even loved him in her own childlike way. She asked him to wait for her. However, if he asked for her hand when she was younger, that is just not okay. Nor is the creepiness when she was 7, which is the age she always stayed in his mind. To me it's a very dubious situation, which isn't as black and white as people would have you believe.

Technically, he never did anything wrong. Technically. There is a moment at the end where Alice remembers a fateful day in the train, where she kissed him. Should he have pulled away immediately? Probably. But the point of the matter is that she kissed him and not the other way around. In this book, Alice is more of an instigator than Dodgson ever was.

Now, I don't know much about facts, to be honest, and I've read loads of contradicting things. One says the family broke with Dodgson, others say they reconnected after the book came out. This book keeps them apart, which adds to the story, and which in my opinion makes more sense. Melanie incorporated that wonderfully in the story, having Alice look back as she grows older. Said book however, would never have seen the light of day if Alice hadn't insisted on Dodgson writing it down. So no matter where you stand on their relationship, it brought forward an amazing story.

I would have loved to see her collection of first editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, though!

This book focuses on more than just the friendship between these two. After the break, Alice finds herself falling in love with the Prince of Wales; Leopold, who is in turn, falling in love with her as well. I loved this storyline so much, and it broke my heart when the inevitable happened. I heard stories that they didn't even like each other, but I think they were at least friends. Why else would they both name one of their children after the other? Why else would he send her a wedding gift? They must have made a huge impact on each other.

The final part of the book focuses on Alice when she's 'old'. She's married, has three sons, and loses two of them to the Great War. Honestly, she has been through a lot, and it's inspiring to see how she never gave up. In that way, she is exactly like the little Alice we know. I truly felt for her at times.

One small thing that I really enjoyed was when she met the 'real Peter Pan'. Once again I had no idea he was based on a real person, but them meeting is just something so out of this world, that I couldn't help but smile. When I read that Peter committed suicide later in life, after learning he didn't like being the real Peter, and wondered how Alice had done it for so long, my heart broke. There is definitely a downside to these kinds of things that we usually don't think about, don't realize.

I would definitely recommend this book if you are capable of keeping in mind this is historical fiction, and wouldn't mind possibly ending up viewing Alice in Wonderland differently while learning more about her and her life. Otherwise, I'd urge you to skip this one.

[curlyhairedbibliophile]

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness || Book Review

POPSUGAR Reading Challenge | A book made into a movie you’ve already seen

Synopsis | The Monster showed up after midnight. As they do. But it isn’t the monster Conner’s been expecting, the one from the nightmares he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments, the one with the darkness and the wind and the screaming...

This monster is something different, something ancient, something wild. And it wants the truth.

REVIEW

Stories are wild creatures, the monster said. When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?

This was another story that caught my attention from the news of an adaption. I’d seen pieces of the trailer many times at work before I actually sat down and watched it in full. I was drawn to the fantastical atmosphere of the imagery, and I had a fear that the mother-son relationship I’d seen in the clips would be an emotional one (especially for me because I’m extremely close to mine), but there was still enough there to pique my interest in the film. After I’d watched it, and cried my eyes out, I went to the library to find the book, hoping to get more of the same, even if there were the ususal changes that take place when a book goes from page to screen.

Many things that are true feel like a cheat. Kingdoms get the princes they deserve, farmers’ daughters die for no reason, and sometimes witches merit saving. Quite often, actually. You’d be surprised.

I don’t know what took me so long to read this, or why it had never crossed my path until now, but I absolutely loved it - reading Conner’s story broke me just as much as when I watched the movie. It was such a beautifully tragic story about grief and healing, much deeper than I could have ever imagined it to be. I connected so much with Conner’s character, his relationship with his mother and his method of coping with fear and pain. I’ve had so many moments where I felt as if not accepting something as reality would keep it from being so, but having now read and seen Conner’s journey with the Monster’s tales in relation to his own journey with his mother’s illness helped me realize that it does more harm than good, which is a lesson I needed even in my adult age. 

“You be as angry as you need to be,” she said. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not your grandma, not your dad, no one. And if you need to break things, then by God, you break them good and hard.”

As an added bonus - if the stories themselves weren’t enough, the illustrations in this are gorgeous! I’ve always loved the illustrations in the new Harry Potter editions, so having these done by same person was great. They capture the atmosphere of a child and a monster in both the scary and the tragic moments, as well as just adding little ornaments to the pages of an equally beautiful story. I wasn’t expecting them to be mixed in with the story, so they were a nice surprise and another way to help visualize what was happening beyond the words.

“The answer is that it does not matter what you think”, the monster said, “because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times each day. You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.”

After getting the story from the source, I’m definitely going to have to carve out some extra time to watch the movie again and revisit this world and the characters. Even though I’m more than likely going to cry again, it’s a story that I feel needs to be told and experienced, no matter what the age. 

Rating | 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Goodreads

[curlyhairedbibliophile]

Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige || Book Review

POPSUGAR Reading Challenge | A book based on a fairy tale

Synopsis |  I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask to be some kind of hero.

But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado - taking you with it - you have no choice but to go along, you know?

Sure, I've read the books. I've seen the movies. I know the song about the rainbow and the happy little bluebirds. But I never expected Oz to look like this. To be a place where Good Witches can't be trusted, Wicked Witches may just be the good guys, and winged monkeys can be executed for acts of rebellion. There's still a yellow brick road - but even that's crumbling.

What happened?  Dorothy.

They say she found a way to come back to Oz. They say she seized power and the power went to her head. And now no one is safe.

My name is Amy Gumm - and I'm the other girl from Kansas.

I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked.

I've been trained to fight.

And I have a mission. 

Remove the Tin Woodman's heart. Steal the Scarecrow's brain. Take the Lion's courage. And then - Dorothy Must Die.

REVIEW

Down is up, up is down. Good is Wicked, Wicked is Good. The times are changing. This is what Oz has come to.

Fairy tales were some of the first books I read before I started reading harder books on my own. Now that I'm older, I'll still revisit them from time to time, but I also keep my eye out for anything that takes a twist on them while still keeping remnants of the original. I’ve always loved The Wizard of Oz in any capacity, whether it be the original story, the musical from 1939 or The Wiz, so this got my attention from both the concept and the beautifully abstract cover.

I hate to break it to you, but just because someone has pretty hair and good skin tone and a crown instead of a pointy hat doesn't mean she's not the baddest bitch this side of the Emerald City.

I really enjoyed the character changes and worldbuilding in this twisted version of Oz. Having a power hungry Dorothy running Oz into the ground with a now mad scientist Scarecrow, lethal bodied Tin Man, and a beastly Lion on her side really added to the fact that this was not entirely the story we were initially familiar with. This also made room for so many horror movie elements that I appreciated, like the PermaSmiles and reanimated corpses of Dorothy’s prisoners. Everything was described so vividly that I could picture even the tiniest of details in my head - from the animation of Indigo’s tattoos to the draining of color and magic throughout the land. The concept of the roles being reversed combined with the world’s drastic changes really painted the picture of an almost post-apocalyptic environment under Dorothy’s rule, which wasn’t exactly what I was expecting when I started reading, but completely welcomed and accepted by the end.

You’re a long way from Kansas, I know, she said. But there’s more than one kind of home. And you’re right. You are on your own. We all are, and we all have to learn it sooner or later. If you have to be alone, wouldn’t you rather be alone among friends?

The glue to this story for me was probably Amy. From the very beginning and throughout, this whole journey to this alternate Oz played out as a trip of self-exploration for her, going from Salvation Amy from Flat Hill, Kansas to the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked’s savior. I liked watching her grow in strengths as both a warrior and a person, perfecting her new magic skills and learning her worth. With this new found knowledge, I’m excited to see where this takes her as she continues to carry out her mission.

There is a moment in magic. Whether it’s a tiny spell or a big one. There’s a point where you can turn back or you can give yourself over to it—even the most Wicked have to pull back.

Overall, this was a great trip back to the land of Oz. I really enjoyed all of the twists and turns to a story I’ve been fascinated with since childhood. It took me a while to actually find and get into this one, but I can’t wait to see where this story goes next. Hopefully an adaption is made soon or in the future - I would love to see there visuals come to life, whether on a big or small screen.

Rating |  🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 Goodreads

[curlyhairedbibliophile]

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood || Book Review

POPSUGAR Reading Challenge | A book about feminism

Synopsis | Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray the Commander makes her pregnant, because in the age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. 

Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke, when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now...

REVIEW

My name isn’t Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it’s forbidden. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, your name is like your telephone number, useful only to others; but what I tell myself is wrong, it does matter. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I’ll come back to dig up, one day. I think of this name as buried.

I first became aware of this book when the news came out about the series on Hulu. Somehow I’d missed anything by Margaret Atwood in the past, even in school, so I was intrigued to check this out just based on the premise. Although it had moved a few notches higher on my TBR list at the time and I made sure to take note of when the first episodes premiered, I hesitated to start reading because it seemed as if it would feel a little too close to home given everything going on regarding women’s issues politically. After a little back and forth, I finally dove in and gave this a chance.

Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.

Despite my initial reservations, the uneasiness I felt is a big part of what made this a great read. Some moments were hard to take in given the context and the connections my mind made to the present, but I almost think it was written that way to get its point across. At times this read as historical fiction detailing events from the past, while other times it seemed to take place in a future dystopian era - I could never truly get a handle on its point of reference, but in the end that didn’t bother me.  That initial discomfort carried over into worry for the characters’ situations and fear of how/if they would survive.

Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.

Overall, it was still a great read and I look forward to finally diving in to the show. The ending left me wondering about both Offred and the town’s futures so maybe this adaption will be able to expand on that.

Rating |  🌟🌟🌟🌟 Goodreads

[caityandcandice]