Reading on Vacation

As I kept in mind how much I would have to catch up on here, I avoided coming here despite how long it's been since I came back home. The plan had been to enter all the books I read during my trip in one post, which I am doing now.

First up, C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian. Can you guess what movie I went to go see while away from home? One guess is all you'll get.

I dug myself into Scott Westerfield's Uglies series while I had the chance while a couple of the books were available to me. These were the second and third books in the series, Pretties and Specials. I did not find these books all that special. Rather, I liked the first one a great amount more. There's still another in the series I've as of yet to read. Having gone this far in the series, I suppose I'll read it. The books have lost the meaning and messages that I had at first thought mean to much, however. I expect not much pleasure in whatever books come to follow.

Next, a map in the form of a book. I'm serious about this, though. If you're ever wandering around Manhattan, NY as a visitor or tourist, Michael Middleditch's The New York Mapguide, 5th edition really helped me out! I'd have been lost without it, and I really was.

More of Rachel Caine's vampire series. I read book three, Midnight Alley and hoped to pick up the latest, Feast of Fools, but never got the chance to read that one. Another time.

Kleenex time! This next book wasn't like the others. It was very deep and touching. Ginny Rorby's Hurt Go Happy was truely amazing and well written. It brought back some very painful memories to me but it takes a really good book to have someone cry as much as I did when I read it. I'm afraid I can't say much as to the tears without spoiling. I'm definitely going to pick up my own copy someday.

Sort of last but not quite least, Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely. I then jumped into her sequel, Ink Exchange, but time ran out on me. Rather than spending the last day of my trip on a book, I closed it for when I will read it over and finish it someday.

That's it for six weeks of vacation time.

Scott Westerfeld: Uglies

After a month in a half of not really reading and trying to pick up a few different books, I managed to jump into one this week and keep reading. I just finished it earlier today.

After hearing Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series being brought up time and again at work and on LibraryThing, I give it a try. My biggest disappointment is that I didn't buy any of the other books in the series.

Right away I could tell this book takes place somewhere different than our world because of the technology, and in a way, it does. It takes place in the future. We are known as what they refer to as Rusties. There are no more people in the simple way we see it as now. Instead there are Littlies, Uglies, Pretties...

They have some interesting terms (SpagBlo) and devices of technology (crash bracelets), but at the same time it's funny hearing them talk about things from our day (roller coasters) that characters are just as mystified over.

In future, people looking different is done away with. They are all made to look the same, equally pretty, upon their sixteenth birthday. All of one's life, children are brought up to believe they are hideous and ugly, to become beautiful only with the surgery that will change their lives for the better.

I think if anyone had a problem with this book (which I doubt, but if it happened), they should at least consider this: this book can do wonders for young teenage girls. If anything it will teach them there is more to the world than being pretty, and that beauty comes from within. It's about being an individual, a good friend, and doing what is right.

The ending of this book definitely holds on to you and makes you want to know what happens next. With luck I'll find out soon...but I'm not wanting to buy any books at all except for Stephenie Meyer's The Host before I go on my trip this summer. I'm eager to read the excerpt for the next book, Pretties, that's in the back of this one, but because I know it won't be till when I can borrow it from a friend in June that I can read it, I'm not going to.

My book challenge is so shot this year. I still have hope, though.