Shiver by Maggie Steifvater

Shiver by Maggie Steifvater

Genre: Young Adult Supernatural Romance

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from this book, Shiver, and it certainly delivered accordingly. A teen--no, a young adult--novel, Shiver chronicles the love-- strife with trials, tribulations, distance and interspecies taboos-- between the human girl Grace and the morphing werewolf boy Sam. The main conflicts lie in Sam's shapeshifting, which is rather interesting in that he changes according to temperature, and the presence of a vicious she-wolf along with the birth of a new and particularly volatile wolf. At one point, Grace rescues Sam and tries to keep him secret by letting him into her bedroom, all the while gazing at his breathtaking amber eyes and whispering sweet nothings--"You're so beautiful and sad"--into his ear.

Hmmmm, any of this sound familiar? A silly teenage girl in love with a supernatural being? A 'emo' boy caught in between his world and hers? "You're so beautiful" and "I'm not afraid of you"?

I wish I could say the language in Shiver was better than Twilight, even if their plots are so similar, but I cannot. Even the characters are pretty much one-dimensional. But, at least Sam and Grace did the deed. Straight to the point in the first book and within a few months of knowing each other. I can give him that much.

Rating: Judge this book by its cover.

May 27th, 2011 12:22am--transferred from ireadanything.tumblr.com

There is No Year by Blake Butler

There is No Year by Blake Butler

Genre: Adult Experimental Fiction

I'm not sure what to say about Butler's There is No Year. There are no words. I am speechless. But, not in the way the 'praise quotes' on the front and back covers mean. This is not a good speechless. There are times when I wonder about the state of contemporary art and literature. This book elevates style way over substance. Perhaps, I could not penetrate the true depth of Butler's prose and critique of a cracking suburban family's lifestyle, but I just felt that he relied too much on gimmicks to complete this novel...if it could even be called as such. Wildly indented lines, gray backgrounds, pixellated "hipster" photos punctuating each 'chapter', gratuitous footnotes (David Foster Wallace, anyone?). Why, why, why? I still don't understand what the general point of the book was. Maybe, the point was that there is none...who knows?

Rating: A Book or a Paperweight?