Book Review: Pandemonium

By: Lauren Oliver

Pages: 375

Published: February 28, 2012

I'm pushing aside 
the memory of my nightmare,
pushing aside thoughts of Alex,
pushing aside 
thoughts of Hana 
and my old school, 
push, 
push, 
push, 
like Raven taught me to do. 
The old life is dead. 
But the old Lena is dead too.
I buried her. 
I left her beyond a fence, 
behind a wall of smoke.

Rating: 5

Rating: Ok so this is my second time reading this book and I still love this book. I will try to remember some of the things i felt about this book when I read it the first time when it came out in February of 2012.

So this book is written slightly differently than Delirium. Instead of just having your normal chapters you have "Now" "Then" "Now" "Then". When I read this book the first time it took a couple of these back and forth's to get used to it.The "then" part was a bit slow but the "now" part makes up for it. The "then" picks up right where Delirium. You learn a lot about how Lena changes and what she went through in her early months in the wild. The "now" part is when she is in New York City with Raven and Tack. 

The characters are not the same characters as Delirium. You have Lena but you don't have anyone else from Portland. No Hana, no Rachel, no Gracie, no Aunt Carol, and no Alex. Instead you meet a bunch of new characters. Some of them are Raven, Tack and  Julian. With the introduction of Julian the infamous love triangle enters the book, except Alex is dead so it isn't really a love triangle in the same way. 

In the beginning of the book Lena was closed of. She didn't talk about Portland at all and she not to even think of Alex. Slowly as the book progresses she opens her heart up and learns to love and care for new people, like Julian. Julian was eighteen but he was innocent like Lena was in the first book. He was clueless about love but he was ok. I kept hoping and wishing throughout the entire book that Alex would just show up.

Then you have the cliffhanger. Well I can't tell you the horribly dramatic thing that happens at the end because that would spoil the whole book. You obviously have to read the first book first. So if you've read Delirium I would definitely suggest you read Pandemonium.

“Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever.” 

“The flip side of freedom is this: When you're completely free, you're also completely on your own.” “If you’re smart, you care. And if you care, you love.” 

“But you can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time. You can build an airy city out of ruins.” 

“That's the thing: We didn't really care. A world without love is also a world without stakes.” 

“But...books are so much more. Some of them are webs; you can feel your way along their threads, but just barely, into strange and dark corners. Some of them are balloons bobbing up through the sky: totally self-contained, and unreachable, but beautiful to watch. And some of them―the best ones―are doors.”

Happy Requiem Day!!!
For any fans of the Delirium Series today is the day the final book comes out! I don't want to say goodbye to the characters but the end is here.

DFTBA
-Jane

Poetry Corner #15

It's Friday hurrah! This week was super long for me and I will be spending most of my weekend studying and working on projects for next week.

So this week the poem is by Victor Hugo because he is the author of Les Misérables.

A Sunset
      By: Victor Hugo

I love the evenings, passionless and fair, I love the evens, 
Whether old manor-fronts their ray with golden fulgence leavens, 
In numerous leafage bosomed close; 
Whether the mist in reefs of fire extend its reaches sheer, 
Or a hundred sunbeams splinter in an azure atmosphere 
On cloudy archipelagos. 

Oh, gaze ye on the firmament! a hundred clouds in motion, 
Up-piled in the immense sublime beneath the winds' commotion, 
Their unimagined shapes accord: 
Under their waves at intervals flame a pale levin through, 
As if some giant of the air amid the vapors drew 
A sudden elemental sword. 

The sun at bay with splendid thrusts still keeps the sullen fold; 
And momently at distance sets, as a cupola of gold, 
The thatched roof of a cot a-glance; 
Or on the blurred horizon joins his battle with the haze; 
Or pools the blooming fields about with inter-isolate blaze, 
Great moveless meres of radiance. 

Then mark you how there hangs athwart the firmament's swept track, 
Yonder a mighty crocodile with vast irradiant back, 
A triple row of pointed teeth? 
Under its burnished belly slips a ray of eventide, 
The flickerings of a hundred glowing clouds in tenebrous side 
With scales of golden mail ensheathe. 

Then mounts a palace, then the air vibrates--the vision flees. 
Confounded to its base, the fearful cloudy edifice 
Ruins immense in mounded wrack; 
Afar the fragments strew the sky, and each envermeiled cone 
Hangeth, peak downward, overhead, like mountains overthrown 
When the earthquake heaves its hugy back. 

These vapors, with their leaden, golden, iron, bronzèd glows, 
Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose, 
Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms,-- 
'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep, 
As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep 
His dreadful and resounding arms! 

All vanishes! The Sun, from topmost heaven precipitated, 
Like a globe of iron which is tossed back fiery red 
Into the furnace stirred to fume, 
Shocking the cloudy surges, plashed from its impetuous ire, 
Even to the zenith spattereth in a flecking scud of fire 
The vaporous and inflamèd spaume. 

O contemplate the heavens! Whenas the vein-drawn day dies pale, 
In every season, every place, gaze through their every veil? 
With love that has not speech for need! 
Beneath their solemn beauty is a mystery infinite: 
If winter hue them like a pall, or if the summer night 
Fantasy them starre brede.


Happy Weekend! DFTBA
-Jane

Books to Look Forward Too in March

Here are some of the books that I am really looking forward to in March, not that I will read most of them but still here they!


Requiem (Delirium #3) by Lauren Oliver

They have tried to squeeze us out, to stamp us into the past. 
But we are still here. 
And there are more of us every day. 
Now an active member of the resistance, Lena has been transformed. The nascent rebellion that was under way in Pandemonium has ignited into an all-out revolution in Requiem, and Lena is at the center of the fight. 
After rescuing Julian from a death sentence, Lena and her friends fled to the Wilds. But the Wilds are no longer a safe haven—pockets of rebellion have opened throughout the country, and the government cannot deny the existence of Invalids. Regulators now infiltrate the borderlands to stamp out the rebels, and as Lena navigates the increasingly dangerous terrain, her best friend, Hana, lives a safe, loveless life in Portland as the fiancée of the young mayor. 
Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings. 
Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it. 
But we have chosen a different road. 
And in the end, that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose. 
We are even free to choose the wrong thing. 
Requiem is told from both Lena’s and Hana’s points of view. The two girls live side by side in a world that divides them until, at last, their stories converge.

Reason(s): It is the last book in one of my favourite series and Pandemonium had a horrible cliff-hanger, oh how badly I want this book.
Release Date: March 5, 2013

Mila 2.0 by Debra Draza

Mila 2.0 is the first book in an electrifying sci-fi thriller series about a teenage girl who discovers that she is an experiment in artificial intelligence. 
Mila was never meant to learn the truth about her identity. She was a girl living with her mother in a small Minnesota town. She was supposed to forget her past —that she was built in a secret computer science lab and programmed to do things real people would never do. 
Now she has no choice but to run—from the dangerous operatives who want her terminated because she knows too much and from a mysterious group that wants to capture her alive and unlock her advanced technology. However, what Mila’s becoming is beyond anyone’s imagination, including her own, and it just might save her life. 
Mila 2.0 is Debra Driza’s bold debut and the first book in a Bourne Identity–style trilogy that combines heart-pounding action with a riveting exploration of what it really means to be human. Fans of I Am Number Four will love Mila for who she is and what she longs to be—and a cliffhanger ending will leave them breathlessly awaiting the sequel.

Reason(s): It is a new series and it sounds amazing! I really really look forward to this.The cover is also awesome!
Release Date: March 12, 2013

Spellcaster by Claudia Gray

When Nadia’s family moves to Captive’s Sound, she instantly realizes there’s more to it than meets the eye. Descended from witches, Nadia senses a dark and powerful magic at work in her new town. Mateo has lived in Captive’s Sound his entire life, trying to dodge the local legend that his family is cursed - and that curse will cause him to believe he’s seeing the future … until it drives him mad. When the strange dreams Mateo has been having of rescuing a beautiful girl—Nadia—from a car accident come true, he knows he’s doomed. 
Despite the forces pulling them apart, Nadia and Mateo must work together to break the chains of his family’s terrible curse, and to prevent a disaster that threatens the lives of everyone around them.

Reason(s): This book sounds super cool. PLus the cover with the flame is awesome!
Release Date: March 5, 2013

Are there any book that sound interesting to you that are coming out in March? Even if you most likely won't read it. Post in comments.


DFTBA
-Jane

Book Review: Delirium

By: Lauren Oliver
Pages: 441
Published: February 1, 2011

They say that the cure for Love will make me happy and safe forever.

And I've always believed them. 

Until now. 

Now everything has changed. 

Now, I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie. 

Lena looks forward to receiving the government-mandated cure that prevents the delirium of love and leads to a safe, predictable, and happy life, until ninety-five days before her eighteenth birthday and her treatment, when she falls in love.

Rating: 5

Review: I love this book. This is my third time reading this book. I am re-reading it now because Pandemonium the final book in this series comes out March 5, 2013 so I am dying. Plus I have no review for this book and I have have to review one of my favourite books.

Love is illegal when you turn eighteen you have the procedure and you no longer love. You you are paired with a husband. I loved Lena. She was afraid of doing anything wrong she didn't want to brake laws, if I grew up the way she did being told love was illegal and that you have to protect yourself from it, I would probably be like her. I wouldn't want to brake laws or do anything wrong. Slowly Lena learns that maybe the way she grew up wasn't right, maybe just maybe love won't always "kill you when you have it, and when you don't"

I love the world that Lauren Oliver created. Ok let me re-phrase this I think it is very creative and unique. I would not want to live in a world without love. I think Lauren Oliver is a fantastic writer. It is descriptive and interesting, I love it.

Well then you have the cliff-hanger. Having read this book three times and having read Pandemonium the cliff-hanger is not that bad since I know what happens. If you don't know what happens after the cliff-hanger, well then it is a horrible cliff-hanger, I died while I was waiting for Pandemonium to come out.

Favourite Quotes:

“You can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes".” 

“I'd rather die my way than live yours.” 

“I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.” 

“Love: It will kill you and save you, both” 

“It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it's taking forever to come. Then it happens and it's over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.” 

“Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.” 

“Hate isn't the most dangerous thing, he’d said. Indifference is.”

DFTBA
-Jane

Favourite Female Characters in Books

So this is my super fun random post about my favourite female character's.

1) Hermione Granger from Harry Potter
 Let's see she bright, brave, and a witch. Anyone who's read the Harry Potter series or even seen the movies will realize how incredible she is. Without her Harry and Ron would have failed miserable and died. It goes to show what being smart can do.

2) Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter
Yes I have two favourite female characters from Harry Potter, it's just such an incredible series. Luna is my favourite character from Harry Potter. She never cares what others think of her. She's not afraid to be herself and I feel like she is a great example. She is also bright, and from Ravenclaw.

3) Lena Haloway from Delirium
I love her. At first she always follows the rules and she believes everything she was always told. I understand her always believing what the government says, it was how she was raised. If I was her I would probably be the same way. She becomes really strong in Pandemonium and I love her.

Well these are three of my favourite female characters, post in comments who are yours?

DFTBA
-Jane

Book Review: The Trouble With Flirting

By: Claire LaZebnik
Pages: 288
Release Date: February 26, 2013

Summary: Franny's supposed to be working this summer, not flirting. But you can't blame her when guys like Alex and Harry are around. . . . 

 Franny Pearson never dreamed she'd be attending the prestigious Mansfield Summer Theater Program. And she's not, exactly. She's working for her aunt, the resident costume designer. But sewing her fingers to the bone does give her an opportunity to spend time with her crush, Alex Braverman. If only he were as taken with the girl hemming his trousers as he is with his new leading lady. 

 When Harry Cartwright, a notorious flirt, shows more than a friendly interest in Franny, she figures it can't hurt to have a little fun. But as their breezy romance grows more complicated, can Franny keep pretending that Harry is just a carefree fling? And why is Alex suddenly giving her those deep, meaningful looks? In this charming tale of mixed messages and romantic near-misses, one thing is clear: Flirting might be more trouble than Franny ever expected.

* I won an ARC of this from storycrush.com*

Rating: 4

Review: This is exactly what I needed. It was cute, fun and standalone. After reading a bunch of books in series it becomes a pain, you either have to wait for the next book to come out or you have to go and buy the other books. I love books that make you think deeply (thank you John Green who wrote the last three books I read that did make me think) but I also love to just read a book for the sake of it being cute. This book was delightful.

I really enjoyed the characters. I liked Franny generally she was nice and sweet, and she was normal. Being normal is good, she isn't insanely rich or cool, because well for a girl to be like that is a bit  unrealistic. She seemed real. This is a minor problem but I didn't like the name Franny. I don't know, I just didn't really like it as a name, but I liked her character so it's ok. 

Then you have the two guys Alex and Harry. I liked Alex more than Harry for most of the book. I didn't like Harry as much at first but he grew on me. Alex was so sweet and nice. Harry is the type of guy that flirts with all the girls and gets a ton of attention. I didn't like that about him but by the end he seemed I don't know, a bit different. 

It was a fun quick read and I really liked it. If you want something cute, I would recommend this. Plus you can decide for yourself who you like more Alex or Harry.


DFTBA
-Jane

P.S. did anyone notice the box around the summary, I just learned how to do it from a post by the amazing Ruby at Feed Me Books Now

Poetry Corner #14

It's the weekend! It's the weekend! I am oh-so excited and glad that I get a break from school. (Even if it is only two days long)

The Road Not Taken
     By: Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. 


DFTBA
-Jane