я хохотала так, что чуть своей хурмой не подавилась :DD You know we agree essentially and on most points re City of Fail (or Stupid, that works too *another hi-five for L*), probably apart from my general disinterest in rat!Simon, so let me just revel in some of your wording XD
instead of witty he just sounded pissy all the time. Clary barely registered as a character He failed pained and/or constipated to me, and Clary.. OH YOU A RONG, she had an amazing character development!!1! She actually learnt to clean her room by applying angelic magic to it by the end of the movie!!1!
Oh, and giving Shadowhunters British accents was something I didn't expect, and it just made the teens seem extra pretentious. Ahahah, I didn't know that, for reasons of dub XDD Sounds appropriately over-the-top *eyeroll*
Alec was sulky and vicious and still way more preferable to Jace
That... just kind of got dropped, right? Yup. The sound you're hearing is the plot points getting dropped from such great heights except not nowhere into the abyss.
:D I'm glad it amused, then! (And, hurma, nom! It's hurma/persimmon season here, too, and we got a bag from the rodents' former kindergarten teacher's friend's tree, which sounds like the start of an urban legend but the hurma is delicious.)
"Constipated" supports Jace's delivery as well, especially during the more pathos-laden scenes XD
Clary.. OH YOU A RONG, she had an amazing character development!!1! She actually learnt to clean her room by applying angelic magic to it by the end of the movie!!1!Oh my god, that scene was so WTF! Like, the rodents obviously do not have the first idea about the books (L had expressed some interest in reading them -- she asked my opinion and I told her they were fun books, but also told her about the Draco Trilogy and how some of the best parts were done better there -- but I'm not sure that interest survived the movie, though I kept telling her the book was way less stupid and random and confusing and much funnier than what we were watching), but even they could tell that nonsense was amazingly
( ... )
we got a bag from the rodents' former kindergarten teacher's friend's tree, which sounds like the start of an urban legend but the hurma is delicious. love everything about that sentence, starting from the fairy-tale climax to down-to-earth Hobbit-y resolution XDD I saw persimmons grow on trees in Beijing - it impressed me a lot! Especially since it was winter, and the few fruits that were still on trees were bright orange, just like their red lanterns.
and the "kids" are all 25+, and Alec is 30 (!) FFS O_O I didn't know that. One of the reasons why I never warmed up to THG movies, while being able to acknowledge they are not bad movies as such, was that substituting child actors with grown-ups they killed the point of the books.
L's theory, to quote my favorite The Producers, is "nah, too good". Impressive cunning on her side, though:)
God, I luurve trashtalking this stuff with you XDD It's a LYNCHPIN of the series for me, if you will <3
(But I still can't see any chemistry between him and Jace. Jace has no chemistry with
( ... )
the few fruits that were still on trees were bright orange, just like their red lanterns.
Oh, that's such a pretty imaged! And yes, the shape and the color of persimmons is really gorgeous -- I think they are the prettiest fruit, except maybe lemons. We have two kinds of hurma here, the ones that are sort of flat, like little pumpkins in shape, and the ones that are bigger, longer, and almost acorn-shaped. The flat, little ones are the ones I like best. I forget what they have in Russia -- both kinds? I think it was only the bigger, longer ones when I was a kid, and I didn't like them, so I didn't realize I liked hurma until I became familiar with the little ones.
L's theory, to quote my favorite The Producers, is "nah, too good". Impressive cunning on her side, though:)
Haha, yes, I think that was basically what I told her -- that she was expecting too much depth from a shitty adaptation of a popcorn book.
Interestingly enough, most of Jace-Simon chemistry was on the gifs with extra scenes/behind the scenes material. Which
( ... )
I didn't start reading YA until I was an adult as well, some time post-college. I also read a whole lot of it now -- seems like the majority of what I read is YA. I'm currently reading an adult book, and I can't remember the last time I did that.
Unlike you, I liked Graceling, though I haven't read the follow-up books yet (Fire is in my To Read pile, so I'll get to it sooner or later).
I LOVED the Leviathan series too! It was my first encounter with steampunk and I loved it so much. I've been meaning to read something else steampunk but nothing has caught my eye yet. I didn't like Uglies, though I'm told I gave up on it too soon. Still, not really interested in trying again.
I looked through my reading list for the year, and looks like maybe half the books I read were adult and a quarter YA, but it's rather nebulous, because I could see a lot of the books that I counted as adult being packaged as YA, too. I've definitely had years where YA was the bulk of what I read.
Fire is really good! Or, well, I liked it a lot, and I think also objectively it takes on some pretty big, difficult themes and handles them, for the most part, more deftly than Graceling did. The worldbuilding is still kind of ridiculous, beyond the neat central idea of "monsters", but worldbuilding is clearly not the part of fantasy Cashore cares about, which I've grudgingly managed to make my peace with. For all that I didn't like Graceling very much myself, I want my kids, especially L, to read it, and Fire, because I think what it does is important, even if I think it does it clumsily
( ... )
In a couple weeks I'll be making my post going over the year's books, then I'll be better able to guess at how many were YA vs adult/other.
Agreed on Leviathan -- Deryn and all the beasties were my favorite parts. The world was so cleverly made! I still want a whale airship.
I gave up on Uglies maybe two chapters in? Here's my review of it:
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. I looooved Westerfield's steampunk trilogy so much, but I hated every single word of every page of this book. Or, well, of the couple chapters I read. If a book were ever written for the exact purposes of me hating it, it would be Uglies. I read a lot of YA books, so unfortunately I encounter a lot of teenagers with teenage problems; I couldn't care less about that sort of thing. This book couldn't be more that. In Uglies, everyone is born "ugly" (normal), but at some age in their teens everyone gets a ton of surgeries to make them into a Pretty. Uglies live in Uglytown. Pretties live in New Pretty City (kill me now, I hated those names so much). What little I read
( ... )
I would settle for a messenger lizard! Or a perspicacious loris, though I think the lorises are a little creepy.
The Darwinist side of the worldbuilding was so neat! Flechette bats! Strafing hawks! Attack krakens! The underwater breather thing Deryn uses, which was all kinds of disgusting but neat. Trans-Siberean bear-road! And the airships, of course. I can't remember the last time the worldbuilding in a series filled me with so much glee.
Haha, wow, no wonder you quit Uglies so early in. The stupid teenagers thinking about nothing but being pretty is a feature of this particular dystopia and so does get better (eventually), but (a) Tally is still kind of a stupid teenager even when she starts thinking about things that aren't being pretty, so she was a frustrating protagonist for me, and (b) the romances continue to be pretty stupid, and (c) having this visceral a reaction to the set-up probably means it's not worth putting yourself through this for whatever payoff it may deliver.
Haha ... I'm not sure we should really call them YA books ... all ages literature would be more fitting, don't you think?
I haven't watched "City of Bones" - after reading your review I'm kinda glad I didn't spend money for the cinema. I'll wait until I can get it fairly inexpensive on DVD. I loved the books, though.
I'll have to try the books by Scott Westerfeld ... Steampunk? Yes please! :D
Yeah, YA is definitely more of a marketing category than something that anything, but as it means that a lot more genre books get published (with young protagonists, but so what), I'm not going to complain. Though I do wish sometimes the cover design didn't follow quite so lurid a template, since I do most of my reading on public transit, and still in paper copy for the most part
( ... )
YA actually didn't split out as a genre (for marketing purposes, anyway) until long after I was an adult, so it's difficult for me to differentiate them from so-called Children's literature. Robin McKinley is wonderful. Bob has a couple of Scott Westerfield's books stashed in his office somewhere--I'll have to track them down.
I think the line between YA and kidlit is kind of tenuous anyway. I am used to thinking of Diana Wynne Jones's stuff as Children's Lit, for instance, but I found it on several "best of YA" lists. Harry Potter routinely shows up in both. I think some of Robin McKinley's stuff is kidlit, and some is adult, but it all ends up shelved in YA occasionally -- I found Sunshine there, and I don't really think it's a YA book? I mean, there's nothing wrong with having teens read it, of course, but I don't understand what makes it YA, other than the fact that the author has some books that are more straightforwardly classifiable as YA
( ... )
Such a terrible movie! And it's not like the material they were working with was particularly challenging to adapt -- the book is already pretty cinematic, all they had to do was pick some actors with charisma and not screw it up!
Glad you're liking Will Grayson -- I thought it was a good read, and also a book that I'm glad exists on the YA shelves, because I think it's important to have books that are more than just coming out stories.
I read something else by Neil Schusterman, I forget what, but was sufficiently pleased with it that I'd like to read more of his stuff, so will definitely take that title under advisement. And I imagine I'll get to Divergent before too long -- L has expressed some interest in reading it, so she'll probably get the books, and then I'll read them, too (which is what happened with the Hunger Games, though I read those first, to make sure they wouldn't be too dark/scary for her) -- I've been hearing good things about Divergent on my f-list.
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instead of witty he just sounded pissy all the time. Clary barely registered as a character
He failed pained and/or constipated to me, and Clary.. OH YOU A RONG, she had an amazing character development!!1! She actually learnt to clean her room by applying angelic magic to it by the end of the movie!!1!
Oh, and giving Shadowhunters British accents was something I didn't expect, and it just made the teens seem extra pretentious.
Ahahah, I didn't know that, for reasons of dub XDD Sounds appropriately over-the-top *eyeroll*
Alec was sulky and vicious
and still way more preferable to Jace
That... just kind of got dropped, right?
Yup. The sound you're hearing is the plot points getting dropped from such great heights except not nowhere into the abyss.
I ( ... )
Reply
"Constipated" supports Jace's delivery as well, especially during the more pathos-laden scenes XD
Clary.. OH YOU A RONG, she had an amazing character development!!1! She actually learnt to clean her room by applying angelic magic to it by the end of the movie!!1!Oh my god, that scene was so WTF! Like, the rodents obviously do not have the first idea about the books (L had expressed some interest in reading them -- she asked my opinion and I told her they were fun books, but also told her about the Draco Trilogy and how some of the best parts were done better there -- but I'm not sure that interest survived the movie, though I kept telling her the book was way less stupid and random and confusing and much funnier than what we were watching), but even they could tell that nonsense was amazingly ( ... )
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love everything about that sentence, starting from the fairy-tale climax to down-to-earth Hobbit-y resolution XDD I saw persimmons grow on trees in Beijing - it impressed me a lot! Especially since it was winter, and the few fruits that were still on trees were bright orange, just like their red lanterns.
and the "kids" are all 25+, and Alec is 30 (!)
FFS O_O I didn't know that. One of the reasons why I never warmed up to THG movies, while being able to acknowledge they are not bad movies as such, was that substituting child actors with grown-ups they killed the point of the books.
L's theory, to quote my favorite The Producers, is "nah, too good". Impressive cunning on her side, though:)
God, I luurve trashtalking this stuff with you XDD It's a LYNCHPIN of the series for me, if you will <3
(But I still can't see any chemistry between him and Jace. Jace has no chemistry with ( ... )
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Oh, that's such a pretty imaged! And yes, the shape and the color of persimmons is really gorgeous -- I think they are the prettiest fruit, except maybe lemons. We have two kinds of hurma here, the ones that are sort of flat, like little pumpkins in shape, and the ones that are bigger, longer, and almost acorn-shaped. The flat, little ones are the ones I like best. I forget what they have in Russia -- both kinds? I think it was only the bigger, longer ones when I was a kid, and I didn't like them, so I didn't realize I liked hurma until I became familiar with the little ones.
L's theory, to quote my favorite The Producers, is "nah, too good". Impressive cunning on her side, though:)
Haha, yes, I think that was basically what I told her -- that she was expecting too much depth from a shitty adaptation of a popcorn book.
Interestingly enough, most of Jace-Simon chemistry was on the gifs with extra scenes/behind the scenes material. Which ( ... )
Reply
Unlike you, I liked Graceling, though I haven't read the follow-up books yet (Fire is in my To Read pile, so I'll get to it sooner or later).
I LOVED the Leviathan series too! It was my first encounter with steampunk and I loved it so much. I've been meaning to read something else steampunk but nothing has caught my eye yet. I didn't like Uglies, though I'm told I gave up on it too soon. Still, not really interested in trying again.
Thanks for the post! :)
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Fire is really good! Or, well, I liked it a lot, and I think also objectively it takes on some pretty big, difficult themes and handles them, for the most part, more deftly than Graceling did. The worldbuilding is still kind of ridiculous, beyond the neat central idea of "monsters", but worldbuilding is clearly not the part of fantasy Cashore cares about, which I've grudgingly managed to make my peace with. For all that I didn't like Graceling very much myself, I want my kids, especially L, to read it, and Fire, because I think what it does is important, even if I think it does it clumsily ( ... )
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Agreed on Leviathan -- Deryn and all the beasties were my favorite parts. The world was so cleverly made! I still want a whale airship.
I gave up on Uglies maybe two chapters in? Here's my review of it:
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. I looooved Westerfield's steampunk trilogy so much, but I hated every single word of every page of this book. Or, well, of the couple chapters I read. If a book were ever written for the exact purposes of me hating it, it would be Uglies. I read a lot of YA books, so unfortunately I encounter a lot of teenagers with teenage problems; I couldn't care less about that sort of thing. This book couldn't be more that. In Uglies, everyone is born "ugly" (normal), but at some age in their teens everyone gets a ton of surgeries to make them into a Pretty. Uglies live in Uglytown. Pretties live in New Pretty City (kill me now, I hated those names so much). What little I read ( ... )
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I would settle for a messenger lizard! Or a perspicacious loris, though I think the lorises are a little creepy.
The Darwinist side of the worldbuilding was so neat! Flechette bats! Strafing hawks! Attack krakens! The underwater breather thing Deryn uses, which was all kinds of disgusting but neat. Trans-Siberean bear-road! And the airships, of course. I can't remember the last time the worldbuilding in a series filled me with so much glee.
Haha, wow, no wonder you quit Uglies so early in. The stupid teenagers thinking about nothing but being pretty is a feature of this particular dystopia and so does get better (eventually), but (a) Tally is still kind of a stupid teenager even when she starts thinking about things that aren't being pretty, so she was a frustrating protagonist for me, and (b) the romances continue to be pretty stupid, and (c) having this visceral a reaction to the set-up probably means it's not worth putting yourself through this for whatever payoff it may deliver.
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I haven't watched "City of Bones" - after reading your review I'm kinda glad I didn't spend money for the cinema. I'll wait until I can get it fairly inexpensive on DVD. I loved the books, though.
I'll have to try the books by Scott Westerfeld ... Steampunk? Yes please! :D
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I just started Will Grayson/Will Grayson, and so far it's enjoyable.
I recommend the Divergent series for you, I think you would like it. I also really like Unwound by Neil Schusterman
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Glad you're liking Will Grayson -- I thought it was a good read, and also a book that I'm glad exists on the YA shelves, because I think it's important to have books that are more than just coming out stories.
I read something else by Neil Schusterman, I forget what, but was sufficiently pleased with it that I'd like to read more of his stuff, so will definitely take that title under advisement. And I imagine I'll get to Divergent before too long -- L has expressed some interest in reading it, so she'll probably get the books, and then I'll read them, too (which is what happened with the Hunger Games, though I read those first, to make sure they wouldn't be too dark/scary for her) -- I've been hearing good things about Divergent on my f-list.
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