emmareadstoomuch's reviews
2051 reviews

ALRIGHT HERE WE GO Y'ALL THIS IS GOING TO BE AN ANGRY AND SEMI-COHERENT REVIEW RIDDLED WITH GIFS AND SPOILERS (which will be marked you can read this even if you're planning on reading this book--but honestly do you not value my opinion at all?!)

ugh!!! i had such high hopes for this book!

but, no. just like the love between two archetype'd robyn schneider characters, my beliefs were scorned. it was just the beginning of everything: maybe we'll die how sad is that let's be pretentious we're so young so full of life so much wasted potential edition. some amazing unique special snowflake she-doesn't-know-she's-beautiful perfect specimen of a girl falls in luuuuuuv with a hot guy. a completely vanilla, absolutely no interesting qualities type.

Spoiler

and the love is scorned in both books can you believe it oh my god it's the twist no one saw coming

Spoiler

except like, no. i predicted from the get-go that mary sue sadie would dieeee. and it would be so saaaad and change mr. vanilla's life forever. boo hoo.

what a coinky-dink that in this group of five friends, the survival rate of the disease is four out of five. SOMEONE'S GOTTA DIE. well, two people in this case. but whatever.

i don't even know how to organize this review. so many things pissed me off. I NEVER EVEN WRITE FULL REVIEWS. I SCRAWL THINGS.

but when i don't like a book, i usually have that feeling going in! and despite my strong dislike of the beginning of everything, i still thought i was going to like this book!

this is mainly due to the following reasons:
1) i only heard good things
2) the premise is pretty cool
3) alright, fine, the cover rocks.



so with my expectations in mind, let's set up the plotline. this is going to be like mildly detailed so if you still want to read the book you should probably skip this part. I'M SORRY I KNOW I SAID THIS WOULD BE SAFE TO REAd

poor widdle lane has TB. except it's now inexplicably different. it's completely resistant to drugs, and yet the mortality rate at a sanatorium where everyone has it is a mere 20%. also it's EXTREMELY CONTAGIOUS!!! but omg why are my parents worried lol i'm fine also they only have a 10% chance of contracting it if they're in contact with me but they'll be fired if they "test positive for exposure" (wtf??)

so the science here doesn't really check out.



anyway, lane arrives at this top-notch expensive sanatorium, granted opportunities anyone else with TB would literally kill for (and that's just in the US). and he hates it there.



maybe i'm not being fair. but this is an epidemic, possibly a pandemic, and his only symptoms are being tired once in a while and coughing sometimes, and this kid is chilling having amazing once-in-a-lifetime experiences with his perfectly quirky popular clique, who are just too cool to deal with these people trying to help them, and they could only ever possibly flourish in this obscure scenario. honestly i cannot picture these kids at a public high school.



SPEAKING OF WHICH, why are there only teenagers in this place?!



anyway he falls in with this group and then falls in love with unique beauty over there, blah blah blah. occasional insertion of coughing fit as a reminder that This Typical And Boring Love Story Is Beautiful Because They Might Die. how deep.



then more stuff happens and shit hits the fan but it's all right but then it's A MILLION TIMES WORSE.



except that at the page that probably inspired tears in some of people who cry during john green books, i cracked an incredulous grin.



don't waste your time on this book.

I managed to write an almost-full review of this book. It is here!: https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.com/2017/07/11/a-little-princess-the-little-prince-reviews-apparently-i-love-small-monarchs/
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I can't believe I'm saying this, but...the movie really was a better story.

Maybe I'll go watch that for the millionth time.

This book pales in comparison to The Secret Garden, but it was still good. Hard to make an über-wealthy seven-year-old seem great, but this book does it. (Burnett KILLS it with the unlikable characters!) I liked the first half better than the second, probably because, again, the movie version of the story is just a lot more entertaining.

There are also a lot more villains in the book. It's more like Sara in a sea of people who are average-to-bad, which is kind of a weird message for a children's book.

Anyway. I'm glad I finally read this, though. It was good, and if I'd read the book first I wouldn't be judging it so harshly.

Bottom line: Yeah, give it a try. Look at that goddamn cover!

3/5

just a mini-review for this one:
i don't think this is a work of literary fiction so much as a fable. the lack of characterization, simplicity and what my senior year english teacher would call "hit-you-over-the-head symbolism" made me think that. because of how simple and easy it was, i didn't love it. i like puzzling through themes and symbols and motifs. (it's the english major in me.)

this was also way too rime of the ancient mariner for me, and i just finished discussing that poem for the second time in a class on wednesday. man kills a beautiful figure of nature for no reason and then is punished by nature? hmm.

anyway, the themes of it were still nice and i do like hemingway's manner of writing. i didn't hate this, it was just eh.

3.75/5

cute! i was warned a million times about dickens's wordiness, but i had no problem with it here. (i'm very wordy myself when writing, so it'd be hypocritical to hate it.)

this never fully grabbed my attention, but i never minded reading it. i've of course seen the story done before (community theater! the mickey cartoon! etc etc) so it wasn't fresh by any means, but i'm glad i read it.

bottom line: this is a good read-in-a-lifetime book! i recommend it.

i really thought i was going to hate this book. i mean, a girl resisting falling in love with her hot kidnapper? puh-lease. but its goodreads rating is killer and i found it at half price books, so i figured why not. but i was wrong: this was a good book.

i am not easily won over by YA romantic storylines, i like to think, and especially not those that appear to be based on stupid decisions like in this book. but the kidnapper and the victim were both full characters, and i was able to at least understand their reasoning while i internally screamed at them to stop being weird. at times, i even understood the more romantic feelings, so that's saying something.

but still, even a not-horrible take on a storyline i hate is a storyline i hate. so i can't give this a very high rating - it was incredibly on my nerves at points.

i think i liked this one more than the first, but it's so hard to say. i can't stand belly and conrad most of all, but none of the decisions in these books make sense to me. i thought belly really was a terrible friend to taylor, but apparently taylor was the only bad one? and conrad had huge expectations and gave literally nothing, but belly was still obsessed w him. i liked jeremiah kind of, but it seems like the only reason the boys like belly is bc she's pretty. (but it's not like she has any redeeming qualities or defining traits anyway.) i liked susannah but she's not a part of this. anyway. i'll probably read the third book bc they take like an hour to read but i don't own it so i won't now. it's hard to believe this is the same author as to all the boys i've loved before.

my grandmother sent me this. MY GRANDMOTHER. i'll never not cringe at the thought of this book.

I straight up NEVER read nonfiction. I don't like it. It's boring. Where's the story? Is someone going to get punched? Anyone? Where is the writing style that doesn't make me want to shove a fork through my eye? I mean, these are all things I need..

However. Everyyyyyy once in a while, an exception comes along.

SAY HELLOOOOO TO THAT EXCEPTION.

This book is so fun!!!!!

It is not only fun; it is interesting. It is not only interesting; it is funny. It is not only funny; it is smart. In short, it is everything I need to have a good time while also feeling very pretentious and smart and patting myself on the back for eight consecutive weeks for reading anything with more literary merit than a young adult contemporary romance.

THE STANDARDS ARE LOW AND THAT'S JUST THE WAY I LIKE THEM.

So this book is about the recent (? semi-recent) trend of publicly shaming people on the Internet. Which is my favorite thing. Watching racists get sucker punched by the entirety of Twitter is my, like, religion. I pray at the altar of screenshots, you know? #JustMillennialThings.

So I was very curious to see if this book could convince me that this ultimate form of technological vigilante justice in any way a bad thing.

And it, um, kinda didn’t? And not for lack of trying. It definitely got me convinced that, like, hey, maybe we don’t need to ruin some of these people’s entire lives. And there was exactly one person in this book who I thought was totally undeserving of the shit storm she formally received, out of maybe 8 examples.

But I read this book shortly before Charlottesville, and it’s hard to look at the hardworking people of Twitter outing literal Nazis and be like, Hey. Bad. Because it isn’t. Vigilante justice can be sh*tty, but I’m not opposed to any anti-Nazi action. Any. Try me.

ANY.

I didn’t feel shamed by Ronson (buh dum ch), though, or anything. So it didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the book.

What diiiiiiid detract from my enjoyment was Ronson casually, easily, you know, just...totally shattering his authorial credibility to me as a reader. Fun stuff! But seriously, this whole book is about delving into people’s pasts to find out the things they’re most opposed to people finding out. Which is already thin ice. But there’s a moment when Ronson makes really clear that the only privacy he gives a sh*t about is his own. (BOOOOOO, shouts the audience.)

My guy Ronson (and I seriously did love his voice throughout this So Much, which makes this heartbreaking moment even more tragic) attends a class on how not to feel shame. This class begins with every person in it going around and stating something about themselves that they don’t want the other students to know. Ronson includes every person’s answer, which is...maybe not necessary. EXCEPT GUESS WHOSE ANSWER IS NOT INCLUDED. YEAH. YOU GUESSED IT. IT’S RONSON’S.

What kind of lack of integrity…

So I don’t know, man. I initially rated this five stars, because I read it in a day and had so much fun with it and also my brain felt all big afterward and it made me so pretentious that I wore a monocle for the next 8 consecutive business days, but there’s no way I can give that type of action five stars. That sh*t is NOT COOL JON.

But will I be reading other Ronson sh*t? Hell yeah I will.

Bottom line: A crazy good book with One Annoying Thing.

IS NOTHING EASY

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pre-review

I LOVED LOVED LOVED THIS BOOK.

i seriously couldn't put it down, and there exists a very limited number of nonfiction books i find un-put-down-able.

i am certain not a single one of you cares about my feelings on this book, and yet i will share them.

review to comeee

not really sure how to rate this...i'm certain i would have liked it much more if i had read it in the summer, or when i wasn't in such a slump! i didn't really enjoy it but i have no specific complaints about it. ugh!! sorry, peter. not your fault. hopefully i'll reread this later on!

hey! sometimes people are better at reviewing than me. (i know! shocking, but it happens.) i can't say anything about this book that hasn't been perfectly stated already in Whitney's review.

you should give it a read. her review, that is, not this god-awful book.

(thanks @may for linking this in your most recent blog post)

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cookies are my favorite food. i am capable of eating probably dozens of reese's peanut butter cups in a sitting. rather than just eating dessert after every meal, i often have sweets for dinner. my teeth are, at this point, 99% made of sugar and thus incapable of being damaged in any way.

and still this book gave me a cavity.

(& at that moment, emma officially gave up on Colleen Hoover.)