The City of "I've Lost all Patience and I Want to Throw This Book into a Fire to Die"

Someone once said that patience is a virtue. Well, sadly, I've stopped being a virtuous woman, especially when it comes to patience. When I first started reading City of Bones by Cassandra Clare, I was kind of bored. But I thought to myself, "Erika. If you want to be a good writer, you should read what other people write. You should be patient with them. You should listen to what they have to say." So, I decided to keep reading, especially since my best friend said that it would get better. Just so you know, you don't always have to agree with your best friends (sorry, Erin).

Well, fortunately, it did get better... 300 pages later. And I must say, it was about damn time. I thought that the sexiness of that scene on page 310 (or maybe it was 308), was well worth the wait. Think of a blonde-haired, 17 year old guy with an inherently defined six-pack, falling in love with a young, red-headed, naive, teenaged girl, who appears to be human. Think of them making out. In the dark. With no parental supervision. Did I mention that he is an angel, with a very, very, very bad attitude?

Not going to lie, I definitely found myself thinking of that car scene in Titanic. It was hot. I was finally hooked.

Then, out of nowhere, the author throws this huge, gigantic switcheroo on you, and you want to yell, and scream, and throw the book into a giant fire to burn in hell. You may also be throwing up in your mouth a little bit. That is exactly what City of Bones did for me.

And then it ended out of nowhere, and I needed, NEEDED to finish the series. In fact, I wasted over sixty bucks on these horrible, lying, nasty books. WASTED. Because Ms. Cassandra Clare, in my opinion, is a terrible writer. She doesn't know when to stop. She SHOULD have stopped with the third novel. But, no, she decided to continue on with a storyline that was so completely out of nowhere, that it didn't even feel like the same series anymore. I felt like I was reading Breaking Dawn all over again.

I lost all of my patience. This is mainly because I had never felt more tricked while reading a book, at least, not since the day I started reading Nabokov for my Fictions of Exile class. Cassandra Clare forced me to fall in love with her characters just so she could stress me out, and weigh me down with her words. And, I've decided that, at least for now, I will not continue to force myself to read something that I don't really want to read in the first place. It just doesn't make sense. I mean, you wouldn't ever lock yourself in a room full of water just to see how long it would take you to drown. You would never force yourself to smell dog poop. So, why in the hell would you ever force yourself to read something that will only make you angry? As a reader, you don't need to have patience. You just need a good book.

Sisterhood Everlasting

While I was in the middle of reading Looking for Alaska, disaster struck. Well, not exactly anything life threatening. I got bored. And something even worse happened--I went to a bookstore. I may or may not pick the book up again, but for now, I have moved on... which is actually a great segway to start talking about the book that I recently started reading (and recently finished haha): Ann Brashares' Sisterhood Everlasting.

The fifth novel in the Traveling Pants series is nothing like the rest. I first read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants as a seventh grader at Marcus Whitman Junior High. It was everything an overemotional middleschool girl needed: it had friendship, magic, romance, and best of all, a moral to the story (which, I have to say, was lacking in a lot of the books that I read as a 12-year-old).

I'm not going to lie--when I first saw Sisterhood Everlasting sitting on that table in Barnes and Noble, surrounded by all those other random novels that didn't really matter much to me, I could not help but immediately pick it up and start reading. I was ridiculously hooked, but since I was still reading Looking for Alaska, and also trying to save some money, I figured I probably shouldn't buy it. I did not stop thinking about it for days. Three days later, I went to Fred Meyer, and bought it.

Just as the first novel was everything 12-year-old me needed, Sisterhood Everlasting was everything 22-year-old me needed. The girls are all grown up now, and they have to deal with these very mature, adult emotions, and moments, and loss... And if you read the book that came before this one, you would know that the magical pants that the girls shared as kids are now gone, lost with their childhood. They have no choice but to deal with their lives, and there is no running away anymore, there is no hiding behind a pair of pants to make things better. Or, rather, to make things seem better.

Where magic was a driving force in The Traveling Pants, realism thrives in Everlasting. The girls are not as close as they were as kids, and they barely even know what is going on in eachother's lives. Everyone has gone their separate ways. Sound familiar, anyone?

And then something terrible happens, and instead of bringing the girls together, it drives them even further away.

I might as well just warn you now that if you do decide to pick up Sisterhood Everlasting, you might want to have box of kleenex with you at all times. I spent most of the book drowning my eyes in my own tears, because I was trying to force them all back in.

Well, that's all I'm going to say for now... Wouldn't want to let anything else spill out! :)

-Erika

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

Fairest, by Gail Carson Levine, is a cutesy, tween novel by the author who wrote one of my favorite childhood fairy tales, Ella Enchanted. While Ella was filled with sarcasm, romance, and smart humor, Fairest lacks all but one thing: romance. I was kind of disappointed, to say the least. I read Ella Enchanted in the sixth grade, and I have re-read the fast novel several times since. Levine's later novel is a bit juvenile, more so than the former. Although I was looking for something easy and nonchalant (especially after finishing four years of reading hard-core, university-recommended literature), I was not expecting this. Twilight is a much tougher read than this.

Aza, the main character, has an annoyingly low self-esteem, and is constantly degrading herself. This is probably what I hated most about the novel. Young girls, especially prepubescant girls and teens, usually feel awkward about their bodies, and the new things that are happening to them. If those same young girls are subjected to a heroine who hates her face and her body as much as Aza does, all they will learn is that it's okay to have low self-esteem, and that it's okay to call yourself names, and that it's okay to not stick up for yourself when other people are calling you those same names, and comparing you to big, hairy ogres. The worst part is that Aza never truly sees herself as beautiful (not even at the end of the novel!), and she only starts to think of herself as "okay" when the Prince starts to fall for her. Only then does Aza's self esteem begin to grow. What is Levine trying to say? That we, as women, need men to make us feel good about ourselves?

There were several moments in the novel where I had to hold myself back from throwing the book against a wall. I almost refused to finish it, but I had a little bit of hope. I thought that Levine would choose to have Aza find beauty in herself. For some reason, I kept thinking that Aza would actually be able to look in a mirror and say something good about her face. But, unfortunately, that never happened.
I wouldn't recommend this book to my friends because of the fact that it is children's literature, and much too juvenile for them to enjoy; but, I wouldn't recommend this book to any of my younger, female family members, either, because of the fact that it lacks the moral lessons and encouragement that I wish for them to learn. The fact of the matter is, every woman (young and old), should know that they are beautiful. They should never let anyone tell them otherwise. And, they should NEVER rely on a man's judgement of their beauty before their own.

I hope you enjoyed the review! Next on my list is John Green's Looking for Alaska!

<3Erika