That Special Time At The End Of October

What is your favourite holiday? Easter, Christmas, New Year... Or perhaps you prefer the spooky yet peaceful time when you can dress up in a costume and participate in gathering sweets for yourself and your family that happens on the last day of the silent month when autumn has fully started without any days of summer and winter is far from appearing? Personally, I have never celebrated Halloween, and I'm a real genius for having read Something Wicked This Way Comes during the hot days of July, but now is better than never. 

What can I say about this book? Those who love the magic of carnivals and all the wonders that they can do, the nostalgic and comforting taste of the food that is served and reminds us of the olden days, the various attractions that they offer, might become less sure about that upon having read this book. While it is not exactly terrifying, it is spooky, and Bradbury's prose in this book helps build the atmosphere. It also helps that this is more than just a standard "good vs evil" story about an evil circus and coming-of-age. There are also many philosophical concepts presented with complex metaphors, which is impressive, especially when you consider that this is supposed to be a book for children, who are often pandered and talked down to just because they happen to be naive and know less than adults, some of whom often seem to mistake this for stupidity. 

There are some great descriptions, yet it's more than that. Ray Bradbury could have just written the book in normal prose, but then the whole point he wanted to make with it would be missed. He over-described everything on purpose, trying to make it feel like you yourself were in a circus for a night, gazing at one wondrous attraction and then the other, which helps build the atmosphere. However, that can also be a flaw. At one point, he described the shadows as "smelling like urine" and the moon as "having the smell of ice" (paraphrasing) in the same scene. This is not an isolated incident. The story was sometimes hard to follow, and sometimes it made the story more boring, sometimes both, especially between the middle and the climax.

The characters also felt a bit flat. Charles Halloway and Mr. Dark are great characters that will stay in my mind for a long time, but the characterization was not one of Bradbury's strengths in this novel. Will was the good boy. Jim was the well-meaning, yet mischievous boy. And the others are even weaker. 

That is it for this review. Goodbye and see you next time.

The Fault In My Stars

Hello and welcome to my blog! I know that you may deem it inappropriate that my first blog post is filled with negativity, but I think that a certain book of John Green's might be a bit overrated. Let me tell you about my experience with The Fault In Our Stars.

For years, I have been part of the writing and reading community. Since very recently, I have been tracking what's popular in America and the UK because I'm Serbian. I have been hearing a lot about the Young Adult genre and what a lot of other people my age like. John Green is among the authors I've been hearing the most about. I have looked at his portfolio and have been intrigued by his books for a while now, especially by his most popular work, The Fault In Our Stars. However, my reading list has always been quite large, so I never really got around to reading anything by him until now. 

Then, an opportunity came to start exploring his work through a buddy read on Goodreads, where I'm new, but where I have also made a couple of friends. A person whose name I don't want to reveal for the sake of privacy had no one to buddy read The Fault In Our Stars with. I agreed to read it with her and another girl. 

First, everything went great. I had some minor complaints, but none of them held much water.

Now here come the negatives. Let me tell you the positives quickly:

- John Green knows how to immerse you into a story. The book had this feeling where it always made me want to know more.

- His prose is special and hits hard at times because of its quality. He knows how to write nice sentences.

- I really liked Hazel, Isaac and Gus's family members.

That's all, folks. Now onto the negatives:

- Inconsistent writing style. It's noticeable, really. Sometimes when the characters speak, the story is written in a modern way, complete with dialogue tags. Other times when the characters speak, the dialogue is written as if everyone were in a play, complete with the names of the characters speaking before everything else. More people should have noticed this. It's just that simple.

- Shallow characterization. Hazel is obsessed with a book, antisocial and spouts pretentious quotes. Augustus is obsessed with a video game, dorky and spouts pretentious quotes. Isaac is Augustus' blind friend who plays his favourite video game with him and is dumped by the girl he loved so much. They're the deepest characters in the book, which is saying something.

- The lack of plot. Hazel and Augustus have got cancer, but Augustus seems to be getting better. Hazel is obsessed with a book called An Imperial Affliction and makes Augustus obsessed with it as well. They go to Amsterdam to meet the author because he ended the book mid-sentence. They fall in love and have relationship problems. The author turns out to be a jerk. One of them will die. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

- The lack of chemistry between Hazel and Augustus. Hazel meets him and goes to his house within five minutes. They bond a little and form a friendship. Then they fall in love. Then they have sex. Then one of them - Hazel - weeps over the death of the other. That's how it felt.

- Disrespect towards the Holocaust. While in Amsterdam, Hazel and Augustus go to the house Anne Frank spent two years in suffering. A video in which Otto Frank's grief is displayed is playing in the background. There are a lot of adults around. They kiss. Everything goes silent and people stare at them weirdly. They think that everyone is mad at them, but instead, everyone claps and cheers as they keep kissing. See my problem with this?

- Emotional manipulation. John Green wants to make sure that you feel sorry for his characters at every opportunity. His choice of words makes it deliberate on his part. He mocks other cancer books for their messages of hope and perseverance and decides to make everything as depressing as he can. Because depressing = realistic. I know that reality is far from heaven, but it isn't hell either. Anyway, he tugs at your heartstrings, wishing for you to release the water from your tear canals for the perfect little angel Gus as he's dying. It would have worked better if that angel wasn't pretentious and two-dimensional, aka if John Green just let him and the story breathe normally.

And, since I titled this The Fault In MY Stars, I want to tell you another story before ending this blog post. I don't want any particular kind of reaction from you. I just want you to listen. I had a classmate whom I went to school with for four years. She died of sickness a year ago. We weren't best friends, and it wasn't exactly cancer, but it was still painful for me. I never went to her grave, and the guilt over that stayed with me. It is still with me. When Gus died, the already emotionally manipulative scene became even more successful in its intentions. I needed some time to rest after that. I was also a bit tired, so there's that.

Well, that's how I feel about The Fault In Our Stars for the most part. I have expressed only the main points here. I think I have presented a clear enough picture of the situation. Goodbye and see you next time!