How to use an ARC (and the ARC winner!)

So I've been struggling all week to figure out, "Gee, what do I post with the winner of the PANDEMONIUM ARC?"

And then, last night on AbsoluteWrite, I saw this:

Terminal Cancer Patient Gets a Harry Turtledove ARC (link is to video--couldn't get it to embed here!)

Quite possibly the best use of an ARC, ever. And unbelievably heartwarming to boot.
So with that in mind, Munnaza, I hope you make great use of the copy of PANDEMONIUM! 

Thanks to everyone for entering. Next up, I think, will be GRAVE MERCY byRobin LaFevers. I'm a little ways in, and hope to have it finished soon!

Review + ARC Giveaway: PANDEMONIUM by Lauren Oliver

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You have your world, the way it is, you think you're ready for things to proceed exactly as they should, and then you suddenly understand the cracks in the pavement and all hell breaks loose.

Pandemonium.

The third book in Oliver's DELIRIUM series is titled REQUIEM, and given how aptly the second is titled, I'm eagerly anticipating the third.

Review: DELIRIUM by Lauren Oliver (ARC giveaway of book 2 to come!)

Delirium by Lauren Oliver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The writing: Dear god, the writing in this. It gives me hope that people will buy and read things that have great imagery, and which spend time describing the environment rather than making every single moment slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am nonstop action. I loved wallowing in Oliver's descriptions; I felt very much like I was there with Lena as she went through her story. Particularly wonderful, I thought, were the ways in which the settings contrasted--the Wilds vs. Portland, the houses in Deering Highlands vs. the homes in the rest of Portland. Oliver has a way of writing description that puts you right in the middle of the action, and for someone who tends to otherwise imagine characters kind of moving about in blank white space, that level of attention to detail was very much appreciated. There aren't senses missing in this--Oliver gets in to how things smell, feel, taste in addition to just how they look.

The plot: DELIRIUM starts out slowly. VERY slowly. Had I not been reading it mostly so that I could get to my ARC copy of PANDEMONIUM, I might have put it down. That said, there are plenty of twists and turns on this path (even if some are a bit predictable: Alex somehow not being a real Cured is foreseeable from the very first moment Lena sees him) to keep one interested. I'm happy that DELIRIUM ends and PANDEMONIUM begins with some big issues still in play, such as the ultimate fate of Lena's mother.

The book does fall in to the ongoing problem of teen trilogies, however, which is that it feels like there was little self-contained plot in this book alone. Like many others (Ally Condie's Matched for instance, comes to mind), the book ends on a cliffhanger, and it feels very much like 1/3 of a larger work, rather than a first book in a set of three. If there's anything contributing to my dropping a star on this book, it's that.

The characters: Lena is very relatable. One of my favorite tiny details about her was her friendship with Hana (Hana got her own novella, which I don't have time to read before PANDEMONIUM releases, but which looks interesting), which plays as a very normal teenage girl relationship. I especially loved that she and Hana had the "Hallelujah Halena!" cheer for each other. It's exactly the kind of thing I remember creating in junior high school, and details like that made Lena a very real, easily identified-with character.

And Alex--I loved his comfort with who he was and his ability to move in and out of Portland society. He had just enough "cool" to make him believable in all the things he's been able to accomplish, but also had a deep caring for Lena which makes him easily sympathized with.

I loved the secondary characters, also. Grace is a wonderful foil for Lena, and lets us see a lot about who Lena is as an "infected" person. So far in PANDEMONIUM, great secondaries seem to be Oliver's specialty, so I'm looking forward to getting to know them more.

My one very minor beef: Is it ever mentioned in the beginning of this book that "Portland" is Portland, ME? I spent a long time trying to figure out if perhaps the sea level had risen and that was why there was shoreline in Portland, OR, and was a little jolted to find that the book was set on the opposite side of the country halfway through the book.

Overall: This is one of the more interesting dystopian ideas I've read in a while. When I first heard the premise, I thought it sounded silly--love as a disease? But as I read and understood it not as only romantic love, but all feeling and strong emotion, I found myself strangely agreeing with many of the society's premises--that love and strong emotion causes as much destruction as it prevents, and able to see exactly how such a society might come into being. For me, that's a critical piece--can I buy in to the dystopian world? DELIRIUM delivered on that front, and that made it an enjoyable read for me. On to book number 2--and I'll be giving away my ARC when I'm done!

4 stars even on this one. One star loss for the slow start and the ever-present YA trilogy "no full plot in this book" problem.

View all my Goodreads reviews

Nab Delirium: 

Indiebound
Amazon 
B&N 

Have you read Delirium? What did you think? Link your review if you have one!  

Strict Pick: TWILIGHT, the Graphic Novel Vol II (and ARC winners!)

[My strict pick is late this week on account of my giving out a project in the course I'm teaching, which I then had to grade. Oy! I had no idea how long that would take me. Thanks for your patience, and back to the usual MO next week.]

So I was originally going to pick this as my strict pick for this week, but then I hemmed and hawed about it. See the thing is, Twilight has one hell of a reputation in the literary circles. People rail on it for being poorly written, too sensationalized, over-rated. But in some ways, it almost reminds me of Simon Cowell's response to Rebecca Black's "Friday:" "Anyone who can create this much controversy in a week, I want to meet."

Plus, honestly, I'm kind of fascinated by the whole thing. And the way they've been spun out into these graphic novels is well worth talking about. So this week's strict pick is the Twilight Graphic Novel, Volume 2. This one I had a chance to read cover to cover before its release, thanks to it arriving in the store two weeks early (and it being a short book). Graphic novel adaptations are fascinating, in my opinion. Until somewhat recently, it was relatively unlikely that a more mainstream book would be adapted into a graphic novel; that was reserved for the space operas and the superheroes. So perhaps a movie would be made, and that would be the extent of any visual representation of an author's words.  

Strict Pick: Liesl & Po (+ an ARC giveaway)

So I didn't get around to writing this on Tuesday, and here's why: I HAD to finish this book. Some people can write a review after having read only a portion of a title, and honestly, I could have done that. But with this title I wanted to finish. It's that lovely.

Now, I have a bit of a YA reader confession to make. Despite her being all the rage with her twin bestsellers Before I Fall and Delirium, I had yet to read anything by  Oliver when Liesl showed up on the lunchroom table at work. I snatched it up, intending to send it over to my friends at WhatchYAreading.net, but then I opened it and read the preface, and decided to keep this one for myself.