From a corner in the library

And I find myself with a little bit of free time in my hands again. Not really, I just don't feel like planning right now... So, I'll try to catch up with the remaining books I haven't posted about :)


A free-spirited, roving actor, Willem is everything she’s not, and when he invites her to abandon her plans and come to Paris with him, Allyson says yes. This uncharacteristic decision leads to a day of risk and romance, liberation and intimacy: 24 hours that will transform Allyson’s life.

I read If I Stay during Easter and I LOVED Gayle Forman. She has that romantic kinda way of dealing with things, I don't know. Secretly, I'm a fool for romantic scenes in books. And this one contained three of the things I enjoy in a book: love, Amsterdam and traveling.
From the beginning, then: part one was amazing. At first, I think Allyson/Lulu is kinda like me. She is careful enough to follow the rules, and the fact that she was expecting her trip to be more than it ended up being really hit home. It was a little weird that she kept going with it after she had so many doubts. But somehow is understandable: a journey that was promised to be amazing turned out to be just a simple trip + a cute boy + so little time = do crazy things because you want to prove something to yourself. Trust me, I know about that.
Willem is cute. I mean, I imagine him like that. But he's confusing. I guess that is kinda the idea, because Lulu didn't know him, so the reader is not supposed to know him either. The thing he had with women... especially with this French one (cannot remember her name, but she was a huge bitch!). The point is that at the end of this part, I hated him with all my guts. But honestly, I knew nothing that had happened was his fault... Come on, all YA novels need that close-to-perfect male character (Think about it: Gus? Peeta? Etienne? yup, it is a key element, the guy cannot be a jerk). Certainly that part of the story was clear, it was a huge misunderstanding... I just wanted to know what really happened. I was hooked.
Part two, where she went to university, is super boring! I almost dropped the book by then (but I can't really do that... I've done it twice, no... three times and I feel terrible about it! I'll post about that another day), but I finished it. I think the character of Dee spiced up things and helped me get through. But it was just frustrated to see how she just...couldn't....forget...him. Oh... well, I think I might understand her. In any case, the can't-stop-thinking-about-him should not have turned her into the zombie she was.
I hated to see her distancing herself from Melanie. It was hard and it was worse to know that all of it started because of a boy, but continued over personal issues. I wouldn't like to lose a friend like that.
And part three, well... he was lost and she found him. I liked the fact that she 'grew up' in that time. Learn from your mistakes and right the wrongs. It's difficult, but doable. She started doing things that scared her.
Oh, and the group of tourists that she talked to on her first night at the hostel! They were amazing!
It is in this part that you get to understand (not "know") Willem. Accidents happen, and they can lead to something good.
It was a good book. The cliffhanger wasn't great. Like, at the moment I went "The heck?!" but later I just forgot about it! So I might read Just One Year later... but I'm not crazy about it. I have the feeling that it will be more about Willem, and I know I'll like Allyson's journey better.

Rating: ★★★★
Favorite character: Allyson (except when she was a zombie)
Favorite secondary character: Hmmm... Dee. I feel tempted to say Willem, because he was pretty cool and even though I hated him, it was.not.his.fault... apparently :P But I'll go with Dee because he was real and he helped Allyson a lot!
Favorite part: That part during the dinner with her family in Miami (I think it was Miami) when she told them she was going on a trip to Europe and everybody freaks out! And then when she starts working at that restaurant... and obviously when she goes back to Europe and meets the shy girl in France and sees her again in Amsterdam. Lots of favorite parts, I guess.
Favorite quote: "There is a world of difference, Lulu, between falling in love and being in love."
#2 "And that's when I understand that I have been stained. Whether I'm still in love with him, whether he was ever in love with me, and no matter who he's in love with now, Willem changed my life. He showed me how to get lost, and the I showed myself how to get found."
Least favorite character: I don't know... I guess it would have to be Celine (I think that was the French girl...) But not so much. And for a while it was Willem, but not anymore.
Least favorite part: I think that boring part when she was zombified during her first semester at the university...

So many books, so much work, so little time... That should be on my gravestone when I die.
Anyway, I'll try to catch up with the reviews of the books I've read, I'll keep it short.
Screw chronological order, I'll do them as I remember them, which means that I'll obviously start with the one I just finished this morning: The Book Thief.


Book Info

Name: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Date of publication: March 14th, 2006 (Worldwide)

Now, a book involving Hitler... forget it! Yeah, that's what I thought until my mom read it and told me it was good, and I trust my mom (most of the times). So one day I was in the bookstore, fighting with myself because the crazy part of me wanted to get a new book, and the rational part of me knew that there wasn't any space in my room to put it... So, I got the book (crazy beats rational, you see?).
I had tried to read it in my Kindle before, but I couldn't get past 5% This time it was different, maybe because I had spent 5 months reading The Stand in my Kindle, but once I started reading this narrative by the Death, I couldn't stop.
My copy of TBT has a Q&A with the author at the end, and he says that this is not a typical story about Hitler and Jews and the Holocaust. Don't get me wrong, all those elements are there and are important, but they are not the thing that gets you. It's Liesel and Papa and Rudy and (ohmygod) Max. It's the people, the emotions and the bonds that those people formed in such terrible situations what gets you, stays with you and makes you feel thankful.
Half way through the story, I felt that it wasn't that good. But I loved Zusak's writing style. Is it wrong if I say that I loved Death as a narrator? I posted on my GoodReads account that a good storyteller is better than a good story. While I still believe that, Zusak proved to have an amazing story (as well as an amazing narrator).
Yes, sometimes it got slow. Yes, there are some parts that I wouldn't have kept in the book. Yes, it was freaking awful how it ended. But I still liked it.


Rating: ★★★★
Favorite character: Max (?) ...OK, it was a tie between Max and Liesel.
Favorite secondary character: Hans. He's just so sweet, I loved the way he would stay up all night with Liesel when she got her nightmares.
Favorite part: I think that when she becomes friends with Max is my favorite part. They are very similar and the way they help each other is very  nice.
Favorite quote: “I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate.”
Least favorite character: The Führer , obviously.
Least favorite part: After the bombs hit Himmel Street, and Liesel finds Rudy and kisses him. That part was heart-breaking. Also, right after that when she finds Hans and Rosa :'(


Book Info
Name: The Stand
Author: Stephen King
Date of publication: September, 1978


I love Mr. King above all things on Earth, well... maybe I love Simple Plan more, but the case is that since I read Carrie, I loved him!
I'm reading King's books in order of publication (the novels he published under Stephen King, otherwise I would never be able to finish! Ever!). So far I have four books read: Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining and The Stand. The first two were creepy, but not really scary. There was a lot of tension, but they didn't give an answer to the question that was bothering me: How can you scare people with words? Movies I get, you have the images, the sounds, everything happening at the same time. But books? How can a book be horror? I had never read a horror book, because I'm a coward. that was what kept me from Stephen King's masterpieces for so long (Do I regret it? Yeah, maybe). But then I got to The Shining... Holy sh*t, that one kept me up for a couple of nights! So now I get how words the scare the crap out of people!
Which leads to my short review of The Stand: this book is insanely long! It took me five months to finish it, but I never gave up because (like I said before) Mr. King is a freaking genius. This story is scary because it is real; I mean not the virus and the demon guy (Flagg), but because that happened because some people wanted to control others, they wanted to be powerful and took every chance they got to harm others so they could be invincible. The story is told from different points of view: there's Frannie's story, Harold's (freaking asshole! I hate you!!), Stu's, Nick's and Larry's (just to mention a few). So the thing is that after a while, even though all characters had their own peculiar voice, the stories started to confuse me a bit. I mixed up Larry and Stu multiple times! And it was so long that I forgot many details from a part of a story when I got the following one.
Aside from that, the tension and suspense and mystery are simply perfect! Like the time Larry had to cross that tunnel... Jesus, I would've died! And when Tom felt something while he and Nick were hiding from the tornado... phew...
There are many things I'd like to talk about, but it's getting late... I'll make a list and write about it in the next post, along with the other books:
-Mother Abigail
-The babies
-Randall Flagg
-The crazy lady that ended up with Harold, but was 'saving' herself for Flagg (I forget her name...)
-And the old guy, the sociologist or something
-And the dog! Kojak (or something like that)


Right, just very quickly... The ending I am not completely happy about it. For once, I was half-expecting zombies (but as usual, when zombies are promised, I'm left waiting...). And then you brought me along this super long (fascinating) story, through the death of some many loved characters, just to "eliminate" Flaggs like that?! I mean, come on! I was expecting something mind-blowing, with blood and severed bodies everywhere and a very heroic action... but no, the desert's heat did it all... How stupid!
But I guess it made sense for what happened next and how Stu went back with Tom and stuff...

Rating: ★★★★
Favorite character: Stuart Redman. Since the beginning he was the one I liked ;)
Favorite secondary character: Nick, he's just so sweet and smart!
Favorite part: At the end, Stu's journey back to Free zone with Tom Cullen (M-O-O-N, that spells Tom Cullen... Laws yes! LOL)
Favorite quote:  I have two this time: “That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery.” 
“God doesn't bribe, child. He just makes a sign and lets people take it as they will.” 
Least favorite character: Harold. There is no doubt about it. He was nastier than Flaggs, for fuck's sake! Just despicable. I really don't understand how he did what he did. He did deserve to die the way he did!!!
Least favorite part: Well, how about every time one of the good ones died?! Larry, Nick, the Judge... Terrible... all of their deaths. Also, all of the gross parts with dead people (eek :S)

Next time I will (try to) post about:
Just One Day (Gayle Forman)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J.K. Rowling)
Behind the Beautiful Forevers  (Katherine Boo) 
Orange is the New Black (Piper Kerman)