End of Uglies & Winnie-the-Pooh

Thank goodness for road trips! For serious, that's the only way I could have possibly caught up with my book project. If I hadn't had those twelve plus hours in the car, I might have given up, even this early. I was three books behind already, and now I'm right on track.

So, final thoughts on Uglies. Though I haven't read the rest of the series yet, obviously, I think that it opens up the series really well. Sets up the characters, the dangers, the setting nicely and is definitely well written.

The thing I enjoyed the most, I think, was the relationship between the protagonist, Tally, and the main boy, David. It's a little contrived and would be the horrific self-insertion fest of other YA books if the author wasn't a guy. I realize now that my basis of a bad book is much of the Twilight series, and I want to reiterate that I don't hate the series. For the most part, I liked reading it. Meyers knows the elements of an entertaining story. That being said, it's not good literature, but back to Uglies.

The only problem I really see with it is that you can only read so many post-apocalyptic distopian novels before they start to become cliche. And when you've read the granddaddy of all distopian novels (in my opinion, 1984), it's hard to not see all the same elements of that category of fiction. You have the outcasts fighting the government which probably had good intentions at the beginning but has become so power hungry that all that has to be done is take it down.

Title: Winnie-the-Pooh
Author: A. A. Milne
Number of Pages: 176
Brief Summary: The adventures of Christopher Robin and his friends, Winnie-the-Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit, Owl, Kanga, and Baby Roo, include Pooh's tangles with honeybees, and Piglet's encounter with a Heffalump.
How I Came To Own This Book: Bought it at Half-Price Books
History With This Book: I've loved Winnie-the-Pooh since I was very young. I think all kids do, but I was only familiar with the Disney version of Pooh and his friends. After I finished reading The Tao of Pooh, I wanted to read the actual stories, the whole stories not just excerpts, from which the author of The Tao of Pooh got his ideas. So, when I went to Half-Price and saw it on one of the front displays for $2, I knew I had to get it.

This book was every bit as enchanting and heartwarming as the cartoons were way back when...except...better. This isn't the Disney vs. Hans Christian Andersen Little Mermaid. Disney kept pretty close to the spirit of Milne's stories, but nothing can top the original.

My favorite thing was the way in which the stories were written. I know that they were written for Milne's son, Christopher Robin, and they were written on paper as though he's telling you a bedtime story, as if you are Christopher Robin and you pull the blankets up as close as you can while still being able to read the words. It's just comforting like the smell of cookies baking in the oven or the feel of your favorite sweater.

The next thing I post will be about the last book I read, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It deserves its own post.