tiny pink books

Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

Harper Teen, 2006.

I guess I needed a break from the grit and gore presented in my recent reads, so I picked this up at the library because I had a vague recollection of someone booktalking this to me once.  I warn readers those, this is a girl book.  It has hot pink accents all over the cover and a picture of, yup, a girl (is anyone else annoyed by the tendency for YA chicklit to have pictures of girls with their heads cropped off on the covers?!).  Anyway, Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes is a young adult book about Ginny, a shy 17 year old who ends up on an incredible European adventure after receiving a mysterious package of letters from her recently deceased aunt.  The package contains a bit of cash and 13 little blue envelopes, each containing a letter with instructions that direct Ginny on a random and sporatic journey.  On the journey, Ginny not only sheds new light on her mysterious aunt, but, you guessed it, she also learns a little about herself (awwww). 

The premise, if a little cliché, is enjoyable enough.  I guess maybe influenced by the enjoyable Queen of Babble, I was looking forward to reading another “girl finds herself on crazy European adventure” type of novel.  And here’s the thing, I did enjoy Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes on some level.  It was cute, the characters were likable, and the story was fun.  There were quite a few problems though.  First off, the character of Ginny is a bit too passive to carry the story.  The book is written in the third person and Ginny hardly ever speaks.  As a result Thirteen never really gives Ginny a voice.  In the few letters than Ginny writes home to her best friend, it’s almost as if a totally different character is writing them.  I think the overall theme of the story is that, through her aunt’s crazy antics, Ginny is finally able to speak for herself…except it sort of fails because down to the very last page, Ginny, although likable, is meek and timid.

Secondly, the age of Ginny is a bit off.  Ginny is supposed to be 17 and still in high school, yet she is somehow able to travel to Europe with no parental support or guidance.  In fact, I don’t believe that her parents are even mentioned more than once or twice in the novel.  I mean, I love the idea of backpacking through Europe as much as the next person, but in my mind, it’s college students doing it…not 17 year olds with no evidence of parents.  I think maybe Ginny is unrealistically set at age 17 because this book is written for a younger audience.  Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes is definitely YA, however, it’s really most appropriate for the younger section of YA.  The simplicity that Johnson constantly boils every situation down to is suitable for a younger reader.  For the older reader, there is a lack of sophistication, especially in the romantic relationships, that is palpable. 

That said, I thought that Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes was an enjoyable and fun read.  I think younger teens will enjoy the book as it takes them on a fluffy and fantastic free-spirited romp across Europe.  Older teens and adults would probably be happier sticking to Queen of Babble for their European adventure coming of age stories.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Fawcett Gold Medal, 1954

I Am Legend is a science fiction/horror novel about the last living man on earth.  Robert Neville has survived the vampire plague of the 1970’s (don’t you just love it when science fiction books are old enough that their “future” is now the past?!).  He lives alone in Los Angeles in a boarded up house keeps him safe at night from the hordes of vampires that are after his blood.  The vampires in Matheson’s world are more like zombies in a way.  They appear to have limited intelligence and seem to exist only to seek the blood of the living.  By day, when the vampires go into a coma and hide to avoid the sun, Robert travels about Los Angeles, scavenging for food and supplies, and fixes up his house.  His existence is lonely and he frequently turns to drinking to deal with the depression he suffers from.  He moarns the loss of, not just the entire human race, but also of his wife and daughter.  Strangely, to me anyway, he seems to miss his wife way more than he misses his daughter, who was still a child when the plague took her.  Finally, after about half a book worth of this routine, Robert begins to research the cause of the disease using books from the library.  He gets a microscope and starts doing simple tests and experiments on the vampires to try and discover what caused the entire human race to become the living dead.  There’s some smallish subplots added on (particularly when Robert finds a living dog) in there too, but the majority of the book is about Robert, his routine, his research, etc.  There is an abrupt and unsatisfying ending, so abrupt, in fact, that I continued reading the short stories that were, unknown to me, printed after the novel (I was so confused!).  It all has to end at some point, I guess.

If you’ve read this far and can’t tell already–I was not exactly enthused by this book.  It was slow and boring, with a lot of dramatic episodes of drinking (and not in an entertaining, Bukowski-like way either).  I found Robert’s character to be dull and confusing.  I know, I already mentioned it, but I just didn’ t understand how Robert could possibly care so much more about his wife than his daughter.  Also, for a book about vampires, there really weren’t enough suspenseful or frightening moments.  Despite these factors, there were still a few nuggets of enjoyment in I Am Legend.  The atmosphere was intriguing.  The idea of a single living man in a city as large and vast as Los Angeles is cool.  The emptiness of the abandoned city, the silence, the lack of the living…all of these are what contributed to the creepy, post-apocalypse landscape that I enjoyed.  I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m sure that this aspect was successfully translated.  The influence of I Am Legend is easy to see in the zombie movies we have come to known and love.

I have to say that I wouldn’t recommend I Am Legend to many readers.  I think established Matheson fans might enjoy the novel, but it’s just too slow to recommend to many others.

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
VIZ Media, 2003.

So first things first, I have to admit that I saw the movie before I read the book.  It had been years since I saw the movie though…it was actually my enjoyment of Stephen King’s The Long Walk that led me to Battle Royale.  Set in a dystopian not to far off future Japan, Battle Royale is about a class of middle school students who find themselves forced into a sick and twisted military program.  The Program, as it is known in the book, run by the fascist government of Takami’s Japan, takes one middle school class every year, drugs them and brings them to a top secret location (a small, evacuated island, in this case), hands them all weapons and forced them to kill one another until there is a single survivor.  There are some other rules and devices to the game, such as the fact that all the kids are wearing high tech collars that will explode if they try to escape the island, but the basic premise is normal middle school kids killing each other off until there is one winner.  Some of the classmates, such as our main characters Shuya, Norkio, and Shogo, try fight against the game with hopes of an impossible escape, while others take to the game with surprising brutality.  Battle Royale is a graphic and violent game of survival of the fittest.

One of the things that I truly enjoyed about Battle Royale was the way that every character, even those which were fairly insignificant, had a basic story.  With almost an entire class of 40 students to make up the death toll, it is interesting that Takami successfully sketches them all out.  Some of the characters are just that, sketches, but they add interest and a bit of humanity to each death in the story.

That said, I have to admit that the writing of Battle Royale is extremely simple.  I didn’t mind it, in fact, I think the simplistic style lends itself to the material and made the book all the more entertaining and enjoyable, but I have to put it out there.  The characters and their motivations border on cliche for most of the novel, some of the action is fairly predictable, and the language in far from flowery.  Maybe it is, in part, due to the translation of this book from the original Japanese into English.  Despite its simplicity, I absolutely could not put this book down!  It was dark and brutal, but also exciting and fun to read.
I recommend this book for reluctant readers seeking action and gore.  Although I think it’s an appropriate book for (older!) young adults, I must restate that it is violent and graphic.  There are some sexual references/situations as well, though nothing nearly as graphic as the violence.

The Host by Stephenie Meyer
Little, Brown 2008

The Host is Stephenie Mayer’s, author of the hugely popular Twilight YA series, first adult novel. In some ways, The Host is very similar to what we expect from Meyers after the Twilight books.  It has undying romance, shares the same themes of questioning what it is to be human, and is every bit as much of a page turner.  In fact, I saw little difference between the writing style and treatment within Meyer’s YA work and The Host, but I suppose that just goes to show that a lot of these differences seem to be held up in the marketing and not the writing.  I digress.  What I meant to say, rather than blathering on about Meyers and YA vs adult, is that The Host was a thoroughly readable and enjoyable book.

Set in an apocalyptic future where body snatcher type parasitic aliens have peacefully taken over the human race, The Host is about two characters sharing one body.  Melanie, a 19 year old woman, was caught and implanted with Wanderer, an alien soul who has experienced many past lives and hosts on other planets.  Melanie refuses to surrender her consciousness to Wanderer as the two battle for control of Mel’s body and mind.  They share thoughts, memories, and emotions.  Melanie uses all of her thoughts to persuade Wanderer to leave the peaceful alien society to find Jared, the love of Mel’s life, and Jamie, her little brother.  Love triangles and emotionally charged relationships ensue as Wanderer learns firsthand the pain and the tangled emotions that come along with being human.

I found this book to be quite enjoyable.  Although it has a slowish start, it soon became one of those books that I was simply hungry to read at all moments.  I guess what I liked was the way Meyers creates truly emotionally difficult relationships between all of the characters.  There’s subtle doses of action spiced in as well to keep things exciting.  Although it’s probably harder for me to judge, since I am naturally quite a fan of science fiction, I also think that Meyers has, just as she did with the Twilight series, delivered a genre novel that reaches beyond the genre.  That is to say, I think readers who are not necessarily fans of science fiction will still enjoy The Host.  With that conclusion, I would recommend this book to Twilight fans looking for more as well as adult and YA readers who want a good fun read that’s both exciting and emotional without getting too dense.