A Midsummer Nights Scream by R.L. Stine (Book Review)

A Midsummer Night's Scream

by R.L. Stine

250 pages

Feiwel and Friends, July 2013

young adult fiction

Read in 2 days

Another Review

My Rating:

Amazon.com | BN.com

"One hand on the wheel, one hand around Darlene's shoulders, Tony pounded the gas pedal, and the van roared over the bumps and pits of the narrow dirt road."

Review: I truly don't know where to begin with this book. Maybe I should start with it's lack of commas. Normally I would overlook such a grammatical detail but in this book I'm afraid I simply could not. It's lack of commas, leading to an obvious lack of sentence structure, was only one of the reasons why I simply couldn't continue to torture my brain with the last 50 pages. I understand this book was meant to be written in the first person account but I doubt teenagers from California talk, let alone think, as disjointed as he was writing. Maybe I'm wrong? Maybe teenage Californians really are mind-numbingly banal in their dialog with each other and in their heads? If you happen to live in California and you're reading this review please set the record straight for me, is the stereotype portrayed in this book true? Are your thoughts simple and lacking of any substance or vocabulary beyond that of a second grader?

I'm really surprised at how juvenile the sentences and words were as well. I've read some young adult books that quite frankly I find to be very adult in topic and vocabulary. I think teenagers can handle a bit more in the storyline department. Maybe Mr. Stine should just stick to Goosebumps and leave the young adult genre to other more capable hands?

I'm sure if I had finished this book I would have found more to dislike about it but for now all I have is the corny dialog and the unbelievable storyline to go on. I find it hard to believe that parents with children acting in a movie where already TWO people have died in very nasty and totally intentional ways would allow them to continue in the movie let alone green-light it to continue filming?! That I find very far fetched, I don't care if they have debts that must be paid, allowing for the possibility of more deaths, including those of your own children for the sake of money is bad parenting period!

My guess is there's supposed to be some similarity between this book and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream? I'd hate for the ONLY similarity to come from the title of the great bards book and the main character deciding to make her sweet seventeen party theme the same title? If that is the case then I'd say an opportunity was wasted for a great classroom lesson or book club chat. I've never read A Midsummer Night's Dream so I guess the one good thing that came out of my reading this book is I'll be reading Shakespeare's version soon.

I do not and would not recommend this book to anyone.

Summary: Oh, what fools these actors be!

It was a horror movie that turned into real horror--three young actors lost their lives while the camera rolled. Production stopped, and people claimed that the movie was cursed.

Sixty years later, new actors are venturing onto the haunted set. In a desperate attempt to revive their failing studio, Claire's dad has green-lit a remake of Mayhem Manor—and Claire and her friends are dying to be involved.

At first, Claire laughs at Jake’s talk of ghosts and curses. He’s been too busy crushing on her best friend Delia to notice that she’s practically been throwing herself at him. What does he know? And anyway, this is her big chance to be a star! 

When shooting starts, though, the set is plagued by a series of horrible accidents—could history be repeating itself?

To learn more about R.L. Stine visit his site here.

Through the Ever Night by Veronica Rossi (Book Review)

Through the Ever Night

by Veronica Rossi

341 pages

Harper Collins, 2013

fiction/young adult

Read in 3 days

Another Review

My Rating: N/A 

Amazon.com / BN.com

"Aria was here."

Review: It's just not gripping me the way Under the Never Sky did. Then again, that book wasn't all that riveting to me either. I find this book to be lacking in story line so it's trying to make up for it with the love story which seems a bit forced to me. I'm trying to remember this is a young adult book so it doesn't necessarily have to have a stellar story to sell millions of copies. Unfortunately, I think my interest in the series will end with this book.

I think I would have liked it more if the relationship between Aria and Perry didn't exist. YES, I know they are the main characters and if not for their meeting in the first book there wouldn't be a need for a second and third book. However, the relationship Perry has with Cinder paralleled with the relationship Aria has with Roar, this book could actually have potential to survive. There is nothing wrong with the characters. In fact, I even like the bitchy ones because their reasoning for bad manners and terrible attitudes is understandable.

I will go back to this book and finish it, but at a much later date and time, when I feel I can give it the proper attention it deserves. Do not let my lack of interest in finishing the book at this time deter you from reading it. There is something here, I'm just not in the right frame of mind right now to pick up on it. I urge you to click on the link above for "Another Review" where I've come across a review that puts the book in a much better light and gives me hope that I will come to appreciate the book when next I pick it up.

Synopsis: It's been months since Aria learned of her mother's death.

Months since Perry became Blood Lord of the Tides, and months since Aria last saw him.

Now Aria and Perry are about to be reunited. It's a moment they've been longing for with countless expectations. And it's a moment that lives up to all of them. At least, at fi rst. Then it slips away. The Tides don't take kindly to former Dwellers like Aria. And the tribe is swirling out of Perry's control. With the Aether storms worsening every day, the only remaining hope for peace and safety is the Still Blue. But does this haven truly exist?

Threatened by false friends and powerful temptations, Aria and Perry wonder, Can their love survive through the ever night? In this second book in her spellbinding Under the Never Sky trilogy, Veronica Rossi combines fantasy and sci-fi elements to create a captivating adventure—and a love story as perilous as it is unforgettable.

To learn more about Veronica Rossi, visit her site here.

The Narrative of John Smith by Arthur Conan Doyle (Book Review)

The Narrative of John Smith
by Arthur Conan Doyle 

120 pages
The British Library, 2011
fiction
Read in 2 days
Another review...

My Rating: ★★★★

Amazon.com / BN.com

"Gout or rheumatism, Doctor?" I asked.

Review: By page 19 I was hooked. One small passage I'd like to share made me want to finish this unfinished novel. But before I share the best part of the book allow me to share a few bad points. Honestly, I wouldn't consider them bad or negative points since this IS supposed to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's first novel so I'd expect it to seem a bit novice. There is very little sentence or story structure. He quickly jumps from thought to thought without putting those fillers we all grow to hate but realize we need when they are missing. The dialogue wouldn't be so bad if he didn't mention how a particular visitor arrived other than to have them start talking. And trying to figure out where the inner monologue starts and the two person dialogue ends is almost impossible. Otherwise I rather enjoyed reading it. He had quite a lot to say on varying topics like religion, children, neighbors, doctors, and so on. 

Simply put, this story is about a man, John Smith, who has gout, rendering him unable to go anywhere for at least a week so it can heal. I can see where the idea of Sherlock Holmes may have stemmed from this restless character who's mind wanders onto different topics of interest rather quickly. He's also observant and rather witty. In any case, this is what one man does to pass the time till his foot is fully healed. Of course the story was never completed and I'm glad no one came along years later to attempt to complete his work for him. No one could write as he does, even in pretense. It is perfect as it is, completely unfinished, and totally enjoyable.

And now, onto the passage I found myself having read, and then reread, several times:

I confess to one little extravagance - and only one. You see those four squat oak cases, their well-stocked shelves line with rich brown leather stamped with gold. Those books are the collection of a lifetime. Run your eye over them. Petrarch, Ruskin, Boswell, Goethe, Tourguenieff, Richter, Emerson, Heine, Darwin, Winwood Reade, Tertullian, Balzac - truly an august and cosmopolitan company.

There should be a society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Books. I hate to see the poor patient things knocked about and disfigured. A book is a mummified soul embalmed in morocco leather and printer's ink instead of cerecloths and unguents. It is the concentrated essence of man. Poor Horatius Flaccus has turned to an impalpable powder by this time, but there is his very spirit stuck like a fly in amber, in that brown-backed volume in the corner. A line of books should make a man subdued and reverent. If he cannot learn to treat them with becoming decency he should be forced.

If a bibliophile House of Commons were to pass a 'Bill of the better preservation of books' we should have paragraphs of this sort under the headings of 'Police Intelligence' in the newspapers of the year 2000: 'Marylebone Police Court. Brutal outrage upon an Elzevir Virgil. James Brown, a savage-looking elderly man, was charged with cowardly attack upon a copy of Virgil's poems issued by the Elzevir press. Police Constable Jones deposed that on Tuesday evening about seven o'clock some of the neighbors complained to him of the prisoner's conduct. He saw him sitting at an open window with the book in front of him which he was dog-earing, thumb-marking and otherwise ill using. Prisoner expressed the greatest surprise upon being arrested. John Robinson, librarian of the casualty section of the British Museum, deposed to the book, having been brought in in a condition which could only have arisen from extreme violence. It was dog-eared in thirty-one places, page forty-six was suffering from a clean cut four inches long, and the whole volume was a mass of pencil - and finger - marks. Prisoner, on being asked for his defense, remarked that the book was his own and that he might do what he liked with it. Magistrate: "Nothing of the kind, sir! You wife and children are your own but the law does not allow you to ill treat them! I shall decree a judicial separation between Virgil and yourself, and condemn you to a week's hard labour." Prisoner was removed, protesting. The book is doing well and will soon be able to quit the museum.'

Okay, so maybe arresting someone for dog-earing a book will never happen, but a girl can dream can't she? I just love this passage because that is SO ME! I love my books as if they are my children and would not think twice to disown a friend who dares to dog-ear or smudge one page of any of the books I own. It's one of the main reasons why I proudly do not own a library card. And never will!

Summary: Before there was the astute detective Sherlock Holmes and his capable compatriot Watson, there was the opinionated Everyman John Smith. In 1883, when he was just twenty-three, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote The Narrative of John Smith while he was living in Portsmouth and struggling to establish himself as both a doctor and a writer. He had already succeeded in having a number of short stories published in leading magazines of the day, such as Blackwood’s, All the Year Round, London Society, and the Boy’s Own Paper—but as was the accepted practice of literary journals of the time, his stories had been published anonymously. Thus, Conan Doyle knew that in order to truly establish his name as a writer, he would have to write a novel. That novel—the first he ever wrote and only now published for the first time—is The Narrative of John Smith.

Many of the themes and stylistic tropes of his later writing, including his first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet—published in 1887—can be clearly seen. More a series of ruminations than a traditional novel, The Narrative of John Smith is of considerable biographical importance and provides an exceptional window into the mind of the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Through John Smith, a fifty-year-old man confined to his room by an attack of gout, Conan Doyle sets down his thoughts and opinions on a range of subjects—including literature, science, religion, war, and education—with no detectable insecurity or diffidence. His writing is full of bravado.

Though unfinished, The Narrative of John Smith stands as a fascinating record of the early work of a man on his way to being one of the best-known authors in the world. This book will be welcomed with enthusiasm by the numerous Conan Doyle devotees.

To learn more about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle please visit his site.

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