Movie Review: The Host

Whenever I watch a movie that's based off a book, I'm a little nervous about how they're going to adapt it.  I'm usually okay with small changes; it's the big changes and pointless additions that bother me.  But there really wasn't a reason to worry about that with The Host.  If I had seen this movie just a few days ago, it probably would have had a place in my Top Ten Best Book-to-Movie adaptations.  It has a great cast, the writing and pace are good, and it stays relatively close to the book.

• Casting
• Saoirse Ronan was perfect as Melanie/Wanda.  She's a brilliant actress (I personally think she'd be a better Tris than Shailene Woodley), and I love how she portrayed her character's inner conflict.
• Max Irons and Jake Abel - how do you choose?  (Team Ian!)  They each brought their characters to life perfectly.  They were exactly the way I pictured them in the book.
• Diane Kruger pulled off her character so well.  I totally despised her throughout the movie because she just oozed evilness.
• Secondary/supporting characters - Each person they chose for the other parts was great, whether they were well-known (William Hurt) or not (Chandler Canterbury).  They all brought so much personality to their roles, even if it was only a small part.
• Writing/Script
• I have to admit I was a little concerned about the writing for this movie.  I kept thinking, "What if this is another Twilight?"  Even though the book had been so amazing, it didn't mean that the screenwriters would do it justice.  Fortunately they did, staying away from total cheesiness and writing a pretty sweet movie.
• Pace/Action
• I definitely felt like they beefed up the action in the movie in order to keep things from getting slow.  They don't add any unnecessary action scenes.  They simply took what was already in the book and made it bigger.
• The movie was paced very well.  It never felt like it was getting boring, or that the story was dragging.  With the action scenes mixed in with the romance and drama, the movie had a good balance of movement.
• The only weird thing about the movie was that it felt both rushed and not rushed.  The movie itself moved at a good pace (which I already said), but at the end, I couldn't help but feel like it had all happened too quickly.  I think that was mostly because they had to cut a lot from the book for the sake of time, so I kept feeling like they'd skipped ahead too far.
• Book vs. Movie
• I loved how true the movie was to the book.  Yes, there were small changes, but every adaptation makes small changes here and there.  None of the changes were drastic or story-altering.  They were very minor things that I had no problem with.
• Also, as I said earlier, things were cut from the story.  But once again, when doing an adaptation, you can't fit a whole book into a two-hour movie, unless it's a really short book.  And The Host is in no way a short book.

I truly loved this movie and felt that it lived up to the book.  I'm definitely looking forward to Stephenie Meyer's next two books in the series, and I hope that if they do movie adaptations of those, that they can get the original cast and do as well with them as they did with The Host.

15-Day Book Blogger Challenge - Day 5

It's day five of April's Book Blogger Challenge.  For more information on the challenge or if you want to participate, visit her blog - Good Books and Good Wine.

Day 5 - Recommend a tear jerker

Ok, so this one's kind of hard for me because I'm a crier.  I read something that's really happy - I cry.  Really sad - I cry.  I watch a movie, and I almost always tear up during an emotional part.  I cried my eyes out after Castle's third season finale.  I'm just an emotional person (I get it from my mom), so I try to avoid books that I know are going to make me bawl.  Pretty much all Nicholas Sparks books are on my Do-NOT-Read list.  But I still end up reading them anyway, so here are some of my favorites.

• Young Adult Fiction
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green  -  I'm pretty sure I've already recommended this book a thousand times, but I'm going to do it again.  My brother recommended this to me first, and a friend warned me - "It's a cry book."  I think if she hadn't warned me, I would have been a slobbery mess by the end of the book.  But since I was prepared for all the feels, I was able to keep the crying to a more dignified minimum.  It's an incredible, bittersweet love story that made my heart ache.
• Adult Fiction
• For One More Day by Mitch Albom  -  My aunt lent me this book, and it was amazing.  The main character, Charley, is a broken man who's life is falling apart, but when he has a car accident and stumbles back into his hometown, he discovers his mother waiting for him.  His mother who died eight years earlier.  For just one more day (hence the title), Charley gets to make things right with his mom, get the forgiveness he craves, and pull his life back together.  I definitely sobbed during this book.  Albom's writing is superb, which just added to how beautiful this story was.
• Non-Fiction
• The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom  -  I read this in high school, along with The Diary of Anne Frank, and I cried my eyes out.  It's the biography of a woman in the Netherlands who becomes part of the Dutch Underground during WWII.  She and her family help Jews escape Nazi persecution, until they're found out and taken to a concentration camp.  It's an extremely powerful and heartbreaking story, but also inspiring.  Despite all of the terrible things that happen to Corrie - suffering in a concentration camp, watching her sister die, being the sole survivor of her family - she never loses faith, and even finds it in her to forgive her Nazi persecutors.

So what do you think?  Did you read any of these and cry?  Or maybe you didn't cry?  What tear jerkers would you recommend?

15-Day Book Blogger Challenge - Day 4

For more info on April's 15-Day Book Blogger Challenge, visit her site, Good Books and Good Wine.

Day 4 - Book Flinging

Honestly, I have never thrown a book across a room.  Across my bed maybe, but never across the room.  I've gotten really frustrated with books, but since I'm also super-careful about damaging them, I try not to fling them in a way that could hurt them.  Besides, there are even better ways to get out my frustration with my books; I've thrown them in the garbage, posted them immediately on PaperBackSwap.com, or simply shoved them back onto the shelf, never to be finished.  I'm going to share an example of each.

• Flung across the bed
• Goddess Interrupted by Aimee Carter -  Even though I liked this book, I got so frustrated with Kate's character and the introduction of Persephone, I "threw" this book across my bed multiple times.  Both characters whined way too much throughout, and Kate made so many stupid decisions that I just wanted to shake her.
• Thrown in the garbage
• Master of Many Treasures by Mary Brown -  It's rare for me to throw out a book, but this one was just too awful to keep or give away.  It started out fine, and then they introduced a new character who was perverse, and then the book itself got perverse.  So I stopped reading it and threw it in the garbage.
• PaperBackSwap.com
• Cinder & Sapphires by Leila Rasheed -  I understand that Downton Abbey is amazing, and therefore people want to make the most of its popularity.  But this book just felt like a YA copycat. It didn't have anything new or interesting to draw me in.  Plus, the writing was so-so, and the characters were stale.
• Doomed to be unfinished
• Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes -  Boring.  Boring.  Boring.  I started this book because I'd actually seen the movie first, and loved it.  So I brought it with me on vacation to read in the airport, and I just couldn't get through it.  The Polish workers who are the best characters in the movie make up a teeny chapter of her book, and another chapter was all about each place they found a well.  I gave up halfway through and decided that sitting in an airport with nothing to read would be way more exciting than reading this book.

15-Day Book Blogger Challenge - Day 3

It's day 3 of April's Book Blogger Challenge!  If you're a book blogger, I highly recommend participating in it.  And if you're not a book blogger, it's a fun way of getting the inside scoop on what book bloggers are all about.

Day 3 - Blogging BFFs

So I don't really have any blogging BFFs yet (unless family counts, in which case I have my brother, but I feel like that's cheating).  Even though I've been blogging for around four years now, it wasn't until about six or seven months ago that I became aware of the book blogging community.  I was pleasantly surprised to discover how much of a community it really is too.  But I still felt shy about putting myself out there and commenting, except for Top Ten Tuesdays.  Occasionally, I would comment on a post if I felt like I had something to say, but that was about it.

And then I went to BEA for the first time this year, and I met so many other bloggers, and everyone was so cool and friendly.  It definitely helped me get over the shyness factor.  Then I signed up for twitter, which has helped me meet/follow even more bloggers.  So as I get more involved with the blogging community, I expect I will make more and more friends, who will eventually become BFFs.  Until then, I will share which awesome bloggers I met at BEA, who made me feel like I'd always been a part of the group.  You guys are amazing!

• Kat & Jess from Books and Sensibility
• Kelly from Belle of the Literati
• Betty from Book Rock Betty
• Kassiah from Swoony Boys Podcast

15-Day Book Blogger Challenge - Day 2

It's day 2 of April's 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge.  It's a great challenge that I would definitely encourage my fellow book bloggers to participate in.

Day 2 - Bedtime Reading Ritual

I've never really thought about it, but I guess I do have a bit of a ritual when it comes to reading books in bed.

• First, I have to get everything else done and out of the way.  Brushing my teeth, washing my face, getting into my super-comfy PJs, checking email/twitter/facebook/bloglovin... I get all that stuff taken care of, so I don't fall asleep without it being done.
• Second, I make a ginormous pile of pillows for a backrest.  My bed's up against my wall lengthwise (like a daybed), and there's no headboard/sideboard(?) to lean against.  So I take every pillow I own, pile them on top of each other, and use them as a rather unstable backrest that usually has to be readjusted several times during the night.
• Third, I get under the covers... no matter what the temperature is.  My bedroom could be really warm, and I will still get under at least a sheet because I cannot read in bed without being under some form of cover.  (Even when it's the middle of the day, and I'm on the couch in the family room, I have to be under a throw blanket while reading.)
• Finally, I read and read and read until I either finish the book or force myself to put it down.  Whichever it is, it's usually super-late... or super-early, depending on how you look at it.  And then a few hours later, getting out of bed and going to work is like this...

And that's my bedtime reading ritual.  How about you?  Do you follow a pattern with your bedtime reading?

Top Ten Tuesday (30) - Best Book-to-Movie/Miniseries Adaptations

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.  This week's topic is the best and/or worst book-to-movie adaptations.  I've already done a post on worst book-to-movie adaptations; it was actually the first Top Ten Tuesday I ever participated in (if you'd like, you can read it here).  So now I'm going to do the best adaptations, but with a little twist - I'm including miniseries in the list because I honestly think they're way better at bringing books to life than the movies.

Top Ten Best Book-to-Movie/Miniseries Adaptations

• The Lord of the Rings trilogy  -  While I hate to pick one movie as my favorite, I will definitely say that this trilogy is in my top five.  There were some changes from the book, but there weren't too many, and they were changes I could live with.  Even if I hadn't read the books, I would still love these movies, simply because they're so well-done and exciting.
• Pride and Prejudice  -  Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.  Enough said.
• Jane Eyre  -  I like almost all the adaptations I've ever seen of Jane Eyre, but this one is definitely the best so far.  The actors have great chemistry, the script stays true to the story, and the tension between Jane & Mr. Rochester is amazing.
• I Capture the Castle  -  This is one of those movies I saw before reading the book, and I loved it.  (I love the book infinitely more.)  I think it has a great cast, and while certain parts were cut for time, all of the best parts are still there.
• Persuasion  -  As much as I LOVE Pride & Prejudice, I think Persuasion has so much more emotional depth to its love story.  And this movie adaptation is so good.  Ciaran Hinds is an amazing actor, and he makes such a great Wentworth.  And Amanda Root as Anne...all of that regret & longing & hope & love - it's all in her eyes.
• Emma  -  I'm obviously an Austen fan, and this is perhaps the best miniseries adaptation of one of her novels.  With an extremely talented cast - Romola Garai, Johnny Lee Miller, Michael Gambon - and the sets & costumes, Emma just comes to life so beautifully.
• Under the Tuscan Sun  -  This is one of those rare times that the movie is better than the book.  I found the book so boring I didn't finish it (which is rare for me), but I loved the movie.  They took the core idea of Mayes' story and turned it into a sweet movie about travel, family, love, and self-discovery.
• Twelfth Night  -  I love Shakespeare adaptations, and this is one of my favorites.  I could not stop laughing; the actors were brilliant, and their timing perfect.  I loved the time period and setting they used - late 1800s in Prussia (or maybe Poland?).
• Going Postal  -  I've enjoyed all three Discworld adaptations, but Going Postal is the best of them.  For one thing, either they had a bigger budget or a better special effects team, because the CGI and effects were much higher quality than in the first two.  I also loved the story - the thief/cheat is given a second chance at life to redeem himself, which leads to a hilarious adventure. 
• The Hunger Games  -  Besides being an adaptation of an amazing book, this movie was great because it only adjusted a few of the original story elements (mostly small details), and the material added enhanced the storyline, rather than drastically changing everything.  I'm sure it helped that Suzanne Collins worked on the screenplay.  Plus, the cast, the costume designs, and the cinematography itself all worked together to make this an incredible adaptation.

So what do you think?  Any you agree with?  Disagree with?  What are your favorite book-to-movie adaptations?

15-Day Book Blogger Challenge - Day 1

April from Good Books and Good Wine has created a fun new challenge for all of us book bloggers.  It's the 15-Day Book Blogger Challenge (one challenge per day), and I'm participating because I totally relate to what she says about not having any energy to blog.  I've been following the same pattern as her, just turning on the TV when I get home and not reading or blogging.  So this challenge is something to do for fun and to get back in the swing of things.

Day 1 - Book Related Confessions

1. I'm kind of OCD when it comes to matching covers.  I need them to match, and when they don't, it bugs me SO much.  I will go out of my way to find the matching covers, even if it means paying a little more or having to visit several used book stores.
2. I hate book jackets.  They annoy me so much when I'm reading because they're always slipping off or ripping.  I usually just take them off when I'm reading so I don't have to deal with them.
3. I prefer paperback to hardcovers anyway.  Partially due to the problem with book jackets, and partially because I just love the way they feel.  They're so much lighter than hardcovers, and I can fit more of them in my shelves too.
4. I try to take super-good care of my books - no cracking the spine beyond repair or bending page corners.  If I get a used book, I don't usually care if it's been beat up.  But once it's in my hands, I try not to further the damage.
5. Even though I'm super careful when handling my books, I have no problem lending them out to people and expect them to have a little more wear & tear than they did before.  The only time I'll freak out is if I get the book back with the cover ripped or mangled, or if it was obvious that they spilled food or drink on the book.  Then you might see a meltdown.
6. I passionately hate e-readers!  I'm so in love with my print.  The only time you will ever see me use any form of e-reader is if a book is ONLY available via Kindle/Nook/whatever.  And then I'll use my iPod or one of my parent's Nooks, but it seriously affects my appreciation of the book.
7. I collect blank journals & notebooks.  I don't usually write in them, but I buy them as if I someday will.  And I'm really picky too, when it comes to buying them.  They have to be college-ruled or unlined (I hate wide-ruled notebooks/journals); there has to be something unique about each one like it has a beautiful cover or it's handmade; and I have to be able to see myself using it, even though that may never actually happen.  I know; it's weird, but it's become a habit.  Whenever I go into a bookstore or stationery store, I usually leave with at least one book and one journal.
8. I hate spoilers, BUT if I'm reading a book, and the suspense is driving me nuts, I'll peek ahead to see if someone dies or not, or who they end up with, just to ease my mind.  I usually end up hating myself afterwards, but sometimes the tension is just too much to handle. (My younger sister's the exact opposite.  She goes on wikipedia and sees everything that's going to happen in both books and TV shows to decide whether it's worth investing her time.)
9. I almost always fall for the bad guy or the guy no one else likes.  I usually love the main love interest too, but I also have a thing for the other guy.  I don't know why, but if there's a secondary character who doesn't get a girl, I end up liking him more than the main love interest.  Or if there's a bad boy/villain, I tend to like them too.  So long as they've got more to their personality than just being a jerk.  If they've got great emotional depth or layers, then I like them.  I just like to believe that they can be redeemed.
10. I rarely go outside of my comfort zone, and when I do, I tend to dislike the books for the very reasons I was afraid of.  Not always though - The Fault in Our Stars is an example of a book I thought would be outside of my comfort zone, and it's one of the best books I've read in the past few years.  But that tends to be a rare experience.  I think we all have our comfort zones for a reason.  We've tried lots of things, discovered what we liked best, and then just stick with those.
11. But to follow-up that point, I will also say that I have a pretty expansive comfort zone.  It's not really about liking certain genres over others; I like to read lots of different genres (although I do tend to read a lot of fantasy).  My comfort zone is more about what's in the books than what genre they are.  Graphic violence/sex, horror & gore, excessive profanity, blatant anti-religious sentiments - all of these would put a book outside of my comfort zone, no matter what genre they were in.
12. I try to always read the book first when they make a movie adaptation.  Some people think this is crazy because then I'm constantly comparing while watching the movie.  But I like to imagine the characters for myself without being influenced by the movie's interpretation.  And I'm also pretty understanding about them making changes for good reasons.  It's only the stupid changes that bother me, like when they completely change the ending for no apparent reason, or they add characters that don't fit anywhere in the story.
13. I have no organization scheme when it comes to my bookshelves.  It's pretty much just putting the books wherever they fit when I purchase them.  So I have series that are split up around the room because I bought them at different times.  And I also find it hard to have any sort of system set up because I've run out of room on my shelves.  The shelves are double-stacked with books in front of books or on top of books, and there are books inside my desk, in my wardrobe, in and on my TV stand, in a box in the corner, in stacks on the floor.. you get the idea.  It's kind of hard to organize all of that.
14. I have a love-hate relationship with fads.  I hate it when one book does really well, so then everyone feels the need to copy it.  After Twilight, there were vampire books everywhere, and since I don't like vampire books, I was not too thrilled with that.  But then The Hunger Games started a huge dystopian fad, and since I really enjoy that genre, I've been pretty happy about the amount of dystopian/post-apocalyptic books available.  So I both love & hate fads.
15. I do not utilize my library that much, because my library... is terrible.  Smaller towns than mine have way bigger and better libraries.  My grandmother's town (which is teeny) has a library so big that the first time I saw it, I asked my mom if it was a school.  I think my house has more books in it than our local library.  And while I can do inter-library loans, my county has it set up that you can't order a book that's just come out from a different library until they've had it for at least six months, in order to give the people from that town time to read it.  So I tend to buy most of my books, because I honestly don't have many other options.

And that completes day one of the 15-Day Book Blogging Challenge.  Now how about you?  What are some of your book-related confessions?

July Reading List

Now that I'm coming to the end of my lovely (lazy) four-day weekend, I realize that I have a lot of reading to catch up on.  My TBR pile is taking up valuable floor space, so I really need to get started on it.  I've been working on a schedule to try to organize things a bit.  The following list is of the books I'm pushing myself to get done this month.

The July Reading List

• Keeper of Reign by Emma Right
• Ink by Amanda Sun
• Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta
• Swept Up By the Sea by Tracy & Laura Hickman
• Awaken by Meg Cabot
• Raven Flight by Juliet Marillier
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
• Dualed by Elsie Chapman
• City of a Thousand Dolls by Miriam Forster
• Through the Ever Night by Veronica Rossi
• Taken by Erin Bowman
• The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey 

And that's my goal to be accomplished by July 31st.  Here's hoping I can actually get it done.

Book Review: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Title:  The Raven Boys
Author:  Maggie Stiefvater
Genre:  YA fantasy/paranormal
Series:  The Raven Cycle #1
Publisher:  Scholastic Press
Pages:  409
Acquired via:  Library

Rating:   

Synopsis from goodreads.com:  It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.  Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.  But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.
For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Please don't hate me, but I did not love The Raven Boys.  I liked it, but I didn't love it as much as everyone else seems too.  I decided to read the book after getting an ARC of The Dream Thieves at BEA.  I'd originally planned on reading it later in the year, but then I saw that my teensy local library actually had a copy available.  So I picked it up, started to read it one Monday... and didn't finish it til Saturday evening.  I just struggled to get into the story.  Eventually, I got caught up in the story and enjoyed it, but it took a while.

Likes

• The characters  -  I love how unique each of the characters is in this story, and how much depth each one has.  They really came to life on the page, and they were always surprising me with a new facet to their personalities that I didn't see at first.  I think Blue and Noah were my favorites.
• The concept  -  I felt that the ley line idea and the quest for King Glendower were great story ideas.  I thought it was unique and original.  And I loved the fact that the main character felt out of place, because she was the only non-magical person in her family.  Most stories usually have it the other way around.
• The writing  -  I already knew that Maggie Stiefvater has a beautiful writing style from The Scorpio Races, which is another reason I thought I'd try this book.  Her descriptions and prose are so well-done that I felt like I was there in the story.
• The final chapters  -  The last third of the book was great.  There was more movement than in the first part, and all the little things that had been slowly coming together finally did.  So much happened that I didn't see coming, so many twists that were unexpected.  And that final closing line?  Even if I'd disliked the book, after reading that line, there is now way I cannot read the next one now.

Dislikes

• The high expectations  -  It feels like everyone and their mother LOVES this book.  Every blogger I've spoken to and every blog I've visited have all said the same thing: "Read this! You'll love it! It's amazing!"  So I started reading this book expecting to have my mind blown, and therefore I think my expectations were just so high that the book would have needed to have been monumentally life-changing in order to meet them.
• Slow build/pace  -  Maybe it was just me, but I felt like the "world/character-building" in the beginning took a long time and caused the first half of the book to drag a little.  I really struggled to stay interested, and kept putting the book down.  Once things picked up, it was great, but it took me forever to get to that point.

So yeah, there was plenty I liked in The Raven Boys; I just didn't fall in love with it the way I hoped I would.  (Plus, a personal preference: I don't swear in general, but I especially dislike the F-bomb).  I think I could have loved the book if there had just been more movement (that's the best word I can think of) in the beginning.  I'm still definitely going to read the next book, The Dream Thieves.  How could I not when The Raven Boys ended the way it did, with such a phenomenal closing line?

A Win and a Fail

For some reason, I thought I had til June 30th to complete this challenge, not June 21st.  I just completely forgot that the whole point of the deadline was that it was supposed to be a Spring challenge, and therefore ended the day before Summer.

Which means that when June 21st came and went, I had completed one of the Once Upon a Time challenges I'd chosen, but not the other.

Completed

The challenge of Quest the Second was to read one book from each of the following genres: fantasy, folklore, fairy-tale, and mythology.  Despite my worry that a folklore story would be harder to find, I was able to finish this Quest early on in the season.  The books I read to complete the quest were:

• Folklore:  Strands of Bronze and Gold by Jane Nickerson
• Mythology:  The Goddess Inheritance by Aimee Carter
• Fairy-tale:  Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
• Fantasy:  A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan

Incomplete

Quest the Third required that you meet the requirements of either Quest the First or Second (check), followed by either a June reading of A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare or watching one of its theatrical adaptations.  Because I thought the deadline was June 30th, I did not complete this challenge in time.  Oops.

So the Once Upon a Time challenge was both a win and a fail for me.  Now I need to get back on track with the Debut Author Challenge, which I completely forgot I was participating in, due to the deadline being so far away (January 31, 2014).