It’s Monday What Are You Reading? is a group blog hosted by J. Kaye’s Book Blog. You can link your blog by clicking here.
This was a two book week for me. I listened to Paper Towns by John Green on audio and read Makers by Cory Doctorow.
Paper Towns
Paper Towns is a great YA novel, with all the elements that make for a good teen read. There’s silly pranks, a mystery and even a zany race against time road trip. It’s realistic fiction, and the sort of realistic fiction that actually feels real. The characters are multi-dimensional and fight off those usual high school stereotypes. Our main character is Quentin a high school senior on the verge of graduation, who spends a lot of time in the band room, even though he isn’t even a member of the band. His next door neighbor and childhood friend is the ultra-popular Margo Roth Spiegelman, but when Margo disappears and Quentin takes it upon himself to track her down, he starts finding out that he doesn’t know Margo as well as he thought he did. John Green has a knack for writing about and for teens, and his novels manage to be both fun and thought-provoking.
Makers
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author who occasionally writes for the YA end of the spectrum. His latest book, Makers, is clearly an adult novel. There are a lot of characters in this near-future science fiction book, but I think the main character here may be the technology itself. The biggest difference between the world of the novel, and our own is the existence of 3-D printers. Rather than paper these printers are fed with “goop” and what they turn out is various three dimensional objects. What this means is that production becomes much more of a small scale sort of thing. The novel follows this technology and the different players involved in using it as they try to understand the business logistics of it from the geeky engineers who just want to make stuff to the Disney executives who just want to make big bucks. It’s an interesting look at a very possible future.
What’s Next
Right now I just began the funny, out there graphic novel Tales Designed to Thrizzle Volume 1 by Michael Kupperman and am listening to the audio version of the YA novel The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson. I’m not sure what I’ll be diving into next, I bought a few YA novels with an Amazon gift certificate I had, and I’ll probably have to do an eenie meenie miney moe to figure out which one I read next.
My Books
I’m planning on reading Paper Towns this week. Glad to hear you enjoyed it!
.-= Alita´s last blog ..Monday Round Up (01.18.10) =-.
Alita: I hope you like Paper Towns as well. I’m sure you will!
Oh! I want to read Paper Towns. There is another book of his I want to read too, but this one was highly recommended. Glad you hear you loved it too!
.-= J. Kaye´s last blog ..New Reading Challenge: 12 by 12 Reading Challenge =-.
I really want to read Paper Towns. John Green is awesome.
J. Kaye: Paper Towns was great, and I liked the way the book managed to surprise me along the way.
Angie: John Green is awesome. It’s only the second book of his that I’ve read, and I now I realize that I must make sure to read everything he writes.