The Ruins - Scott Smith

From the back of the book:

Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation - sun-drenched days, wild nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they stumble on the site of some ancient ruins...and the terrifying presence that lurks there.

Let me preface this by saying this book is not at all what I expected it to be. The fact that it's a bestseller gave me high hopes (and maybe that's part of the reason for the disappointment), but it was not up to par. It's really far-fetched - it's fiction, I get that - but so much so that I was rolling my eyes at times. With Stephen King's proclamation that it's "The best horror novel of the new century" on the front cover, I was expecting to have nightmares.

It was a page-turner, I'll give Smith that, but man was I disappointed. Four friends make friends with other tourists while on vacation in Mexico, which was their first of many mistakes. One of the brothers disappears, and on a whim the 4 set off with 2 other guys in search of the missing. Second mistake? The 2 guys they've just met do not know much English. So, they set off into the Mexican jungle with a language barrier, hardly any food and water and about 4 bottles of tequila.

The group proceeds to get lost, take a few wrong turns, and cannot figure out why they can't get past the flock of Mayans they come across. The Mayans force them to stay on a hill, with nowhere to go, no way to get out if they weren't already lost, and they become hungry, dehydrated and weak. Their Greek buddy ends up falling into a hole and breaks his back, and it sets off their downhill fight for survival. The group waits and waits for help to come, for rain, and to survive the odds. Then there's the vine. A vine that crawls to them, mocks them, sucks up their waste, and eventually, kills them.

If I were grading this book on an A-F scale, I'd give it a C. There were parts where I couldn't wait to see what happened next, but it was definitely not the horror story I was hoping for.

House Rules - Rachel Sontag

This is the incredible story of a very resilient girl, Rachel Sontag, and her family. Her father is an overbearing, over protective, abusive jerk, her mother is brainwashed into her dad's ways (does/says whatever he tells her to), and Rachel's little sister is the forgotten one. Yet Rachel struggles to reach her dad, to make him feel proud of her, to love her, as she grows up.

Rachel struggles with her father and their relationship, as she constantly seeks his approval, tries to reach him and understand him, and tries to make him feel proud of her. She searches for the good in him, strives to be the parts of him she loves, and still, she baits him when he's getting angry. Her defense mechanism was to be sarcastic (which I can totally relate to) or to concentrate on tuning him out. She even got involved in acting and theatre as a child so she could literally escape her life.

As she enters high school, things have never been so bad with her father. He tapes her phone calls, makes her have almost nightly talks about how she does absolutely everthing wrong, makes her write page after page of belittling words about herself, as he dictates them. When she realized her father - a doctor - was medicating their mom to the point where she would physically attack Rachel, she realized it was time to get out of there. DCF entered the picture, and for awhile, Rachel lived in a teen shelter for girls.

As Rachel's mom went in and out of (forced) drug use, she threatened to divorce their father multiple times but never went through with it. It was then Rachel stopped trusting her mother as well.

Rachel and her family are still estranged - her father cut her off when she took a trip to visit friends over a holiday break (crazy, right?) - but Rachel and her sister are still trying to work through their past.

It was a heartbreaking story - there were so many times when I could've thrown the book clear across the room, I was that disgusted with her dad - but I was constantly routing for her and couldn't wait to see how she ended the book. I don't even know her and I'm proud of what she's accomplished. Proud that she has stayed true to herself despite all the setbacks in her life. Despite her family. Proud also that she's still reaching out, still trying to repair what's been broken.

Highly recommended.

Book burning in the news

I found an interesting article on CNN today, that some controversial young adult novels are creating a huge rift in a Wisconsin town. Read the entire article here.

I agree that books including graphic sex and/or rape and incest are indeed not appropriate for all teens, but who's to say they should be removed from the library? Some teens are having babies, but they're not allowed to read about sex? Some teens are headed to college, but they can't read these books? I graduated high school and completed almost the entire first semester of college before I even turned 18. If books were removed from my library when I was 17, isn't it safe to say that college situations and incidents could have provided more harm than reading fiction?

Sound off on this...I'm curious what other readers have to say about it!

My first award!

Ivy at willing to see less has just blessed me with my first award - the Kreativ Blogger Award. How awesome! Thanks to Ivy for deeming me worthy. I'm passing it on to Kristin at Books for Breakfast, and Susan at Bloggin' 'Bout Books. They are both great bloggers who seem to fly through books even though they are both busy women.

Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates

I had mixed feelings about this book, which is highly acclaimed - Kurt Vonnegut says it's "The Great Gatsby of my time...One of the best books by a member of my generation." Possibly because I am not of that generation, I didn't feel the same about it.

It was a bit depressing. Frank and April Wheeler seemed like any ordinary couple, going through marriage and children and life just like any other couple. He worked while she raised the kids. They both lived their lives as they felt they should, compared to society, but were always waiting for the next thing, something new and exciting around the corner.

"Sometimes there was a glint of humor in these embraces of the eye: I know I'm showing off, they seemed to say, but so are you, and I love you...And what did it matter? The very substance of their talk, after all, the message and the rhyme of it, whatever else they might be saying, was that they were going to be new and better people from now on." (pg 133)

Oh, and they both had a major downfall that really didn't allow their relationship to work well: he's a very angry man who would go ballistic, and she's so insecure she looks for assurance in everything.

**SPOILER ALERT**

Ultimately it lead to her demise. While they cheated on each other, planned to move abroad and start life anew, their current life and an unwanted pregnancy set them too far off track to recover, and April committed suicide. What a sad, sad ending. I really wasn't sure what to expect, and although I saw it coming toward the end, I was still surprised it ended that way.

2009 Book Marketing Trends

The other day on Twitter I was pointed to this article about 2009's Book Marketing Trends. I have to agree with a lot of what was said, including that "hot" items will include anything green or eco-friendly, entrepreneurs and business coaching, social networking and home/decor and DIY projects were the items that especially caught my attention. All of these topics are important to me and provide me with inspiration this year, and not just in the book category.

The concept of green isn't new, I'd say that it's just picking up speed. Fast. I've been much more aware lately of my habits (such as plastic bags, recycling, etc) and have been trying very hard to curb them. The entrepreneur and business topic will always be near and dear to me, as I aspire to have my own business someday, and I just think entrepreneurs rock. Social networking - well, you already know that I recently purchased The Social Media Bible. I have also recently gotten into the interior design/decor and DIY on my other blog, and it's been providing me with non-stop inspiration.

What do you think of these trends?

The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides

Well what a depressing book this was!

It's quite obvious by the title what it's about, but I couldn't have been more shocked by the way this family of girls chose to end their lives. I know that being a teenager is awful, awkward, unpredictable and very dramatic, I can't image this actually happening in real life. It's set in the 70s, which is when my parents and their siblings grew up, so I really tried to consider them while reading this.

When Cecelia Lisbon, the apparent "crazy one" of the 5 sisters, attempts suicide and then later succeeds, her 4 sisters slowly move to the crazy side. The girls' mother shelters them to the point that the girls rarely even step outside the house. She makes their clothes - all matching patterns but different colors and she forces Lux to burn all of her records. They go to school, for awhile at least, and it appears that everything, such as taking the trash outside, gets done in the middle of the night. The girls get a following with the neighborhood boys, who are fascinated with the family even more so after Cecelia committs suicide.

The boys (who tell the story with information they've gotten from the girls' mom and from observations they made while obsessed with the family) are on cloud nine when the girls' parents finally allow them out of the house, and the boys take the girls to a school dance. It is there they realize that the girls actually are somewhat normal - although only in appearance.

The title of the book? From page 176:

From this "research," she came up with the find she was most proud of: a song by the band Cruel Crux, entitled "Virgin Suicide." The chorus follows, though neither Ms. Perl nor we have been able to determine if the album was among those Mrs. Lisbon forced Lux to burn:

Virgin suicide
What was that she cried?
No use in stayin'
One this holocaust ride
She gave me her cherry
She's my virgin suicide

Shortly before the Lisbon girls committed suicide, they started sending nightly signals to the boys. Also around this time, the boys started finding pictures of the Virgin Mary - pictures the girls placed in the middle of the night. It became apparent what the girls were going to do, and when they invited the boys over to their house in the middle of the night, I cringed. It was obvious to the girls that it was the opportune time since their parents would be sleeping. I don't understand why they needed the boys to be the first to find them though. The girls lured the boys into the house and one by one took their lives in different ways (sitting in the car in the garage, sticking a head in the oven). Those poor boys is all I could think!

At the very end of the book, the boys are recapping the girls' lives, trying to solve the puzzle with the help of a doctor.

"All wisdom ends in paradox," said Mr. Buell, just before we left him on our last interview, and we felt he was telling us to forget about the girls, to leave them in the hands of God. We knew that Cecilia had killed herself because she was the misfit, because the beyond called to her, and we knew that her sisters, once abandoned, felt her calling from that place too.

..."It was a combination of many factors," Dr. Hornicker said in his last report, written for no medical reason but just because he couldn't get the girls out of his head. "With most people," he said, "suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty." (pgs. 246-248)

Once again, I will just say that I realize adolescence is hard, but man- it's not worth dying for! I think adulthood is harder. Must less awkward, but harder still. I understand Eugenides was writing to show how hard the life of teens can be, and he succeeded. I did really like the book (but it sounds awful saying that!)

Newsweek's Top 100 Books

I'm such a sucker for these lists. You know, the "top 100" or "best of" lists of books. I always have to compare my reading to the lists. And as always, I'm disappointed in myself for not having read the "classics" or the "top 100." On June 29th, Newsweek published this article on their Top 100 Books.

And here I go again. I've only read 10% of this list - 10 measley books. Realizing I have some serious catching up to do with all these great books of the past. I can't believe I call myself a reader! That's it - I'm incorporating some of these books into my reading list if it kills me! Here's what I'm starting with.

• 1984 - George Orwell
• The Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
• Pride & Prejudice - Jane Austen
• The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger
• The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
• Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
• Animal Farm - George Orwell
• The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
• As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
• The Interpretation of Dreams - Sigmund Freud
• The Color Purple - Alice Walker
• The Affluent Society - John Kenneth Galbraith

Just to make myself feel better, I feel like I have to point out that I actually HAVE read the Canterbury Tales. Not many people have. I had to recite the opening lines in Old English for a grade in high school English class. I nailed it, of course.