Category: Family

MY sister-in-law Mindy recommended the Maze Runner series to me.  While talking about it she also recommended Divergent because I told her I had gotten hooked for trilogy books.  Kay Gough, a friend’s mother posted on Facebook about the Hunger Games that “Best writing now days is Young Adult fiction.”  I realized that is what I had been listening to the most was books gears toward teenagers.  Divergent is no exception as it is in the Children’s section of Harper Collin’s website.  I have decided to change gears after Divergent by picking up a book that was recommended to me by John a while back.  I started The World Without Us, but never got to dig into it because I started reading it about the same time as the Wallow Fire, irony or coincidence?

Anyway, Divergent is what appears to be the first book in a series following the theme of something horrible happened to the world, and this is how people cope now.  In this scenario Triss, or Beatrice, has come of age where she must choose what faction or group of people that she will ultimately live with and become.  There are five factions and each represent a different mentality and purpose for the population as a whole.  Trouble occurs when she is tested to find her faction tendencies, and she comes back divergent.  This means she displays multiple faction traits, and is a big no-no.  The text on the covers states “One choice can tranform you,” and that is what we see as Triss discovers who she is an changes to fit the situation she is presented.

The book sticks to her experience to strive to become one of her faction while trying to figure out what it means to be divergent.  The book keeps a good pace, and wraps up well for the sequel titled Insurgent is slated for a May 2012 release.  It will be interesting as I’m not accustomed to waiting for a sequel to come out.  All of the series I’ve done so far had been published (okay, I had to wait a week for Death Cure to come out to finish the Maze Runner).  It will be like waiting for the next Lord of the Rings or Back to The Future to get released in theaters.  It will be good to pick this back up next year in April to refresh what happened in the book to get ready to find out how “One choice can destroy you.”

Post-war craziness. new disease taking over humanity, possibly evil corporation trying to rid the world of the “Flare”.  Who would possibly be able to save the world’s population?  A bunch of kids of course.  The Maze Runner Trilogy follows a group of kids that have been tasked with saving the world.

The story didn’t exactly hook me, but it was enough for me to want to see it through to the end.  They kids used their own version of vulgarities that ended up getting rather annoying about midway through the first book.  Had they been the real words I think it would have been a major turn off to the series, but the removal from our vernacular made it bearable enough to finish.   The third book, “Death Cure” just came out so go ahead and have at the series.  I have such a hard time waiting after I’ve started reading, so having it out in it’s entirety surely helped.

Ready Player One, is a technology infused 80s pop culture movie about a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMO or MMORPG).  You follow a number of characters in their journey for an Easter Egg placed inside of a game that would lead to riches beyond riches.  The 80s references come again and again, and for someone that know’s about 80s movies, music, and video games it is fun to catch them as they are snuck in.  Ernest Cline did an excellent job of roping me in, and from the beginning I was wishing that it was a trilogy of books instead of a single novel.  If you are a geek at all you will enjoy Ready Player One.