Full disclosure- I had NO IDEA who Marina Keegan was. This book just fit a book challenge prompt and I saw that one of my friends had it marked "To Read," so I decided to check it out. I only learned about her life and her accident in the book's introductions.

Now that I've finished reading...I'm hovering between a two- and a three-star rating. I'm really not sure how to best explain my thoughts on this book...

On one hand, I enjoyed the writing (specifically her stories which drew me in pretty well), but on the other hand I was quite a bit put off. As I was reading, I wished that a couple of her stories had gotten the chance to be full-length. But the non-fiction essays I found myself just skimming... Of course these stories and essays could have been refined/added to before publication if Marina had the time, but I found the angst to be just too much- whether it was in the stories or in her non-fiction work. Sections of her writing really bothered me, sections like:

"Some of us know exactly what we want and are on the path to get it: already going to med school, working at the perfect NGO, doing research. To you I say both congratulations and you suck."
Perhaps that came out more as a joke when she read the speech? But reading this, I was immediately annoyed. If some one told me I suck because I was on a good path, I would be pissed!

"I'm so jealous. Unthinkable jealousies, jealousies of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel I'm reading and the Oscar-winning movie I just saw. Why didn't I think to rewrite Mrs. Dalloway? I should have thought to chronicle a schizophrenic ballerina. It's in excusable. Everyone else is so successful and I hate them." Going through life being jealous over everything would certainly have been exhausting.

My favorite line from the book:
"We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life."

In the end, would I recommend this book? Probably not. Would I re-read it? Definitely not.

I LOVED this. When I first heard about this book, I ordered it instantly, and then anxiously waited until the mailman dropped it off at my door.

I love that the storyline is set up like Stan is giving a talk to a crowd- complete with getting carried away with a story and needing to stop and back up to fill in some details. Throughout the book, I thought that his voice and personality were captured perfectly. You could really feel his positivity, his pain, and his struggle. And of course the artwork was lovely!

I would highly recommend this to any Stan Lee / Marvel comic fan.

Favorite line:
"As for what I read, it would be easier to say: what DIDN'T I read? I'd read the label on a bottle of ketchup if nothing else was around!"

This book is another that needs to be on all high school reading lists. It's a very tough read content-wise, but incredibly important, timely, and powerful. Overall, I would highly recommend this book. I think it should be read by everyone at least once.

More personal review:
When I first started reading, I really struggled with this book. I had to remind myself numerous times that this book was written for the "Teen" persona. Though after a few chapters, I got into the swing of things and stopped getting annoyed by little things like how pumped the teenagers were to reach Friday so they could go get wasted at a party.

However, I still had a few irks with this book. These included:

1) The use of the "NBD" acronym rather than actually writing it out. In my opinion, stuff like that works when there is texting or emailing occurring in the story, but I cannot stand when it's just thrown into the text randomly.

2) The numerous mentions of how office jobs (and even office clothes) are boring. One mention, maybe two would have been alright. But there were at least four. At that point I was just like, okay we get it....

3) How often the story made it a point to say that there are two sides to every story, but we didn't really see much of the "other side." I felt like we were really only shown Paul in a negative light, though some of the stories Quinn told made him look like a decent guy, I wish we had actually seen proof of that.

4) It seemed like the ending kind of fizzled out. I would have liked to see a bit more of a closing, like what happened with the trial, how things at school turned out, etc.

5) How there really wasn't much mentioned about how the school handled the situation. Maybe it's because I went to a very small school (82 kids K-12 my senior year) but I would have liked to see a assembly or something happen. It bothered me that it seemed like the school was just ignoring the issue.

My favorite lines:
"...trying to stare so hard at my own two feet so I wouldn't have to look up and see what was really going on. And while I'd been doing that, I'd been walking in the wrong direction. I didn't want to walk away anymore."

"Sometimes, when people get treated less than human, the best way to help them is to simply treat them as human. Not as victims. Just you as you."

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

I really enjoyed this graphic novel! The action started from the very first page and didn't let up until the end. The artwork was stunning. The storyline was dark and very violent. The fantasy and magical elements were interesting. I didn't love the main character, but I look forward to discovering how her storyline develops. I did love Kippa (the fox cub- adorable!) and Commander Ren Mormorian (the cat- hysterical!).

I would highly recommend this graphic novel for anyone that likes dark fantasy. If you are a fan of the Game Of Thrones graphic novels, you'll love this one!

This was such a fun read! Not much of a storyline, but the action and the artwork made up for that. The coloring in this series is absolutely stunning.

Ugh. Yet again I absolutely despised the main characters in this book. I thought the story line dragged on and on and I found myself forcing myself to read through. I'm not sure if I've just read too many of these types of books, but I thought the ending was really predictable. I wouldn't recommend this book.

I have to admit, I didn't like this graphic novel at first. I had really high hopes for it since this is one of my favorite book series. I thought the artwork looked rushed and sketchy (literally). However, after a few pages, I started to like the simple style. Once Jacob entered the loop, I was officially in love with it!

However, I would definitely recommend that a person read the actual book before the graphic novel because (obviously) quite a bit is left out and you don't really get to know all of the characters.

I cannot wait to get my hands on the second graphic novel!

Another reread. As usual, this was another absolutely ridiculous and anxiety filled story. Just when you think things are finally going to turn around for the siblings, things just continue to go down hill.

My favorite lines:
"Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it."

"...and this morning I am so tired that I can scarcely type these worfs."

In this issue, a cop approaches Deadpool and asks him to kill the top six mob bosses in New York. His contact that he has to go to for help is a girl named Anastasia who works at a tattoo parlor. Deadpool takes out one of the mob bosses by feeding him to the sharks. When he goes for his second assignment, Anastasia asks to see his face. When he shows her his true look, she says she can work with it.

In this issue, Deadpool comes up with clever ways to take out a couple more mob bosses. However, when he goes to get his money from the cop, he gets knocked out by the tattoo lady that he seemed to be hitting it off well with.