While I didn't love this book - how can you 'love' a book like this? - it was written really really well. I actually listened to this one and at first the POV of Jack was driving me crazy. I thought it was a little overdone and frankly got on my nerves, but by about a quarter of the way through I was hooked. It was heartbreaking and uplifting, consistent but also dynamic, slow where it needed to be then thrilling when it was important. I can see why it was a bestseller for so long, and while I'm not sure what I'm taking from the book other than the recognition that no one can understand or assume anything about anyone in this situation, I think it's a very important book.

Frankly I am just happy to finally be done with this book. It was looooong long long. And since there's been so much time inbetween the books of this series (I was able to read the Percy Jackson books back to back) I've gotten the characters back stories confused. About halfway through I just decided to accept that I wouldn't remember all of the important histories of the heroes and just trudge on with the plot. Oh, Piper has a cornucopia that shoots food? I vaguely remember something like that? Frank is both a demigod and a descendent of some other weird shape shifting Chinese something? Oh, gotcha.

HOWEVER, House of Hades had every great thing I've come to expect from a Rick Riordan book. It was fast paced, hilarious and heartbreaking appropriately, and extremely entertaining. It was also just so gosh darn long. It took me a good month because I could only do a few chapters at a time before I felt a little drained. While there wasn't anything that seemed totally unnecessary, there were times that I just felt like I was jumping from action scene to action scene without enough break for dialogue, thoughtfulness, or preparation.

I also thought this would be the last of the Heroes of Olympus series, but clearly I was mistaken! Not sure if there will be one or two more, but there's another year now to wait and find out. Hope I remember the important things because I just don't think I could reread this series!

I bawled.

Certainly an unexpected book.

I kept waiting throughout the book for the important message, and it didn't disappoint. It's a life lesson that I had to learn all too recently, so this book hit a hard home to me.

I kept having to remind myself that Conor was older than I thought. I kept imagining an 8 year old young boy when he was 13 and a teenager. But something like cancer makes children out of all of us I think.

The illustrations which I anticipated being frightening only added to the fantastically written story. Honestly one of the best I've read this year. I won't forget the message, and I'll apply it when I can.

Originally read July 2012.
This book.
It just flew, and was consistently exciting and thoughtful and well written. I loved all of the gray area in the story. There is no good side and bad side, and Tris spends the novel truly thinking about this conflict.

I obviously won't ruin the ending, but I just want to say that it's not fair for Roth to end the book that way and then not have the next one published until FALL 2013!!!

UPDATE: October 2013 rereading before Allegiant!

What I loved about reading this book again was how much I noticed Tris's aptitudes for Dauntless, Abnegation, AND Erudite. I was even thinking while rereading Divergent how little she seemed to express any Erudite qualities, but they really stand out in this book. I appreciated again how much Roth makes the storyline one that you have to think about. There's no right or wrong, good or evil. There's just people doing what they think is best for the greater good, and not everyone agrees. I forgot how much of a CLIFFHANGER this book has but luckily for me I get my copy of Allegiant in the mail tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!

I didn't cry when I finished this book.
I don't know why, because it certainly warranted a good cry.
I think I felt a little bit overwhelmed - like, past the point of crying - when I finished. I became Sam more and more throughout the book until I felt lost in her character, who is one of the most dynamic characters I've read in a book ever.

I think what Same does in her 7 days is go through the stages of grief - for herself. There were high moments and low moments, but what she realizes and I think what is most important is that life is better when it has depth. She has to give depth to Lindsay, to Juliet, to Kent, to her math teacher, to fully understand how each of them impact her life. She starts to see people outside of the bubbles she had spent her life putting around them. It confuses her at first, but by the end she has become such a beautiful and empathetic person. My heart broke for her.

I'm going to talk about her last day, so I guess there will be spoilers.

I loved Kent. I wish we had gotten to know him better, but I know that this book was about Sam, not about him. And there's only so much you can learn about another character in a 1st person POV where one day repeats over and over. I also loved (in an appreciative way) how well we got to know both Juliet and Lindsay. They are such different girls whose lives turned out so differently simply based on how they each respond to situations. Sam learns from each of them why you can't lash out at people because of fear, and alternatively why you can't just ignore others when they throw their problems on to you.
I wish Sam's last day had gone a little bit better, toward the end. But I understand that what Oliver is showing us is that we can never truly dictate a perfect day - even if we know it will be our last. As I said, there were wonderful parts of each day and terrible parts. That's life. Not everything can go according to plan. I wish Sam's last day with Kent had been more like the days before. I wish she'd gotten to tell off Lindsay a little more, and Ally and Elody as well. I wish she'd spent more time with her family. I feel like I'm mourning her in a way I've mourned few other characters. I wish we could have seen the after effects of Sam's death - to see how the butterflies dispersed and led different people to different walks of life. Sam became such a beautiful girl by the end of this book. And for so short a time.
I think Sam's most important day was the 6th day. It was the last day that she spent the whole time thinking about herself, and realized that she had to think instead about someone else to escape the loop. And I think what the purpose of all of our lives.

One last thing - I liked this book SO MUCH MORE than the Delirium series. In fact, I may have liked the series more if I'd read this one first because I would have been biased toward Oliver. I wish they would have been written a little more similarly, at least in tone. The end.

This is really a 4.5 star book. For quality narrative and prose: 5. For how much I actually enjoyed/understood the book: 4.

I love listening to Neil Gaiman read his books, so I got this audiobook from the library. It had everything I've come to love about Gaiman's writing style: creepy moments treated as somewhat ordinary, quotable life lessons, and a world I can't imagine how he imagined.

Spoilers possibly.

Among all of that, however, I just didn't get this book. My friend Claudia Swisher wrote a great review where she discussed that the plot didn't bother her with this novel because it was everything else that made it great. For me though, the plot did matter. I felt that we never got any resolution between the main character and his father. I felt that I never really understood the Hempstocks, although I know with them I probably wasn't supposed to. I think what is continuing to just itch at my mind is the scene with Lettie and the boy in the fairy ring where Lettie makes him wait and ignore the monsters, then brings him the ocean in the tub. They get in and he sees Lettie and knows everything, and then they get out and go to the Hempstock's farm. What was the point? Why did he have to wait in the fairy ring? Why couldn't they have just gone straight to the farm? The ocean didn't take out the hole in his heart, so why did she bring it to him, and why was it so important that old Mrs. Hempstock had to help her get it in the tub? I just didn't get it.

After reading quite a few other reviews about how the theme is really about childhood and the way we remember things, I do think it's possible that I'm just not old enough to appreciate this book yet, but I don't know. That one scene just keeps bothering me.

I will say that I have moments where I get frustrated that I can't remember more about my own childhood. It makes me sad for the boy/man that he comes to visit Lettie so she can check on him and he can remember everything, then he leaves again and forgets. I wonder if that happens to any of us.

I took this book for what it is. It's not trying to speak volumes about society or people or the world. I think it's just a story about a girl and a boy. In high school. First love and heartbreak and whatnot. That being said, I really enjoyed the format of the story. It was fairly quick and easy to read. I felt so bad for Min while at the same time recognizing how blind she was to nearly everyone around her.
Everyone feels like they're the one who's 'different.' Except for Min. I liked that about her - that she acknowledged that she was who she was. Not 'arty,' and certainly different from Ed, but not 'different' in the way that everyone thought. She was just Min.
I got tired about halfway through of Min's multi-page long tangents about high school and life. It was a bit exhausting, and I started skipping through them. And there were a lot of sentences that I had to read multiple times to understand what the heck she was saying because her stream of consciousness was at times so confusing to read.
Anyway, I'd recommend for high school age.

Cute story. It's curious to me how a children's book rises above the rest. What qualities does it need? The parts of this book I chuckled at were a monkey smoking a pipe and getting sent to prison. Not sure if either of those would happen in a modern picture book!

I LOVED this. Way to go, Snicket. The illustrations were beautifully crafted and unique - especially when only little bits of the scenes were visible. In this book, the dark is a presence that takes over in the evening, rather than the light being a presence that recedes. Laszlo is an awesome name, and I imagine this would be a great book for a child afraid of the dark.
"Hi," he would say. "Hi dark."

HOW AM I JUST NOW DISCOVERING THIS BOOK?! I LOVED this hilarious and fun look at an orchestra. It's educational for kids and amusing for adults and musicians. I read it at the bookstore so I wasn't able to listen to the CD but I'm dying to! This is definitely going on my wish list.