Category: Young Adult

Looking for Alaska by John Green

Posted May 11, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Young Adult / 0 Comments

“How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” — Simón Bolívar

Title: Looking For Alaska (Goodreads)
Author: John Green
Published: Puffin, 2005
Pages: 221
Genres: Young Adult
My Copy: Paperback

Buy: Amazon, Book Depository (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

I don’t think I’ve ever started a review with a quote, but these famous last words really are relevant to this book. Looking for Alaska tells the story of Miles; a kid obsessed with memorising famous last words. He is leaving a school where he has no friends to go to a boarding school. The reason; well according to Miles it is because of François Rabelais’ famous last words “I go to seek a Great Perhaps”. At this new school Miles experiences a lot of firsts, first friends, first cigarette, first kiss, first love and first heartbreak.

Alaska is the beautiful girl that Miles has a crush on and I can see why; she is a great character. She is an outspoken book nerd who, while she can get rather emotional, is the kind of female friend every high school boy dreams of having; obsessed with sex, flirting and teasing but ultimately one of the guys. But the thing I liked about Miles and Alaska (as well as the other characters) is their emotions and the way they act seem so familiar. It is easy to connect and understand what they are going through. It is hard to get the emotions right, and make them feel real; I know most YA books miss this completely but John Green makes it look so easy.

I really connected with Looking For Alaska, and I could probably talk about the awkwardness of the characters (including the awkward blow job), the views on religion and philosophy and even the pranks and mischief they get up to; but I will leave that for the readers to discover. I think the main thing I took away from this book is the fact that John Green wrote a book exactly like the stories I’ve attempted to write when I was in high school. The feeling of loneliness, being a geek, having a crush; Green captured this perfectly and he showed me how an expert writes a YA book about love and lost. I know I’ve been on a bit of a John Green kick lately, I’ve even been watching his YouTube channel constantly but I don’t think this will stop anytime soon, I can’t wait to read another one of his books.

For The Win by Cory Doctorow

Posted May 1, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Young Adult / 0 Comments

Title: For The Win (Goodreads)
Author: Cory Doctorow
Published: Tor, 2010
Pages: 480
Genres: Young Adult
My Copy: Audiobook

Buy: Amazon (or visit your local Indie bookstore)

I’m not sure if I’ve just read a novel or had a lesson in economics. Cory Doctorow’s dystopian novel For the Win tells the story of the exploitation of an online role playing game’s economy. In the running of what could be classed as electronic sweatshops throughout Asia, gold farmers suffer from very poor work conditions in the effort to mine gold and find virtual treasure to sell to first world customers. The novel has a typical ‘unite and rise against authority to improve our lifestyle’ plot but add a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) this book makes for some interesting concepts. While this book is a book about slave labour, gangsters and forming a revolution, this book also dives into the world of global finance in a very educational way.

This book reminds me of Neal Stephenson’s novel Reamde, in the sense that it explores the world of gaming from the perspective of gold farming. While Stephenson focused on all the aspects of creating a MMORPG for the purposes of gold farming and money laundering, For the Win focuses on the concept of the in-game financial system and how fragile global economy can be. The author floods the book with many different financial theories and uses the games economy to help the reader understand just how global finances work. While this novel focuses on the in-game aspects of economics, the theories taught are very real.

Like Reamde, For the Win made me thing of an aspect of gaming that I never released existed. While Reamde hired a geologist to create the world of T’Rain’s mining system; For the Win had an economist working for the game developers. This book was a real eye opener while still making a great story. To begin with I had trouble keeping up with all the characters Doctorow tried to introduce, characters from USA, India and China; but slowly I started to get a feel for which character was which. I don’t think Cory Doctorow spent enough time exploring his characters, I felt like I only got a glimpse of each character and I would have liked more. For the Win is a book for gamers, but non-gamers might also enjoy the thrilling ride this takes the reader on. It is more than just a lesson in economics and it is more than a novel about unionising Gold Farming. While very predictable this ended up being a great read.

The Hunger Games: The Book vs The Movie

Posted April 22, 2012 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Young Adult / 3 Comments

Normally I would stand by a simple truth; “The book is always better than the movie” but that is not always true. In the case of The Hunger Games, I’m not going to say the book is better than the movie. I think they were both great but I can’t pick one over the other. If you haven’t been living under a rock, you would have heard of this book and the movie adaptation but just in case you haven’t, let me quickly sum it up. The Hunger Games is the story of a 16 year old girl that takes the place of her younger sister to compete in the annual televised event ‘The Hunger Games’. This is an event where a young boy and girl are called up randomly to participate in a fight to the death for survival for the entertainment of the rich and powerful.

Katniss is a strong character, with all the normal awkwardness you would expect from a teenager; having to deal with love, death and loneliness in this dystopian world that she lives in. But in the book it tends to focus a little too much on the cutesy teenage girl aspect and less on the darkness of her situation. The movie does have this same element but a lot of this has been cut down to make room for the main plot line. When it comes to the violence, the book seems more violent and the movie felt a little anti climatic at the end. Also I’ve found in the movie the tributes were very two dimensional and very annoying but when reading the book I didn’t notice this at all. Capital’s fashion was terrible in the movie and I was glad I didn’t have to be subjected to seeing it while reading the book. In the end, the movie slightly departs from the book but it really sets up the next movie (If it gets made) really well.

While I’m talking about this movie, I want to know what was with all the racism with the twelve year old from Division 11? In the book it mentions she had dark skin but people seemed so shocked when in the movie she turned out to be an African American. It shouldn’t matter what colour her skin was all that should matter is that Amandla Stenberg played the role perfectly.

The faults I had with the movie balanced out my problems with the book. I don’t think I can pick one over the other. I’m interested in seeing how the series plays out as a movie adaptation but at the same time I don’t have much of an interest to continue the series. I think as a stand-alone book, it’s fantastic; but if I try to predict the rest of the series and all I can see are love-triangles, fighting authority and a lot more romance. If this isn’t the case, I might read the other books; but at the moment I just think it works better as a single story. Problem is, if they are making the movies I feel inclined to read the book before seeing the movie.