Tag Archives: Contemporary

We Should Hang Out Sometime by Josh Sundquist

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If you’ve We Should Hang Out Sometimeever felt embarrassed or awkward read this book and you will feel like nothing you have ever done was embarrassing or awkward.  This is a book that you will be laughing out loud while reading it.  You will feel for this boy who just can’t get it together and find a girlfriend.  You’ll want to tell him what he’s doing wrong and explain to him how a cell phone works (we’ll get to that later).  At the same time, you’ll relive all the awkward middle school, college, and life experiences you have had.

Josh Sundquist is a 25 year old leg amputee who has just discovered that he has never had a girlfriend.  What is really sad about this fact is that he was under the impression that he had a girlfriend when he found this out.  Awkward.  So he decides to be all scientific and interview all his old “girlfriends” to find out what went wrong.  Enter all the said life experiences we all try and forget about.  Prom, mini golf dates, gross food eating contests at youth group, calling a girl every single day of summer until we learn what caller ID is…wait that one was just Josh.  All he really figures out after reviewing what happened and then speaking to the girls is that there is not one specific thing that he was doing wrong.  I won’t give away the ending except to tell you it’s a good one.

What I wasn’t expecting from this one was the lesson that we all need to stop questioning what other people are assuming about us, we need to accept who we are and love that person before we expect another person to love us.  Now, go read this book and let me know what you thought of it!

The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith

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An oldieThe Geography of You and Me but a goodie, another day another dollar, all’s well that ends well, an apple a day keeps the doctor away.  You guys know what these are?  Clichés, just like this book is a cliché.  I had to make myself finish this one because I knew how it was going to end on the first page.  I also knew pretty much what was going to happen by the second or third chapter.  I felt like I had read this book a million times over.  Don’t waste your time.

Lucy and Owen meet in the elevator during a New York City blackout and end up having a picnic on the roof of the building that night.  And guess what, they like each other!  Who knew that was going to happen?  Answer: everyone.  Here is the one thing the book had going for it; travel.  Unfortunately, the travel part didn’t pan out either.  The only way we know where they are is at the beginning of the chapters it says “In London Lucy…”.  Lucy and Owen can’t be together because Lucy is moving to Edinburgh and Owen is going out west with his dad.  So they start sending each other postcards from wherever they are.  But wait, you can’t have a book like this without a little jealousy sprinkled in there, right?  So of course both Lucy and Owen end up dating someone else and when they see each other in San Fransisco they find out and stop talking for a while.  As you’ve probably guessed, after San Fransisco  they keep thinking about each other (featuring one line pages about where they are thinking about each other) and end up meeting in New York where it all started and have another picnic on the roof of the building.  The End.

Now this is only my opinion of the book, if this seems like something you would like, go ahead and read it, but just remember if you have read any other teen romance books, you’ve read this one too.

Room by Emma Donoghue

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I was really excRoomited to read this book, but it didn’t impress me as much as I thought.  It was too slow and simple.  It was written from the point of view of a five-year-old, and even though he did have a big vocabulary, it still felt dumbed down.

A woman, Ma, is kidnapped and is forced to live in an eleven-by-eleven shed for seven years.  She has a son while living there and the story begins on the boy’s, Jack’s, fifth birthday.  The first part of the book is about living in the shed.  They play track, running around the shed, cards, watch TV, read the few books that they have, and clean the shed and their clothes.  The second part is when we see more of their captor, Old Nick.  He brings them Sunday Treats every week, which can be groceries or clothes, and sometimes toys for Jack.  Old Nick hurts Ma in the second part and we begin to see how much she wants to get out.  The third part is my favorite, because it has most of the action of the book.  Jack and Ma come up with a plan to escape and carry it out.  The fourth part starts when they are out of the Room and are sent to live in a clinic.  This is the part when we see how badly Jack has developed.  He has trouble going outside because the wind hurts him and he has to learn how to be away from his Ma.

I did like how Donoghue described all the new things that Jack was experiencing.  The simplest things that we all take for granted are seen as the best treasures in the world to Jack because he had so little in the Room.  In today’s world I think we could all learn a little bit from Jack about not wasting everything we have and only taking what we need instead of everything we want.