Best & Worst of 2010 - Young Adult

Here are my favorite and least favorite young adult reads of 2010 (books that I read in 2010, not just books that were published in 2010).

Best:

I read a lot of Young Adult books this year, and had a hard time paring the list down, so I decided not to. These are all wonderful young adult reads and I didnt want to leave any of them out.


Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld This book is enjoyable both for the beautiful illustrations and the very original steampunk story with a classic element - a girl dresses up as a boy to perform tasks that girls are not allowed to do. In this story she ends up befriending a fugitive prince in the middle of an alternate-history World War I.







The Scorch Trials by James Dashner What a pleasant surprise this book was! I read the first book in the series (The Maze Runner) and thought it was an interesting plot, but I hated the made-up slang , which I found annoying and distracting. I picked up the Scorch Trials because the final chapters of The Maze Runner added some major twists to the plot and I really wanted to know what was going to happen in the next book. I was so glad that I continued with The Scorch Trials because it was filled with twists and turns similar to those found at the end of The Maze Runner, and the! slang d idnt bother me as much in this book (I really do think that it was used less often). The third book in this trilogy will definitely be on my wish list because I have to know what happens to Thomas and all of the other kids too.



Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver Out of all of the books that I read this year, I think that this one was the hardest to put down, the one that made me reflect not only on my own teenage years, but also on my actions as an adult and how they affect those around me. It was heart-wrenching, but so good that I would read it again. I highly recommend it to parents and older teens I think it could stimulate good discussions about serious topics like sex, drinking and bullying.




Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer This futuristic disaster story shows one possibility for how people could react in a world-wide catastrophe that changes everything (weather, food supply, water levels, etc). The story is told via a teenage girl's diary about her struggle survival in this new world.






Matched by Ally Condie A story of teenage love set in a dystopian society in which choices of any kind have been taken away from the population and are decided by the government. The people have no worries about what to wear, where to live, what to eat, who to marry or when to die. Cassia is matched with one boy and but then thinks she might be falling in love with someone else. Cassias story is one teen love, rebellion and government control (and that constant curiosity of just how much the government can see).




Inside Out by Maria V. Snyder A dystopian fiction story with an unusual twist (which you dont find out until the end). Trella is a scrub (one who lives in the lower levels and does grunt work while those in the upper levels have more freedoms) and she sometimes breaks the rules by climbing through the pipes of the upper levels. When she finds out that there might be a way out of Inside (where they all live) she and others around her take risks that could get them all killed.




Unwind by Neal Shusterman - Connor lives in a world where parents can "unwind" their children (basically selling them to be donated for body parts). It sounds ho! rrifical ly morbid, and it is - but the story itself deals more with how Connor comes to terms with this betrayal, how he develops friendships, and how he and his acquaintances flee from the authorities in hopes of a better life. Unwind is a fast-paced and intense dystopian fiction read that I was surprised to love.




Worst:

The Water Wars by Cameron Stracher - The Water Wars brought up good questions about water usage, rights and preservation, but was completely unrealistic in how the young characters triumph against the villainous powers-that-be.







This World We Live In (Book 3 of The Last Survivors Series) by Susan Beth Pfeffer It is the last book in the trilogy, and the first book made my best list above. This was a very lackluster finish to the series though. It had some odd plot elements, little chemistry between characters, and an unsatisfying ending.






Mockingjay! by Suzanne Collins I was not at all pleased with how the author ended this series, especially the second half of the book. Some elements seemed rushed, skimmed over and tacked on. I wish she could do this one over again.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WikiLeaks: Strained relations, accusations and crucial revelations

Extract from WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy reveals twists and turns in the fraught lead-up to the publication of US embassy cables Buy WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy here Three men were in the Belgian hotel courtyard cafe, ordering coffee after coffee. They had been arguing for six hours through the summer afternoon, with a break to eat a little pasta, and evening had fallen. Eventually, the tallest of the three picked up a cheap yellow napkin, laid it on the flimsy modern cafe table and started to scribble. Ian Traynor, the Guardian's European editor, recalls: "Julian [Assange] whipped out this mini-laptop, opened it up and did something on his computer. He picked up a napkin and said, 'OK you've got it.' "We said: 'Got what?' "He said: 'You've got the whole file. The password is this napkin.'" Traynor adds: "I was stunned. We were expecting further, very long negotiations and ...
Keep reading

Britains first celebrity stalker revealed

Image
A copy of a 19th century cartoon shows Boy Jones (L), the stalker of Britains Queen Victoria, spying on he. Reuters file picLONDON, Feb 3 A 19th Century intruder sat on Queen Victorias throne, slept in one of her servants beds, hid under her sofa, read her private letters and even stole a pair of her voluminous silk knickers.Yet he was just an ordinary 14-year-old boy one of Britains first celebrity stalkers.The story of Edward Jones, known to Londons Victorian police as Boy Jones, has been pieced together using contemporary newspaper reports of the monarchs early reign.According to Jan Bondeson of Cardiff University, who spent five years writing a book on the lads fascination with the Royal Family, he broke into Buckingham Palace at least three times between 1838 and 1841.Jones, who, according to Bondesons book Queen Victoria and the Stalker, managed to get within a few feet of the young monarch, alarmed authorities who tried to keep accounts of his break-ins secret.On one occasion...
Keep reading

The Fighters Cruel Art

Image
Joyce Carol Oates Paramount Pictures A still from The Fighter (2010) The Fighter might more accurately have been titled The Fighter and His Family : its a boisterous, brilliantly orchestrated ensemble piece at the paradoxically near-still center of which is an Irish-American boxer (Mark Wahlberg), whose once-promising career, like his grim hometown, Lowell, Massachusetts, is on what appears to be an inevitable downward spiral. Just nominated for seven Academy Awardsincluding best picture and Christian Bale as supporting actor, the current favorite in that categorythe film is based on the life and career of former junior welterweight champion Micky Ward, most famous for his three brutally hard-fought bouts with Arturo Gatti in 20022003. It is also a group portrait of working-class Irish-Americans in a blighted, postindustrial landscape: the brawling, clannish, emotionally combustible Ward-Eklund family for whom Micky is the great hope and from whom, if he wants to survive, let ...
Keep reading