beanie baby worm blog

I read The Outsiders  for my Young Adult Literature class, and was excited to find out my current impressions, because I last read it in middle school, like many of us. I was surprised by how much and how little I remembered. The feeling of the world and descriptions of the boys were familiar, and the general time and setting was captured very clearly through the writing, prose, and vernacular. Hinton discusses the boys' appearances right away, and it lent a very vivid image of the characters immediately and I had no trouble imagining what they looked like. However, I was surprised by how little I realized during my first reading, the sheer tragedy and helplessness of the entire story. All I remembered from my reading as a younger teen was that the boys had funny names and that someone died. But the way Ponyboy describes the helplessness of the “Greasers” who he loves like family but must watch them face their “fate” of dying young and desperate cut me deep, maybe because I am olde...

November 9  was less emotional for me than I'm sure it was intended to be due to its sheer absurdity, but it was overall decently entertaining. For context, It Ends with Us also by Colleen Hoover was my favorite book when I was 14, far before any Colleen Hoover hype hit the internet and her work saturated the market. I've attempted to return to her work after its explosive manner as of late, by reading this book, Ugly Love , and  Confess,  but none of them has had nearly the same effect it had on me as It Ends with Us  all those years ago. I am afraid to reread It Ends with Us  after hearing how underwhelming it is from current, more mature readers, as well due to as my personal reaction to her other works now that I am older.  November 9 was ultimately another disappointment to add to the collection of mediocre at best Colleen Hoover novels I have consumed. Her narrative voice and writing style tend to come off as a bit juvenile to me, and her over exagge...

While reading Everything I never Told You, I could tell that every word and sentence was carefully and deliberately put together to develop the different themes and concepts each character clings to, from chapter to chapter the layers just keep building into a precipice that made me genuinely feel for the characters and be invested in them, which is much more than I can say for the countless amount of Young Adult fiction I've consumed throughout the years. This story integrates so many themes, from how it feels to be a minority in America, sibling and familial relationships, keeping secrets, snowball effect, and more, but feels complex and meaningful rather than spread thin. I felt the most compassion and emotion for the youngest Lee sibling, Hannah, who is often pushed to the side and forgotten as a result of her parents' adoration and focus on Lydia, and even Nathan when Lydia passes. The switching timelines and jumping from the parents' relationship in the past to the tr...