Erken Kaybedenler - Emrah Serbes itibaren İletişim Yayınevi içinde LIT biçim

Brian P _roductions — ** spoiler alert ** While I was doing my review for this book, my internet decided to restart on me, so I apologize this isn't going to be as good as a review as it would have been. This was a really good book! I do wish that I read the book before I watched the movie, because I was expecting something completely different! In the movie we watch how Noah and Allie met and that is most of the movie, but in the book this is about a paragraph long. This is why I was so surprised that Noah was in his thirties!! What we read in the book is what is happening with Noah and Allie, after Allie leaves and becomes engaged to Lon. So, in the book we really don't see how much they were in love with each other as we see in the movie. I really liked Allie in the movie, but in the book she seemed kind of... pushy... (I would have used a different word, but I don't know if I can put it on this website) Which is ok, if I read the book first. At the end of the book I found it really hard to read, not because it was horrible or badly written, but because it was so sad!! We read about Noah talking about himself withering away and how he is dieing, not to mention the pain he feels when ever he sees Allie forget him. In the last chapter Noah reads a letter that Allie wrote to him when they found out she has Aylztimers (sorry I don't know how to spell that) and it is SO sad! I just about put the book down so I wouldn't have to read all the pain and sadness!! Another thing that took me off guard was at the end of the book Noah and Allie don't die together, like in the movie. I really wish I read this before seeing the movie. I suggest to anyone who wants to read this, read it!! And if you haven't seen the movie yet, don't see it untill after you read the book! I really have to give congrats to Nicholas Sparks for this book!! He is an amazing writer, and I know he would have to do a lot of research to write a story about a couple who are about to die, and who are so much older then he is!! Fantasic writing!!! Love his books!!

Aiste Butleryte aiskreem — ** spoiler alert ** I wanted to like the book more, (three-stars is being on the generous side, actually), but frankly I don't feel the book lived up to its potential. Pros: - I liked Ryan's worldbuilding, mostly. I liked how she built up these little secluded ecosystems, surrounded by a forest of both trees and zombies. At least, I could imagine it vividly in my mind, and sometimes just envisioning the setting of an uncommon written world is half the fun I find in a story. There were enough differences between the village of Mary's and the second village they discover (even without anyone living there) that would allow you to contemplate how differently the cultures of these two places would develop without any outside influences. - The feel of adventure. Kind of funny, considering the characters don't really walk the earth, but seeing as they'd lived their entire lives knowing only this one village, the paths, the puzzles to unlock how they're coded, the discovery of another village, running through the forest, coming across the ocean, it was definitely an experience for them. - The relationship between Mary and Gabrielle. It's probably the only relationship that is interesting in the book, even though the two exchange only a couple lines of dialog. Most of their interactions are after Gabrielle has changed into one of the Unconsecrated (a word that frankly feels way too long, especially when they repeat it at least once every other sentence), but even then it has an obvious effect on Mary, and in fact, Gabrielle is one of the only people that actually causes Mary to reflect and do much in general. There's a poignancy between the two that I can't really describe or put into words, but had the book been able to carry that feeling all throughout, it would've been a much better story. - Argos the dog. What can I say. I like stories that focus on animals as characters (whether they speak human languages or are more realistic), he was heroic, you grew quickly to like him. Unfortunately, I found the dog to be better written than most of the human characters, but that's a gripe for the cons section. - The writing of details were decent. Descriptive enough without being overbearing. Cons: - The writing of most everything else. Dialog is sparse and when they do speak, it's all very dull and dry and, even if this is a zombie apocalypse, there isn't a spark of humor to be found. I am frankly not a fan of first-person present-tense writing, though this is a very personal aesthetic gripe, so I can't say too much beyond "I just don't like it." First-person past-tense I don't mind, present-tense...I honestly don't see why it's all the rage. I certainly don't feel any sense of urgency more than what I'd feel if it were happening in the past. I suppose it's not the worst thing ever, but present-tense just feels jarring to me unless I'm reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book (lol.) - Related, the character (and relationships) writing stinks. We don't get much insight on a lot of the characters that aren't Mary, but it's the damnedest thing; even though most of the book is just Mary's internal dialog yak-yak-yakking away, ......GodDAMN is she boring as hell. Seriously, Mary is more of an Everyperson than an individual, interesting character. Her thoughts, her actions, everything just feels too generic, like the book is obviously catering toward those readers who don't want a distinct main character, but more of a placeholder within the confines of the story so that she (or he) can easily place themselves into Mary's shoes and experience the action as if it were they that were the main character (the first-person narrative and present-tense lends heavily to this feeling). I do not want this boring, personalitiless Barbie alter-ego; I want a distinct character that I can like because of her own merits. I want to know a Mary that is very distinctively Mary of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, one whom I can list very specific details about her wants, needs, loves, character traits, character faults, and by doing so she would be distinct and stand out against the descriptions of female heroines from the ton of other young adult fiction out there. She becomes a little better here and there and more in the latter half, taking more action, having these strange but absolute needs to do certain things, but she still isn't memorable. People may try to play up her badassery by saying "She kills her own boyfriend!!!!!!", but beyond that, can they really say much about her? Sure, you could argue she has specific needs and wants, but really? "She wants to see the ocean". Her village, surrounded by zombies, is all she's ever known, and she has a yearning to see this "mythical" body of water that her mother told her about but which nobody else believes in! ...So? It really doesn't go into much detail beyond that. I'm really not feeling this "dying need" to go out and battle ridiculous odds in order to see it; to keep Mary from being too interesting, you see, you can't be that urgent, gotta stay kind of wishy-washy. Ariel did it better when she wanted to be part of the human world, and she even had a song about that. See, now that's a yearning. Mary just doesn't feel driven enough, or inquisitive enough, or passionate enough, or imaginative enough about much of anything. She doesn't go out of her way to start looking for the ocean or to discover where Gabrielle came from; the circumstances just happened to push her in that direction. You could also argue that she has a specific love: Travis. The book also never tells us exactly why she loves Travis so much, considering he has all the personality of a Ken doll. (How appropriate, what with Mary's "insert your own personality here" description.) Does anyone who read the book honestly give a damn about Travis? He's so bland, like some amalgam of generic good traits of every boy you've ever had a crush on, without having to be his own distinct, interesting person. Like I said up above, Argos is the only character I particularly liked (well, and maybe Gabrielle, and she spends most of her on-screen time as a zombie), but Cass and Sister Tabitha are the only characters that I felt got a decent writing for. They both have distinct personalities, many, many faults (neither are people I would personally ever want to be friends with (for different reasons)), but positive aspects, too. Sister Tabitha even actually shows that humane side of her...right before she gets killed. Maybe Jed could fall into the above category, as he has definite parallels to Sister Tabitha. Maybe Harry is quite similar to his brother, being largely boring. I'm sticking them somewhere else to talk about, however. - One of my biggest problems with the book, aside from the characters and how they're written, is the fact that Mary, whether as a soap box for Carrie Ryan or honestly being just an issue that Mary has, as a character within this story, has definite problems with religion as it is used and abused in her village....but the blatant sexism also plaguing their society never gets called out on. Mary spends a fair deal of the book (largely the first part) talking about how she's lost her faith in a God, because what sort of God would let her lose her mother like that, on top of the fact that the Sisterhood is blatantly abusing religion to keep the villagers ignorant and within the safety of their little box. Alright, this is all fair. Now, how come she isn't raging about the prevalent sexism within their society also? No, just because the Sisterhood is the puppet masters behind everything doesn't mean that the women are in charge. The average Jane in the village is, flat out, not treated with the same respect as men are (bonus points if you're the First Born Son!). Women are basically baby-making machines; that's their main worth. If they don't want to have children, or if a man doesn't "claim" them before a certain age, they become part of the Sisterhood, though mainly doing bitch work; they only get to know some of the great secrets if they're good enough. Nobody in this society seems to have a problem with that. Mary would've been fine with it all had she been able to be with Travis first and forever (though maybe with a side of pining for the ocean now and then); when she's forced into the Sisterhood for a while, she blames NOT the severe skewing of egalitarianism within the village, but just Harry for not calling for her and getting her out of there, since her only way out is through a man. "But that's not what Ryan was trying to write here." Well, why the hell not? Mary goes on and on about how pointless their religion is; why couldn't she have also spent some time raving about how women aren't treated as equals? This is the main reason I couldn't stand Jed (and Harry, for that matter). Jed never gets called out for his bullshit. He is a cowardly, mean bastard. He places all the blame on his younger sister for their mother turning into a zombie ("Why couldn't yoooou be the one to kill her before she turned completely? Now Iiiiii have to be the one to kill her if I see her on the other side of the fence!" No, not quite in those words, but that's exactly what he says to her. He's a guardian who is supposed to be doing stuff like that, she's just a regular girl), then turns her out to the mercy of the Sisterhood when Harry doesn't claim her for marriage because he's too busy feeling sorry for himself to be big about it and act like how a sole remaining family member of someone in need should. He also thinks nothing of putting everyone else in danger when his wife becomes infected because he's too damn selfish, and when Mary finds out, he manipulates her emotions into keeping quiet ("If you've ever loved, then you'll let me do whatever the hell I want let me stay with Beth just a while longer"). The fact that Beth, his wife, has to be killed before she turns completely zombie, or that they had a number of miscarriages isn't just punishment for Jed's being a complete doucherag for a large part of the book. Sorry, but in a zombie apocalypse, it's reality for most of the villagers; there's nothing "Poor Jed ;_;" about it. It doesn't change the fact that no one calls him out specifically for all his assholeness toward Mary...why? I honestly believe it's because of the unaddressed sexism here. He's a man, and the eldest son on top of that, so everyone thinks he's in his right, or that something else is always to blame, or just...never completely his fault. And then he dies (most likely) at the end of the book saving Mary. Great. You know he'll now remain a hero in her eyes forever, now? How she'll gloss over how he treated her generally like shit most of the time? Tabitha tried to save Mary herself, but Mary didn't make excuses for her or the Sisterhood when they did nasty things, or things came back to bite them in the ass. On the topic of Harry...if you don't look too deeply he seems like a decent guy on the surface; maybe a little cowardly when he didn't come for Mary, yet brave and a take-charge type of person when the zombies breach the villages fences. I don't like him. I probably dislike him as much as I dislike Jed, because at least Jed was mostly shown as an asshole whenever he was around (to the audience, anyway; no one in town thought ill of him). Harry, on the other hand, is presented far more sneakily than that. Frankly, the main thing I got from him was that he's a manipulative bastard himself. From the start, we're given hints that Harry knows Mary doesn't give a damn about him and that she's in love with Travis (for whatever reason). He also knows, what with the handy village mentality that First Born Son is always right, that Travis, even if he loves Mary back, would never try to steal Mary away, so he asks her to be his betrothed. Cass, Travis, Mary are all people who can't be with the person they truly love because Harry knows he can manipulate it that way, instead of being the one to stand back and try to let the majority be happy. There's another line in the latter half of the book where Harry gives Travis this possessive smirk, showing Travis that Mary is Harry's and Harry's alone. This is another of the very few tidbits we're shown into Harry's true personality, and it made me want to fucking punch him in his smug little face. He's just as much of an asshole as Jed; he just hides it much better. - Finally, my final gripe (I think): careless writing surrounding talk of the ocean, or any ocean-related metaphor. The ocean is supposed to be something barely beyond comprehension to the people living in this village. Most of them just flat out don't believe in it. A body of water that stretches out as far as the eye can see, filled with salt? For a people that've lived their entire lives (and many generations before them) surrounded completely by forest with only maybe a river or something running through their fenced-in community? That can be understandable. And naturally, just because they have no contact with something, or something becomes obsolete, doesn't mean that that word and anything relating to it automatically drops from a language. Still, I think any figurative use of ocean-related terms within this book cheapens the whole "Ooh oceaannnnnn" mysteriousness that was trying to be conveyed. There was a sentence where Mary is talking about the sea (yet again), and she mentions something about being able to smell all the salt in the air. Okay, see, generally when people think of salt, they don't think "smell". You don't put out dishes of food with too much salt and go "I dunno guys, it smells a little too salty for me". I doubt these people have acres of salt flats within their compound. As far as they're concerned, Salt = no smell. There is no reason for Mary or Cass or anyone to think about the smell of that "salty air". Also, yes, I know that islands exist in all sorts of bodies of water, not just oceans, and again, words can still exist in one's lexicon, particularly in phrases and set sayings, even if they're something that no one has seen in several generations, but there is a part in the book where something is described as "an island in the middle of a sea" or something to that effect. This is, of course, before Mary actually reaches the ocean. I think there might've been a few more mentions of something similar, but again, this just feels careless. It's not that hard to omit ocean-related terms from writing if you really want to make it come across as cryptic to these people who've never seen it. I was thinking as I was reading (listening to) the book that...this would've been more enjoyable if it had been a video game. Seriously. Not a big hit super HD FPS horror survival or anything, of course, but some low-key adventure/RPG/horror survival/life-sim. You live most of your days in the village doing menial tasks like in The Sims, or something (and since Mary is so bland, you can easily make your own character!), but then you uncover mysteries, the truth behind the Sisterhood, their secrets, the Roman Numeral code, hidden passages beneath the cathedral, discovering the new town for your adventure segment. Anything dealing with actual contact with zombies, especially when Mary has her "party" with her, the horror-survival RPG. I dunno. I'd play it.

Connie Lemon connielemon — Read aloud to Levi and Haley. A perfect read-aloud book with short, lyrical chapters in which each word counts. The seemingly small story of a china rabbit ends up illuminating life, death, and love. The edition we read has beautiful, vintage-looking plate illustrations. It was a high point of our summer.