Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

I will rarely suggest to anyone to watch a film adaptation prior to reading a novel, but in the case of Battle Royale, I actually think most people would benefit from it, and here's why. There are more than forty-two characters in this novel, and while each character gets some face time in the novel, Japanese names can be very similar and therefore hard to differentiate. I found that having watched the movie first, I was able to remember characters better because I had a visual reference already in place. This also eliminates the need for note-taking (which I find tedious and made novels such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy somewhat unenjoyable for me). There are also certain scenes in the book that (I don't want to give away anything) kind of fell flat but the director of the movie, Kinji Fukasaku really brough to life. Sure, there was tension and high drama in some of the scenes in the book, but being a translation, the impact, the original author's intent, may not come across as effectively. So, my recommendation: watch the movie, it's fantastic. Watch it before reading the book or just after if you just can't bring yourself to watch a movie before reading the book, but watch it. You can stream it on Netflix.

What initially drove me to read Battle Royale (aside from enjoying the movie) were the constant lamentations by people that The Hunger Games was just a ripoff of Battle Royale. I honestly don't find this to be the case. There are similarities. Of course there are. The idea of children fighting each other is actually a pretty common theme in dystopian novels. However, in Battle Royale, the characters are living in a society with a possible shadow-puppet dictator (as theorized by one of the characters) and while the youth population is on the decline, the "games" are still held for purported scientific reasons that hold no social benefit (unlike The Hunger Games, where the objective  was winning food for the district). To say that one is wholly based off the other is really a very shallow comparison at best.

While the primary characters that you follow are Shuya, Noriko, and Shogo, each student (or group of students) gets at least one chapter told from their point of view, which I appreciated. This is not just a book about killing, but rather a book about the human condition, and what shapes us as an individual and how we make the choices we make. The personalization of each chapter also gives the reader more insight into the government and the state of society as it exists in the timeframe of the novel. This type of effective storytelling makes a dauntingly thick novel an easy, enjoyable, and quick read.

Rated 5 stars on Goodreads

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk

I entered into this book with no bias, having never read any of Palahniuk's novels, and not knowing what to expect. A clean slate. I know a lot of people don't care for the writing style, but for me, it's very similar to a stream of consciousness, a sort of disjointed inner monologue interspersed with memories and you know, it kind of works for me. I like a bit of grit in my fiction. I like that Victor has just enough of medical school under his belt that he has a WebMD reaction to every ailment, that he checklists his trysts, that he lies to the elderly with dementia to avoid the horrible reality of the disease. In a way, Choke is every dysfunctional relationship and aberrant behavior anyone has ever has, mixed with mental illness, rolled into one big disgusting, uncomfortable ball, a bitter pill to swallow. It doesn't pull punches about addictive and avoidant personalities, and I appreciate that. It's not the best book ever written, but it should be read. I would absolutely love to see this adapted into film.


Holy crap, apparently it was adapted into film! I'll have to check it out.

Rated 5 stars on Goodreads

Midnight Sun (Twilight 1.5) Stephenie Meyer

What Twilight fans clamored for, Midnight Sun is essentially Twilight from Edward's perspective, and it's a hell of a lot more honest. Apparently, though the Kindle edition I downloaded from Goodreads was only a partial draft, and not the full book, although I thought it was an appropriate length and what the parallel novel should have been. That being said, it did read like a draft, with awkward jumps in time, glaring errors, and awkward punctuation.

I can't decide if Meyer wrote this to show her young female audience that Edward Cullen really isn't the ideal man or if she really had no idea that she had such a detestable, arrogant snot of a character. This was really her chance to give him some depth but instead she reinforces everything that every woman with a sane mind and feminist bone in her body found when reading the books, and he even admits, as early as page 59, that he is "An obsessed, vampire stalker." Do you hear that, girls? This is not good boyfriend material! In fact, he constantly ruminates over his obsession as he blithely shuffles through the minds of other people to stalk and gather information on Bella.

I'm giving this 3 stars because of its honesty. Yes, at some point Edward starts to moo about his love for Bella and all that, yadda yadda, but at least we're not reading Bella's boring as shit inner monologue about being ordinary, bored, hating rain, etc for almost 550 pages!

Rated 3 stars on Goodreads