The author, Alex Bell, haven’t written a lot of books before this one, but her latest book from 2014 had many good reviews, so I'm hoping that "The Polar Bear Explorers' Club" will live up to that. 

“Ready player one” seems to be an interesting and pretty crazy book. The praise for this book is insane, and I really hope it lives up to its received reviews. My thoughts on the book is influenced by these critic acclaims, but I still have my own opinion. I think it will be a book in my taste, and that the genre is well knitted around my preferences. I am also unsure of the ending of the book, as it seems to be a book that is so full of cool featured themes and ideas. That I am just afraid that it will be a big mess of awesome things that just won’t find a good story that branches well with the themes. But that is just my first impression on the book. 

The author is Ernest Cline. And other that he is a bestselling novelist (for the book “ready player one”), screenwriter (for the movie “Ready player one” soon to be released), father and full time geek. There isn’t too much to add. He doesn’t seem like an author, but rather like a genuinely chill guy. Hopefully this “chill” and sort of funny vibe transfers well into the book. 

Lord of the rings part 2, The two towers by J.R.R. Tolkien 

I will read 10 to 15 pages per day 

I am pratty sure that I will like this book, I already read the first one in the series and liked it very much. There have been films made of this series of books and I have watched them and they are to my liking. I have read the back and the first page, it is well written and a good story, I have high hopes. 

         The novel was written in 2014 by American author Anthony Duerr but it takes place in France and Germany during World war 2 so it is a historical novel. I have read a few books of this type of genre before and I have really liked them so I hope that this book is as good.  

 

The author of the book is Danielle Young-Ullman who is a playwright, author and a former actor. Her latest book (Everything beautiful is not ruined) is a finalist for the Governor General´s Literary Award so I really hope it´s worth reading. I haven’t read anything by her earlier so this will be interesting. 

Parzival is a poor boy living in a trailer with his aunt and her husband. He is obsessed with James Halliday’s treasure and is researching everything about Halliday to give him an edge in the search for the treasure. Everything in Parzival’s life orbits around his quest for the treasure. He is known as a “gunter”, an OASIS player that is dedicated to find Halliday’s treasure. He doesn’t like the real world and escapes reality by playing antique videogames.  In the daytime he runs away from his trailer and hides in an abandoned van. He locks himself away and plays OASIS, an virtual reality game where you can do almost anything. Parzival only really has one friend “Aech” and is very antisocial, he doesn’t want to make new friends and sees himself as a lone wolf. Lone wolf or not, I think that in the continuation of the book he will see more and more players on his journey to the treasure. I think he will have to team up with some other players in order to manage the quest. I also think that he in the end will achieve the treasure. 

 

b)    This book is in a weird way a bunch of genres since the game that is being played in the book is very different. There are over a billion worlds where magic is available in some, making it very fantasy inspired. Then there are worlds where plasma guns are the norm and these gives the book a sci-fi genre. But I think that in general the main genre is adventure and action. Another really good genre description is “nerdy” or “geeky” since the trivia possessed by the protagonist and James Halliday is vintage video games, comics, movies, tv-series and cartoons. I think that this is a book in my taste since it has the elements that I like in a book. The trivia part is something new for me, but it isn’t to hard to tag along in the deep discussions about old-school comics and video games. 

 

The genres of the book are fiction, social issues and family life I think. 

There are two main characters in my book. Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a French girl, born around 1928, who lives in Paris with her father. She becomes blind in the beginning of the book. The other main character is Werner who is a German boy, born around 1926, living in an orphanage in Zollverein near Essen. He is the character that I would like to focus on. He is as mentioned an orphan boy and he lives in the orphanage with his sister Jutta and many other children under the care of Frau Elena, who Werner seems to like. 

         One day he finds an old radio and he and Jutta turns it on and listens to some programs. They find a program that is about science, which they really enjoy. Werner becomes very interested in the radio and soon he knows how to repair and replace every single part in it, and not long after that, he gets to repair the neighbours’ radios. 

         Since the book jumps a bit back and forth in time, I know that Werner will work as an Engineer for Germany during the war since he is so talented in repairing things. I also think that he will meet Marie-Laure somehow, although I have no idea how.

 

b)

The genre of this book is historical fiction, since it is about the second world war and the characters have not existed in real life. I really like this genre and I have read some similar books before but I haven´t read that many so I wouldn´t call it my normal genre.

 

b)    The atmosphere in the real world is dull. More and more people has given up hope in humanity. Inside of the OASIS, the environment is flourishing. You can do almost whatever you want whenever you want. The OASIS consists mostly of gamers, so the common used language is slang or “gamer terms”. Shortenings and references are used heavily inside of the language. 

I feel like a setting doesn’t make the mood of a story. It is all up to the characters and the telling of the story to determine the mood. 

The story is set in a few different places. Marie-Laure lives in Paris in the beginning of the book but she later moves to a small town called Saint-Malo. Werner however lives in Zollverein in Germany but he also moves when he attends the National political institute of Education in Essen. The historical setting is obviously just before and during world war 2. This is very clear since the book is divided into parts and in the beginning of each part it says what year it is. The plot also circles around the war.

 

b)

The book starts of before the war, around 1934. During this time people in France are generally happy, although as time goes on and more news about a big future war circulate in France, people get more and more depressed. When Germany invades France, this gets even worse since many die, houses gets destroyed and food prices skyrocket. People flee from the big cities and try to seek shelter. In Germany however, people (including Werner) are very patriotic when the war breaks out, and they think that they are going to win easily. Both the geographical and historical setting does therefore affect the mood in this book. The war plays a big role in creating the mood in both Germany and France.

2.     This story is the be all end all of the fantasy genre, all fantasy writers after this was published has read the lord of the rings and they often borrow heavily from it. I think Tolkien found the perfect way of making up a fantasy world, it has so many details but still it is not over the top. This is my typical type of genre and one of my favourite books I have read. 

2.     The mood is kind of what you would expect of a fantasy book like this one. It is heavily centred around courage, friendship and overcoming your limitations. Tolkien wrote it so well that you really feel like you know the characters, their goals and the way they evolve throughout the story is natural and fluent. The setting does improve the mood in a very good way, it is set in a time when the heroic stuff really fits. But the mood does differ very often, for entire chapters the mood can go from mellow, easy going fun to intense desperation and danger then to an epic fight between armies where the heroes defies all odds and come out on top. What baffles me is how well the author handles all these transitions without disrupting the flow of the story. 

 

The narrator is available to read the mind of the “main” character in that chapter but not the other characters´ minds. This can be somewhat confusing sometimes when you don´t understand which character is being narrated. I generally like that the narrator can read minds though, since Marie-Laure and Werner often are very alone and therefore they think about things instead of talking about them. 

The genres of the book are fantasy and adventure. It’s not really my typical genre, but at the same time it is. I like fantasy, but this particular book is a little bit too fairy-tale-ish for my taste. I also really like a good adventure book with a few unexpected twists and I don’t think this book will meet up to those expectations. 

b) I haven’t really noticed a specific mood in this book. I’m not sure it’s because of the way the book is written or if it’s just my own experience. The book is quite straight forward and doesn’t really build up to anything, neither exciting or scary. I’m more than half way through the book and I’m only now starting to see a change in the mood of the book. Maybe the “straight forward” thing is to bring out the tense energy between Stella and the other kids on the expedition. Just like they just want to get the whole expedition over with, the author wants the reader to feel the same way. Now when the characters are opening up to each other, the mood is much less tense and almost warm in some way. 
 

 

Marie-Laure on the other hand doesn´t know of any of this. She hasn´t changed that much but she has become more afraid of the Germans since my last entries. This is because a German officer has been in her house trying to steal things. 

 

All in all, I like my novel so far. It was a bit boring at some parts in the beginning when not much happened but the last 250 pages or so have been really good. 

  The book is taking place in a deserted, icy and cold landscape and the characters are probably scared. That feeling would really be enhanced when reading from a first person point of view since you basically are inside the characters head. 

 

Ingrid’s dream to become a singer follows her thru out the whole novel. Not a day passes without her thinking about what to do after the camp is finished, and I admire her in that way. She is a girl who knows what she wants even thou her lack of confidence. Thru out the story, Ingrid changes a lot. She becomes present, confident and not afraid to speak out. She is an interesting character in that way and I think many people can relate to her in some way.