July Wrap-Up | Raquel

Wow first wrap up with my actual name... It's kind of odd after a whole year of using an acronym type thing to start using my real name, but I think this just seems a lot more normal. Anyway here is my wrap up for July, hope you enjoy it!

The first book I read this month was The Host by: Stepenie Meyer. I watched the movie for this story and Faith owned the book and had told me some about it when she read it and I decided I wanted to read it too. It kind of started my streak of reading books of movie adaptations I have watched. I liked the host movie I thought it was an interesting idea and it was well made! The actors were decent too which is always nice. I find sometimes that one actor can really mess up a movie if their portrayal of a character is off. I found that the book generally was similar to the movie. I will say I enjoyed the movie better but it's hard to really have an unbiased opinion. I find that sometimes when I watch a movie first that when I read the book later I find it to only be equally as good or not as good. This is not always the case, but it is a common thing for me. However I would still recommend the book especially if you haven't seen the movie because the story is well written! I would rate this book 3.4/5 stars.

The second book I read this month was Silver Linings Playbook by: Matthew Quick. I watched the movie to this book one day when I was bored and it was much better then I had expected. I knew the book would most likely be kind of slow but I decided that I would read it anyway. I was right the book is kind of slow, I generally like a little bit fuller books. However the story still is really good and I did enjoy being able to actually read more of his thoughts and stuff which I wasn't able to do so much in the film. Again i'm biased but I did like the movie better. In this case I think the movie just had more entertainment value since the book was kind of slow. It was also well written, but I find that books like these don't have a whole lot of plot I guess and can really be summed up in a few short sentences. The story is a good idea, but I think more content could have been added to make it a bit more interesting. I rate this book 2.8/5 stars.

The third book I read was The Perks of Being a Wallflower by: Stephen Chbosky. I watched this movie quite a bit before I read the book. I didn't know it had a book until after when I looked up the movie. This month I decided I wanted to read a bunch of books of movies I have seen so this was included in that bunch! I really loved this movie, it definitely is one of my favourites! The book was really good as well. It is written in a journal or letter type style which can put some people off. I personally wasn't bothered by it in this case as I think it really didn't affect the story. There are some things that can be uncomfortable for some people to read as it is in the perspective of a teenage boy. Though none of it is really that bad so it wasn't really difficult to read. One thing I always find difficult when reading the book after is that I picture the movie in my head and sometimes I forget that the story of the book could be completely different. The story in this case is a bit changed, but not a whole lot. I rate this book 4.5/5 stars.

I did a list of some of my favourite movie adaptations! This movie was included, if you want to see what I thought of it, and other adaptations I enjoyed you can see that here.

The next book I read in July was Warm Bodies by: Isaac Marion. This book as well was included in the books I was reading whose movie's I had seen. I really had enjoyed the movie, I found it to be quite entertaining. I found the book to a bit less so. I don't know if it is because I saw the movie first or if it was just the book itself, but I did get a bt bored in the book. I found myself skimming a lot and skipping parts. It's always difficult to not be biased in cases like this. I know that I do enjoy the story. The whole idea of it is really unique. This story is centered around a romance, but still has lots of action and substances. The idea seems to stem from romeo and juliet, but in a modern day zombie society. I really like this whole story and everything that happens. In the book I would say that I didn't enjoy as much how it was written. In some parts it would really hold my attention, but I found in other parts I felt really lost or bored. Like I said I can't tell if this is the book or just the fact I saw the movie first. I would say if the story sounds interesting then you should try it out! You never really know if you will enjoy it unless you try reading it yourself. Anyway I would rate this book 3/5 stars.

The fifth book I read in July was Crazy by: Han Nolan. This book was quite the book to read. For me personally it was hard to read. It was just really sad and tragic and I really could feel everything the character was experiencing. I felt like it was me living through this story and that is what made it so challenging. I really connected to this story and I think it is just amazing when a book can make you feel like that. Like movies can make you feel some pretty intense things as well, but I have never had a movie make me feel like this. Though this definitely is not the first book that has made me feel such emotion, it is one of the few that have made me experience so connected. It honestly just felt so real to me. The story itself is really unique and throughout the story I wasn't able to accurately predict what was going to come next. I think this book was just incredible. As I said it can bring about some intense emotion so it may not be for everyone. However if you think you can handle such a story I would highly suggest trying this story! I rate this book 4.5/5 stars.

The last three books I read were all manga's based off books written by James Patterson. I have been working on reading the manga's of the series of James Patterson that I have read. When I really like a story I like to just read or watch all the other versions of the story! Each manga represented one story of Daniel X's adventure. They do relate to the actual books so I was able to recognize the stories. I think they are very well drawn! The characters definitely are how I would have imagined them in manga-form anyway. I also feel they did a good job at rewriting the books to work in this new format. Sometimes when they make a manga out of a book they loose critical information or pieces from the story. If you hadn't read the books its not a huge deal, but for people who have it makes the story seem very dull. This series didn't have that problem I found. The idea is really interesting, it is just these stories are more written for people of a middle school, or young high school age so they can be a bit cheesey. I enjoy them though I think that every once in a while its nice to just read some good cheesey stuff. I would rate the first volume 3/5 stars, the second 3.3/5 stars and the third 3.6/5 stars.