School Book: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

When I first started reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, it reminded me of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. The main characters in both books are rather similar: they are young boys who are both socially awkward. But from the first chapter, I knew that I would enjoy Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a lot more than The Curious Incident. It was funnier, and overall a better story.

Extremely Loud is the story of Oskar Schell. His father is killed in the Twin Towers. While snooping in his dad's room afterwards, Oskar discovers a strange key hidden in a vase. He decides to embark on a quest to discover what the key opens, even if he has to open every lock in New York City!

At the same time, this is also the story of his family. His grandfather left his grandmother when she told him she was pregnant. Interspersed throughout Oskar's story are chapters written from both of his grandparents' perspectives trying to explain why things happened the way they did. These narratives were just as interesting as the main story.

While Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was rather different from what I normally like to read, I really enjoyed it. If you're looking for something different, then I recommend giving it a try!

School Book: Spud in Winter

Sorry, this image is from Amazon; you cannot look inside the book by clicking on it.

So another school book, once again from Contemporary Children's Lit. I read Spud in Winter by Brian Doyle over the last few days. I tried reading it a week or two back, but didn't get very far. So I started it again while I was away, reading the bulk of it while I was flying home, and finishing it earlier this afternoon.

Reading Spud in Winter reminded me of another book that I read earlier in the year before starting this blog, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon. There wasn't a lot of dialogue. The story was told from the main character's perspective with waaaay too much detail. And as I found out from reading Richard Wright's The Weekend Man, I hate too much detail from someone's perspective with very little dialogue.

Luckily, Spud in Winter is a better story than those two books. But it wasn't terribly good. The book follows Spud Sweetgrass as he tries to protect those he loves. After having witnessed a murder and knowing who the culprit is, Spud has to decide whether to tell the cops, identifying himself as a witness (and possibly putting Connie Pan, his friend and love interest, into danger as well because she also knows the culprit), or to keep quiet and hope the whole thing blows over. Yes, it managed to tie everything up nicely in the end; but getting to the end was a bit brutal. The plot itself was rather boring. A lot of things that were described (like the Laneway Man) weren't terribly interesting to begin with, so when they were tied up at the end, I really didn't care. However, the characters were kind of interesting. Some of the things they said and did were kind of funny. And a lot of their names were great (who doesn't like B. Faroni?)

As far as books go, this one isn't really the greatest. There's humour in it from the characters, but not enough happening in the plot to keep you interested.