Lit Listening is a blog for readers by a city dwelling audiobook lover.
It’s WWW Wednesday, a tag hosted on Taking on a World of Words It’s easy to do, just answer the three questions below! This is late and also the only post I’ve had since last week because I went into a “first-autumn-cold coma,” but I’m alive now! (Sort of)
Book: Dry
Author: Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
Release Date: Oct. 2, 2018
The drought—or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it—has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers.
Until the taps run dry.
Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbours and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return and her life—and the life of her brother—is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she’s going to survive.
Format: Physical Advanced Reader Copy (found at library sale, not given to me by the publisher)
Length: 389 pages
Dry is an apocalyptic-esque thriller, multiple perspective story on the desperation that follows when Southern California runs dry. It starts from people stealing cases on water from each other at CostCo and quickly devolves into doing absolutely whatever it takes to survive.
All of the main characters are teenagers, which means there was a good chunk of the middle where I had to stop reading, turn to my S.O. and say “THESE KIDS ARE SO DUMB!” or “Listen to the 10-year-old! Your plan is stupid.” But hey, I’ve watched a lot of disaster movies so I’m pretty judgy.
This is also my first Neal Shusterman book, so I’m not sure if this is just his style or not, but there were a lot of heavy-handed metaphorical or “deep thought” statements that you’d typically see at the end of an important passage or at the end of books, but that were just thrown around every page or so. I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the “momentous” moments these 16-year-old kids were internal monologuing about. (Oh god the more I type, the more I want to lower the rating).
One more gripe. This book had real stakes and bad things happen. But I couldn’t help but feel at the end that none of their decisions actually mattered? Like if they had decided to stay versus go or this way or that, it seems like the ending would’ve been the same. The main characters didn’t bring about the end of the book, so the deus ex machina element to this made the ending a bit of a let down for me.
Ok, so let’s say it’s a 3.5 star that I’m rounding up. If you like Neal Shusterman’s style, you’ll likely enjoy this more than me. I’m still going to give Scythe a chance to see if I like his dystopians more.
It’s WWW Wednesday, a tag hosted on Taking on a World of Words It’s easy to do, just answer the three questions below! My post is coming to you a little bit later than I hoped because I finished two things yesterday, so I had to amend all of my answers.
Happy October, bookworms! Before the new month gets underway, let’s take a look back at September. I love looking at my stats, especially if they reveal something I wasn’t expecting. This month seems pretty standard to me, but it’ll give you, lovely readers, a glimpse into my reading life for the month of September.
Into the stats!
This review is going to get.. Complicated.
TLDR: This is a fun, fast-paced speculative fiction novel that expertly explores modern-day’s media obsession and the price of fame. Not without its faults, I’d happily recommend this book to lovers of the internet age.
Continue reading “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing | Sunday in Review”
We’d all like to believe that we expect to love every book we pick up, but that’s just not the case. On this fall Friday I’m bringing to you my 5-star predictions. If you haven’t seen this going around, it was started by Mercedes of MercysBookishMusings on Booktube. She took a look at her shelves and the books on her TBR and guessed which books would get 5-stars once she read them. So I’m doing the same, and I’ll hopefully do a follow up post to see how accurate my predictions were.
Continue reading “My 5-Star Predictions | Books I think I’ll love”
It’s WWW Wednesday, a tag hosted on Taking on a World of Words It’s easy to do, just answer the three questions below!
It’s finally fall! While I’m not looking forward to fall turning into winter, I’ll relish these cooler, crisper days while I can. And with the autumn season comes the Finally Fall Book Tag, originally created by Tall Tales
Into the questions: Continue reading “Finally Fall Book Tag”
Synopsis: Magic 2.0 is a comic science-fiction/fantasy series of books written by Scott Meyer. The series so far consists of five novels, the first being Off To Be the Wizard. The series follows Martin Banks, a programmer from 2012, who uses a computer file that allows him to alter reality to time travel to medieval England where he joins a community of other computer programmers posing as wizards.
My history with this series goes back to hearing Book Roast talk about reading the first book nearly a year ago. At the time I searched my libraries and none of them had a copy, so it stayed on my Goodreads To-Read shelf, perhaps to be forgotten. But I finally got my chance when I saw Scribd had the first 3 books on audio, which I read in August, and I got the latest two books on Audible, which I finished up this weekend.
Continue reading “Magic 2.0 Series Review (so far) | Sunday in Review”
You’d think a new blog that focuses on audiobooks would start off by talking about the audiobooks they just love, right?
~Well that’s not how I do things.~
I love audiobooks. They’ve gotten me from reading about 20 books a year to reading more than 100, they help ease my anxious tendencies and they are just plain fun to listen to. BUT that does not mean all audiobooks are created equal.
Continue reading “Audiobooks I regret listening to | Discussion”
