Divergent

What do you know, another book that isn't on the list. I chose to read this book now because the movie comes out in a couple of days, and I'm the kind of person who likes to read books before I watch movies that are based on them. I promise the next one will be a book on the list (and I can promise that because I've finished reading it and only need to get around to writing about it).

Divergent is the first book in a science fiction trilogy. It's set in a dystopian* Chicago, where society is divided into five factions, depending on what a person's strongest personality trait is: honesty, bravery, selflessness, intelligence or peacefulness. People become members of these factions the year they turn sixteen, by first taking an aptitude test, which lets them know which faction they are most suited for, and then by attending a ceremony where they choose which faction they actually want to belong to.

The main character is a girl called Beatrice, whom we first meet the day before her aptitude test. We follow her through initiation, which is the highly competitive and potentially dangerous process in which the sixteen-year-olds find out if they really are suited for the faction they have chosen. But Beatrice is special, and the thing that makes her special is also the thing that could get her killed, if the wrong people find out.

I'm still a little bit unsure how I feel about this book. I mean, it's a fascinating story, and a very interesting spin on the whole dystopian universe thing, and for the most part I think it's very well written. It's the author's first book, and sometimes I think that shows in the writing, and in the development of certain parts of the story. Sometimes while I was reading, I would think "oh, this is interesting! I can't wait to see where this is going!" and then nothing would really happen. I'm not going to give examples, most because I don't want to spoil the book for anyone who might be reading it in the future. Partly also because I read it all in one sitting in the middle of the night, and I didn't think to take notes of these parts. I know, excellent blogger right here.

Anyway. The main story arc I thought was really good. It holds up under scrutiny (at least to my untrained eye), and the romantic parts don't feel forced or unnecessary. When I read the back of the book and saw that there was a romantic subplot, I was worried that it was going to be one of those "it's not a book about a teenage girl unless there's a hot boy", but it wasn't like that. This IS a book about a teenage girl, and there IS a hot boy, and the romance is written in a way that mostly seems natural. I'll admit that I think that for a character who has had little to no physical contact with anyone (including her own family) her entire life, she's awfully quick to get over her awkwardness. But that's goes back to this being the author's first book, I think. She's not as skilled a writer yet, and so sometimes the story loses it's magic and you realize it's "just a book". I don't think it's a big problem though. Like I said, I read the book in one sitting, all the while knowing full well I should be sleeping, because I just had to know what would happen next. And to me, having a story like that is much more important than having a story that is perfectly written but exceedingly dull.

So, for the most part I really did enjoy this book. The story is good, the characters are believable, even if some of them are maybe a little too black-and-white. This could be remedied in the next two books though, as I'm assuming most of them will be in those as well. And besides, even if most people in real life aren't black-and-white, that's the beauty of books. Things don't always have to be the same as in real life!

A very important factor to mention is that I really can't wait to see these characters again. This goes for both the good and the bad ones, because I want to know what happens to them, and I actually think that's one of the highest compliments I can pay a book. I'm not speaking from personal experience here, but if I were an author, I would want people to finish my book and go "where can I get more of this?" So basically, I'm really happy it's Easter soon, because if I can't read for leisure at Easter, when can I? Answer: whenever I want. I'm a grown-up. I can make stupid decision every day of the year.

*Per Wikipedia: A dystopia is a community or society that is in some important way undesirable or frightening. It is the opposite of a utiopa (which is a society possessing highly desirable or near perfect qualities). Thanks Wikipedia.

Picture from http://www.divergentfans.com/thestory

#5: The Thousand and One Nights

For new readers (haha...), the number at the beginning of the heading refers to the book's place on the List. See "about the blog" for more information.

This is going to be a fairly long post, as there are several stories to talk about, so bear with me.

It took me a lot longer than I had planned to read this book. My settings in my app have me reading 3 books a month, and instead it took me three weeks to read this one book. To be fair,  I do have a lot of other reading to do for school, but I have to admit I'd still expected to use a lot less time on this one.

First, a little bit about the book. I had the choice between a six volume version, and a 300-page version. Needless to say, I chose the shorter one. The version used in the app is 450 pages, so I also went with what was closest to that. As it turns out, this is also just one volume in a several-volume version of the book, so that was a bit of a fail, but that's what they had in the library, so that's what I went with.

I had a bit of trouble getting used to this book. I think it's because it's very shortened, so the stories don't flow as well as I imagine they do in the full-length book. The stories in my version are as follows*:

• The Tale of King Omar bin al-Nu'uman and His Sons Sharrkan and Zau al-Makan
• Ala al-Din Abu al-Shamat
• Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman
• The Mock Caliph
• Aladdin; or, The Wonderful Lamp

The first one, The Tale of King Omar, had a lot of stories inside the story (storyception!), which I think is part of why it took me so long to get through it. The stories seemed to only have very brief strokes, and this paired with how the main story was constantly broken up by other stories, made it difficult to get into. I do think it was an interesting read though, and I would love to go back and read the full version some time, so that I can really enjoy it properly.

The second story, Ala al-Din Abu al-Shamat, confused me. At this time I didn't know there was a second Aladdin story in the book, so I was confused as to how different it was from the Disney movie, as there were obviously parts of this story that had influenced the movie, such as the name of one of Ala Al-Din's wives and the flying carpet (a flying sofa bed in this story, which seems infinitely less practical). I liked it, but with this one I was definitely distracted by similarities and differences with the story I already know.

The Sindbad story mostly frustrated me. It's a very interesting and entertaining story, but I kept thinking how Sindbad needs to learn from his past experiences. He goes on 7 journeys, and each journey ends in somewhat of a disaster where he barely escapes with his life, and still he doesn't learn, but keeps going on new journeys! I think maybe this story would also have benefitted from being read in the full versions, as I suppose it wouldn't feel so much like he was suffering from short-term memory loss. This story also features my hands-down favorite sentence in the entire book, which is the following**:

In this area there are also unicorns, or rhinoceroses, which graze just like our oxen and buffaloes (...)

I mean!!! That is fantastic! I don't know about you, but where I'm from, rhinos and unicorns are two very different animals. I loved this part so much I just had to write it down so that I'd remember to put it in the blog post, because it is just golden. Sindbad goes on to explain how the rhino is so strong that it sometimes catches an elephant on its horn, and doesn't notice until the elephant dies and its fat starts melting and runs down into the rhino's eyes. At this point the rhino lies down to die, and the giant bird Roc feeds them both to its offspring. Like I said, this is hands down my favorite part of the book, for obvious reasons.

Out of all the stories, I think The Mock Caliph is probably the one I liked best. I think it probably isn't much longer in its original form, because it flowed well and didn't feel chopped up like the others. It's a clever story with unexpected twists, and I liked the morale, and how it shows us that even the wisest among grown-ups can learn things from young children.

The final story is the second Aladdin story. This is obviously the one that influenced the Disney movie the most, and it did help to clear up some of the confusion I had about the first Aladdin story. Out of all the stories this is the one I was the most familiar with from before, and I thought it was perfectly okay. Again it's probably a lot more interesting in the full versions, as things happened really quickly and it felt like some of the excitement was missing.

Looking at the book as a whole, I think the impression I'm left with is that I definitely need to read the full versions of these stories to really enjoy them properly. It's very interesting as a Christian to read stories written from a muslim viewpoint. It makes me understand even better than before that a story will always be influenced by the author's history, both religious and cultural. The first story features a war between Christians and Muslims, and in these cases I'm used to always having the Christians be "the good guys", and so I actually found it refreshing to read something that's different, and I think it's also important and healthy to not always read stories where the people you identify with are the heroes.

All in all I liked this book, but I do think there are other books on the List that I will enjoy more. And some that I will definitely enjoy less.

* I read the book in Norwegian, so I had to look up the English titles online. Naturally they're a bit different, so you'll have to forgive me if this isn't what these stories are actually called.

** Again, as I read this in Norwegian, I've had to improvise the English. This is my own translation, and the wording probably isn't anything like in the book, but I think you get my point. 

Audiobook: The Fellowship of the Ring

I suppose it's kind of ironic that my first post isn't about one of the books on the List. But here we are. I just finished listening to the Fellowship of the Ring (first book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for those who are unfamiliar with the name) on audiobook, and I thought I'd write about about that.

I don't listen nearly enough to audiobooks. They really are a brilliant invention. They're especially nice if you want something to listen to while doing other activities, but aren't really in the mood for music. I use them while writing assignments and while playing computer games. The one thing I do find, is that if you're listening while doing other things, it's best to choose a book with a story you're familiar with, as it's hard to pay attention 100% of the time, so you might miss out on important things if you don't know the story. If you're going to listen to something you haven't heard or read before, I think it would be best to do that while doing something that doesn't require much attention, so that you can follow the book.

The book is narrated by Rob Inglis, and is split into four parts. It is unabridged, which means that it is the book in its entirety. I suppose that explains why it's been split up; the whole thing is around 19 hours long!

I really enjoyed listening to this, in part because the narrator is very good. He has a deep, "old" voice, that sounds a bit like Gandalf sounds in my head, but he's very good at doing different voices for the different characters, and he does them consistently, so that you recognize who is speaking even if their name isn't mentioned.

The story, if you've read the book, is of course the same as ever. Although it does feel, at least to me, like a longer story than it does when reading the book, it never gets boring. And I found that some parts, particularly the chapters with Tom Bombadil, are actually much more interesting when listening than when reading. When I first read the book I thought these chapters lasted forever and weren't very exciting at all, but when listening to them, they go by like a breeze, and I never once find myself wishing they'd get on with the story. I think part of this has to do with the songs. When reading, the songs are much like the rest of the story, they're just text. You can try and come up with a tune, but I for one never have much luck with this. But in the audiobook, the narrator sings the songs, which makes them feature in the story in a completely different way. They become little breathing spaces where you can enjoy the melody without necessarily having to worry about missing vital parts of the plot, and of course Tolkien's verses are brilliant, and it's great to get to hear them set to music.

Of course, the songs that one recognizes from the movie are slightly different. A lot of the songs that are sung by characters in the movie are from the book, but in the audiobook they are song with to different tune, which can be a bit confusing. But if you can get over that, I think the songs are a great addition throughout the story.

Maybe it's because this is my all time favorite book, but I don't really have anything negative to say about this audiobook. It's long, but I don't mind, because the alternative would have been an abridged version, which is unacceptable to me. All in all it's a great story to listen to, and I definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to try an audiobook, whether it's just to try something new or because you're not very fond of reading the "traditional" way.

Picture from http://audiobookscorner.blogspot.no/2009/08/lord-of-rings.html