Read/reading: Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion, Up In The Air by Walter Kirn.

You might have noticed - that was quick. Reading Warm Bodies has taught me that it’s ages since I’ve read a YA novel (the last was probably the Hunger Games trilogy, the freaked out reactions to which Arden can attest were during April 2012), and it’s almost alarming how quickly the words fly off the page when you’re used to more dense, tortured material. But it’s fun!

It’s funny - Stephanie Meyer has a cover quote, but it’s far from her dreck; there’s a metric ton of gallows humour, a believable and active female character, and a protagonist who reinvents rather than wholeheartedly dilutes an already-established idea (zombies to Meyer’s vampires). It feels very filmic already, so I can see where the adaptation came from; that said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they change a couple of things. Like the clear nod to erections in the closing pages. I doubt that made it in.

Continuing with the books-with-film-adaptations theme for a little while. Most of it’s because I’m currently bleeding the college library dry, and they’re mostly academic so have an awful literature collection; but, at the same time, stuff like this tends to be fairly interesting. Usually, even if the film adaptation’s awful, the work that it’s adapted from holds some scrutiny.

Read/reading: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion.

Extremely Loud is an odd book. It’s kind of fragmented, which is how I read it - short bursts over a month, because I’m sometimes terrible at committing to books and this one was definitely challenging at points. But it’s rewarding - the protagonist, nine-year-old Oskar Schell, is a fascinating character and it felt almost painful to be torn away from him by the alternative perspectives presented throughout the novel. It’s not perfect - some of the more experimental sections border on the banal - but it’s fascinating in a way that few books have been lately.

I’m not expecting much from Warm Bodies - I know it’s unabashedly populist, a YA novel, and the film was middling to good(ish). I just need something lighter after that mammoth.