Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. This award-winning book from one of the Animorphs authors was so very good!

Set in what was basically a private zoo, Ivan has been kept in a little cage for 27 years. He was raised by a man (raised like a human baby, dressed up, the man took him for fast food, tried to teach him basketball), but eventually Ivan became too big for the house, so the man made a "zoo" around him. The zoo was located in a mall and the animals were abused, thought he author was subtle about saying so.

The story is told in first person by Ivan, so the writing is simple and the chapters are extremely short. Most are 1-2 pages, some are just a paragraph or less.

Even though it's a children's book, it was a really emotional read. It reminded me of Flowers for Algernon (or was it Of Mice and Men?). The main character had a rough, bad life, but he wasn't intelligent enough to realize it, but we the reader could see it all too well.

Ivan's voice was amazing, I never once questioned him being a gorilla. There was an elephant being kept in this "zoo" as well, and her story and existence was just so heartbreaking. (Unlike Ivan, she was smart* enough to know just how awful their lives were...)

[* "Smart" is not exactly the right word here. They were both smart animals, but they had different kinds of intelligence. She remembered the past and was more aware of the future, Ivan lived more in the now just for his own survival. ]

This book has almost 100,000 five star reviews on Goodreads, and it deserves them all.

DNF #149: An Ocean of Stars by Becca Mionis. Ugh, this book. I did something I very rarely do: I DNFed it, then I went back to it (and then DNFed it again...).

The story is a YA sci-fi romance. The sci-fi part was interesting and is what brought me back after I DNFed it the first time: Humans found a wormhole just beyond Pluto. The first exploration ship was being sent through it, and the main character (Xanorra) and her family were sent on it.

Just days into the journey, the ship was attacked by an unknown ship and destroyed. Xanorra was taken onto the attackers' ship, and as far as she knows, she's the only survivor.

She's met by the attacking ship's captain (who just happens to be a teenager) her first thought? Wow he's so hot.

Seriously. As far as she knows, her family is all dead. Her ship is destroyed so she's trapped on this enemy ship. She almost died herself. And her first thought is how hot he is.

I stuck with it a little beyond that, but the characters' actions were so unreasonable, I DNFed it a second time for good.

DNF #150: A Season Most Unfair by J. Anderson Coats. I thought I was going to stick with this one, it was such a nice idea for a story. Set in medieval times, a girl (Scholastica, nicknamed "Tick") helps her father with his candle making business. She's his only child, so she learns the whole trade. But one day her father took on an apprentice and suddenly she's banished to the kitchen/garden to do "women's work".

The whole entire problem with the story was why didn't the father just talk to his daughter? He loved her, he valued her, and yet he sent her to the kitchen without a word explaining why, even when he could see how heartbroken she was. I think, since the book is meant for young readers, the author probably wanted to make it seem like adults were unreasonable, but it took all the enjoyment out of the story for adult reader me.

DNF #151: Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw. Written, edited, narrated, and published by whoever the hell Yahtzee is (some game streamer). The book was just not good, and apparently got worse as it went on. (Every female character was described only by her chest...) I DNFed it a few pages in.

DNF #152: The Last Walk Out: A Tribal Space Opera by David Helton. "A Tribal Space Opera" really summed this up. It seemed like some sort of tribe (Neanderthal times?) but set in space. It seemed like the idea had potential, so I stuck with it for a while, but it just didn't work for me at all. The author described this book as "distractingly haphazard" which I'm sure was a huge part of the issue.

DNF #153: ANIMAL (The Anitar Chronicles) by G.S. Banks. Self-published books with the typical problems of one. Sometimes the main character seemed to be a pre-teen, sometimes she seemed to be an adult. The story had such a slow, confusing start, I DNFed it pretty quickly.