Pages: 386

Rating: 4/5

This is the second book of Across the Universe. It’s good but not as good as the first installment of the trilogy. In this second book, there are many people who died (I’m not telling who)  and more mysteries and secrets unveiled. They are still in the ship that I can assure you, but in the last few pages they are few minutes away from landing to Centauri Earth. I recommend you to continue reading because the last book is just so frexing amazing (I’ve already started reading it)!

“Michael Angelo  said: Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of teh sculptor to discover it” -Beth Revis, A Million Suns

Pages: 398

Rating: 5/5

The book cover suggests that it is a love story with heavy romance. It’s a trick! It’s more of sci-fi/ mystery/ suspense/ dystopia genre. Sure it has lil bit of romance but it in this first installment of ATU the story focused in developing the whole scenario, describing how the vessel looks like, how people manage to live there, and all the mysteries involved. So basically in this book, a group people live in a ship (a space vehicle) and they are led by Eldest and Elder. They are the future of the human race. This ship is alleged to be flying for at least 250 years already and it is supposed to land in Centauri-Earth (this is another planet not the same as OUR so called earth) for another 50 years. Sleeping in cryo chambers which are hidden in the ship are people who specializes in particular things necessary for people’s survival when they land in the Centauri-Earth. These frozen people in cryo chambers are supposed to stay there for another 50 years. However, one girl was melted by an unknown person (it will be revealed near the end who woke her up) and from there, it all changed everything.

“I never thought about how important the sky was until I didn’t have one.” -Beth Revis, Across the Universe

Number of pages: 240

Rating: 4.5/5

I read this book just because my friend is so obsessed with the movie. He said even said that it’s better than Twilight. Warm Bodies shows what happens when a zombie and a human fall in love. At first I thought that it is just the typical zombie apocalypse storyline. But it’s totally unique, I assure you. Just like normal zombie world in books and films, the place is infected with plague and zombies are all scattered all over, eating human brains, and there’s an isolated place called the Stadium where humans live. One day, ‘R’, the zombie protagonist, met Julie, a normal human. From then on, R protected Julie from other zombies. He even brought him to their hideout. Somehow or another, R and Julie fell in love and it somehow change R. It’s making him more human. This spark between R and Julie affected the other zombies and somehow the plague is like disappearing. The story goes like that. Just read it. It’s just a very fast read and the manner of writing is so easy to understand.

“We are where we are, however we got here. What matters is where we go next.” -Isaac Marion, Warm Bodies

Number of pages: 320

Rating: 5/5

Deuce, Fade, Stalker, and Tegan are now all in the topside called Salvation. This place seems like paradise for them…. at first. They have their own adoptive families, friends, and new responsibilities. Duece and Fade developed and expressed their feelings for each other. However, it’s difficult for Deuce to learn all the girl things expected from her. She always gets in trouble because of this. The huntress lurking inside of her still boils and becomes alive when she sees Freaks. Deuce and Fade joined the security group where they guard the persons growing the crops from Freaks. But one day, the Freaks stole their fire. And then another more day, they kidnapped Fade. Deuce rescued Fade. What Fade told her from his experience is so chillingly unbelievable. The persons captured by the Freaks are first put into a fenced pen, and before they are eaten they will first be mashed to make them tender and then deboned. Even though most people in Salvation do not like Deuce, it’s all in her hands to save them before history repeats itself.

“People try to make sense of things, and if they don’t know the answers, they make them up,because for some, a wrong answer is better than none.”

No. of Pages: 374

Rating: 5/5

This is a futuristic story being related through the point of view of the protagonist. This story happens in generation where virtual videogames are popular and are widely used. The ideas incorporated by the author are very plausible considering the breakthrough innovations nowadays and the prolific use of computers. The protagonist and his friends all battle inside a videogame amongst other “gunters”, short for “egg hunters”, to win the inheritance left by the maker of OASIS, James Halliday. All of the OASIS users have the chance to be the heir to a billion dollar property of James Halliday. All they have to do is to search for the hidden keys scattered around OASIS, but this is not as easy as it looks because OASIS is composed of hundreds of planets and that the search has been on for so many years already and that many users already gave up thinking that all of it is just a sham. However, one day, the dormant gunters started searching again when the first key was found by a young boy living in the suburbs. That young boy happened to be Wades Owen Watts a.k.a. Parzival a.k.a. W.O.W.

“It’s not over until it’s over. And it’s not over yet.” ~Ernest Cline, Ready Player One

The habit of reading is one of the greatest resources of mankind; and we enjoy reading books that belong to us much more than if they are borrowed. A borrowed book is like a guest in the house; it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a certain considerate formality. You must see that it sustains no damage; it must not suffer while under your roof. You cannot leave it carelessly, you cannot mark it, you cannot turn down the pages, you cannot use it familiarly. And then, some day, although this is seldom done, you really ought to return it.

But your own books belong to you; you treat them with that affectionate intimacy that annihilates formality. Books are for use, not for show; you should own no book that you are afraid to mark up, or afraid to place on the table, wide open and face down. A good reason for marking favorite passages in books is that this practice enables you to remember more easily the significant sayings, to refer to them quickly, and then in later years, it is like visiting a forest where you once blazed a trail. You have the pleasure of going over the old ground, and recalling both the intellectual scenery and your own earlier self.

Everyone should begin collecting a private library in youth; the instinct of private property, which is fundamental in human beings, can here be cultivated with every advantage and no evils. One should have one’s own bookshelves, which should not have doors, glass windows, or keys; they should be free and accessible to the hand as well as to the eye. The best of mural decorations is books; they are more varied in color and appearance than any wallpaper, they are more attractive in design, and they have the prime advantage of being separate personalities, so that if you sit alone in the room in the firelight, you are surrounded with intimate friends. The knowledge that they are there in plain view is both stimulating and refreshing. You do not have to read them all. Most of my indoor life is spent in a room containing six thousand books; and I have a stock answer to the invariable question that comes from strangers. “Have you read all of these books?”
“Some of them twice.” This reply is both true and unexpected.

There are of course no friends like living, breathing, corporeal men and women; my devotion to reading has never made me a recluse. How could it? Books are of the people, by the people, for the people. Literature is the immortal part of history; it is the best and most enduring part of personality. But book-friends have this advantage over living friends; you can enjoy the most truly aristocratic society in the world whenever you want it. The great dead are beyond our physical reach, and the great living are usually almost as inaccessible; as for our personal friends and acquaintances, we cannot always see them. Perchance they are asleep, or away on a journey. But in a private library, you can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy. And there is no doubt that in these books you see these men at their best. They wrote for you. They “laid themselves out,” they did their ultimate best to entertain you, to make a favorable impression. You are necessary to them as an audience is to an actor; only instead of seeing them masked, you look into their innermost heart of heart.

William Lyon Phelps – 1933