Damned

This week I tried to read Damned by Chuck Palahniuk. He also wrote Fight Club, and I thought the movie was interesting, so I'd try this book. The main character is a 13-yr-old girl named Madison who ends up in Hell supposedly for smoking marijuana.

This book was so bad, I couldn't even finish it. I read the the beginning and then skipped to the end to see if it ever got better. It didn't.

It wasn't the concept of Hell that was portrayed, or the language, or the sometimes graphic images that I minded so much. I can deal with that if the book is good. No, it was Madison's really, really annoying internal dialogue that made me put this book down.

It was kind of whinny and just had a "Why do you think I'm stupid because I'm 13? I'm smarter than you" attitude. She uses big words, and then says things like, "I may be dead, but I know what X means!" Yeah, I never thought she was ignorant just because she was 13, and the author's constant use of this device got old, fast.

I do not recommend this book to anyone.

My Sister's Keeper

My Sister's Keeper is by Jodi Picoult. It was published in 2004 and later made into a movie, but I haven't seen the movie. The main premise is that a 13-yr-old girl, Anna, wants to get a medical emancipation from her parents, which means they don't get to make medical decisions for her. The reason is because Anna's sister has leukemia, and Anna was born so that she could provide her sister with bone marrow and other transfusions/transplants.

This is an absolutely amazing book written from multiple characters' perspectives. I love that Jodi Picoult's books really make you think about what's right and what's wrong, and there's always a twist at the end of her books that changes everything. This is no different. It is definitely the most emotional book I've read by her.

This is not officially a teen lit book, and it deals with a lot of different situations. I would recommend it to older readers.