Yikes.

Let me just say, it's been a busy month. Not a great excuse, but its all I've got. I've had a lot of projects for class, plus outside plans, plus Thanksgiving and all of its attendant activities...there hasn't been much time for reading or writing about reading. That said, I have read a couple of books since the 7th (can it really have been that long?).

So we'll start with James Dashner's Maze Runner prequel, The Kill Order. It takes us back as far as the first day of sun flares and follows a kid named Mark and the rag-tag group he takes up with through their first post-apocalyptic year. The appearances by recognizable characters are few and far between - in fact, if you took out the prologue and epilogue, this book could exist as a standalone novel. A really violent, depressing standalone, but still. That's my basic takeaway - it's a grim, violent book that does not hold out much hope for the future. It does move incredibly quickly and does not let up. Of the three Maze Runner books, it reminded me most of my favorite, The Scorch Trials. Overall, it's not a bad addition to the trilogy, although it didn't answer as many questions as I would have hoped.

The second book was Frank Portman's King Dork. This is one of those books for class, so I feel like I should have some really insightful things to say about it...we'll see. In my hunt for a picture of the cover, I came across an article about casting for the movie version (Nick Offerman...I'm there). This article included the Amazon summary, which is kind of misleading, so let's start there. This is not a book about a nerdy guy whose life is changed when he discovers the book The Catcher in the Rye (though you might be forgiven for thinking that was the case if you only look at the cover). It's about a nerdy guy who is plenty familiar with TCITR and is, in fact, not a fan. His life is changed when he finds his deceased father's copy of the book and by the notes his father wrote inside.

King Dork does parallel TCITR in some key ways - it's told in a first-person style, with Tom (aka King Dork, Chi-Mo, Moe, etc.) narrating; like Holden, Tom thinks that most people aren't really worth his time (he scoffs at Holden for calling them "phonies," then dubs them all "psycho normals"); Tom is dealing with the early death of his father, much like Holden is still dealing with the death of his brother Allie.

Okay, my computer is acting up. There may be more on King Dork later.