30 Day Book Challenge- Days One and Two

Ok so I just started the 30 Day Book Challenge on Facebook yesterday. I had considered doing one of the other 30 day challenges you can find such as those for music and movies but I decided books were more appropriate to me so went and found the book challenge. While on Facebook I only need to put up an image of the book and the name. I decided I would post on here as I go through the challenge giving reasons behind the choices.

So here are Day 1 and Day 2.

Day 1: Favourite Book

It won't come as a suprise to those who know me well that my favourite book is Tomorrow, When The War Began by John Marsden. The reason I love this book is that it has made me and many other people reconsider the capabilities of teenagers and myself. It treats teenagers as something more than slaves to technology(though for some that is entirely true). John Marsden's writing speaks at the same level as the age group he wrote it for. He doesn't write down to his readers and treat them with the condescension that many people treat today's teenagers with. He lets the reader decide for themselves what they will take from the story. He focuses on the characterisation and doesn't try to encompass an entire epic plot. This is one of my favourite things about it. It lets me imagine what I want with the settings by not confining the story to a specific place or city.This book has been translated into multiple languages and although it is undoubtedly set in Australia(exact location to be decided by the discerning reader) it has become popular in many of those countries. Fans stretch from Australia, Japan, Sweden, USA, South America right around the globe. I definitely recommend this book to anyone and everyone whether they be adults or teens.

Day 2: Least Favourite Book

 

My least favourite book by far(and I do have a few books I dislike) would have to be Emma by Jane Austen. I had to read this for year 12 English and before I started reading it I was actually looking forward to it. That didn't last. To me this book dragged quite a bit. Before I even finished the first page I fell asleep. That has never happened before or since for anything other than maybe a text book and even then I can't actually think of any occasion when I fell asleep on a text book. To sum it up simply this book to me was a book written for whom the modern day equivalent would be blonde bimbo's. I am neither blonde nor a bimbo. I told my teacher as much; she wasn't very impressed. Also the fact that we had to compare this novel to the film Clueless didn't work in its favour. I had to force myself to sit and watch that and still only made it half an hour in at most. I think I eventually forced myself to Chapter 12 of this and watched the film instead but I don't remember even from that what happens. I don't know what happened to my copy as soon as the HSC was over. I think I gave it away. I don't recommend this book to anyone.