Wool
By: Hugh Howey

Challenge:  50 States Challenge

Published: 2013 (hardcover)

# of pages: 509

Official description: In a ruined and toxic landscape, a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. There, men and women live in a society full of regulations they believe are meant to protect them. Sheriff Holston, who has unwaveringly upheld the silo’s rules for years, unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: He asks to go outside. His fateful decision unleashes a drastic series of events. An unlikely candidate is appointed to replace him: Juliette, a mechanic with no training in law, whose special knack is fixing machines. Now Juliette is about to be entrusted with fixing her silo, and she will soon learn just how badly her world is broken. The silo is about to confront what its history has only hinted about and its inhabitants have never dared to whisper. Uprising.

My opinion:  This book was recommended to me by my dad.  After he described it to me I knew I had to read it.  Dystopian society, yes please. I feel like if everyone in our government would read a couple of dystopian novels this country would be a different place.

The world Howey created in this novel is original and fascinating.  It was a little slow at first, as it follows two characters who introduce the world of the silo.  However, it picks up as it follows Juliette and the reader is pulled into the world and the other characters that are introduced.

I recommend this to lovers of dystopian novels, those who enjoy sci-fi, and those that enjoy reading a novel that can pass on important messages.  There is a little bit of language, but it isn't overwhelming.


Why I gave this book 5/5 stars:  Original setting, characters who are easy to relate to, interesting plot, couldn't put it down after I got past the first third of the book!

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Life of Pi
By: Yann Martel
Published: 2004
# of pages: 401
Quote: "Despite attending a nominally Christian school, I had not yet been inside a church—and I wasn't about to dare the deed now. I knew very little about the religion. It had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools."

Official description: Life of Pi is a masterful and utterly original novel that is at once the story of a young castaway who faces immeasurable hardships on the high seas, and a meditation on religion, faith, art and life that is as witty as it is profound. Using the threads of all of our best stories, Yann Martel has woven a glorious spiritual adventure that makes us question what it means to be alive, and to believe.
Growing up in Pondicherry, India, Piscine Molitor Patel - known as Pi - has a rich life. Bookish by nature, young Pi acquires a broad knowledge of not only the great religious texts but of all literature, and has a great curiosity about how the world works. His family runs the local zoo, and he spends many of his days among goats, hippos, swans, and bears, developing his own theories about the nature of animals and how human nature conforms to it. Pi’s family life is quite happy, even though his brother picks on him and his parents aren’t quite sure how to accept his decision to simultaneously embrace and practise three religions - Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam.
But despite the lush and nurturing variety of Pi’s world, there are broad political changes afoot in India, and when Pi is sixteen, his parents decide that the family needs to escape to a better life. Choosing to move to Canada, they close the zoo, pack their belongings, and board a Japanese cargo ship called the Tsimtsum. Travelling with them are many of their animals, bound for zoos in North America. However, they have only just begun their journey when the ship sinks, taking the dreams of the Patel family down with it. Only Pi survives, cast adrift in a lifeboat with the unlikeliest oftravelling companions: a zebra, an orang-utan, a hyena, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
Thus begins Pi Patel’s epic, 227-day voyage across the Pacific, and the powerful story of faith and survival at the heart of Life of Pi. Worn and scared, oscillating between hope and despair, Pi is witness to the playing out of the food chain, quite aware of his new position within it. When only the tiger is left of the seafaring menagerie, Pi realizes that his survival depends on his ability to assert his own will, and sets upon a grand and ordered scheme to keep from being Richard Parker’s next meal.
As Yann Martel has said in one interview, “The theme of this novel can be summarized in three lines. Life is a story. You can choose your story. And a story with an imaginative overlay is the better story.” And for Martel, the greatest imaginative overlay is religion. “God is a shorthand for anything that is beyond the material - any greater pattern of meaning.” In Life of Pi, the question of stories, and of what stories to believe, is front and center from the beginning, when the author tells us how he was led to Pi Patel and to this novel: in an Indian coffee house, a gentleman told him, “I have a story that will make you believe in God.” And as this novel comes to its brilliant conclusion, Pi shows us that the story with the imaginative overlay is also the story that contains the most truth.

My opinion:  I loved this book more than I can say!  It is so much better than the description makes it sound.  According to the description, it sounds very intellectual and like it's filled with lessons, but although there are several profound ideas throughout the story, that's just what it is - a story.  If you feel intimidated by the description or even by the description of the movie, I urge you to pick up the book and try reading a few chapters.  I think you will want to continue reading just like I did.

This would be a great book club read.  I find myself wanting to discuss it with others!  I'm also eager to see the movie although before I didn't have a desire to watch it.


Why I gave this book 5/5 stars:  Great writing, beautiful descriptions, smooth storytelling, interspersed with just the right amount of humor

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Have you reviewed this? Let me know and I'd be happy to post yours as well.