Unwind—an abridged review.

Golly. I don't know how I could abridge a review. I just think that it'd sound epic.

I've decided that I'm going to follow a system thingy for all of my book reviews. It'll be much more organized.

Anyway, the book I'll be reviewing today is Unwind by Neal Shusterman. It's another futuristic LOLWAT kinda book.

Background—In the near future, I believe it's sixty years or so, the United States had a second civil war (I'm assuming that it started a few years from the present). The war was between the pro-life and the pro-choice people. Eventually, the war ended after an agreement had been reached. They created a thing called 'The Bill of Life'. In that, they agreed that you could not terminate a child until the age of thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent can decide to 'abort' their child by unwinding them. Right before the agreement that ended the war, some scientist figured out how to transplant 100% of the body (actually, it's like 99.4% because of useless organs). So unwinding technically keeps the child alive, but in parts and pieces. It made both sides happy.

Characters—The story follows three 'unwinds'—one a rebellious sixteen year old boy named Connor; another a girl, Risa, who grew up in an orphanage that decided that she wasn't doing as well as she could and they needed room for other children; and Lev, a 'tithe' whose family had ten children, and out of religious reasoning tithed their tenth son.
Connor found out about his unwinding while snooping through his father's office and saw three tickets (one for his mother, father and brother) to some vacation spot, and found the unwinding order after trying to figure out why there were only three. Risa, was doing a piano recital knowing that if she didn't do a good enough job, she'd be unwound for sure. Afterwards, she was taken to some important person's office and was told of her unwinding. Lev knew about his future his entire life and was treated in a high respect for it. He was sent off after having his thirteenth birthday party with his pastor.

Plot—These three kids are on the run. Connor starts it off for everyone by making a big scene on a highway where both Risa's bus and Lev's car are forced to stop. Risa and Connor run for it and Connor drags Lev from his car despite his struggles of wanting to get unwound. Eventually, they find an underground railroad of sorts.

My thoughts on it— It's a terrifying book. I'm almost freaked out, wanting to turn eighteen as soon as possible for fear that my parents might have me unwound. But it's amazing at the same time. My friends and I are making a pretend audiobook for it. :D It's going to be really fun. I'm Risa. The characters that the author created are just so full of the fear of getting unwound and they all have such different personalities. Obviously, the main conflict is them (maybe?) getting unwound, but there are so many miniature ones inside each part and chapter, even. Details that were hinted at in the very beginning pop up at the very end. It's a laid out amazingly.

Movie? Sequel?—A movie is set to be made for this book, and it's supposed to come out sometime in 2012. And I've heard rumors of a sequel, though I'm not sure what will happen. I looked at the author's website and blog, but I haven't seen anything about it. I really hope there's a sequel to it.

Recommendation—I'd recommend this to anyone. Adults, people my age, boys, girls, losers, cool people. It's just that fabulous. If you haven't read it, go get it from the library as soon as you can. Just make sure it doesn't make me have to return my copy to the library. I need it for the audiobook.

Stop! Book review time!

Okay, so I have decided that like, once a week or whenever I feel like it, I'm going to post a book review. :D But it'll be five times more epic than a normal book review.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

(I've had to shrink the photo for spacing purposes, but if you click on it, a bigger one will pop up and it'll be easier to read what it says.)


This is easily in my top five favorite series, that's how fabulous it is. I'm really into dystopian future stuff. You can tell because my number one favorite series is the Uglies trilogy-type thing.

I really wanted to review Catching Fire, but I know that it would totally give away how The Hunger Games ends.

This book takes place in the near-ish future. I'm pretty sure that it's three to four hundred years into the future, but I don't think they ever actually say 'THIS TAKES PLACE IN THE YEAR 2345!' because that would take away the mystery factor of it. And there's not really a mystery factor, I just like leading people into false dreams.
Back to the setting of the book. Future. In the FUTURE, there's this country-type thing called Panem. And it takes up the entirety of North America (Canada, U.S., Mexico). And within Panem, there are twelve 'districts', which give me the impression of states or provinces. Each District has its own specialty kinda thing. 12 is coal, 4 is fishing, 11 is food, etc.
This story takes place in District 12, from the point of view of a sixteen year old girl named Katniss Everdeen. In this futuristic country, there is a yearly 'celebration' thing called the Hunger Games.
For the past seventy-three (almost seventy-four) years, each district has to come up with two 'tributes', one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen. These twenty-four tributes are put in a giant outdoor arena to fight to the death. Last one alive wins.
That's where Katniss comes in. At the seventy-fourth Hunger Games reaping (where they choose who is a tribute) Katniss's beloved younger sister who deeply cares for all life is chosen as a tribute. Katniss does something amazing that most people would not do for a sibling in many districts; she volunteers as a tribute in place of her sister.
The male tribute for District 12, is named Peeta Mellark, the baker's son (Geddit, cuz its pronounced like pita, as in the bread??! HAHAHA SO PUNNY.). For some reason, the narrative goes off on this random story about how he burned bread and then got slapped and then threw the bread at her because she was so hungry. That's probably the only part of the book I don't like/get. Katniss feels like she owes him or something.
Anyway, they get whisked off to The Capitol (The capital of Panem) to be prepped for interviews and training.

That's all I'm really going to say, since the littlest thing I would say could ruin the entire thing.

If you've never read this amazing trilogy in the works, GO OUT AND GET IT FROM YOUR LIBRARY, YOUR LOCAL INDIE BOOKSTORE (we need to be supporting locally owned businesses), YOUR BEST FRIEND WHO IS IN LOVE WITH THIS SERIES AS WELL, YOUR GRANDMOTHER, YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY, OR ME. :D I'm sure all of those places and people would love to let you borrow it or sell it to you.

Since I know a lot of book reviews start/end this way, I'm going to do it too.

I GIVE THIS BOOK FIVE BILLION STARS!
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I don't really think that's five billion, but I don't wanna bore y'all with all these fabulous stars that this book totally deserves.

If you've already read this book and the second, Catching Fire, then check this out if you're eagerly awaiting the release of the third (and final? I kinda hope not. I love the world that she's set.) book, Mockingjay. CAUTION. Do not look at if you haven't read it. And by the way, if you're worried about the third book being 'ruined' by reading that (like my mother), don't fret, it's just a bunch of insane ideas put together by this person. And the crazy thing is, they actually almost make sense and I want what he's predicting to happen in the book. -cannot wait-.

I hope you enjoyed the first ever blogging book review by yours truly. I'm kinda hoping to do a review once a week or something. Or whenever I can't think of anything to blog about. :D


Photo is not mine. The images and stuff are Suzanne Collin's and her publisher's. And the cover mash-up with the quotes was all designed and put together by Lesslya.

In other news, I am thoroughly freaked out.

Though that's not really saying much. I get freaked out about everything. The dark, spiders, storms, heights, the thought of people breaking into my house (WHAT IF THEY KILL ME?), war, oil spills, and more recently, the future.

I had told myself I wouldn't blog anymore today, just in case I run out of ideas some other day, but I think this post is of extreme urgency to my mental health. I find that I become less freaked out if I talk about it or something. So...

Everyone knows about how the Mayan calendar stops in December of 2012 when translated to present calendar-ness. Last year or the year before, I discovered this while chatting with a friend about how the world will end. I was all 'ZOMBIES' or something, and she was all 'ZOMG 2012'. I was all 'Wait. What?' and she linked me to this really scientific page about how the stars are all funky and the Mayan calendar and a bunch of stuff that I totally freaked out about. I went and shared my freak-out with my parents, and they pretty much laughed at me and told me it was all a myth and mumbo-jumbo. But I kept on searching it on google because when I'm freaked out, usually facts and more information on it set my mind at ease. Now, two(ish) years and a movie about it later, I'm planning on waking up on the twenty-first of December in 2012 and I'll be all BRING IT, WORLD. I think the stamp below explains my feelings. So I'm at peace with 2012 because people have hyped it up and now it just seems like a silly thing that some idiot at school made up to freak everyone out. You know what I'm talking about, right?

So, now that I've talked about 2012, I'm hoping that you know that that's not what I'm freaking out about. It's something kinda related in the end of the world kind of way.

I doubt many people really know about this, so I'm educating y'all.

So there was this lady who was born in the Ottoman Empire back in the day (1911). Her name was Vangelia Pandeva Dimitrova, but she was more commonly known as Baba Vanga. When she was twelve, apparently she was in a really bad storm and was picked up by either a tornado or really strong wind. She was found (alive) pretty far away, and she had sand in her eyes which blinded her.

After that, she began predicting things (WHICH IS TOTALLY WHAT IS FREAKING ME OUT) which includes the 'End of the World' and her eventual death. She predicted 9/11 and the sinking of a Russian sub ten and twenty years in advance.

In 1989, Baba Vanga said the following:
"Horror, horror! The American brethren will fall after being attacked by the steel birds. The wolves will be howling in a bush, and innocent blood will be gushing."
People have interpreted this by taking 'American brethren' to mean the Twin Towers, since they are American and technically brothers (twins). Steel birds are obviously planes, and Bush literally means George Bush. HOW FREAKING SCARY IS THAT?

In 1980 she said:
"At the turn of the century, in August of 1999 or 2000, Kursk will be covered with water, and the whole world will be weeping over it."
Kursk was the name of a Russian city as well a submarine named after the city. In August of 2000, the sub sunk. How freaky is that?

And she's predicted a bunch of other things that will happen in the future. That's totally what's giving me a panic attack now. Prepare for a long list.

• 2010-World War III begins in November and it turns into a nuclear war.
• 2011- The entire Northern Hemisphere is destroyed and lifeless for the most part because of radioactive showers.
• 2014- As a result of all the radioactiveness of the world, most of the population will have skin cancer and other various disease of that sort.
• 2016- Europe has close to no people living there.
• 2018-China becomes new world superpower.
• 2023- Earth's orbit will change.
• 2025- Europe continues to be underpopulated.
• 2028- New energy source is found, flight to Venus will depart, hunger is ended.
• 2033- Sea levels rise because of melting ice caps.
• 2043- Economy is getting better and better, Muslims run Europe.
• 2046- Organs can be reproduced and is the new cure for most diseases.
• 2066- U.S. uses climate changing weapon on Muslims, centered in Rome.
• 2076- Communism.
• 2084- Nature rebuilds itself from all the uckness.
• 2088- New disease that ages you really quickly.
• 2097- Aging disease cured.
• 2100-Artificial sun is created to light the dark side of Earth.
• 2111- People become robots(?) Does that mean... cyborgs? YES.
• 2123- Small wars between small countries. No one intervenes.
• 2125- Signals from aliens recived in Hungary. Baba Vanga is remembered because it is said she could communicate with the aliens.
• 2130- Aliens teach us how to live underwater; civilizations there are created.
• 2164- Animals become human hybrids. (Uhm, bestiality?)
• 2167- New major religion.
• 2170- Big drought.
• 2183- A colony on Mars gets independence through threatening with nuclear weapons.
• 2187- Big volcanic eruptions will be stopped.
• 2195- Underwater places will have their own energy and food.
• 2196- New race from mixing of the races.
• 2201- Gets colder because sun begins to shut down.
• 2221- While searching for more aliens, we'll come across something terrible. (Like what? Death-aliens?)
• 2256- Space ship transfers a disease to Earth.
• 2262- Planets begin to shift orbits and Mars might get hit by a comet.
• 2271- Laws of Physics are changed. (How is that even possible?)
• 2273- Only one race from all the mixing.
• 2279- 'Power obtained from nothing'. People think that means a black hole or some kind of vacuum.
• 2288- Time travel? Alien contact? (Didn't that already happen? Or another kind of aliens?)
• 2291- Sun continues to cool. People try to stop it.
• 2296- Big explosions in the sun, gravity gets screwed up.
• 2299- A France rebellion against the Muslims.
• 2302- Secrets and laws of space and the universe are revealed.
• 2304- Secrets of the moon revealed?
• 2341- Something bad will come at Earth from space. (I KNEW THAT DREAM THAT I HAD A WEEK AGO MEANT SOMETHING.)
• 2354- Screw up with artificial sun(s)? creates a drought.
• 2371- World hunger. (Golly, it's not like that's ever happened before.)
• 2378- New fast-growing race. (Like a human race or what?)
• 2480- Artificial suns will hit each other and the Earth is all dark and stuff.
• 3005- War on Mars changes orbit.
• 3010- Comet hits the moon, destroying it.
• 3797- Everything on Earth is dead, but we're advanced enough to move somewhere else.
• 3803- New planet has only a few people on it. Communications between people on different planets is rare. Mutations because of new planets.
• 3805- Battle of resources, half of people die out.
• 3815- War ends.
• 3854- Development stops. People become savages.
• 3871- A prophet tells people of morals and religion.
• 3874- Prophet is accepted by everyone, and a new religion is created.
• 3878- Church re-teaches forgotten sciences.
• 4302- New cities growing, new religion promotes advances in technology and other things of that nature. Scientists figure out something about diseases and behaviors.
• 4304- Discovers a way to battle any disease.
• 4308- Because of mutations, people can use their brains at a 34% capacity. People forget what hate and evil is.
• 4509- Man can communicate with 'god'.
• 4599- Immortality is achieved.
• 4674- Development peaks, 340 billion people on several different planets. Begin to understand and befriend aliens.
• 5076- A boundary universe? (Did they discover that our universe is one or it becomes one or what?)
  
• 5078- People decide to leave the boundaries, though a bunch of people are against it.

• 5079-The end of the world.

OH MY GODS, I AM PANIC ATTACKING.

Isn't that freaky? -rant rant rant- Good gods, I'm going to die. We're all going to die. Augh. HELP ME. Someone put my in a straight jacket and in a room with padded walls. I think that will help.