Não, não é porque eu to participando de uma promação que vou escrever isso. É porque os livros são muito bons, e já vão ganhar tradução pela editora Novo Século, e todos merecem ler e saber quão legais eles são.
Ok, nem eu acreditei em tudo isso.Ok, os livros são ótimos mesmo, e eles serão traduzidos mesmo. Mas se não fosse pela promoção, minha preguiça dominaria e esse post nunca sairia da minha cabeça. Ou o ciúme ilógico por minhas coisas favoritas me impediria de compartilhar com o mundo a descoberta dele.Shut up, Hunger Games.
Janie é uma garota ok, que não conhece o pai,é ignorada pela mãe e praticamente não tem amigos. Apesar disso tudo, ela não é reclamona e insuportável. Ela vive na parte mais pobre da cidade, aguenta o desprezo das colegas e espera ir pra faculdade, como qualquer uma de nós.
Só que ela sabe dos segredos de todo mundo à sua volta. Bem, pelo menos pra quem já dormiu ao seu lado.
Janie "vê " os sonhos de uma pessoa. Seja o que for que você sonhe, ela assiste aos seus desejos mais vergonhosos, conhece seus segredos mais sórdidos. Se ela fosse a gossip girl x.o.x.o,pode crer, a cidade viraria de pernas pro ar.
Só que não é por vontade de Janie. Ela é arrastada, orbigada a assistir os sonhos, e enquanto isso acontece, seu corpo meio que entra em colapso. E a cada vez que "volta" dos "episódios", ela sente que seu corpo se deteriora. Sem contar que se debater no meio da aula não é lá essas diversões todas.
E é no meio de um sonho que ela encontra Cabel, um colega de escola que até agora passava despercido. Por seu sonho ser tão assustador, Janie tenta se aproximar de Cabel, sem, no entanto, assustá-lo. Pelo menos ñão até uma viagem de colégio, onde Cabe presencia um "episódio" de Janie. A partir daí, Cabel passa a ser o confidente de Janie, que finalmente sente que pode talvez ser um pouco mais feliz.
Os livros tem um toque de tagédia e depressão, mas não são góticos ou emos. Têm humor que entretém, sem no entanto fazer caricaturas de personagens batidos pela cultura norte americana. E o que é melhor: o texto é construído de modo sucinto, mas não resumido. As orações são curtas, mas passam idéias muito mais abrangentes do que o tamanho de suas frases. E a autora realmente conquista o leitor, e torna suas personagens tão reais, palpáveis e críveis quanto nossos colegas de sala.
O terceiro e último livro da série, como título de Gone, será lançado somente em fevereiro. E as leitoras e fãs da série já sentem apreensão, a julgar pelo nome. Fade, o segundo título da série, deixou os leitores com um gostinho de quero mais, e lançou suspense, trazendo até mesmo certa angústia em virtude do possível destino de Janie.
Eu me conto como uma das fãs angustiadas, ainda mais com o "fear everything" que Lisa disse em um chat com os fãs. Aliás, aí está mais um plus. A autora é muito gentil com as fãs, e é acessível, respondendo sempre que possível e conversando normalmente com as leitoras.Não é necessário dizer que eu já sou super fã dela, né?
Aqui termina minha pseudo resenha, ou então eu falo demais e solto spoilers aqui e VÃO LER AGORA.
quinta-feira, 5 de novembro de 2009
terça-feira, 3 de novembro de 2009
Nowhere is Safe (pt 2)
I don’t know who got the idea first—might have been me. Might’ve been Baz or Baz’s cousin, John. Could even have been my BFF, Isabel. Just three guys and a girl withbackpacks, Eurorail passes, and two full months before we had to report to college.
Somehow we’d managed to blow through most of our money in a month. That’s when one of us—again, I can’t remember who—suggested we stretch our cash by packing it through Eastern Europe.“It’s that or we go home early and spend the summer at the Taco Temple handing bags of grease bombsthrough the drive-thru window,” Baz said. He was on his fourth German beer and looked like a six-foot-four, sleep-deprived goat the way he staggered around. There was foam in his new chin scruff.
“Can’t we go to Amsterdam instead? I hear you can smoke pot right out in the open,” John pleaded. Isabel shook her head. “Too expensive.”
“For you guys,” John mumbled.
“Don’t be that way,” Isabel gave him a kiss, and John softened. They’d been a thing since the second week in Europe, and I was trying to be cool with it. Izzie was worth ten of John, to be honest. “So where should we go? Not someplace everybody and their freaking aunt Fanny
go. Let’s have a real adventure, you know?”
“Such as, my fine, travel-audacious princess?” said Baz, being all Bazlike, which is to say just one toe over the friend side of the Cheeky-Friend-or-Obnoxious-Jerk divide. He tried to pat Isabel’s faux hawk. She shook him off with a good-natured glare and a threatened punch that had Baz on his knees in mock terror. “Mercy,” he cried in a high voice. Then he winked. “Or not. I like it
either way.”
With a roll of her eyes Isabel opened our Europe on the Cheap travel guidebook and pointed to a section entitled “Haunted Europe” that gave bulleted info about off-thebeaten-path places that were supposedly cursed in some way: castles built out of human bones, villages that once
hunted and burned witches, ancient burial grounds, and caves where vampires lurked. Werewolf or succubus hot spots—that sort of thing.
John tickled Isabel and grabbed the book away. “How about this one?” He read aloud, “‘Necuratul. Town of the Damned. In the Middle Ages Necuratul suffered from a series of misfortunes: a terrible drought, persecution from brutal enemies, and the Black Death. And
then suddenly, in the fifteenth century, their troubles stopped. Necuratul prospered. It escaped all disease and repelled enemy attacks with ease. It was rumored that the people of Necuratul had made a pact with the devil in exchange for their good fortune and survival.
“‘Over the past century Necuratul’s fortunes have dwindled. Isolated by dense forest and forgotten by industrialization, most of its young people leave for the excitement of the cities and universities as soon as they can. But they return for the village’s festival day, August 13, in which Necuratul honors its past through various rituals, culminating in a Mardi Gras–like party complete with delicious food and strong drink. (Necuratul is famed for its excellent wines as well as its supposed disreputable history.)
“‘Sadly, this may be the last year for the festival—and Necuratul itself—as there are plans to relocate the town and build a power plant in its location.’”
“Wow. There’s a happy travelogue,” Baz cracked. “Come to our town! Drink our wine! Ogle our women! Feast on our feast days! And all it will cost you is . . . your soul!”
“They’ve got great wine and a hellacious party? I’m there,” John said. He still had his expensive sunglasses perched on his head. His nose was sunburned. Baz drained his stein and wiped his mouth on his arm. “I’m in.”
“Me too. Poe?” Isabel held out her hand to me andgrinned. It was always hard to resist Izzie when she was being adventurous. We’d been best friends since seventh grade when she’d immigrated from Haiti and I’d arrived from the big city, and we’d held on to each other like
buoys lost on a dark, uncertain sea. I laced my fingers through hers.
“Town of the Damned it is,” I said, and we all shook
on it.
Somehow we’d managed to blow through most of our money in a month. That’s when one of us—again, I can’t remember who—suggested we stretch our cash by packing it through Eastern Europe.“It’s that or we go home early and spend the summer at the Taco Temple handing bags of grease bombsthrough the drive-thru window,” Baz said. He was on his fourth German beer and looked like a six-foot-four, sleep-deprived goat the way he staggered around. There was foam in his new chin scruff.
“Can’t we go to Amsterdam instead? I hear you can smoke pot right out in the open,” John pleaded. Isabel shook her head. “Too expensive.”
“For you guys,” John mumbled.
“Don’t be that way,” Isabel gave him a kiss, and John softened. They’d been a thing since the second week in Europe, and I was trying to be cool with it. Izzie was worth ten of John, to be honest. “So where should we go? Not someplace everybody and their freaking aunt Fanny
go. Let’s have a real adventure, you know?”
“Such as, my fine, travel-audacious princess?” said Baz, being all Bazlike, which is to say just one toe over the friend side of the Cheeky-Friend-or-Obnoxious-Jerk divide. He tried to pat Isabel’s faux hawk. She shook him off with a good-natured glare and a threatened punch that had Baz on his knees in mock terror. “Mercy,” he cried in a high voice. Then he winked. “Or not. I like it
either way.”
With a roll of her eyes Isabel opened our Europe on the Cheap travel guidebook and pointed to a section entitled “Haunted Europe” that gave bulleted info about off-thebeaten-path places that were supposedly cursed in some way: castles built out of human bones, villages that once
hunted and burned witches, ancient burial grounds, and caves where vampires lurked. Werewolf or succubus hot spots—that sort of thing.
John tickled Isabel and grabbed the book away. “How about this one?” He read aloud, “‘Necuratul. Town of the Damned. In the Middle Ages Necuratul suffered from a series of misfortunes: a terrible drought, persecution from brutal enemies, and the Black Death. And
then suddenly, in the fifteenth century, their troubles stopped. Necuratul prospered. It escaped all disease and repelled enemy attacks with ease. It was rumored that the people of Necuratul had made a pact with the devil in exchange for their good fortune and survival.
“‘Over the past century Necuratul’s fortunes have dwindled. Isolated by dense forest and forgotten by industrialization, most of its young people leave for the excitement of the cities and universities as soon as they can. But they return for the village’s festival day, August 13, in which Necuratul honors its past through various rituals, culminating in a Mardi Gras–like party complete with delicious food and strong drink. (Necuratul is famed for its excellent wines as well as its supposed disreputable history.)
“‘Sadly, this may be the last year for the festival—and Necuratul itself—as there are plans to relocate the town and build a power plant in its location.’”
“Wow. There’s a happy travelogue,” Baz cracked. “Come to our town! Drink our wine! Ogle our women! Feast on our feast days! And all it will cost you is . . . your soul!”
“They’ve got great wine and a hellacious party? I’m there,” John said. He still had his expensive sunglasses perched on his head. His nose was sunburned. Baz drained his stein and wiped his mouth on his arm. “I’m in.”
“Me too. Poe?” Isabel held out her hand to me andgrinned. It was always hard to resist Izzie when she was being adventurous. We’d been best friends since seventh grade when she’d immigrated from Haiti and I’d arrived from the big city, and we’d held on to each other like
buoys lost on a dark, uncertain sea. I laced my fingers through hers.
“Town of the Damned it is,” I said, and we all shook
on it.
Nowhere is Safe (pt 1)
Hello? We recording? I see a red light, so I’m hoping my battery lasts. Okay, pay attention, because I’ve got only one shot at this, and it’s gonna come at you on the fly. If you found this on YouTube, you are seriously lucky, because you need to know this.Sorry about that banging in the background. It’s too hard to explain right now, and you don’t want to know what’s on the other side of that door. Trust me.
My name’s Poe, by the way. Poe Yamamoto. And that’s Poe as in Edgar Allan. Yeah, ’cause what guy doesn’t want to be saddled with that name? Crap, I’m all over the place. Okay. Focus, dude. Tell the story.
Let’s say you’ve just graduated high school and you’ve decided to celebrate the end of thirteen years of compulsory education with a little backpacking trip in Europe with some friends. You do the do: Paris, Dublin,Venice—which, by the way, smells like pigeon shit fried in grease—London (cold, wet, expensive, but you knew that), maybe some beers in Germany. And just maybe one of you says, “Hey, let’s go off the grid, check out some of these mysterious towns in Eastern Europe, hunt for vampires and werewolves and things that go bump in the Slavic night.” Why the hell not, right? You’re only doing this once.
So you pack it up and head east. You take a train through the kind of forest that’s older than anything we have here, older than anything you can imagine. Like you can practically smell the old coming off that huge wall of forever trees, and it makes you feel completely small and untested. Anyway. You get to a village and you notice the big honkin’ evil-eye pendants the locals hang from their windows.Maybe you even laugh at their quaint superstitions.That, my friend, is the kind of arrogant crap that can get a guy killed. It’s not quaint and it’s not superstitious.There’s a reason those villagers are still alive.
You hang out, eat thick, spicy stew, try to make conversation with the locals, who keep telling you to move on—go see Moscow or Budapest or Prague. Like they want to get rid of you. Like you’re trouble. You ignore them, and one day you and your friends might find yourselves venturing into that unfamiliar forest, winding through a thick mist that comes up out of nowhere.
This is not the time to stop and take a piss on a tree or make a travelogue video for your family back home.You know that prickly feeling you get on the back of your neck? The one that makes you scared to turn around? Pay attention to that, Holmes. That is a Me-No-Likee signal creeping up from the lizard part of your brain—some primal DEFCON center of your gray matter left over from the very first ancestors that hasn’t been destroyed by gated communities, all-night convenience stores lighting up the highways, and a half dozen fake Ghost Chaser shows on late-night cable. I’m just saying that lizard part exists for a reason. I know that now.
So if you’re walking down that unfamiliar path and the mist rises up out of nowhere and slips its hands over your body, turning you around until you don’t know where you are anymore, and the trees seem to be whispering to you? Or you think you see something in the dark that shouldn’t exist, that you tell yourself can’t possibly exist except in creepy campfire stories? Listen to the lizard, Holmes, and do yourself a favor.
Run.
Run like Hell’s after you.
Because it just might be.
We still recording? Good. Let me tell you what happened,while I still can.
My name’s Poe, by the way. Poe Yamamoto. And that’s Poe as in Edgar Allan. Yeah, ’cause what guy doesn’t want to be saddled with that name? Crap, I’m all over the place. Okay. Focus, dude. Tell the story.
Let’s say you’ve just graduated high school and you’ve decided to celebrate the end of thirteen years of compulsory education with a little backpacking trip in Europe with some friends. You do the do: Paris, Dublin,Venice—which, by the way, smells like pigeon shit fried in grease—London (cold, wet, expensive, but you knew that), maybe some beers in Germany. And just maybe one of you says, “Hey, let’s go off the grid, check out some of these mysterious towns in Eastern Europe, hunt for vampires and werewolves and things that go bump in the Slavic night.” Why the hell not, right? You’re only doing this once.
So you pack it up and head east. You take a train through the kind of forest that’s older than anything we have here, older than anything you can imagine. Like you can practically smell the old coming off that huge wall of forever trees, and it makes you feel completely small and untested. Anyway. You get to a village and you notice the big honkin’ evil-eye pendants the locals hang from their windows.Maybe you even laugh at their quaint superstitions.That, my friend, is the kind of arrogant crap that can get a guy killed. It’s not quaint and it’s not superstitious.There’s a reason those villagers are still alive.
You hang out, eat thick, spicy stew, try to make conversation with the locals, who keep telling you to move on—go see Moscow or Budapest or Prague. Like they want to get rid of you. Like you’re trouble. You ignore them, and one day you and your friends might find yourselves venturing into that unfamiliar forest, winding through a thick mist that comes up out of nowhere.
This is not the time to stop and take a piss on a tree or make a travelogue video for your family back home.You know that prickly feeling you get on the back of your neck? The one that makes you scared to turn around? Pay attention to that, Holmes. That is a Me-No-Likee signal creeping up from the lizard part of your brain—some primal DEFCON center of your gray matter left over from the very first ancestors that hasn’t been destroyed by gated communities, all-night convenience stores lighting up the highways, and a half dozen fake Ghost Chaser shows on late-night cable. I’m just saying that lizard part exists for a reason. I know that now.
So if you’re walking down that unfamiliar path and the mist rises up out of nowhere and slips its hands over your body, turning you around until you don’t know where you are anymore, and the trees seem to be whispering to you? Or you think you see something in the dark that shouldn’t exist, that you tell yourself can’t possibly exist except in creepy campfire stories? Listen to the lizard, Holmes, and do yourself a favor.
Run.
Run like Hell’s after you.
Because it just might be.
We still recording? Good. Let me tell you what happened,while I still can.
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