Praise for Robert Cormier

Who here has heard of Robert Cormier? I kind of had....I knew he wrote fiction books for teens, but I'd never actually read any of them.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I read I am the Cheese in about two hours. I'm not trying to brag about my reading speed - I honestly could NOT put this book down! I was completely riveted from page one all the way until the end. It was a masterpiece!!!!

All right, here's my spoiler alert: I'm going to talk about the whole book, including the end, so if you haven't read it, please don't read ahead!!!! The twist ending is totally the best part of the book and trust me, you don't want to ruin it. If you've already read it or don't really care about reading it, read on!

When it started as Adam on his bike, I was like, "Ok, this is interesting. I'm really curious about what's going on here." As the recorded interview sessions began, I was like, "O-k, this is....interesting. I'm REALLY curious about what's going on here." Then the ending came, and I was like, "Say WHAT?!?!"

It turns out that throughout the entire book, Adam is just riding about his mental hospital! His parents are dead (well, at least his mom is) and the guy who killed them and put Adam in the institution was the man assigned to protect them! OMG!!! This is a classic twist ending; I feel like since this book, there's been a lot of movies and books where the character ends up to have been in a mental hospital the whole time. For example, I believe Shutter Island has a similar twist (I haven't actually seen that yet - I'm a little scared to, because I heard it's pretty creepy!)

Anyways, this is my first Robert Cormier experience, and I must say that it was great! I'm definitely going to look into his other books and read some of them. I heard The Chocolate War is good, so I think I'll delve into that one next!

Back to School?

The other day I went into Walgreens to buy some gum and what did I see???? The Back To School aisle!!! Aaaaahhh!!!! Did I miss something? Does school start in early August now???


I don't actually mind back to school season; I'm a total nerd and happen to be in LOVE with school supplies (fresh notebooks, pens, binders....beautiful!). But not quite yet! I like to think about returning to school in August; you know, when school is actually around the corner?

Stores are always ahead of the game, though. Who says we need to wait until December for the Christmas decorations to show up on the racks? Back to school is clearly no exception.

The aforementioned Walgreens aisle was actually fantastic, though. They'd made cardboard school buses to hold the supplies! I mean, how cool is that? I'm speaking literally (like I said, I'm a nerd). I just feel like I'm being pushed to start the back to school shopping season before I actually want to. Plus, sometimes stores have gotten rid of their merchandise right around the time you actually want to buy it! What's up with that?

This hasn't really been my best rant, mostly because I actually quite LIKE back to school season....I just wish I could have stumbled upon the heaven of school supplies in mid-August instead of mid-July. Oh well; now that the school supplies bug has bitten me once again, I have to admit that there's a part of me that can't wait to head over to Staples, Target, and Walgreens to start buying my back to school equipment - but trust me, there's a much bigger part that will hold me in summer mode!!! (Well, at least for a few more weeks!) ;-)