The Divergent Trilogy: I *finally* finished it!

I have done it. I have finished reading the Divergent series! I thought it was pretty great. I'm gonna spare you my long, monotonous summary and just give you what the inside covers said about Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant. Personally, I would only advise someone to read this book if they're on board the whole "dystopian-city-love-story" train. It was essentially the Hunger Games revamped and morphed into some new premise.
Divergent Series vs Hunger Games series: What's Different

• Characters
• Premise
• Time setting

What's the Same

• Dystopian society
• Love story
• Struggle to survive forms relationship
• Female Protagonist
• Female Protagonist has a sidekick
• Male Antagonist +Female Antagonist team up against protagonist
• Society divided into groups
• Groups have designated jobs
• I'm too lazy to think of anymore, but you get my point, so that's okay.

Veronica Roth's imagination was great; the entire series was well-thought and well-planned. If only it wasn't like trying to stuff a too big plot into too small dystopian novel jeans. I'd give the book book a 2 for originality, but 9 for concept. Another glitch I found with this book is that it was written at about a fourth or fifth grade reading level. I literally had to do no thinking while reading this novel. Every minute detail, every millisecond of thought was spoon-fed to me. For example, on page 170, Tris describes how she feels and says, "Once I'm dressed and the urge to cry is gone, I feel something hot and violent writhing in my stomach. I want to hurt them." Could Roth really not come up with something better than "I want to hurt them," to say? Really? I flipped to a completely arbitrary page to find an example and that was the very  first page I flipped to... Maybe some people would like this brain baby food. I dunno. I'm not omniscient or anything... Anywho, this novel was great for lazy day reading, but horrendous for thought provoking.

Divergent- Movie vs. Book

Are you all enjoying spring break? I sure am! I went to Nashville and I got to see the movie "Divergent" with one of my besties (I promise I will limit my use of that word :3). I've spent the past couple of hours in the car re-reading the book. I must admit that the movie was pretty darn close to the book. Here are a couple of things that I noticed were different:

1. Four is supposed to be 18 in the book; Theo James is 28. Apparently the producers were shooting for 24. I guess they couldn't have actors who were too inexperienced...
2. Uriah! He's not in the movie! WHAT?!
3. Peter is ruthless in the books; Peter is rude and cruel, but not quite ruthless in the movie.

Overall, the movie was a really great supplement to the book. I think that it wouldn't be necessary to have read the book to understand much of the movie, so I'd definitely recommend the movie to dystopian-city-lovers.

(Connections: Text-to-Film)

Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us - Things to Think About

Well, I must admit that this book isn't what I expected. It is indeed a bunch of statistics and studies, but somehow, somehow, I'm actually enjoying this. For those of you who've checked out my blog in the past, you may be vaguely reminded of a previous post... Anywho, I've found that all those number crunching moments are actually really intriguing (but that might just be me). Do know why soda is always just right? Not over-sweetened? Not under-sweetened? It's because soda companies for thousands upon thousands of dollars into research about the theoretical "bliss point". The "bliss point" is essentially the highest amount of sugar that a person can handle in a drink with out feeling that it is too sweet. Hmm... now I wonder why 1/3 of the US population is overweight and Type 2 Diabetes rate are on the rise... I mean it couldn't possibly be the food companies putting the *maximum* amount of sugar into drinks and KFC's being completely drenched in fat.  That's just ludicrous! Well I'm off to dinner at Penn Station for an oh-so-healthy Philly Cheese steak....

(Connection: Text-to-Life)