| Cherry Who? |
05-25-2012 02:40 AM |
I haven't read all of their books, but here are the ones I've read.
John Green
Paper Towns - A teenage boy has sort of idolized his next door neighbor/crush/childhood friend. Then she goes missing and while looking for her, he learns about her. Deals a lot with remembering that people are layered and multi-faceted and so much more complex than the ideas we make up for them.
Looking for Alaska - Coming of age novel. A guy goes to boarding school, makes some friends, and... actually, I can't really say much about this at all without spoiling it. Here's what Amazon has to say about it (but even they spoiled it... I omitted that part)
Quote:
Sixteen-year-old Miles Halter's adolescence has been one long nonevent - no challenge, no girls, no mischief, and no real friends. Seeking what Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps," he leaves Florida for a boarding school in Birmingham, AL. His roommate, Chip, is a dirt-poor genius scholarship student with a Napoleon complex who lives to one-up the school's rich preppies. Chip's best friend is Alaska Young, with whom Miles and every other male in her orbit falls instantly in love. She is literate, articulate, and beautiful, and she exhibits a reckless combination of adventurous and self-destructive behavior. She and Chip teach Miles to drink, smoke, and plot elaborate pranks. Alaska's story unfolds in all-night bull sessions, and the depth of her unhappiness becomes obvious. Green's dialogue is crisp, especially between Miles and Chip. His descriptions and Miles's inner monologues can be philosophically dense, but are well within the comprehension of sensitive teen readers.
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The Fault in Our Stars - A girl with cancer meets and falls in love with a guy with cancer. The novel deals a lot with death, life, meaning, and that sort of thing. While it may not sound that exciting, it's a very poignant and touching story.
He has two other novels that I have not read yet, An Abundance of Katherines, and a collaboration with David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson.
Max Barry
First, let me say that all of his books are really funny. Nothing here is played straight, it's all satire and such.
Syrup - (He's credited as "Maxx Barry" on this one, which is a joke relating to the content of the book) It's been a few years since I read this one, so I'm not really able to do it justice. Again, I'll let Amazon talk.
Quote:
Lampooning corporate "ethics," sexual politics and the marketing and film industries, this clever debut satire by 25-year-old Australian writer Barry will have readers nodding in agreement and quoting it to their friends. Ingenuous new marketing graduate Scat (he feels that his full name, Michael George Holloway, just won't do for a career in marketing) moves to L.A. hoping to become rich and famous. After he gets a million-dollar idea for a new cola product, cheeky and arrogant Scat approaches a beautiful, ruthless marketing manager named 6 at Coca-Cola. The new product's name is, hilariously, a "dirty" word, spelled unconventionally and in stylish font on a black can. But before Scat's cash cow can be milked, his roommate Sneaky Pete steals the idea, is hired by Coke, and soon holds the purse-strings for Coca-Cola's biggest marketing undertaking ever, a $140 million movie. The infuriated Scat joins forces with 6 to create their own, better movie, with a measly $10,000 budget. With Scat's creative ideas, 6's business acumen and the help of 6's film-major roommate Tina, and Scat's actress ex-girlfriend Cindy, they set out to beat Sneaky Pete at his own game. Scat and 6 have an affectionate, wary bond (even though Scat's crazy for her and she claims she's a lesbian), and together they nimbly dodge the clever, ever-surprising political landmines that Sneaky Pete sets in their path.
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Company -
Quote:
Stephen Jones is a shiny new hire at Zephyr Holdings. From the outside, Zephyr is just another bland corporate monolith, but behind its glass doors business is far from usual: the beautiful receptionist is paid twice as much as anybody else to do nothing, the sales reps use self help books as manuals, no one has seen the CEO, no one knows exactly what they are selling, and missing donuts are the cause of office intrigue. While Jones originally wanted to climb the corporate ladder, he now finds himself descending deeper into the irrational rationality of company policy. What he finds is hilarious, shocking, and utterly telling.
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Jennifer Government -
Quote:
Taxation has been abolished, the government has been privatized, and employees take the surname of the company they work for. It's a brave new corporate world, but you don't want to be caught without a platinum credit card--as lowly Merchandising Officer Hack Nike is about to find out. Trapped into building street cred for a new line of $2500 sneakers by shooting customers, Hack attracts the barcode-tattooed eye of the legendary Jennifer Government. A stressed-out single mom, corporate watchdog, and government agent who has to rustle up funding before she's allowed to fight crime, Jennifer Government is holding a closing down sale--and everything must go.
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He has one other novel, Machine Man, which I haven't read yet save for an early draft of the first chapter. |
