Book Review: Glass (Crank, #2)

Author:

Ellen Hopkins

Publisher:

Margaret K. McElderry Books

Story:

Crank. Glass. Ice. Crystal. Whatever you call it, it’s all the same: a monster. And once it’s got hold of you, this monster will never let you go.

Kristina thinks she can control it. Now with a baby to care for, she’s determined to be the one deciding when and how much, the one calling the shots. But the monster is too strong, and before she knows it, Kristina is back in its grips. She needs the monster to keep going, to face the pressures of day-to-day life. She needs it to feel alive.

Once again the monster takes over Kristina’s life and she will do anything for it, including giving up the one person who gives her the unconditional love she craves — her baby.

Review:

After reading Crank, I was desperate to read Glass. I really wanted to know what happens Kristina. I finally had to buy on Kindle in July. It was a pretty good book. This book, deals with Kristina’s trouble with the monster Crank. She also has to take care of her son Hunter. It is during this time, that she starts using again. She thinks that no one knows that she is using again. Somewhere through the book, we get hints that her mother and Scott know that she is using again. She also falls in love with the dealer Trey.

She is one day left alone to take care of Hunter. At that time, Hunter rolls under the sofa and is crying his lungs out, and Kristina is sleeping and doesn’t wake up. This was the last straw, and she was kicked out of the house. She goes to live with the Brad, Trey’s brother. Eventually, she is forced to move out of that house too. She finally lives in a motel, and ends up marrying Trey.

I found that this book was dragging and got quite boring at a point. I felt that Ellen was dragging the book to 630 pages. She could have easily finished it in 300. She dragged in some unnecessary events and characters into the book, which adds to the pages. The poems also got quite mundane as it went on. The type of poems or the way the poems were written seemed to be repeated.

This book doesn’t encourage me to read the next book in the series  “Fallout”.  This book was pretty good. it had a good plot, though it was boring at times.

Final Verdict:

4.5/10

BVM: Books vs Movies

Book related arguments have been going on for ages. The most recent one is whether a hard copy of a book is better than the digital copy. Every new device wants to be the next Kindle. But, lets face it, there’s nothing like an Amazon Kindle and the wide range of books on the Amazon Kindle store. Sorry iBooks, unlike the rest of Apple stuff you are far far far behind !

Here I’m wading into a  much older debate: Books vs Movies. Some people are book people while others are movie people. Book people prefer to read books and not watch movies. If you were to tell them that Toy Story is an animated movie, which is not just for kids, their go-to reply would be they don’t watch Cartoons .  Movie People, on the other hand, prefer to watch movies and the adaptations of the books. I’ve heard some people say that they’d rather not read the book as they’ll wait for the movie to release. If  they get a book as a gift, the’ll put away in a forgotten corner.

Me? I’m a book and a movie person 🙂 . The best of both worlds even if I say so myself.  I’d read the book and then watch the movie (For those movies, which are based on books).

Round 1:

Books provide  the reader with hours or days or even weeks of entertainment. Movies can be watched again and again, but you can’t watch it every time as if it was your first.  Thus, Books provide hours of entertainment. And the winner is… Books.

Round 2:

Books take a long time to be read. But movies are, at the most ,two and a half hours long. Movies can be finished in one shot and you dont need to bookmark it every time you stop. And the winner is… Movies.

Round 3:

When you read a book, your brain runs through various designs, scenes. You picture the scene of a book, you’d see the scene as you understand it from what is written. Movies have SFX. But, the SFX of the movies, is what is imagined by the director. A book opens your mind to a whole new world of imagination. Though the special effects in hollywood are getting more realistic than ever, nothing can beat the best graphics chip in the world.. your imagination. And the winner is… Books.

Round 4:

When books are adapted into movies, all the things you wanted aren’t usually there. What you had imagined the movie to be like, isn’t what you get when you see it. Thus, usually the books are better. But sometime, the movies are better. But a million other time the books are better. And the winner is… Books.

Round 5:

When you go for the first show of a movie, you’d want to experience it with the other people who are watching it for the first time. When we read books, we are transported to far off lands that we can only dream of. But when other people read the same book, they might read at a faster pace than us and may tell you what happens many pages ahead. But we don’t have that problem with movies. Because of the short duration of the movie, we are able to enjoy it with others, without it being ruined.

And the winner is… Movies

So after tallying Books got 3 wins and Movies got 2. So Books win by 1.

But it doesn’t matter for me. I cannot imagine a world where I go without books or movies.  Your vote ??