I am a literary hipster, meaning that if a book becomes a best-seller, I will wait almost a year before I am willing to read it myself. That being said, with the final installment of the movie in the Divergent series by Veronica Roth, I decided it was no longer mainstream and I could read it myself. As I began reading, I slowly realized that the story line was eerily similar to other best-selling novels that have been published during my adolescents. Don't get me wrong, these novels are a ~novelty~ read, but the storyline remains stagnant and leaves little room for imagination. I know how the novel will end, two chapters into the book and I'm seldom wrong. Here are ten thoughts that meander through my brain while reading a young adult novel:
1) These novels continue to get longer and longer, and the font also continues to grow larger. This book could easily be less than 200 pages if they did not use size 20 font.
2) Wow, this book has the same kind of dystopian society that those other novels I read were centered around.
3) I wonder if any of these main characters will ever be liked by more than, like, 12 people?
4) I bet no one would read this if the main character were normal like every other character. Seriously, all these main characters possess some sort of "god-like" power that makes them the enemy to some people, but a hero to others.
5) What would Harry Potter have done if he were put in the Divergent series? What faction would he have chosen in the choosing ceremony? What about Ron and Hermione? They would not have been friends, surely. Voldemort could have established the factions to vanquish the powerful strand of three that was Harry, Hermione, and Ron.
6) This is such an easy read, I could finish this in less than a day if I had the patience to.
7) I wonder why there is so much cat hair in my tea? How did it even get into my mug, my cat has been asleep on the floor for hours?
8) Katniss' sister, Prim, dies in the end. She has to, she is not a damaged enough character to remain in Panem. Katniss has to marry Peeta, she does not have a choice, her life is dictated by the capital ever since she volunteered for the Games, she must mold to their desires even after the capital will inevitably be destroyed later. The only question is when, when will the capital fall? When will our government fall? We are just as corrupt, maybe not one person like President Snow, but the system as a whole.
9) Seriously people, is nothing original anymore?
10) Just because every person in the world read the book, it became a movie and won loads of awards does not make it a successful, literary adventure.
