Book Nerds Across America

The BookNerds read Something Borrowed to launch our Friday Movie/Book Read back in May. We really enjoyed the book, and those of us who saw the movie really liked it as well. Now it's coming out on DVD tomorrow, and we are giving you the opportunity to win a free copy! To enter, simply take the "Is it OK?" quiz below and then leave a comment with your result and/or thoughts on the quiz, along with an email address so we can contact you. The contest will run until next Monday, August 22nd. Good luck!

Mary's Review:

Out of all the BookNerds, I was the only one to actually finish the book.  However, it was so painful to finish that I was thankful I did an audio book instead of reading the actual book.  I do not know if I would have been able to finish it! I really disliked that Sal was never content where he was.  If he was in New York then he wanted to be in Denver.  If he was in Denver then he wanted to be in San Francisco.  This whole book was very drawn out and so LONG! I was bored to tears through most of it.  However, I did like Part 2 of the book (which I am going to assume is where most of the movie will take place). I enjoyed the storyline with Sal and MaryAnn, until she left him on the corner.  I absolutely did not understand anything in Part 3,the whole story line in Mexico was a mess!  I am so hoping that the movie will breathe some life into this book. 



Teri's Review:
My hitchhiking adventure started in New York. I was going out west..YAY..I was going to discover the great unknown..the hip generation... I was excited...I was.... oh so WRONG!
Somewhere, and I couldn't honestly tell you where, as I had no stopping places in this adventure, we climbed aboard a flat bed truck with a cast of colorful characters. Actually they were more black and white, I remember none of them, maybe a man traveling with a teenager and some guy named Montana Slim. Heck for all I know these two could be one and the same, you see I slept through this part of the trip.
The truck did finally stop, jarring me from my sleep. Someone said we were stopping for a "pisscall" in Cheyenne Wyoming. Here it was, my chance to escape my fate, a chance to go on, to travel to a land ( any land really) of perhaps vampires, angels, heck I'd take on a zombie attack at this point. I slipped inside the nearest bar (Oh please please be Pandemonium and full of ShadowHunters) , grabbed  a drink and watched from the distance as Sal and his merry men rode off into the sunset. I would never make it to Denver, or anywhere else that Sal roamed. I would never meet the people he was destined to meet, but hey I am okay with that, because I know my fellow Booknerds will be joining me soon, we will get our Haymitch on and then take off on another great adventure together. Books are like that.... they let us escape!

Jacque's Review:
I started out on this journey in central Ohio.  I travelled to northern Indiana and back listening to the audio book.  I just could not get into the story.  Sal was travelling the country aimlessly from New York to Denver to California then back to New York.  He worked odd jobs, complained about not having any money, but managed to buy alcohol and party every night.  When Dean arrived in New York and they decided to travel out west again, I couldn't believe I was about to make another cross country trek.  They made it as far as Denver before Dean had to stop for gas.  While he was filling up the car, I ran into Teri who was on her way to a local pub.  After countless hours in the car, I decided to join her for a cold one and ended the road trip early.  I could not bear to listen to any more of this book.

Flo's Review:
Like Mary, I listened to this one on audio. And like Jacque, I could not finish it. I was the last of the BookNerds to attempt reading this, even after I knew how the other 3 felt about it. But I have to agree with everyone above. Sal seemed to be just traveling around without a real destination. I thought he was planning to go to San Francisco to meet his friend and they'd go work on a ship together. But after he finally made it across country, he just hung around Denver playing around for a period of time. He admitted that he didn't go to work, yet he had money to go drinking with his friends every night?! I know it was the 1940s, but still!

So, then he finally leaves Denver and heads to San Francisco...where he only stays for a night before he decides he wants to leave again?! Really?! So then he meets this girl and ends up just living with her and her son and her family for several months. We see the situation is not ideal, so it's understandable when he wants to leave again. He returns home and is there for awhile before Dean returns, and all of a sudden they are talking about randomly going somewhere else?!? It was too much for me to take. I heard that Jacque and Teri had hopped off the road and decided to hang out at the bar, so I left Sal and Dean and went to join them.

I will say this though: Jack Kerouac is a good writer. Maybe even a great one. I have a feeling that if this story actually had a plot, I really would have enjoyed it. Kerouac has a way with words. He comes up with beautiful phrases to describe simple things. Simply Google "On the Road quotes" and you will come up with a wealth of them. Here are a couple of my favorites:

"I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future."

And perhaps the most famous one: "...because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

TERI'S REVIEW:

I love history,I love the Civil War ( get to know me fact #1-I have been to all the major Civil War battlefields in the US) I love vampires, so I felt this book was going to be perfect for me, and for the most part it was. After reading Seth Grahame-Smith's book I could almost believe that Abe Lincoln was a vampire hunter. He brilliantly combines fiction and fact together blurring the edges where it was at times hard to know where one ended and the other began.

Maybe it was Abe himself, that kept this from being "the book" for me. I have never given the man much thought (My family is from the South ya'll). The start was very slow fro me, I held little interest in his childhood, but it had to be written to understand his passionate hate for vampires.  The third part of the book, did however keep me reading. Mr Grahame-Smith's idea of vampires and slavery was very believable and, once again brilliant.

As for the ending, it has a twist, which I will leave for the reader to discover. I however, felt I should have seen it coming, as Henry left  clues throughout the book. I being a music lover, instantly thought of the old Dion song, Abraham Martin and John, I'd like to think that Mr Grahame-Smith was listening to it also as he wrote the final chapter.

MARY'S REVIEWS

It is true that I am a big history buff and of course have a thing for vampires.  So when I heard this book was being made into a movie my thought was "Cool idea!".  Now for the book itself, upon finishing it, I thought it was ok, but I do think that it will make a good movie.

I will give Grahame-Smith one thing, he did keep the historic part of the book correct. 

The things I did like was Edgar Allen Pow being in the book (I LOVE HIM) and the twist at the end.  Like Teri, I will not tell you it.  I do like the way Grahame-Smith is very descriptive in the book.

I did not like the way it seemed rushed during the Presidential years.  I felt like he just wanted to finish the book.  Plus, there were times in the beginning where I felt it lagged a little bit.

I will see the movie though!

Jacque's Review:

Like Teri, I have visited the vast majority of Civil War battle fields and monuments.  I have enjoyed watching reenactments and discovering our history first hand.  I was hoping this book would provide a humorous twist to a dark time in American history, however, it was nothing more than a warped presentation of facts. 

The beginning of the book actually caught my attention.  Within the first fifteen pages we meet a young writer commissioned to write a book based upon the information contained in ten journals.  The journals were presented to him by a mysterious patron of his store.  He quickly learns that the journals were written by Abraham Lincoln and we later can presume that the "man" that gave them to him was a friend of Lincoln's.

The book then relates events from Lincoln's childhood through the time of his death with the existence of vampires.  It was presented in a very dry, matter of fact manor that lacked any excitement.  I honestly felt like I was reading an elementary school history book.  There was nothing that held my attention and enticed me to continue.  If it weren't for the fact that I needed to write this review, I probably wouldn't have finished the book.

The connections that Mr. Grahame-Smith made between the events in Lincoln's life and vampires were very imaginative and made sense in a fictional world in which vampires truly exist.  I just wish he would have presented them in a way that was more enjoyable to read.