The Running Bibliophile

Divergent (Divergent, #1)  by Veronica Roth  opens in Chicago, Illinois, where it has become its own dystopian world which has divided society into five different factions based on a particular virtue: Honesty (Candor), Selfless (Abnegation), Bravery (Dauntless), Peaceful (Amity), and Intelligence (Erudite). Each year, those factions come together for a ceremony where all the sixteen year-olds must choose which faction they want to live in for the rest of their lives. To help them make this decision, they all take a test prior to the ceremony that tells them which virtue is their best one, but despite what the results show, the choice is still theirs to make. Beatrice Prior learns a deadly secret about herself during testing and surprises everyone with her faction choice. During the initiation, she renames herself Tris and struggles along, not really knowing who her true friends are. Does she keep her secret and survive the initiation? A few years ago, it seemed like al...

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell  opens in 1850 with Adam Ewing, a notary, is traveling home to California on a ship. Then, in 1931, Robert Frobisher, a composer, orchestrates a way into a sickly maestro's home. After that in the 1970's, Luisa Rey, a journalist stumbles across a story that threatens her life. Present Day, a Korean super state has overtaken England. Post-apocalyptic Iron Age, the last days of Earth on Hawaii. Then, we go back in time in reverse order, finding that all the characters are connected and intertwined. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell was a book selection for the first book club I ever joined. It isn't a book that I would've ever picked up to read on my own. I loved the concept of the story when I read the synopsis and was looking forward to reading it. Typically, I don't mind when a book jumps from one time period to the next, but with Cloud Atlas I did mind. It took away from the overall story line and made it very choppy. It fe...