Get hooked on reading

by Jillian Cremens

Are you looking for something good to read? Is your English teacher making you get an independent book to read? Either way, here are some books perfect to read whether you are being forced to or not.

Divergent, by Veronica Roth is a great book. Yes, this actually is a book and not just a movie. Divergent is the first book to a riveting trilogy. This book's world is seen through the eyes of a girl named Tris Prior, previously known as Beatrice before she left her faction of Abnegation. Her world of dystopian Chicago is split up into five factions: Abnegation, Dauntless, Erudite, Amity, and Candor. Each of these factions were created based upon their highest value. To find out the faction one belongs to, he/she must take an aptitude test. Some people, like Tris, belong in more than one faction, which is highly dangerous and those people must hide their so-called divergence in order to stay alive. Tris, originally in Abnegation, leaves her faction to join the intriguing Dauntless, the faction who values bravery above all else. However, hiding her divergence is hard when the Dauntless simulations do not work on her. Will Tris be able to survive Dauntless and keep her divergence hidden?

Paper Towns movie release date is June 19.

The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green is a highly praised book and movie, but believe it or not John Green, has a few other novels that might perk interest. Paper Towns, which is now in the making of becoming its own movie, is an incredible novel filled with adventure and mystery. It’s senior year and Quentin is still in love with Margo, his adventurous neighbor known for her ability to run away and leave clues to find her, only to return before any sense is made from them. On the last few weeks of senior year, Margo goes missing yet again and her clues are left for Quentin to decipher. It seems the more clues he solves, the farther away he is to finding Margo and the more this assumed stable girl appears to be quite unstable. As the days Margo is missing add up, Quentin fears if this stunt of hers is really a body hunt.

A more lighthearted book of John Green is An Abundance of Katharines. A child prodigy named Colin has only dated Katharines his whole life but none of them worked out. Then the summer before college he is dragged on a road trip by his friend to lighten him up after yet another rough breakup with another Katharine. Colin finds the need to create the perfect math formula for how long a relationship between two people will last using variables like how many times one has been dumped vs. dumping someone else. Who knows if his formula will work or even if he will fall in love with another Katharine?

Additionally, John Green's Looking For Alaska is a story that gets people thinking. People are not always as okay as they seem and this boarding school kid, nicknamed "Pudge" finds this out the hard way as he's pulled deeper and deeper into this girl named Alaska's labyrinth.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer, by Michelle Hodkin is an eerie book that is hard to put down. After a horrible accident in a "haunted" abandoned building, Mara Dyer wakes up in a hospital with no recollection of an incident that left her as the only known survivor of her friends and a completely collapsed building. Even without knowing what happened, this event leaves her with intense post dramatic stress disorder that gives her blinding migraines and hallucinations. Afraid of her mental health, the Dyer family moves to Florida hoping Mara will get better. Instead, her hallucinations worsen enough to harm her physically. She also begins envisioning people brutally dying only to find out that they have died that day in the exact way she envisioned. At the same time, scattered agents from the night of the accident slowly come back to Mara. As her "hallucinations" become more frequent and the night of the accident pieces together, Mara begins to think that this is not all in her head.

Whether or not you want to read books or not, these books are great and will get you hooked on reading!