Divergent

"It's got some s-e-x stuff, and it's REALLY violent,

but it's a great book and you should really read it."

- a review of the book by one of my students

So, I finally broke down and read Divergent.

Sort of.

KC has twice as long of a commute as I do (a whopping 20 minutes), and the whole "being a mom of two kids- one of which is a toddler" thing, so she doesn't get as much reading time as she'd like. So she gets most of her book intake via audiobooks.

She and I had both been talking about reading this book, and I had told her to let me know when she read it, and I'd start it too. I started a grown-up book after reading The Spectacular Now, but never made it past page one. Remember, February didn't exactly work with the More Pages Less Screens.

So, during the weekend of Icemageddon, when I got a much needed snow day, KC was riding back from Wichita Falls and listened to the book on the way there and back, and was almost done with it when we came back to school. I obviously had some catching up to do.

Enter a five hour drive to Lubbock (on a Friday directly after school) and a five hour drive back. Perfect opportunity to test out the audiobook and see if it would keep me interested and such on the go. I figured it was an interesting enough book to start with (I was right.)

The problem was that this smart girl downloaded it on her computer, but didn't transfer it to her phone. So, once I got out of radio range, I hooked up my phone, and... nothing. Book is nowhere to be found on my phone. I keep trying to download it onto my phone, and at one point seriously contemplate just re-buying it but kept giving myself the "you're a smart girl, you can figure this out" pep talk, and so I improvised:

I plugged my computer in to my car audio cable (at a stoplight...safely...) and listened to that on the way, hoping to make it as long as the computer battery would let me.

Then, I really thought it through, and at the halfway point, realized that all I needed to do was to plug in my phone and it transferred over in roughly 37.4 seconds.

I am a smart girl.

I also downloaded the Audible app, which connects with my iTunes. It's not like I've ever used the app before.

Except I have.

I am a smart girl.

The only glitch so far is that whenever I do anything else on the phone, it skips back to one place. Get a text? Back to chapter 13. Get an email? Back to 13. Turn the phone sideways? Chapter 13.

Sigh.

Otherwise, I am now addicted to audiobooks. I listened to them when I was getting ready, so now I'll probably start doing that every morning. And at night, while I'm crafting and project life-ing, I can listen as well. The possibilities are endless!

Oh? The book?

It's good. It's interesting.

It's a little racy for younger kids, as evidenced by the following text:

It is, however, an interesting insight into the whole theory of nature vs. nurture, which is a whole blog post in and of itself because my family is the poster family for nature vs. nurture. (Spoiler: we side with nurture.)

I guessed who one of the main characters was the minute he was introduced, because while in real life I like to believe in the good of everyone, in books I am suspicious of every character.

I blame British television.

P.S. There's a part of the book where they go into a "fear landscape" (see text above) and they have to face their fears. That fear landscape was called my dreams last night. One word: spiders.