30 books challenge #1

I haven't told you here, but just like my friend Ria, I'm going to try myself with the 30 books challenge this year. Basically, you have to read 30 books of your choice withing the next 12 months. I love reading, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm going to review some, if not all of the books I'm going to read, and this post will be the start. Because yesterday, I finished the first book of my list: The Maze Runner by James Dashner

The Maze Runner is a YA scifi-book, about a boy called Thomas. He wakes up one day in an elevator, not knowing anything about himself, apart from his name. When the elevator stops, he's greeted by a group of teenage boys, living in the Glade, a community surrounded by nothing but a sky high maze. Over the course of the book, Thomas makes it his mission to solve the maze and find a way out of it, but there seem to be more obstacles than one would have thought...

I'm going to review the book with the help of 4 categories. For each category, the book ca receive 5 points. In the end there will be a result as to how much I liked the book, combining all for criterias.

1. Readabilty: The book is fairly easy to read, there aren't many 'big words' that are hard to understand, even for non-english speaking readers, like me. Still, you have to get used to the 'Glader slang' and some of their words and structures. It's easy to catch uo, though, after a few chapters.

4 of 5 points

2.Structure: The book is devided into many short chapters instead of long ones, which is a definite plus for me. Also, the chapter ends are very well made with many cliffhangers, leaving you on the edge as to what happens next. The last very good thing is the fact that there are no titles to the chapters, which leaves you the possibilty to use your own imagination without having a catch phrase in your head that you cling to.

5 of 5 points

3. Plotline: The book has a very good concept and I really like the idea of it. It is quite innovative, and I have to say I have never read something wuite like that. Still, some parts of it reminded me of the Hunger Games books, but that's not a bad thing, because I believe the series is the best I have read in a very long time, if not ever. Another thing I really liked was that you could get to know the main characters vrey good and that you started feeling with them. A minus is the fact that some things happening were really predicatble, way before it actually happened. Also, I was quite irritated by the fact that one of the main characters was introduced in about chapter 6, but not really set into action until halfway through the book. I found that to be really annoying, because I wanted the plotline around her to be revealed way sooner, and actually, the whole book could have been shortened by a few chapters that really weren't necessary, in my opinion.

3 of 5 points

4. Crave-factor: I had difficulties reading the book at first. I found it to be a pain sometimes, because I bhad the feeling it was just droning on and on, without much actually happening. I had thought about putting it away and not finishing it more than once. I have to say, though, that I'm glad I didn't, because the second half of the book was excellent and I read it in two sittings. Really, would the book have been like that the whole time, it would have been perfect. 

3 of 5 points

End result: 15 of 20 points => 4 of 5 points in whole

Books until I'm done with the challenge: 29