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Holes
Louis Sachar

Holes is amazing. It's a simple read, but an extremely intelligent one. I read it several years ago when it first came out, and reread it recently when I was finally able to add it to my collection. The book is a puzzle, but it doesn't leave you grasping for straws trying to figure out the answers at the end. It makes sense when it's supposed to, and it plays fair. Funny, heartbreaking, heartening, and tragic. I just really like it a lot. Really really do. Can I recommend it to all of you just by saying it's awesome a whole bunch of times? Cuz it is.

My AP British Literature teacher in high school seemed to be under the somewhat strange opinion that you could watch a movie and it would pretty much be the same thing as reading the book. We didn't read Moby Dick. We watched it. We watched Much Ado About Nothing. In fact, the only book I can recall us reading as a class was Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. But if he had watch Holes I would have been okay with that. It is one of the very best adaptations from book to movie that I have seen. I think the only thing that changes is the weight of the main character. That's it. The rest of it is dead on, and it even tells the story in the movie the same way it is told in the book. And it works. So there you go, two reviews for the price of one.