The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson

     The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
     Published September 1st 2009 by Square Fish (first      published April 29th 2008)
     More at:
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     Website

     First Line: I used to be someone.




Science and technology. Advances in medicine. These are suppose to be governed by logic and reason. Yet their existence was founded by hope. Every day someone, somewhere hopes and prays for a cure, for a way, for a life. Lose a limb? They can give you a false one. It's not the same but it lessens the feeling of loss. An organ fails? You get in line for a new one. You may get it and maybe, just maybe it'll take to the rest of you. Those that make the discoveries, claim great strides. For those who are waiting, will it ever catch up with the hope?

In a future, science has developed a fix all. Bio gel, a neurochip laden, oxygenated substance that mimics human cells, only more efficiently, and can condition themselves to perfectly replicate real cell action. They can become whatever they are told to be. Not just a new arm, your arm. Not a donor heart, your heart. We can now completely replace any part that is diseased or damaged. With this new technology, we could completely rebuild a human and to tether that ability, the government has sanctioned that only up to 49% of a person can be replicated. Brain cells are forbidden. There must still be boundaries. We must still have an expiration date.

A terrible accident should have cost Jenna her life, as it did the other victims of the accident. No one could have survived it. Maybe no one really did. There shouldn't be anything left of her. Maybe there really isn't.

________

Don't you just love the dystopian genre? It's like reading a horror story, a sci-fi and a conspiracy theory all in one. It's conceivability is the scary part. The way it so closely mimics our own reality blurs the line on fiction and the fact that you could really imagine this happening makes you question whether or not it already has. I get so caught up in these stories I almost forget that the neighbors are not really zombie/alien/robots- well maybe mine are.

Jenna's story is full of questions. Could this happen? Should this happen? And maybe even a hopeful, "When will this happen?" The myriad of ethical issues raised are interwoven into a family's understandable sense of desperation. If you could save your child or loved one? Government regulations and moral responsibility be damned. You'd do it. Are we such selfish creatures that we would jeopardize the very humanity of the human race to save the one person that means the most to us and us alone? Yes, but I prefer to believe it's because our capacity to love trumps reason every time.

"One small changed family doesn't calculate into a world that has been spinning for a billion years. But one small change makes the world spin differently in a billion ways for one family."

Excellent story of self-discovery. For Jenna it's both real and replicated, and how you have to learn to except who and what you are, even though you may not like what you find out. Even in a future where so much of a person can, in essence, be faked, the part or us that is us doesn't change.

Ms. Pearson has written a sequel of sorts, The Fox Inheritance, that tells Kara and Locke's story (I won't tell you who they are so that I don't spoil anything) that is set to be released in August of this year. In the meantime, has anyone read any of her other work? I'm inclined to believe that she produces only good things.

Bloggers don't sell books.

I'm not going to reference where that came from. Those in the know, know.

I haven't been around lately. Work is shit and it sucks the life out of most things, blogging being one of them, but I have been reading your blogs and I have been reading. A lot actually. I've also been buying books based on book blogger recommendations. While selling and promoting books is not the aim of a book blogger, who blogs about books because he/she loves to talk about books, it is, fortunately, free advertisement for authors and publishers. Though I don't expect anyone I associate with in the book blogging community is looking for thanks for this, because we're going to do it regardless, but it would be nice if authors could, so to speak, not shit where they eat.

So, since I don't have anything much to say at the moment (and perhaps this post will put me in the mood to write some posts that apparently in no way promote or showcase books and might as well be blank pages or perhaps as meaningless as my grocery list) I thought I'd take a minute to let you, bloggers, know what you haven't sold:

Since this post is tinged with pissiness (like so many of my posts and perhaps my persona in general), please use this as your key to help decipher my sarcasm, though I feel it's apparent enough without:

1. Offender: book blogger
2. not selling: selling, promoting
3. Meaningless: full of meaning
4. fails: excels
5. No one reads: you read it everyday
6. Have not purchased: purchased

The biggest offender that comes to mind when I think about not selling me a book is Angie of Angieville, who you all know writes a meaningless little blog that completely fails in its objective to not sell books, and no one reads it anyway. Thanks to Angie, who may have merely mentioned some of these books, as well as completely failed to review some of them, I have not purchased:

1. Emotional Geology (which was a chore to get and I'm reading now and dear lord it's so beautiful it hurts.)
2. Northlander
3. Graceling (Which is now one of my most favorite books ever)
4. Fire
5. Alanna
6. Beauty (which introduced me to the wonder that is Robin McKinley and prompted me to buy #7 and #16)
7. Sunshine
8. The Dark is Rising (the whole series)
9. Audrey, wait!
10. How I Live Now
11. Keturah and Lord Death
12. Jane
13. The Thief
14. A Certain Slant of Light
15. Such a Pretty Girl
16. Spindle's End

When I don't want to find a book to read, I in no way visit another offender, Kristi @ The Story Siren because it would be pointless as she never recommends a book. Kristi, whose blog does not receive thousands of hits, and who absolutely NO ONE goes to in order to receive information about books before they're even mentioned anywhere else. By not reading Kristi's blog, her Books to Pine For posts and heavens no, not from her In My Mailbox post that doesn't showcase some books THAT WOULD NEVER HAVE RECEIVED MENTION OTHERWISE (oops I slipped) I haven't purchased the following:

1. As You Wish
2. The Adoration of Jenna Fox
3. The Line
4. Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake (One of my favorite books ever and it's a freakin' romance and I now adore with all the adoration there is Sarah MacLean)
5. Other Words for Love
6. Beautiful Creatures (which made me buy #7)
7. Beautiful Darkness
8. Across the Universe

Anyway, I think you get the gist, and while I can't remember the name of each and every book blogger (Donna @ Bites, Sandy @ The Pirate Penguin Reads, Melissa @ Book Nut, Jillian @ Random Ramblings, Taschima @ Bloody Bookaholic, Kate @ The Neverending Shelf, Jenny @ Wondrous Reads, etc...) whose mention of a book has prompted me to buy it, I can remember the books. Book Bloggers, those insignificant little worms who are sucking the life out of the industry, have resulted in my not grabbing my keys and not running out to immediately buy the following:

1. A Map of the Known World
2. The Hunger Games Trilogy
3. Eyes Like Stars
4. Percy Jackson and The Olympians series
5. Coraline
6. If I Stay
7. The House of Night series (which I LOVE LOVE LOVE to hate)
8. The Darkest Powers series
9. The Mortal Instruments series
10. The Black Dagger Brotherhood series (Thank you thank you to whoever this was. Was it you Taschima? I can't remember. Whoever prompted this is a goddess)
11. The Mercy Thompson series
12. Wicked Lovely
13. Stardust (favorite)
14. Thirteen Reasons Why
15. Speak
16. Ghostgirl
17. Greenangel
18. The Night Huntress series
19. Hex Hall
20. The Forest of Hands and Teeth
21. The Wallflowers Series (thank you thank you to Sarah MacLean and her BLOG)
22. Briar Rose
23. Secrets of the Tudor Court book 1 and 2
24. Because I Am Furniture
25. Incarceron
26. Restoring Harmony
27. Princess of the Midnight Ball
28. Grace
29. Crank
30. Firespell
31. The Graveyard Book
32. Harmonic Feedback
33. Looking for Alaska
34. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian
35. Wings
36. The Iron King
37. Before I Fall
38. Prophecy of the Sisters
39. Light Beneath Ferns
40. Meridian
41. Soulless
42. Wondrous Strange
43. Everlasting
44. A Great and Terrible Beauty
45. Bloody Jack
46. The Book Thief
47. Plain Kate
48. The Luxe
49. Inkheart
50. The Looking Glass Wars
51. Insatiable
52. Life As We Knew It
53. Ash
54. Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart
55. The City of Embers

So keep up the really shit job, offenders. Your work is crap and so are your blogs. You don't promote or sell books and every post you make is pointless. No one has ever heard of a book, or bought a book because you mentioned it and no one ever will.
_____________________________________________________

From the bottom of my heart, which is so full of a love of stories and the written word that I could never adequately describe and in fact, I wouldn't want to because capturing a feeling that intense would lessen it- I thank you for what you do and I love you for it.