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A rant about Every Day by David Levithan

Discussion in 'Entertainment and Technology' started by MissBookworm, Jun 23, 2015.

  1. MissBookworm

    MissBookworm Guest

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    So normally I'm a HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE HUGE fan of David Levithan but I just read Every Day... GAH. NO. I was completely disappointed. Instead of providing commentary on the way people treat the same person with the same personality when the only thing that's different about them is their body, or in other words, their outward appearance, David Levithan just took the easy way out and gave a tired, cheesy, one-dimensional love story that didn't even have a good ending. The book was basically a boy meets girl story, with the twist that the boy wasn't always a boy.

    The entire concept of the book is that there is some kind of unearthly being (who has named themself A) basically 'body-hopping'. Every day A wakes up as a different person with a different life, with a different body. The only thing A keeps on a day to day basis is their knowledge and (more or less) personality. A is genderless and raceless, but they are very judgy. Levithan basically provided a great premise and then left the reader to do all the thinking and wondering while he provided a boring, repetitive story. It was almost lazy. Because of all the types of life A had experienced and all the bodies they had been and lived in, I feel like they should have been a lot wiser. Instead, A sounded like a normal, petulant teenager, remarking only briefly on different types of people. It was unremarkable with moments of beauty.

    In fact, A was a little stalkerish and quite bullheaded. They didn't seem to understand that while their experiences made them realize that love transcends gender and physical appearance, it didn't mean everyone thought that way. They didn't seem to understand that just because THEY happened to be pansexual (or at least bisexual), it didn't mean that because they were without a gender it meant that everyone else wouldn't be affected by their outward appearance. All around, it could have been executed in a MUCH better way. The way the story worked... It didn't fit. It didn't give A an ultimate goal, because it would make A a bad person to "hijack" a life. And the truth is that A really is a parasite, A fed on the lives of others, but in order to avoid disrupting those lives, they happened to change their body every day. Really, all A was doing was thriving off of borrowed time. A sad way to live, but even more sad for the people being possessed.

    On top of that, with the concept of there being more beings like A, couldn't A's "kind" really BE the Devil? If A and beings like A had the capacity to be devilish, wouldn't it be likely that there is a malevolent being rather than a passive one? In theory, since A retained the same mind but was never in the same body twice, couldn't they destroy SO many lives by murdering, stealing, etc. and getting away with it? Along with that, A never tried to do really awesome things while they were in the bodies of talented people! They were once in the body of a talented graphic designer, a tech genius, an anime drawer, and I'm sure there were many others. I mean, A had access to all of the people's memories and knowledge... I know that if I spent one day in the body of a skilled whatever, I would take advantage of that ability. If I were a programmer, I would hack something or make a video game or something. If I were an artist, I'd paint a picture of something I loved! There were so many possibilities that Levithan could have explored, but the one he chose fell short of what could have been.

    Sorry 'bout that, I just needed to post that SOMEWHERE. xD
     
    #1 MissBookworm, Jun 23, 2015
    Last edited: Jun 23, 2015
  2. wisefolly

    wisefolly Guest

    I just want to say how great it is to see such an enthusiastic display of reading fervor. I don't know if there's been a book club on here but if there's enough interest...