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            For my final I decided to read The Dead & The Gone and The World We Live In, which are the sister book and sequel to Life As We Knew It respectively. First of all, let me just say that I really enjoyed reading all three of these books and that they are a super-fast read even if they are a normal length book. Now, from this point on there are countless spoilers, so if you are planning on ever reading either of these books, which I suggest you do, then don’t read the rest of this blog.

            The first thing that I would like to talk about is the point of views that the stories are told from. Both Life As We Knew It and The World We Live In are told from the first person point of view of Miranda. The twist on this first person point of view is that the story is supposed to be told as if you are reading out of her countless diaries that tell the story of how her family lived before, during, and after the apocalypse. The point of view that The Dead & The Gone is told from is similar to how Blindness is told, in third person, but following one character. In this case the person that was followed was a 17 year old boy named Alex.

            The next thing that I want to talk about is the deaths that occur in each of the books. In Life As We Knew It there weren’t all that many deaths. There was only Mrs. Nesbitt, Peter, Miranda’s friend, and her friend’s mother. Mrs. Nesbitt and Peter were the only deaths in the book that could be considered close to the main characters. In The Dead & The Gone there were more deaths which were the implied deaths of the parents, the oldest sister, Alex’s friend, the store owner, and then just the mounds of bodies that he passes every day that Miranda doesn’t have to until The World We Live In. At the end of The World We Live In there were the additional deaths of the new character of Charlie and Alex’s younger sister. With the death of Julie, that leaves Alex to be the only surviving character from The Dead & The Gone while most of the characters from Life As We Knew It are still alive at the end of The World We Live In.

            The last thing that I want to talk about how the characters get the necessary resources to survive in each of the books. In Life As We Knew It the characters survived with a combination of wilderness skills and handouts. The handouts were all of the food that they ate excluding the amount that they bought at the very beginning of the book. As for wilderness skills, they were able to chop wood, boil snow, and other skills like these. In The Dead & The Gone the characters also relied on handouts but then relied on scavenging. The handouts were also given to them by family and government that that helped sustain them for part of their food, or all of their food in the beginning of the story. What they did to survive for the rest of the book was Alex went out body surfing with Kevin to search for anything valuable on the dead bodies to resell to a store for food and other necessary goods that they needed to survive. These two strategies for getting the necessary resources to survive in this post-apocalyptic world combine in The World We Live In. The still receive handouts from the government through the city hall once a week. They also still gather wood like they did in the middle of Life As We Knew It but they add fishing to that list as well for a little bit. As for scavenging, Miranda does this with several people throughout the book to get any supplies that are left in any of the houses. The most important scavenge of the book was when Miranda and Alex go out together and they find a massive food stash that helps replenish their food supplies.

            I really enjoyed reading all three of these books. I managed to read the second two books over winter break in just 4 days. Reading all of these books helps give the reader an idea of how a situation can be completely different if it is viewed from a different angle. All of these books talked about the same event that happened, but each had their own spin on the events and had their own sort of flavor to them. I would definitely recommend reading The Dead & The Gone and The World We Live In to anyone who enjoyed reading Life As We Knew It, they are all truly great books that you will not be able to put down.