Rating: 3
I’m wrapping up this challenge with one of my favorite categories: Science Fiction.
Selecting an author was difficult because there’s a wide range who fall into science fiction. I settled on H. G. Wells because I’ve already read a lot of mid-20th century sci-fi authors, and of the more recent books I’ve tried I haven’t really enjoyed them. So I opted for something a little more classic.
The War of the Worlds is not what I expected based on references in movies and other media. Fully expecting a rather dryly presented account of an alien invasion from Mars, I was surprised to see the focus much more on the social aspects of the crisis. This shift took a long time to build up to, or at least a long time in a book that’s less than 200 pages. The first third of the book is simply documentation that, despite its otherworldly information, did not hold my attention very well. When the effects on society started coming into it, however, the story became much more interesting.
This book has to be approached with the time period in mind to be enjoyable. Even the modern-day reader with the most basic of astronomical and cosmological knowledge (you can put me into that category) will find the premise of the story laughable if taken too seriously. Wells uses theories that work for the day with the limited knowledge they had available to patch together a story that has enough science in it to make the reader follow along, but his stories are very much more about the fiction, and in this case fiction as social commentary. Science fiction has always been one of the genres that is most capable of standing back and looking at humanity as a whole, possibly because of its accessibility to aliens and other forms of “the other”.
The panic described seemed very accurate and real. Hell, people trample each other for a good sale on Black Friday, imagine what they would do if a Martian was trying to kill them? It was also interesting to see the different types of characters the narrator ran into. From the cowardly curate to the artillery man who could talk big but not get past a big dream with a bottle in-hand, this story looked at the individuals of a crumbling society just as well as it looked at the whole.
Back to the science side of things, I thought the construction of the Martians was really interesting, and the explanation for how they might have evolved into what was more or less a brain that created its own bodies. An eerie prediction these days, when most of the world spends 50% of their time or more with an electrical device in their hand or in front of them.
Overall, the dry language and documentary-esque narration was not my favorite, which hindered my enjoyment of this book, but the story itself was interesting and even at moments kind of scary. I’m glad I read it and may read another Wells book in the future.
This of course sums up my Read the Store challenge, and I am very excited about that. I will write a full summary of it in a few days. For now, thanks for reading – I hope you got a little enjoyment out of my book ramblings this year.
This post has been a part of my Read the Store Challenge for 2014.
If you have a Goodreads account, please feel free to friend me. I’m always looking for more book friends.
Rating: 4
My dad and I have both been reading a lot over this past year, and I’ve noticed that for the most part we have very different tastes. He likes dense books and favors histories, whereas I generally like things with more pace and the occasional fluffy plot, with thicker material sprinkled in. C. S. Lewis has been the author where our tastes overlap the most. My favorite book of all time is Lewis’s Till We Have Faces which my dad picked up this year and enjoyed about as much as I did. He just finished reading Out of the Silent Planet while I was reading The Screwtape Letters. From there we’re finding other books that we both like, and it’s been a lot of fun having book talks with him on the phone.
I’m not an especially religious person, which is why it surprises even me that I like reading C. S. Lewis so much. His writing is concise but illustrates the point well and usually with humor, and his approach to various subjects is always unique. This book is no exception. I chose it for my Christian Studies selection, and I could have picked up a purely nonfiction book with the same information and most likely thoroughly disliked it. From the perspective of Screwtape, however, the same subject matter becomes much more interesting, and (in that paradoxical way fiction has of making reality more real) even more true. Screwtape is entertaining in a morbid sort of way, which also aided my enjoyment of the book. If I were to read him simply as a character without the author’s background agenda, I would want to read more from this character.
From Screwtape’s letters to his nephew Wormwood, we learn where humanity makes its biggest pitfalls by seeing how eager the demons are to guide them in that direction. The virtues and sins are looked at and discussed in depth as they pertain to Wormwood’s “patient,” a human he is trying to win the soul of. While the gimmick gets a little old, it still allows for some fun exchanges while not sacrificing the meaning of the book.
There were moments where I felt the agenda getting pushed a little too much, and this is even more true in the follow-up story “Screwtape Proposes a Toast.” In it Screwtape is addressing a graduating class in Hell, and spends most of his time talking about the issues with “democracy” as it’s being handled in that day’s British society. It’s a thinly-veiled commentary from the author himself, to the degree that sometimes you don’t really see Screwtape in the voice anymore. Even with that, and with the fairly long list of things I disagree with, I still really enjoyed these stories. And let’s face it, this isn’t a book that is shelved in Fiction, it’s shelved in Christian Studies. It’s supposed to be pushing an agenda, and I can accept that and enjoy it for what it is.
This post has been a part of my Read the Store Challenge for 2014.
If you have a Goodreads account, please feel free to friend me. I’m always looking for more book friends.
Rating: 2… and a half
This was the first James Patterson book I’ve ever read. I don’t usually read mystery/thriller, which is the only way I’ve avoided who is arguably the most popular author in this genre these days, or at least the most prolific… or sort of prolific. Jimmy P. is more of a brand than an author these days it seems, but regardless, you get my point. He’s got a lot of books, and lots of people read him.
The Women’s Mystery Club series has been one of his most praised, so I thought I would give it a shot. The majority of the book was a solid three rating for me. Lindsey Boxer was a pretty standard female cop main character – intelligent, no nonsense, and single because apparently they always are. The pace of the novel moved pretty well. The overarching murder plot was kind of eh, I mean you watch enough tv and read enough books and there’s just not much you can do that’s unique anymore. Even so, it was enjoyable. Solid three.
Until the end. When apparently three plot twists in a row weren’t enough, and there had to be JUST ONE MORE to make sure you were adequately surprised. It wasn’t even a good one, it was just like, “Here, this really wasn’t as great as I wanted it to be, so let me throw in one more than the necessary amount of plot twists just to be special.” Did not like.
As far as the club itself, I’d have to read more of the series to judge it. I felt like none of the characters got very fleshed out except for Lindsey who was telling the story (usually anyway, there was a lot of pov switching, which also drove me crazy). Claire got some backstory and life into her character, but Cindy and Jill were just very stereotypical and flat. I could see the dynamic of the group getting better, though, and obviously this series has been continuing to come out for so long that a lot of people like it.
This post has been a part of my Read the Store Challenge for 2014.
If you have a Goodreads account, please feel free to friend me. I’m always looking for more book friends.
Rating: 3
I hadn’t ever really read through one of the -Ology books, so chose this as my nonfiction children’s selection.
This book is all about the interactivity of the slips and pictures and everything else in it. It’s honestly kind of a challenge to read because of how spread apart information is and the fonts they choose to use (or my eyes are just getting old). Still, it was kind of cute to read a story about an expedition to Egypt and through that to learn about some of the history. While I feel like the information was very watered down thanks to target audience (there was no mention of Isis being Osiris’s sister as well as wife, that would just be too scandalous), and that the history in it was probably not all that accurate, it’s a neat book for a kid.
Only three books left to read this year. If only video games weren’t so persuasive right now…
This post has been a part of my Read the Store Challenge for 2014.
If you have a Goodreads account, please feel free to friend me. I’m always looking for more book friends.
Rating: 2
Finally, my last Romance read of this year’s challenge.
I think it’s a requirement in the Romance genre to have at least one bath scene, one feeding scene, and one almost-but-not-quite-but-maybe-rape scene. Usually more of most of the above if the author is especially unimaginative… or maybe because Romance readers really like that stuff? Clearly I wouldn’t know.
I could have liked this book if any of the side characters had been the main characters. I could not stand Emmaline and Lachlain. Emma was like that person you RP with who wants to be alllllll the special things. Half vampire, half Valkyrie, half werewolf, Lykae queen, Vampire royalty, and the daughter of THE Helen of Troy. The nature of the story is a little parody-ish at times, so I’m hoping against hope that this character is also meant to be a little bit of a parody, but I got sooooo tired of reading about her. And I couldn’t care less about her love plot with Lachlain, which means I could have cut out 300 pages of this book and been happy.
Seriously, with those 300 pages taken out, this might have been a 3-4 star review. I liked the overall plot about the immortals, and many of the side characters were much more entertaining with better plots than the main couple. While I never really like a plot set-up that involves fighting for fighting’s sake, I still enjoyed the unique approach to many creatures that have been done to death in literature over the centuries. Basically, if this book had been written for a Fantasy, Sci Fi, or Horror crowd, I probably would have liked it a lot.
As it is, I am just going to be happy that I probably will never read another Romance again.
This post has been a part of my Read the Store Challenge for 2014.
If you have a Goodreads account, please feel free to friend me. I’m always looking for more book friends.
Rating: 3
This was my pick for psychology. Not having a background in the field and lacking familiarity with the associated jargon, I was hoping to find a book that was pretty accessible to “everybody else”. While Sacks has a tendency to throw names of disorders and other words around like I am supposed to know what they mean, for the most part this book still fit that bill. The more necessary terms were explained in detail, and when all is said and done, this book is less about the disorders and more about the actual patients who suffered from them.
The book is broken into four parts: Losses, Excesses, Transports, and the World of the Simple. The first two were the more interesting to me as they focus on patients dealing with problems you very rarely hear about, such as the sudden lack of ability to recognize your own body, or to even move it. The story that stood out the most to me was “The Disembodied Lady” about a young woman who suddenly lost her proprioception, or body-sense.
Sacks has occasionally been criticized for using his patients to make him famous, in one case being referred to as “the man who mistook his patients for a literary career” by disability rights activist Tom Shakespeare. I feel like he approaches the cases with both the clinical eye and a deeper sense of humanity as well. His insights on the musical and artistic side of the brain was also fascinating, and helped make contact with those human beings who were suffering from a very wide range of illnesses and disorders.
This post has been a part of my Read the Store Challenge for 2014.
If you have a Goodreads account, please feel free to friend me. I’m always looking for more book friends.
Rating: 3
One day I will rate something not a three again, I promise.
Anyone who knows me is aware that I am pop-culturally and celebrity challenged. I go to the movie theater maybe once a year, I don’t watch tv, I don’t listen to the radio… You get the picture. This has nothing to do with hating or looking down on such things, there’s just other stuff I’d rather do, like read or play video games for three hours.
So when it came time for my celebrity bio pick, I was kind of at a loss. The thought crossed my mind, “Would it really be cheating to pick up one of these Marilyn Monroe photography books?” But I decided to stick it out with the short list of celebrity names I knew and try to find a personality I could stomach. Carrie Fisher fit that bill. I knew nothing going into this aside from the fact that she played Princess Leia in Star Wars and that she was apparently really funny, so here we go.
Surprisingly, I enjoyed this book well enough for being someone who really doesn’t care about what’s going on in Hollywood. Fisher can tell a story really well, and manages to switch from a hilarious tone to poignant realization in a single sentence. I enjoyed how she talked about the concept of celebrity, pointing out how human they are. This goes along with why I don’t keep up with them – I can hardly keep up with my actual friends, why should I care who some chick in Hollywood is dating? She also talks about “celebrity” as an active force for some people, especially in the chapter about Michael Jackson who was so “other” even in famous circles as to actually make people wonder just how like anyone else he could be. She skillfully writes about these people and events with love, though, and I really enjoyed that about this book.
I doubt I will read another one of her books (my to-read list is just too long), but I’m glad I read this one.
This post has been a part of my Read the Store Challenge for 2014.
If you have a Goodreads account, please feel free to friend me. I’m always looking for more book friends.
Rating: 3
I somehow managed to get to the age of almost 31 without ever reading a Judy Blume book. This wasn’t any sort of intentional oversight, I just tended to like books about cats or wizards or dinosaurs much more at that age. What led me to picking one of her books for my stand-alone chapter book was that her name turns up all the time on banned books lists, and I really wanted to know why.
Superfudge isn’t banned as often as some of her others like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, but I can see why some of her books end up being challenged. I mean, clearly we don’t want our kids reading about divorce, the addition of a new sibling which begs the question “where do babies come from,” and disagreeing with parental figures. Why would we possibly want them to read something that they may relate to in their every day lives. The nerve.
I’m curious to read more of Judy Blume now. For one thing, her writing style is enjoyable, and even as an adult I can relate to what the characters are dealing with, whether they are the children or the adults in the story. I really loved how she approached these very real subjects in a factual way without adding any awkwardness to the story. It’s important for kids to read about people who are going through the same things they are, and Blume seems to make that a priority in her books.
This post has been a part of my Read the Store Challenge for 2014.
If you have a Goodreads account, please feel free to friend me. I’m always looking for more book friends.
Rating: 3
I picked this for my science read. While I know it’s rather out of date at this point, it’s still a classic that has a lot of information on the history of cosmological theories, many of which are still relevant.
Hawking outlines various ideas about how the universe came into being, focusing on the big bang theory, and offers some theories on where it’s going. He also discusses time, black holes, and gives information on some basics of physics and quantum mechanics so that you don’t feel completely lost. I of course still managed to be lost for the most part, but hey…
How the universe works has always been one of those anxiety-inducing overwhelming head things for me, so I’m pretty proud of myself for getting through this book. I actually enjoyed it a lot and want to find similar and more updated material. Yes, that’s a passive request for book recommendations.
This post has been a part of my Read the Store Challenge for 2014.
If you have a Goodreads account, please feel free to friend me. I’m always looking for more book friends.
Rating: 1
I’ve mentioned before that I was a Lit major in college. I can understand the value of a book based on its time and its meaning to a movement. I can get through a book and find the purpose/meaning/symbolism/etc. even when I don’t like it all that much. This would be one of those books. While I could write numerous essays on it, I really disliked it (and that’s putting it nicely).
I think it’s telling that most of the people who have read it and really liked it are men, whereas most of the women who have read it (at least the ones I have talked to) hated it. Especially in the first to third parts of the book, as the reader is starting to uncover the many layers of Dean and Sal, this book is crap as far as female characterization goes. I realize it’s not really about the women in it. I realize that much of it is the misogyny of the times. And as I neared the end of the book, I realize that the women played an important part in the development of the two protagonists. That still doesn’t mean that, as a woman reading this, I have to accept it or like how they are portrayed, especially when they are usually named only by physical attributes such as “the blonde” or “the fat brunette” instead of by name. The only gained a name if they had a long-term interaction with one of the male characters, whereas side male characters that would only turn up for a page or two would get a name. In fact, the only way I got through the first three parts of this book was by imagining Sal as a trans man, but that’s a totally different story…
However, I’m glad I read this book. My dislike of most things American Literature meant that I avoided those classes as much as Lit Majorly possible, which resulted in at most a glossing of the Beat movement and certainly no actual study of it. Now I’ve read one of the primary pieces from it.
And I’m so glad it’s time for something else.
This post has been a part of my Read the Store Challenge for 2014.
If you have a Goodreads account, please feel free to friend me. I’m always looking for more book friends.
Life Flails 