The more I think about this book, the more conflicted my thoughts become. On a purely visceral level, I really enjoyed this book. I gasped, I laughed, I even considered crying over it. On an intellectual level, I can appreciate the craftsmanship, the clockwork (or perhaps more appropriately, dollhouse puzzle-work) machinations of the plot. But there’s something that holds me back from fully praising this book. Read the rest at Pop Culture Penalty Box.
Generic Rich White Guy Saves The Day Again!
It feels like an Onion article: Local Woman Praised for Not Reading Paper; Knowing Nothing of World. But also like William/Ryan shouldn’t be famous. If Paris Hilton weren’t, you know, famous (or whatever) on her own, would you have any idea who the owner of Hilton Hotels’ kids were? Can you pick the children of the heads of Viacom, General Electric, or Monsanto out of a line up? I can’t! Wait. Am I the lead in a romantic novel? When I go out to […]
To Hell By Compass
In your face, Neil Armstrong! Finally, hard sci-fi with a sense of humor. This is the story of Mark Watney, who has been stranded on Mars when the rest of his crew abandon him for dead. It’s not their fault. They believed he was dead already. This is a shipwreck story, but the man marooned is stuck in a barren wasteland where communication with Earth is just this side of impossible and the only music he has is disco. How will he survive? Will […]
Out of Bounds
Outlander is one of those books I picked up about a dozen times in various bookstores and then put down without actually buying it. It has a lot of elements I go for–WWII! Britain! Conspicuously well-groomed and progressive men-of-the-past! Time travel!–but for whatever reason, the back of the book never grabbed me. And I heard rumblings that the book had some problems, which I will get to later. Outlander is the story of Claire Randall, an English woman freshly back from WWII where she served […]