The Maze Runner (2010) by James Dashner sounded kind of interesting at first. Mysterious mazes and unexplained girls showing up–both curious and exciting. But then I read a couple of reviews and decided it wasn’t worth reading. That decision held until my book club picked The Maze Runner for our next book. I could have easily skipped the reading. We usually spend more time catching up than talking about the book anyway, but my conscience wouldn’t let me slack off. I should preface this review with the […]
“Ninjas are silly. They are the flower fairies of gong fu and karate.”
Writing 52+ reviews is hard. Writing 52+ reviews is harder when I’m supposed to be writing my dissertation, and not reviews. Oops! Well, anyway, here we are. The Gone-Away World is a very strange book. It’s also a very good book, but it’s a good book that took me awhile to get into and appreciate. Harkaway’s prose is witty and often nonsensical, filled with non-sequiturs and descriptions that seem to mean absolutely nothing, and yet somehow conjure a well-staged — if surrealistic — scene, and […]
Separation made my heart grow colder
Two years ago I read, and loved, Wool, the first book in the Silo Trilogy. I bought the follow-up on Kindle. And then… I just never read it. Until a month ago, when I really took notice of it just sitting untouched in my Kindle library and thought, dang, I should really read this book! So with that in mind, understand that by sitting on it for so long, I lost all of my interest and I couldn’t get it back, and that’s possibly causing me to […]
The Road Less Bleak
One of my biggest fears is surviving an end-of-the-world catastrophe. It was recently pointed out to me that I’m worrying needlessly, that in the event of a zombie apocalypse, it’s unlikely I’d survive past the first wave. Probably that’s an accurate statement. I don’t do well without air conditioning or diet Coke. But if I did survive, I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if I got to live at the airport with Hig and Bangley. Mostly because while Bangley scares the ever-loving daylights out […]



