I’ve been meaning to read this book for a long time, and the impending release of Ron Howard’s adaptation spurred me to finally pick it up. It’s one of the better reading choices I’ve made this year. For the uninitiated, the Essex was a whaling ship that was sunk in 1820 roughly halfway between Hawaii and the coast of Peru; almost as far from land as you can be and still consider yourself terrestrial. The ship was attacked by a sperm whale, which ultimately inspired […]
Still time to read it before the movie comes out
I can’t believe it has taken me a month to get to writing this review. I was telling everyone about it when I finished it, but just didn’t get it written down. I had managed not to hear much about this book beforehand. I can’t even remember where it was recommended so that I put it on my library hold list…and then waited months for it to come up since it was so popular. I will start with what a lot of other people say […]
Second Verse, Same As the First
Sam Sisavath’s second book of survival picks up where the first book left off…and I predict that this is how all the books are going to go. There’s going to be a metaphorical carrot of safety dangled in front of them, they’ll go for it and that safety will be revoked…or so it seems to go. Chapter by chapter we get a story told from the perspective of different characters from varying sides (good guys, bad guys, undead peeps). We have Will and Danny, […]
MacGyver goes to space
Goodreads summary: “Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first men to walk on the surface of Mars. Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first man to die there. It started with the dust storm that holed his suit and nearly killed him, and that forced his crew to leave him behind, sure he was already dead. Now he’s stranded millions of miles from the nearest human being, with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive–and even if he could […]