In one of my Old Man’s War reviews I mentioned that Scalzi’s strong suit wasn’t in crafting disparate personality types; his best characters are all (presumably, but I’m confident on the logic) stand ins for John Scalzi, which is fine because I like them all. This book has more than a dozen characters we share a POV with. It’s a lot, and it doesn’t play to the author’s strengths. I had a tough time separating characters for just this reason, and it somewhat undermines Scalzi’s […]
Better late than never – Cbr10bingo: Cannonball Book Club
A little over a week ago I realized I was two squares short of completing a second bingo column, the book club pick and something from the So Popular! category. My downtown library had both Between the Bridge and the River as well as Eleanor and Park, my first choice on the So Popular list, so off I went. Due to the mixed opinions on Craig Ferguson’s book, I suspected I would not enjoy it as much as Eleanor and Park, so I decided to read it first […]
I mean, it WAS
So yes, my bingo square for “The Book Was Better” was indeed filled by a better book than a movie, but I tried to make it the fairest fight in the Harry Potter series; I wonder how much better the movies would have been with Alfonso Cuaron behind the camera for all of them. The filmed sequences that stood out for me were Buckbeak’s execution, the first appearance of the Dementors, and the staging of the adventures with the Time Turner, but honestly, this is […]
A Trippy Sci-Fi Thriller
“Dark Matter” is a sci-fi thriller with a side of romance (but in a good way). Jason Dessen is a physicist at a small college in Chicago. That is until he’s kidnapped, drugged, and wakes up in a world that is familiar and foreign all at the same time. Soon he realizes that the only way he can get back to his world is to remember what anchors him to his reality: his wife and son. Thus begins his journey back to his world and […]