So, I’m totally stealing this idea from NTE. These are the books I attempted, but wasn’t able to finish (for one reason or another). I really like the idea of including these books in my Cannonball, if for no other reasons than they still warrant some discussion. In no particular order: Dracula, by Bram Stoker (4 stars) I loved Stoker’s writing, and the book had a beautifully sinister atmosphere to it. It’s not hard to understand, reading this, why the book resonated so strongly with […]
Epic book is epic.
YOU GUYS, HI. THIS BOOK WAS SO THIS BOOK. WHAT WORDS TO USE I DO NOT KNOW. MUCH FLOUNDERING. BOOK HAS CREATED NOOK FOR ITSELF IN BRAIN AND IMPRINTED DEMON SHADOW IN NEURAL CELLS FOREVER. CAUSES TO TYPE ALL CAPS OH NO. Okay, I’ll stop now. But seriously. THIS BOOK, THIS @(*&#$%* BOOK. I have been meaning to read The Stand for yearrrrs now, but I kept putting it off. Ever since I discovered about four to five years ago that Stephen King’s storytelling was […]
Still alive
The Girl with All the Gifts breathes life into its genre with a fresh angle on the pathology of an outbreak and an ending that I truly did not expect. The story opens at a noticeably unconventional school/dormitory, where the pupils are carefully monitored and restrained when they are not locked in their individual cells. Our primary protagonist, Melanie, is one such pupil, a bright girl of about ten who loves learning, particularly math and stories of Greek mythology. Her favorite teacher, Miss Justineau, encourages […]
Keep calm and — bloody hell, it’s The Happening!
I absolutely adored this book. But not in the way I typically do. Wyndam does not paint a rich tapestry of a post-apocalyptic England, nor is he particularly adept at creating complex and layered characters. But he masterfully accomplishes what so many current writers flail at mindlessly: a believable world that feasibly explores the varying degrees in which people abandon their ideas of what society can be in the aftermath of cataclysm. But this was written in 1951. The veterans of WWII had yet to […]