The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot A non-fiction book that’s basically two different narratives. One is about a breed of cervical cancer cells sampled that are able to thrive in culture — which has been a tremendous boon to scientists. With a constant supply of unchanging cells, research has opened for developing commercial drugs, IVF, and vaccines. This part also brings up issues of medical ethics and who owns your cells. Because the other part is about Henrietta Lacks, the person from whom those cells were “donated”. Also her family, and the author’s journey to find out about her. Henrietta Lacks died shortly after her cells were…
-
-
The 2012 Hugos and Where You Can Find Them
And of course, as soon as I’m done reading the Nebulas, the Hugos get announced. Lots of crossovers this year though. Remember — the Hugos are a popular vote, voted on by anyone who pays money to Worldcon to become a member. BEST NOVEL (40,000+ words)• Among Others by Jo Walton (Excerpt) (Google Books Preview) (Amazon Excerpt) Thumbs Up!WINNER!• A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin (Excerpt) (Google Books Preview) (Amazon Excerpt) Thumbs Up!• Deadline by Mira Grant (Excerpt) (Amazon Excerpt) Thumbs Up!• Embassytown by China Miéville (Excerpt) (Amazon Excerpt) Skip it• Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey (Excerpt) (Google Books Preview) (Amazon Excerpt) Thumbs Up! BEST NOVELLA (17,500 –…
-
The Books I Read: January – February 2012
Holy Smoke. Last edition, I read seven books in five months. This time I read eight books in two months! Thanks eReader, but it also probably helped that I was reading at work too. Onto the books! More exclamation points!! Lightning by Dean Koontz(re-read) My wife picked this for book club because it was one of her favorites growing up. I liked it too, and you know what’s weird? The character has the same name as her. I don’t get to read books I’ve previously read too much. I’ve got so many on my to-read stack, the idea of repeating books seems negligent. I would re-read books if I could,…
-
The Books I Read: April – May 2011
Dune by Frank Herbert This one’s on everyone’s must-read sci-fi books of all time so I figured I’d better read it or I’m not really an author. And I hadn’t seen the David Lynch movie before this, so I wasn’t ruined by that (I have seen it since, but I’ll get to that later) (And I did see the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series and read the comic beforehand, so I knew what to expect going in). And it’s a good thing I did — there is a lot going on here. It takes place in a very well-developed world. Almost too well-developed. There’s a lot of characters, a lot of factions,…
-
The Books I Read: January – March 2010
How to Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier It was a light and short book, but the title is misleading. I was looking forward to seeing the characters interact with little, clingy fairies like pet Tinkerbells. It turns out a “fairy” is more like an RPG ability. Like, you have an empty slot, and it gets filled with some bonus ability, like being able to get out of trouble or finding loose change. But you don’t get to choose. Some of these abilities are useful, some are not. Some don’t have fairies, and some try to get a new one, which is where the story comes from. Apparently, this book…
-
The Books I Read: October – December 2009
Wicked by Gregory Maguire I borrowed this one from my mom, along with the rest of the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. It is a long read, and it reminds me of those early modern literatures that expound a lot of philosophy along with the story (i.e., students go to a coffee shop and wax poetical about the nature of something while nursing the drunken one-night stand they had ). Not that I’m saying the story is pretentious. It’s not. But it is long-winded. The storyline is good and the writing style is quite palatable. It made me feel smart to read this book, even though I was reading it for…
-
Yearly Rant Against Scalzi
Seems like everyone’s talking about John Scalzi’s rant against Black Matrix press – a short story junket that pays $0.005 cents per word. In one corner, Scalzi calls this a pittance, an insult, and encourages his followers never to submit your work to such a magazine that values your words so poorly. In the other corner is everyone else in the world who is not John Scalzi. It seems like Scalzi says one stupid thing each year, like he’s handing out judgement to the commoners. Last year it was his justification for blog tyranny, and his idea that his blog was private property. This year, it’s like Van Halen declaring…
-
Nominations are Awesome
Today’s rant comes to us from this fellow (and the letter Q). If you read Scalzi’s blog, you’ve probably already seen it. Basically, it’s just a rant on how this guy’s not pleased with the mediocrity of the Hugo nominations for best novel this year, and how the voters are not going for, what he says is, the good, groundbreaking, experimental science fiction. He demands that we, the readers, need to broaden our horizons, and starting picking the right novels (which he conveniently lists for our convenience). He also expressed disgust on how many novels were YA this time around, calling them monotonic and simple. He even tries to lump…
-
The Books I Read: April – June 2009
The Darkness and the Light by Peter David This is an awesome book, but I was intimidated by its length. Although it’s quite the doorstop, it’s also a sprawling fantasy epic that encompasses multiple storylines and races – human, troll, merpeople, cyclops, vampire, etc. I don’t read much high fantasy, but I’ve been meaning to get into it. I read it because it’s by Peter David, who I’ve been meaning to read more of ever since Tigerheart. But this story’s great because it always keeps you going, and all the storylines are set evenly, with interesting climaxes and developments. There are twelve worlds, each with its own race and society,…
-
Doggonnit, People Like Me
I got another request to do a novel exchange, this time with an actually published author. Granted he’s from Spain, and English isn’t his first language (or second), but I’m quite happy that, if my wife ever finishes her Kathy Reichs’ books, I’ll have four pairs of eyes looking at it. This is good, because it means people are interested in reading it. And if people are interested, maybe publishers will see that too. Hopefully, I get thoughtful reviews and critiques. It’s not easy slogging through 140,000 words. Vampire Family Story was submitted to Hungur Magazine – an anthology of vampire stories. It’s 2,000 words over the submission limit, so…
