Columbine by Dave Cullen I don’t know what you can say about a book like this. Columbine was the word poised on the lips of any high schooler. Everyone asked themselves if they were a potential victim. It got to the point where my sociology professors refused to read any papers about Columbine because they had read so many. Everyone spent the next 2-3 years asking why, how, and what can we do to prevent it from happening again. No one got any answers. And now it seems like everyone’s almost forgotten about the small-town tragedy. It’s especially important to me because it happened in my senior year of high…
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The Books I Read: March – April 2012
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…
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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,…
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The Books I Read: June – August 2011
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss Before George R. R. Martin released his latest doorstopper, this was the big epic taking up every fantasy geek’s time. My interest became piqued when Penny Arcade made a joke about the second book in the trilogy. As was my friend’s, who let me borrow the first book, The Name of the Wind. I loved it right away. The book is framed story about the life of a boy/man named Kvothe, a son of traveling actors. After his troupe is killed by a supposedly mythical person, he has to learn how to live and survive alone. His primary goal is to learn…
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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,…
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The Books I Read: January – March 2011
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins The final book of the Hunger Games trilogy (see Hunger Games first & second and Catching Fire reviews). There are things I liked about the book and things I didn’t. I liked Katniss’s role as figurehead of propaganda — how she both embraces and rejects the role. I like that the ending is like another Hunger Games, but where Catching Fire just repeated it, Collins did it a little different with the infiltration. My biggest problem were the parts in-between all these exciting bits. The constant question of Peeta hangs over everyone’s head. I’m sure some readers liked that, but I got sick of it. It stopped the…
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The Books I Read: November – December 2010
Ariel by Steven R. Boyett This is the kind of book I want to write. They say if you can come up with one truly original idea, you’ve accomplished a great deal. I know I’m no good at that, but I love genre-mixing, both writing it and reading it. Ariel is one of those books that is actually urban fantasy. Not oppressed vampires, bare-chested werewolves, and leather-bound bounty hunters. A unicorn and a boy journey from Atlanta to New York, surviving the apocalypse. There are dragons and gryphons, and there are skyscrapers and cans of beef ravioli. It’s a got a street-smart unicorn and a samurai swordsman. I can tell…
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The Books I Read: September – October 2010
The Help by Kathryn Stockett This is an excellent book. It was on everybody’s “Best of” lists for 2009, but I never considered reading it because it wasn’t in my genre. And to be honest, it sounded a little Gone With the Wind for me. But my mom had it and liked it, so I borrowed it. What book is is females with no junky romance (well, a little), no weak women, and lots of Bechdel test successes. This is a book about black housemaids in the 1950’s in the south and their white women employers. The novel takes it from multiple perspectives, and there are good and bad guys, and not everyone…
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The Books I Read: July – August 2010
Weaveworld by Clive Barker(unfinished) I wanted to read some Clive Barker. I read a short story of his called “Dread” that I really loved. But I couldn’t get into this story. I didn’t understand the stakes. I couldn’t care about the main characters or what they were doing. I couldn’t keep track of them. I’m sure they were good characters. Great characters, even. I just wish he had written a novel to go with them. The two main guys have no defining personalities. The two villains are pretty good. Gaimanesque. But the “Alice in Wonderland” other world concept has been done to death. And unless you’ve got something to spice…
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The Books I Read: April – June 2010
State of Fear by Michael Crichton I was reading this book all through March, trying to get it done so it could be on the last “Books I Read” list. No dice. I love this book. Michael Crichton has pleased me in every book he’s written, of which I’ve read three others (“Jurassic Park”, “The Lost World”, and “Timeline”). He has a way of blending action with scientific education, and he’s famous for it. He can explain complex scientific theories better than any science teacher I ever had. Characters are a bit of a problem for him though. Maybe because scientists in complex disciplines often turn out to be egotistical…