In happier news, I’m reading a different YA series that is well-plotted, well-characterized, and somehow…gentler…on the human spirit. I’d always heard of The Giver but never really knew about the sequence of novels that came later. I’m really glad to be reading them. Let’s talk about Messenger. Lowry weaves together plots from The Giver and Gathering Blue with the story of Matty, now a teenager and living in Village, a haven for broken/destitute/discarded people of outlying villages. Protected by Leader and mentored by Seer, a […]
Scorch Trials? Try half-baked zombie writing, Dashner.
Despite my reservations about The Maze Runner (namely, poor plotting and lots of really gratuitous VIOLENCE), I decided to keep reading. And then, despite my reservations about The Scorch Trials, I have requested and received The Death Cure from my library. Apparently, my interest is enough to keep me going. So: Thomas and his band of Maze cohorts, including his friend Teresa, are out of the frying pan and into the fire, so to speak. Without giving too much away, for those of you who […]
Moby-Dick, ten years later
Fun story: I read Moby-Dick for the very first time after I had jaw surgery in the summer of 2004. I was taking an American Literature survey that fall, and I wanted to prepare, especially because I would be pretty much confined to no strenuous physical activity with lots of free time (and sure enough, the most workout I could muster was carrying a stack of books from the library. I read 40-some books that summer alone, and watched countless movies in between my mom […]
My first-ever cyperpunk novel, guys!
I am not–strictly speaking–a sci-fi reader. I had never heard of The Diamond Age until my sister recommended it to me. My sister is an awesome person. She has read so many books that I have recommended to her, including ones for my dissertation, that I thought it was long past time I returned the favor. So I picked up The Diamond Age. It starts with a man named Bud who buys an illegal skullgun, beats a man, and is then sentenced to death. The […]
The Children Act (.)
Ian McEwan gets it. He understands the complicated nature of the human heart, the means by which we process love, loss, faith, loss of faith, life and death. His later novels are especially interested in human nature, not as an abstract concept, but as a reality. A solid, concrete, beating heart. And it’s to this material that he again returns with The Children Act. The novel’s title is a pun of sorts, deriving both from The Children Act of 1989, and a short, declarative sentence. […]
Unlucky Jason (a more painful Lucky Jim, in letters)
As an academic, I do enjoy poking fun at myself and my profession every once in awhile. Like any other profession, there is plenty about academia that is ridiculous/absurd/unfair/hilarious. I don’t particularly enjoy Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim (and I suspect that has as much to do with the sort of white-boyisms that populate the novel, and that Jim is kind of a twit), and I haven’t yet read any of David Lodge’s work (I hear The British Museum Is Falling Down is excellent, however). So […]
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