I can’t remember who said it, and I may be mashing many people’s words together, “when there is nothing external to give our life meaning, then all that matters is what we do.” Which is another way of saying “survival is insufficient.” I loved Station Eleven. It struck a number of chords in me. There are some spoilers in the review. Station Eleven is about loss, meaning and human connection before, during and after a global pandemic that wipes out most humans and human civilization. The timeline […]
The End of Everything and How We Got There
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014) – I fear this review will make this book seem much more convoluted than it really is, but I’m going to try and give it the credit it’s due. The premise is a simple one: there’s been a worldwide pandemic where most of humanity is dead and the few survivors in the twenty years that follow fight brigands, cultists, and a world slowly devolving into barbarism. Technology is gone, borders no longer exist, medicine is a memory. […]
Makes you think twice about the sick people on the plane with you…
I would give this a solid 4.5 stars (rounded up here). This book has been on my to-read list for over a year, and I finally was able to walk away from my ongoing series to listen to this one. It was an excellent audiobook, I really enjoyed the narration. Short synopsis: It’s the end of the world as we know it… there is a virus that wipes out 99.99% (est.) of the human population. The book primarily follows a few key characters throughout their […]
Fantastic Read to Kick Off to CBR9!
This book was a part of one of the CBR group discussions last year, or the year before, wasn’t it? I knew it sounded familiar but alas, had not gotten around to it until now. I’ll be honest I had no idea what Station Eleven was about when I started to read it, but I received it as a gift from a friend and I must say, she did a great job choosing something that she thought I would like! It looks like quite a […]
Late to the party. CBR7 Book Club
I remember seeing all the Station Eleven reviews popping up throughout CBR7 but for whatever reason I didn’t jump on the bandwagon until now. In lieu of a traditional review I’m going to answer a few of fantingviolet’s book club discussion questions. 1. Did you find the shifts between pre- and post-apocalypse to be an effective storytelling technique? How about changing character perspectives? I’ve gone on record saying that multiple character view points combined with too much time jumping can be irritating and I stand […]
Tell me something I haven’t imagined before
I’m having very mixed feelings about “Station Eleven.” It sure checks a lot of boxes for me including post-apocalyptic survival, a plague, interconnected characters, graceful exposition, and a creepy antagonist. But it misses the mark on originality and heart. Hard to summarize, and it skips back and forward in time a lot (effortlessly, to its credit), this is the story of a handful of individuals affected by a civilization-ending strain of the swine flu. These people are all connected through their various relationships with a […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- …
- 17
- Next Page »