I have to apologize in advance to Redshirts because I have major review fatigue. I was really hoping to do a double cannonball this year, and I can based on my pace, but lawd almighty am I ever running out of different ways to talk about books. And as such, this is going to be such a crappy review. Anyway, Redshirts was great. It hooked me immediately and kept me laughing throughout; I sympathized with the characters and was utterly delighted at each of Scalzi’s uber-winky PLOT […]
Why didn’t I read this sooner!?
This is straight up going to be one of those reviews where I don’t do the book justice, in this case it’s mostly because I feel kind of overwhelmed by what I just read. I wish I had time to sit down and re-read it, pen in hand, and then attend a series of lecture classes with likeminded people where we totally dissect it and wallow around in its lovely nuance. Maybe I just miss grad school. (The people and the atmosphere and the stimulating discussion, […]
A self-indulgent mid-series book that is about 1000 pages too long.
I DID IT. I FINISHED THIS HULKING BEAST OF A BOOK. The Fiery Cross is the fifth book in Arizona (woot) author Diana Gabaldon’s time-traveling historical fiction saga. I have enjoyed all the books up until this one, some with reservations, but still enjoyed. They all felt like they had strong backbones, and even though they were long, most of the stuff stuffed up in there had a point. Not so with this fucker. Since the book is soooooo looooooong, I’m going to respond by […]
Shine on you crazy diamond
There are three reasons I pushed through The Shining Girls to the end. First, I hate giving up on entertainments half way through. This is also why I stuck with American Horror Story: Freak Show despite it being a fetid pile of rancid bung beetles. Second, I09 was so effusive in their praise I felt like I wasn’t giving it a proper chance. Third, because Wikipedia does not have a complete synopsis. If I’m being honest Reason Third is the most important reason I stuck […]
Time-travel for dummies. That’s probably mean but I don’t care.
A couple of years ago, I pounded the Goodreads pavement pretty hard searching for pretty much any time-travel book I could find to add to my ever-growing to-read list (a list which has, to my horror, since surpassed 1,500 books–for every book I periodically cull, ten more pop up in its place). The Accidental Time Machine was one of the books I found. I’d heard of Joe Haldeman because his Forever War series is a classic of the miliatary sci-fi genre, although I have yet to […]
More like drums of melodrama.
And so concludes another installment of the madcap adventures of that time-traveling Highlander clan, the Mackenzie-Fraser whatevers. This was the least weird, but most melodramatic of the books so far. It was wacky and I enjoyed it, despite some issues. In 1767, Claire, Jamie and Ian are fresh from being shipwrecked off the coast of Georgia. In 1969, Jamie and Claire’s grown daughter, Brianna, grows closer to Roger Wakefield, the only other person who knows her family’s secret: they are time-travelers. And Roger, too, is a […]