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| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages | avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read |
date
|
date purchased | owned | purchase location | condition | format | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B007PUMZ7O
| 3.39
| 194
| Mar 28, 2012
| Mar 28, 2012
|
 the book isn't about zombie cats (sadly), but that is a cute picture, and it's difficult for me to write a review for a 20-page story unless it involv...more the book isn't about zombie cats (sadly), but that is a cute picture, and it's difficult for me to write a review for a 20-page story unless it involves some sort of dirrrty monster sex. this is a lightweight little zombie fantasy/regret-and-redemption piece. it's too short to have impressive world-building or super-inventive mythology twists, but it isn't bad - it has moments of humor and moments of pathos, and moments of action. and that's more than most people have in their 20 page short stories. and it was only 99 cents. is this a review? it must be - it has pictures!  (less)
| Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| Mar 25, 2013
|
Mar 26, 2013
| Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
| 1608199924
| 9781608199921
| 3.47
| 490
| Jan 01, 2012
| Jan 08, 2013
|
liz. jensen. so super-psyched that i was able to get a netgalley pre-u.s release of this book. not that many of you care, because so few people read li...more liz. jensen. so super-psyched that i was able to get a netgalley pre-u.s release of this book. not that many of you care, because so few people read liz jensen. which is, i think, the cause of most of the world's ills. floundering economy? probably because not enough people are reading liz jensen. hurricane sandy?? happened 'cuz not enough people have read liz jensen. rihanna and katy perry are fighting?? all of this could have been avoided by just one or two more of you reading some liz jensen. so get out there and take back the world. go ahead and start with this book, because it is pretty sweet. and i mean "sweet" in the darkest and most horrifying definition of the word. this book centers around hesketh lock, whose asperger's syndrome prevents him from making emotional attachments to the people in his life, but makes him very good at his job as an anthropologist, employed to discover patterns of behavior across populations. 'When it comes to gauging human behaviour, it's an asset. It's like colour-blind people being deployed by the military to detect camouflage,'I reply. 'They look for the shapes rather than the colours.' and he is very good at pattern-recognition. also numbers, colors, and origami. less-good at remembering the faces of women with whom he has had sex, but what does that get you, at the end of the day? the world is in need of a hesketh to make sense of some disturbing recurring instances of extreme violence: children all over the world are lashing out at their family members, attacking and killing them with no memory of their actions afterward, and unwilling to discuss or even acknowledge the events. concurrently, acts of corporate sabotage are occurring across the globe, whose perpetrators claim to have seen strange things, and shortly thereafter, commit suicide. how are these phenomena connected? can hasketh, the "robot made of meat" get to the bottom of it with venn diagrams and ozuru?? sure he can, but sometimes the answers are more horrifying than anyone could have anticipated. this is an incredibly satisfying book, emotionally, intellectually, and philosophically.it is liz jensen at her finest, and i think i am going to go ahead and up this to the full five stars. why not? i am encouraging you to read this. heed me, please. there is a little problem with the netgalley edition, though, one in which every word that uses the letter-combinations "ff", "fi", or "fl" will just have those letters omitted completely, so it was a little annoying, but you would be surprised at how quickly your reader-eyes adjust to it. and also surprising how many words use these letter combinations. eye-opening all around.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Nov 02, 2012
| Nov 04, 2012
|
Nov 02, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1618680218
| 9781618680211
| 3.68
| 76
| Mar 31, 2012
| Mar 31, 2012
|
 zombies.  werewolves.  armageddon. that is the tag line along the top of this book. THERE IS NO SEQUENCE OF WORDS THAT COULD MAKE ME WANT TO READ A BOOK MOR...more zombies. werewolves. armageddon. that is the tag line along the top of this book. THERE IS NO SEQUENCE OF WORDS THAT COULD MAKE ME WANT TO READ A BOOK MORE THAN THOSE. just, wow. this book is about a seeecret government facility on an island where soldiers are being turned into werewolf (well, actually, dog, but the cover says "werewolves," so i am going to say werewolves because the cover doesn't listen to me when i gently correct it) anyway, so "werewolf" fighting machines. right?? and they battle each other for dominance in this fighting ring and they growl and they spar, but when they turn back into humans, they are pretty nice guys, mostly. OH AND ALSO when they are in dog form, they have super healing abilities which can come in useful. BUT THEN OH NO ZOMBIES!!! WHO COULD HAVE FORSEEN ZOMBIES????? so the scientists and administrators have to make a decision. do we send out these dogs to fight the zombies? or do we cower in here and protect our investment? HOLY SHIT OF COURSE YOU SEND THEM OUT BECAUSE THAT WOULD BE FREAKING AWESOME!!!! there are many details that i am not going to go into, because you are going to read this book BECAUSE IT IS ABOUT WEREWOLVES (koff - dogs) ATTACKING ZOMBIES!!! AND PEOPLE!! AND EACH OTHER!! OOPS SPOILER ALERT!!!! but not really. there is a lot of blood. and cage-fighting. and essplosions. and amateur brain surgery. and other stuff like badassery: "i'm a realist, miss randall. if you show me a glass, i see it as neither half-empty nor half-full. i see enough water to drown a man, if i can find a way to put it in his lungs. wonderful imagery: a zombie falls from a greater height onto a surging horde of other zombies "like a crowd surfer at a wake." ZOMG, and did i mention??  zombie. clowns. seriously, this book is so much fun. is it the best-written book i have ever read?? welll....no. but it might be the best-written book i have ever read by two people.so stick that in your pie-hole and smoke it. HOW DID MO YAN WIN THE NOBEL WHEN THIS BOOK EXISTS???(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Oct 24, 2012
| Oct 25, 2012
|
Oct 24, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0843964642
| 9780843964646
| unknown
| 3.96
| 354
| Feb 04, 2011
| unknown
|
hmm. i should have realized this was the third part of a trilogy before i read this. i have read reviews of this on here before that explicitly stated...more hmm. i should have realized this was the third part of a trilogy before i read this. i have read reviews of this on here before that explicitly stated this, but for some reason, i just blanked that out when i was choosing my books for "october is spooky." this is a perfectly fine self-contained story, but i think i might have felt more connection to it had i read the first two and been better able to connect with the characters from their previous storylines. so, a cannibal woman happily living on her own terms all half-nekkid in nature, hunting and gathering and eating ummm meat, is captured by a perfect-family-on-the-surface whackjob creep, restrained,imprisoned, tortured, and raped. all - you know, to civilize her. it is graphic and brutal and as though that weren't enough (it is), there's all sorts of other horrific stuff going on out in the barn with the dogs and in the bedroom with the teenage daughter. if it is making you uncomfortable to read this review, just think what the book is like. you know, like the joke goes: (view spoiler)[a little boy and a pedophile are walking in the deep, dark, woods. the little boy says, "mister, i'm scared! these woods are really creepy." the pedophile replies, "how do you think i feel? i have to walk back all by myself." (hide spoiler)] this isn't really a book i would feel comfortable recommending to anyone. there are definitely scenes in this that are vile and appalling. but there is also comeuppance. you have to wade through a river of blood and torture in order to get to the comeuppance, sure, but take stock of your personal violence-limits, and if you feel you are up to it, give this a read. i am curious about the first two books, myself, but i will probably wait until next year's "spooky month" to satisfy my curiosity about "how did these people come to this?? (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Oct 23, 2012
| Oct 23, 2012
|
Oct 23, 2012
| |||||||||||||||
| 0143121464
| 9780143121466
| 3.18
| 636
| Feb 21, 2011
| Sep 25, 2012
|
(now with pictures!) this book was an easy near-five stars for me. it opens with a funeral scene in rural germany - three men and a woman attend the bur...more (now with pictures!) this book was an easy near-five stars for me. it opens with a funeral scene in rural germany - three men and a woman attend the burial of a woman; a childhood friend. there is an awkward conversation, sprinkled with resentment and innuendo. at the close of the prologue, the woman triumphantly pisses on the grave. everyone's got grudges... what follows is a series of short stories, alternating between the perspectives of all five characters, as they dispassionately recount the horrific (to the reader) childhood experiences occurring in their deliberately insular village of hemmersmoor. they are all told in first-person past-tense, so it is unclear whether they are remembrancing things past as adults, or narrating the stories as children, but i prefer to think that they are told in the voice of a child, self-reflecting; musing on things just-past with only themselves as audience. kids are scary. you know this, right? and this village helps to foster the scary. small villages, cut off from the rest of the world make their own rules. here, "murder" is just another word for "justice," and superstition, tradition, folklore, and magic have the power to shape destinies. there will be incest, arson, facial scarring,character assassination, cannibalism, and soul-stealing. just to begin with. the stories are narrated in a very straightforward, matter-of-fact manner. this is german horror, after all. it is quietly chilling, rather than going for grand gestures. there is casual violence undercutting these stories without any real emotional response. awful things happen, and life goes on. there is an emphasis upon the erasure of the past: Nobody shed a tear for the youths, and what had happened to the people who had lived in the camp before them, nobody was interested in either. Despite the photo in my living room, despite the vans that had delivered groceries to this other village on a daily basis, and despite the railroad track that led right through it, nobody in Hemmersmoor could say who the people in the camp had been. Nobody remembered the ones who had lived there, slept in the barracks, and died. There had never been such people. which is probably the scariest thing of all. atrocities should leave emotional scars, but here, their fading is taken for granted, life goes on, murders become barstool anecdotes, and while individuals remember, and will eventually piss on your grave,the community-at-large will have all but forgotten, or consigned your suffering to legend. this book comes highly recommended from me. a very under-the-skin kind of book that has a true shirley jackson feel, and not just that knee-jerk name-drop that comes when people want to describe literary horror. christian's chapters are particularly good - just complete bland teenage sociopathy. brrrrrr and i am a little disappointed that i have an advanced readers' copy from ALA. reading the other reviews of this on here, it seems the published book has a feature mine lacks, one which i am going to confirm at work today. watch this space. okay, ready??? oh, it's just a regular book doo dee doo  until you hold it under the light...   can you see that?? so cool. i love details.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Oct 11, 2012
| Oct 11, 2012
|
Oct 11, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1841499005
| 9781841499000
| 4.20
| 4,904
| May 22, 2012
| May 22, 2012
|
more, please. i don't want it to be over. review when i stop hyperventilating. ....................................................................... so,...more more, please. i don't want it to be over. review when i stop hyperventilating. ....................................................................... so, yeah. the only way to review this book is to squee over it like a little girl. because it's the final book in a trilogy - whatever i write here isn't going to make anyone who hasn't read the first two run right out and buy it, because these books build - there is no way to only read the third book and feel like you have made a good decision. and if you have read the first two books, obviously you are going to read the third one, so my review isn't going to be what convinces you to find out how it all ends, right? so - commence the squee... and i will be very very careful to avoid spoilers. because i would have murdered anyone who had dared spoil it for me. i thought this was a perfect conclusion to a trilogy. sure, there were some moments when i rolled my eyes a little: shaun's endless witty remarks, becks' behavior towards you-know-who in some of the scenes was a little much, and ditto with the fox. but both of them redeemed themselves, and performed such wonderful heroic acts, that my heart swelled repeatedly. but as far as tying up loose ends and giving her characters believable endings and leaving the reader with complete satisfaction in the world of her creation.... an easy five stars. mira grant is just so masterful. the blog-excerpt chapter-openers are some of the best examples of reader-manipulation i have ever seen. she has a perfect sense of rallying the reader, you know what i mean? emotionally, they run the gamut from humorous, poignant, cheesy (that poetry...), and just flat-out triumphant - they made me want to rise along with them. it's a neat trick she accomplished, and a great way to supply additional depth to her characters. one of my favorites: (view spoiler)[ kill me once, shame on you. kill me twice, shame on me. kill my brother? oh, it's on. and you are not going to enjoy it (hide spoiler)] because i shouldn't really like the george character. she is so...earnest and driven and honest and sincere, usually a character like that would make me feel queasy. and we all know what happens to characters who are too noble for their surroundings, right? this is not a spoiler for this book, but for a very popular series by george r r martin, so stay away, nerds: (view spoiler)[ 
(hide spoiler)]but george (not martin) is great, and i don't know what it is about her that rescues her from my eye-rolling, except that she is just perfectly written; she is not some cookie-cutter character standing in for "all that is good and right and just", she is beaten and defiant and oh, god karen - don't use that picture again... oh god, you are going to, aren't you??  .yup, it can't be helped... and add her to shaun, and oh my god. a terrific explosion of capable badassery that just never lets up. i love every little thing about this book. the attention to detail, the science that sounds pretty terrifyingly plausible to me, the nuance to characters, the way everyone has their own damage and their own coping mechanisms... it just feels right , all of it. it feels like i am not really reading it, but that i am immersed in something. and that is rare for me, with reading. i love reading, i do it all the time, but it is rare for me to experience this level of envelopment in a story. i was there, man... yeah, it's a zombie book - get over it, it is also a book about the indomitable human spirit. and it fucking kicks ass. alariiiiiiiic!!!(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| May 29, 2012
| May 31, 2012
|
May 29, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| B006TMA9ZE
| 4.25
| 266
| Oct 25, 2011
| Oct 25, 2011
|
for some reason, i thought this was going to be another one of those downtrodden working poor novels i so love. damn that cover: barn, grass, isolated...more for some reason, i thought this was going to be another one of those downtrodden working poor novels i so love. damn that cover: barn, grass, isolated-looking rural atmosphere. i didn't even realize that blob in the foreground was a nude girl. oops. i knew this had a horror angle; i knew it was going to have some - you know - cannibalism in it, but that's never bothered me any; i just for some reason thought this would have some of the poetic literary language i love from these books - the way everything is expressed so beautifully juxtaposed against the harsh realities of the landscape and the hopelessness of the characters - the diamonds in the rough...i thought it would be like Kings of the Earth, which review i so helpfully floated recently to pave the way for this one. you're welcome. instead, i got this: first, his nose was broken and throbbing like a teenager's pecker at the prom. and that sums up my gripe with this book; it lacks subtlety. it is this:  instead of this:  and that's fine - i don't read horror often, but i have definitely read some fine horror novels in my time. this one is only okay. it did have some wonderful gross-out moments (elizabeth - skip this) there was no momma anymore, he said, not the way they remembered her. now she was a mass of suppurating bedsores, fused to the mattress where old wounds had healed and the torn flesh and pus had hardened to form a kind of second skin around the material and bedsprings beneath. the mattress, once plump and soft, had been worn down by her weight to almost nothing, a wafer thin slice bent in the middle, pungent, soggy and stained by the fluids that had soaked down from her corpulent body over the years. the boys took turns washing and tending to her wound, grooming her, scooping out the large quantities of fecal matter that gathered between her enormous thighs, then giving the remaining stain a cursory, half-hearted scrub before leaving her to wallow in the vestiges of her own waste. and that is not even the worst of it - let's just say that i will never read the word "rebirth" the same again. shudder. this book has mostly four- and five-star ratings on goodreads which surprises the crap out of me. am i just being star-stingy? did i miss something? were my expectations just different so that they clouded my appreciation of what this book was? have i just read too many better examples of god-blinded individuals killing in the name of their skewed worldviews? probably. it tickles me that one of the tags this book has on here is "military" and yes - two of the characters have spent time overseas, being exposed to and somewhat numbed to violence which definitely shaped their characters, but i highly doubt that fans of tom clancy or larry bond are going to derive the same kind of pleasure from this splatter-book as they are from their helicopter tales. just...be warned. and this is the book that did it. this is the book that may have convinced me to get one of them newfangled e-readers. because it is out of print, and i had it on my to-read list because lou had recommended it to me, and it sounded like something i would like, but if i had actually tracked down a used copy of it, well then now i would be stuck with this book i thought was okay, but i will never reread. (i read this on a store-borrowed nook) so... maybe. i am considering it. because for 5 bux i could have read this and moved on with my life, without cluttering up this tiny-ass apartment of mine. and as much a i love the thrill of the hunt and the buying of books an abe.com and such, well, the e-readers make things that much easier. nothing to get lost in the mail, nothing to cause book avalanches in the middle of the night, nothing for the cat to throw up on. (well, something very expensive for her to throw up on...) i don't know. just know that i am considering it. and i will reserve my book-hunting for more "guaranteed" good reads. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| May 11, 2012
|
May 09, 2012
| Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||||
| 1936383284
| 9781936383283
| 4.20
| 70
| Oct 15, 2010
| Oct 15, 2010
|
mykle hansen hates rich assholes. when he isn't making bears eat them, he makes chefs and gourmands do the dirty work. but that's fine, i have run up...more mykle hansen hates rich assholes. when he isn't making bears eat them, he makes chefs and gourmands do the dirty work. but that's fine, i have run up against my share of rich, entitled new yorkers, and while i have wanted to bitch-slap them on a number of occasions, i had never considered the possibility of just...eating them. but mykle has shown me, with this book, that this is not only a viable option, but the correct one. this is the A Modest Proposal for our generation. because, seriously, there are too many millionaires. someone should occupy them or something. what, exactly, does kim kardashian do, except be orange and wear tight dresses? (although i would not recommend eating kim kardashian. just like i would not recommend dabbling your bare hands in medical waste.) mykle addresses this uselessness of millionaires: many of them are smart, competent, but no match for you or i. an entire second generation of them appear remarkably inept and unsuited to anything. they share a powerful mutual instinct for self-preservation that serves them well, but this glorious structure, this social weave that protects them like a castle on a mountain, this is a building they inherited. the geniuses who designed it are long dead, louis. the foundation is crumbling, but the millionaires can't see that yet. the millionaires are blind to the coming collapse. they look at everything they have, every advantage tilted toward them, and they tell themselves: i made this, i deserve it, only i could have achieved it, my condition is just and correct. for am i not the mastermind who, armed with tremendous financial and social advantages, managed to go from rich to even richer? and isn't that just the most remarkable, poetic, blessed form of righteousness there is? and how could such a wonderful state of affairs ever end?? mykle will tell you how, and it is delicious! his argument is that eating millionaires is morally correct. they have not been constrained in holding pens with hundreds of their kind, they were not raised in stacked boxes, unable to stand, injected with growth hormones and forced to shit upon one another. millionaires are the definition of free-ranging; they're as ethically clean as they are flavorful and nutritious. i am sold on his logic! on their benefits to the human body: ...their composition is almost exactly the same as our own. any other food, the teeth must first grind it to paste, the stomach then has to boil it in acids to break it down further, down to the simplest amines and scraps of protein, and then out of that molecular wreckage the body must painstakingly stitch together the distinctly human cells and hormones and juices and bones. but millionaires offer plug-and-play nutrition; all the microscopic building blocks of human tissue arrive properly sized, stacked, and numbered. to the human gut it's the difference between a seven-course restaurant meal and chewing on a raw, dead rodent, bones and all. i am being swayed once more! but that's just the practical. there is also the sheer gustatory enjoyment: there is so much to explore with this material. the skins, the bones, the hair, the teeth, it's all such fabulous first-class stuff. every single part of a millionaire is impregnated with the essence of wealth. science needs to study the supernatural effects of this food. it is like eating angels plucked from clouds. angels plucked from clouds??? sign me up! where do i get me a millionaire soup? but lest you think this is all manifesto with no plot, understand that this is also a book in which there are uprisings and murder and betrayal. and a trap. and mykle doesn't just write about this, he also practices what he preaches. i once ate thai food with him, and even though he claims to be a vegetarian, he surreptitiously removed a small, foil-wrapped package from his pocket, and shook the contents onto his noodles. he claimed it was homemade seitan, but i know the truth of it. who makes seitan? your secret is safe with me, mykle... and now, with the internet. shh, internet. read the book. you have a lot to learn. while we are celebrating awesome goodreaders, if you happen to yourself be a millionaire, or even someone with a little spare cash, why not help nick black finance his book? i did, and i am dirt-poor. show some love for people trying to make their dreams come true! but hurry, the clock is ticking... http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/n...(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Apr 26, 2012
| Apr 26, 2012
|
Apr 26, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0312641699
| 9780312641696
| 3.08
| 643
| Mar 27, 2012
| Mar 27, 2012
|
i don't know if i can guarantee a great and focused review right now. i might have to revisit this (read: float) at a later date. but i am gonna try. f...more i don't know if i can guarantee a great and focused review right now. i might have to revisit this (read: float) at a later date. but i am gonna try. first and foremost - my three-star ratings are all over the place. know that this book is a super-shiny three-star book, and not one of my "i didn't dislike it enough to hate it" three-star ratings. i mean, if my star ratings do anything in terms of swaying you to read a book, know that i did like this and i do recommend it...with reservations. other people have complained about the language in this book. not the profanity, although there is a little of that, but people who get all revved up about cussin' really shouldn't be allowed to read books in the first place. this book isn't written in dialect or slang so much as "we are struggling to stay alive here - grammar's gonna have to take a back seat right now, 'kay?" so for people who only like to read books written exactly the way they themselves speak, then this book is going to grate on you: but he's my dad like i said, and you got to respect your dad i reckon. my mum got dead when i been a baby still scrieking in my ass rags. that happen a lot up here when the snow been deep and your breath freeze in the air. but magda live with dad now, up in our end of the house. magda's in charge of the little kids and i don't envy her that job. if it been me i'm gonna bash them all. my own personal reasons for not loving-loving it are twofold. one - i wasn't sold on the protagonist. he's an odd mix of the very capable and the overly-introspective slash possibly delusional. all the dog stuff was my personal thumbs-down, and that's all i am going to say about that. you'll see. the second reason is mostly my own fault. i had forgotten the details of tatiana's review, (why didn't that link work, goodreads?? OKAY I GOT IT TO WORK NOW!!)having read it oh so long ago, and i forgot that this wasn't a straight "survival in the snowy woods all alone" book, but that it would at one point morph into a dystopian situation. however, events that occur at the end of the book point towards it maybe having more of the survival stuff i so love in the second part. fingers crossed. umm- yeah - tell you what - i am in no condition right now to review this properly. i will return in the am to make it all better. INTERNET, WILL YOU SURVIVE WITHOUT MY THOUGHTS ON THIS BOOK?? if i wake up to a smoking barren wasteland, i will completely understand. and i apologize for the death of you all. okay, i'm back. and i thought i would have more to say about this, but now i am beginning to doubt that. maybe you should just go read tatiana's review, since she's better at this than me. bottom line is that the characters are a little flimsy, but towards the 3/4 mark, it really picks up with some good ol' violence and a broadening of the story that could make the second part either really interesting or completely overambitious and porous. no more book reports - i am on vacation... i feel like my favorite character from the book: i can look after myself, callum. you know that. i was born in a tent like you but i've grown soft. i remember the feel of rags on my feet but i found chinks in the walls. you're like a dog but i am a cat, always seeking the warmth of the fire... i am exactly the same way. i read all these survival books thinking that when the time comes (and it will come), i will be prepared because knowledge is power and all that but honestly, i will be the one always looking for the fire. i'm no dog. and right now, i am going to go seek my fire...(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Apr 25, 2012
| Apr 26, 2012
|
Apr 25, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1571310762
| 9781571310767
| 3.24
| 34
| unknown
| Oct 19, 2010
|
this book probably just entered my life at the wrong time. i had high hopes and good intentions and all those things that always end in successful par...more this book probably just entered my life at the wrong time. i had high hopes and good intentions and all those things that always end in successful partnerships with books.(does sarcasm read on the internet?) after finally reading that maureen mchugh book last week, despite having had three of her books here for years and years, i thought to myself, "what other gems do i have lying around here - what other authors do keep buying without ever having read?" it came down to david adams richards and this guy. i should have gone with the richards. i really think if i had had more time to devote to this book, if my reading hadn't gotten broken up into such jagged stolen moments, my experience would have been better. tom fuller likes this guy, and tom fuller knows his shit. but i know for a fact he would not have liked this one. it is a first novel, by a 22-year-old, which reads exactly like what it is. you can feel the boundless youthful energy of it, but you can also see where its wings are still wet. it is convoluted and surreal, which i ordinarily like, but i just felt it was muddled in a way that made it difficult to enjoy. some of it may have been my pressed-for-time start-and-stop reading of it - it took me three days to read. THREE DAYS!! unacceptable. but this may have made me miss connections and echoes, which led to my overall negative reading experience. basically, it chronicles some horrible things that happen to a family living in des moines. rape and dares-gone-wrong, and institutionalization and tractor accidents and amnesia. oh, and also - in this version of des moines, there is a subterranean city complete with giant stone monuments and fog and creepiness, which many have entered, but none have returned. so on the premise alone, it sounds exactly like the kind of shit i like. but it meandered and blurrily contradicted itself in places, and the overall surreality of it lacked finesse. within the parameters of the surreal, a writer has a lot of leeway, but sometimes this book read as though the surreal was just covering up for a lack of authorial direction. i am definitely going to read the other books of his i have lying around here - this has not turned me off of him. i can see that he has a lot of potential here, and i can accept that this was just not the right book for me at this time. his ideas are solid, and i am looking forward to reading a more mature work. (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Mar 24, 2012
| Mar 27, 2012
|
Mar 24, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1862057710
| 9781862057715
| 3.92
| 26
| Aug 18, 2008
| Sep 01, 2009
|
mike mullin recommended this book to me, i think because he's on to me and my gingerbread i ord...more mike mullin recommended this book to me, i think because he's on to me and my gingerbread i ordered it into the store, and then i felt obligated to buy it, even though it was a silly book for kids with pictures of witches and what have you. so i bought it, cursing my stupid self the whole time, and then i actually sat down with it, and guess what? it's pretty great! i have to admire the author's commitment to detail. there is a way to write this book that is lazy and half-assed: just draw some witches and make some cutesy rhymes about eating kids maybe a poop joke and blah blah - done. but this is a much more thoughtful book. each witch hails from a different region, and has their own method of kid-cuisine, and borderline offensive dialect and tone. i particularly like the beginning instructions for making bratwurst and upset cabbage:  (weiner the whiner pictured below.) the first thing to do is make your upset cabbage. it is not difficult, they are shy creatures and easy to frighten. i sneak up from behind and then throw myself on it screaming "achtung green swine." after weiner the whiner does his business on it i poke it with a stick. this makes a very upset cabbage. now hold weiner the whiner over a large saucepan until he does his toilet again and throw in the chopped cabbage. put the lid on and boil for six hours until the cabbage is furious. i am not going to try this, obviously; i have a cat, not a dog, but i like knowing that cabbage has got a quick temper. does this make the irish cannibals? see? borderline offensive! i am learning! it is a much more fun and detailed book than the cover and similar books on the market would lead you to expect, and it includes three pages of advertising for the restaurants of the featured witches, which is pretty cute. it is a very well-thought out book,with appeal for both kids and adults, and i am sorry i underestimated it. also: looking at the illustrator's website, i found another book of his i want even more: The Poison Diaries i will order it tomorrow. and buy it without regrets! thanks, mike mullin!(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Mar 07, 2012
| Mar 07, 2012
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Mar 07, 2012
| Hardcover
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| 1451642997
| 9781451642995
| 3.60
| 1,517
| Apr 01, 2012
| Apr 17, 2012
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so this is why i hate reviewing advanced readers' copies. after the thrill of "yayyyyy, i have something that youuuu don't have" wears off, i am stuck...more
so this is why i hate reviewing advanced readers' copies. after the thrill of "yayyyyy, i have something that youuuu don't have" wears off, i am stuck here with a book that was good, but didn't blow my mind. and now i have to be all critical about it, and it can't even defend itself yet. and it is probably one of those books that is going to be wildly successful and then i will be the lone voice in the wilderness on record as not loving it and all the internet will laugh at me. not that i lack the courage of my convictions. it's just hard being me, sometimes. this is another post-apoc story that wants us to reexamine what it means to be human. okay, i can do that. if only it weren't so frustrating to be asked to do it so often, and so shallowly, all the time.i'm not saying the book is shallow - it has some great moments in it, and a lot of the writing is taut and appealing. but i get so fed up with characters in situations like these who keep trying to hold on to moral structures that no longer apply to their circumstances. seriously, cast of walking dead - recognize that you just cannot rebuild the world that was on top of the embers of the world that is. time to start over. new game plan. stop with the talking and the nicey-nice and man up. and this, too. it is great to have the impulse to save the young blind girl from the creepy advances of the male members of her family, but the reality of the two of you making your way through the blighted landscape with limited resources and "people" who want to kill and eat you? that right there is a burden you have accepted. and if you choose to take on that burden, sometimes you gotta take a life. no? you refuse? interesting choice. hope that doesn't come back to - oh, look out! it's nice to want to give food to strangers passing by. it is nice to retain the vestiges of humanity. and i am not saying you have to become a blood-smeared warrior with a string of ears on your belt, but at some point this pollyanna attitude become unrealistic. but i suppose it is the impulse of a person who carries around a sealed and unread letter for most of the book. a person without curiosity, who is fine as a literary-person standing in for an idea(l), but i like to read these books for tips i can actually use. no role model for me, here. the structure is a good call - shifting in between "now" and "then" - bringing the two stories ever closer together. she has a good sense of timing and drama, and it is a book i found myself flying through, wanting to know its secrets. so, a good page-turner. but there are times when you just want to pat her on the head and say, "there, there, dearie, not everything needs to be a metaphor." because it sometimes gets away from her. he jerks me backwards and pulls me against him until his gut it a stuffed IHOP pancake bulging against my back. she doesn't know that i'm making it up as i go along. pulling it out of my ass like my butt is a magician's hat. etcetera. the less i say about the romantic plot, the better. there is no level on which it makes sense to me. ditto on the "bad guy." pure horror-movie indefatigable meta-evil that is too cartoonish to be threatening. but not bad overall, despite my growling. i am probably just being overpicky. i thought it started out wonderfully, but somewhere along the way, it lost itself, and kind of muddled on to an ending that made me shrug and say, "whatever, you win, i give up." and those of you that have this on your YA shelves?? get it off immediately. go on, do it. this is most definitely not for a YA audience. rape and incest and massive human and animal deaths, cannibalism, mutants, that i can see, but (view spoiler)[corkscrew-abortion??? (hide spoiler)] that goes one step too far. and i doubt a YA audience would believe the love story, either. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Mar 03, 2012
| Mar 05, 2012
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Mar 03, 2012
| Hardcover
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| 1582436010
| 9781582436012
| 2.70
| 114
| Feb 01, 2011
| Feb 01, 2011
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this book could have gone either way: brilliant satire about our fallacy in equating reality television with reality or steaming pile of finger-pointi...more
this book could have gone either way: brilliant satire about our fallacy in equating reality television with reality or steaming pile of finger-pointing hipster poo. it's somewhere in the middle, but because i was never really jazzed about picking it back up again every time i put it down, and was easily distracted from reading it by other things, it gets a sad two stars from me. others might like it more. i actually don't watch any reality t.v. i have never seen survivor. or real housewives of anywhere. or even american idol, which is not technically a reality show, but i understand that it is a popular show that people like to watch that features non-actors and is televised. i am, however, a victim of both top chef and project runway, but those are shows in which something physical is produced, and i hate it when any of them talk, so the "reality" elements of it are painful to me. i would run the show in a much less social manner. project sweatshop. top shut the fuck up and make me a sandwich. you don't even want to know how i would revamp that teen mom show. so i might be missing a lot of subtleties in this book that other people more reality-show-savvy would appreciate. i do understand, however, that reality television is still a really big deal because it is so cheap to produce and audiences just want to see "real" people do unfortunate things. i get schadenfreude. i work retail, after all... here, in the world of this book, reality shows have progressed somewhat further down the taste-spiral than they are currently, and become nearly self-parodic, yet still wildly successful. "but why? why can't we make a show people would believe?" the AP meets his gaze and holds it."because it would be boring." "so people would rather be lied to than bored? they'd rather have their intelligence insulted?" "wouldn't you?" and this is the audience. people only in this for the razzmatazz. no one cares about being lied to, or being supplied with no-brainer humor, flashy lights, being cast as dummies and offered only the least common denominator-grade of entertainment.it is all gimmicks and easy laffs. and i'm not making any judgments here, just observations. there still seems to be this manic rush towards the next big thing, but the next big thing frequently seems shallower than what came before and it lowers the bar more and more until what's left is all flair and no substance. but i don't mean to sound like i am patting myself on my elitist back - people will like what they will like. just because i personally do not understand why larry the cable guy is meant to be funny doesn't mean he is not, to some. to many. i just lack the frame of reference. this book is ultimately less of a satire and more of a sustained existential crisis caused by reality television. the producer oversees the contestants who become less and less real to him every day. rather than developing some kind of god complex as he observes and manipulates them, he begins to doubt his own authenticity, and the authenticity of the people around him; their reactions and "personalities" a by-product of exposure to reality television, which has become indistinguishable from scripted television. who are these people? where are their counterparts in real life? exposure to reality television, with its heightened personas, makes any subsequent contestant on reality television develop these "as seen on tv" personalities and pigeonholes them into a role they are only imitating, making the term "reality" laughable at best. is complicated. so i'm not sure if i am underappreciating this book. the writing is fine, there are some clever moments and jabs at the standards of populist appeal, but ultimately it just never grabbed me. like survivor has never grabbed me. someone else could be totally grabbed by this. give it a shot.be grabbed.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jan 27, 2012
| Jan 28, 2012
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Jan 27, 2012
| Paperback
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| 1590213335
| 9781590213339
| 4.02
| 42
| Nov 2011
| Nov 01, 2011
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when i am promised "a lesbian zombie novel," i kind of expect that the zombies are going to be lesbians, with all the emotional and physical difficult...more when i am promised "a lesbian zombie novel," i kind of expect that the zombies are going to be lesbians, with all the emotional and physical difficulties such a relationship would entail, and some "we're here, we're queer, we're gonna eat your children".lesbian werewolves were, after all, lesbian werewolves...  but this is a novel, in fact, about zombies, in which there are some lesbian characters.so if you are planning on reading some hot girl-zombie on girl-zombie action, this is probably not the book for you. and it's not erotica, either, so you cheap thrills-seekers, go elsewhere. the sexy bits in this book frequently go awry, and are more likely to leave you laughing than revved up. this is just a whizz-bang of a book. it is a fun zombie romp with characters that you would actually want to see in a zombie-filled situation: one has badass training in zombie-evasion from her film career, and one is just regular-people-tough and sweet and loyal and well-meaning, but isn't going to freak out if a zombie heads her way, thanks to video games. good action sequences, good and charming characters, still pretty confused about the zombie mythology in this one, but no matter, because the pacing of the story is enough to hold the reader's attention, and it's not as though, were this a real occurrence, there would be simple and straightforward explanations about what the fuck was going on, so i am okay with a little zombie-origin-story vagueness. definitely worth a read for its action sequences and humor. she should write more, please. braaaaains....(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Dec 30, 2011
| Dec 30, 2011
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Dec 30, 2011
| Paperback
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| 031608106X
| 9780316081061
| 4.16
| 7,366
| Jun 01, 2011
| Jun 01, 2011
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i have learned nothing from horror movies. i have fallen victim to the most elementary trap. never, ever think you are out of danger. never say things...more
i have learned nothing from horror movies. i have fallen victim to the most elementary trap. never, ever think you are out of danger. never say things like "phew, i'm glad that didn't happen etc etc" i have said this. (view spoiler)[ so all the shit i said in my review for feed about how refreshing it was to have a relationship like george and shaun's, where they were so very close for a brother and sister, and NEARLY dangerously close but how glad i was that that line was never crossed and how it made me feel like some cynical old biddy with a dirty mind to even have had the thought cross my mind. well. harrumph. you think once a character has been KILLED OFF, you will see the end of that particular danger. but no. and yeah yeah they are not ACTUALLY related, but shaun constantly refers to her as "my sister." as though he is reminding us. as though he is sticking it to us when really he is sticking it to... oh, dear. (hide spoiler)] so the lesson to be learned is - you are never out of the woods. however - despite THAT THING I DISCUSSED IN THE SPOILER, this book was more fun than the first one.the stakes were higher, there was a good mixture of dramatic and action-y sequences, and it really moved the characters further into their situation, rather than succumbing to the bloated, "filler-feeling middle novel of a trilogy" syndrome. although the ending... yes, it is a "cliffhanger," and at first, i was like "yyyyyayyyyyy!" and then i stopped to think about it, and i was more like "hey, wait a second, no." because up until that point, the book had been very respectful, i thought. this may surprise you, but i am no virologist. and for the most part, when this book starts talking all smart about science, i just bat my eyes and look all cute and assume the author has done their research. and i have to admit that what she's imagined here, as a potential danger - sounds convincing. i am on board. also on board with miniaturizing bulldogs to be the size of cats. emphatically on board with that, by the way.less so with what happens in the epilogue and first chapter teaser for book three. unless there is as much convincing science-y sounding detail to satisfy all my "waaaaaait"s, i will remain disappointed by the turn. but also unreasonably elated, because (view spoiler)[i missed george. real-george, not shaun-head george (hide spoiler)] but overall, i really liked this book. the action was genuinely gripping, and i like the secondary characters a lot. shaun is kind of a tool, unnecessarily antagonistic over very natural human responses to situations, very one-note, (view spoiler)[hey, shaun, do you miss george?? i miss her, too. she was less adolescent. why don't you go punch something? (hide spoiler)] but i thought this was a solid follow-up, and i am definitely going to read the next one, and even go so far as to track down the (shudder) online stories that people are telling me about. and this book marks the end of "zombie month 2011". or "zombie three weeks 2011," which is less catchy.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Oct 27, 2011
| Oct 30, 2011
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Oct 27, 2011
| Mass Market Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0385528078
| 9780385528078
| 3.26
| 6,857
| Oct 06, 2011
| Oct 18, 2011
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AHHHHHHHH!!! jesus christ, but colson whitehead can write. i read the intuitionist way back when everyone was praising it to the moon as the masterpie...more AHHHHHHHH!!! jesus christ, but colson whitehead can write. i read the intuitionist way back when everyone was praising it to the moon as the masterpiece of the next great american writer, but that book didn't really do a lot for me, while this one keel-hauled me. it was strolling along at a solid four stars until the ending, which just reached in-between my ribs with insistent fingers and squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. the last 100 pages or so just blew me away. and it's not even a long book, 259 pages, but it took me three days to read; partly circumstantial, partly because unpacking his sentences takes a really long time. this man is the master of the dense sentence. and also at creating these descriptive arabesques of imaginative digression: speculations about characters that do not exist in the novel as such, but are representative of a type of person who might still be existing in this post-infestation world and what that type of person might be doing, thinking, even though they are only a subjunctive character in a three-sentence authorial daydream. who bothers to do that? it is madness! but a madness that stands out as a truly original technique of an incredible writer. this is both not at all a zombie book and the purest zombie book i have ever read. it is so hard to describe it. i am going to have to read it again, because circumstances muddied up the first half of the book for me a little. part of that is that i really feel this book should be read with as few breaks in the reading as possible. there are so many details, many of whose significance do not become apparent until much later - it is best to read with full attention, in as straight a sitting as you can manage. ceridwen's review is probably the best review i have ever read. not just for this book, but ever. i would love to review her review, but i don't think i am even savvy enough to articulate how perfect that review is, never mind trying to discuss this book. i love this part best: Then there is the New Yorkiness of this book, a resident recounting his mixed irritation and affection for the cityest of American cities, carefully prodding nostalgia that at any moment might stir and bite. And when it does, put it down with a bullet. that is a perfect encapsulation of this book. whitehead takes the danny hoch stance of "gee, new york (brooklyn, for hoch) is really changing" and ramps it up with fury. and yet - it is new york, and always will be, no matter how many trust fund babies move in, no matter how many buildings have their outsides gentrified or mirrored, no matter how many zombies cross over into it from new jersey. whitehead's final panning shot of the zombies is a masterful and familiar descriptive passage, despite being utterly horrifying. this is new york, warts and all. it's a very emotional book, despite a main character who is more a bundle of instinctual calculations than emotions. even before the events, he is someone who carefully gauges what he can get away with, what he can do to pass through life with the least resistance, rather than someone who is experiencing life as a series of emotional occurrences. a coaster. so, in many ways, the perfect observer, the perfect survivor. and yet - the surroundings are definitely meant to inspire an emotional response, even to non new-yorkers. new york is a microcosm to the world, after all, the corroded melting pot. and this situation, eyeballed by this character - the extraordinary translated by the mediocre - is made all the more haunting for it. now i understand the whitehead hype. aside: i was actually in tribeca on tuesday, where the action of this novel takes place, and i could not help superimposing the narrative upon the scenery - the nearness to halloween didn't hurt matters. but yeah, a terrible part of town to try to withstand a zombie apocalypse. and, to ceridwen, i understand your bristling at the midwest barb - there was a little one for queens, too. why i oughtta! (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Oct 25, 2011
| Oct 27, 2011
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Oct 25, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 0316081051
| 9780316081054
| 3.94
| 15,315
| May 01, 2010
| May 01, 2010
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three stars - look at me!! i am right in the middle of the road with this one!! watch out for traffic, karen!!! i wanted to read this as soon as it cam...more three stars - look at me!! i am right in the middle of the road with this one!! watch out for traffic, karen!!! i wanted to read this as soon as it came out. i think i bought it the week we got it into the store. but, you know how i roll, this was just sitting around for ages and ages in a stack by the door. and then i heard that it was amaaaazing. and then i heard that it was terrrrrible. and etc etc. and it wasn't until zombie month 2011 that i managed to see for my damn self. and for me, it was good but i have no choice but to rate it in terms of the other zombie books i have read thus far. it was way better than dust and frail, but not as good as the reapers are the angels or raising stony mayhall. so we gotta go with a solid and respectable three. fair is fair, after all.  i loved the characters in this book, i gotta say. george and shaun are both such damaged and driven people. and i was so relieved that grant didn't go where it looked like she wanted to go with their characters. she was toeing the line there for a while, and i was rolling my eyes and giving her warnings, but she never toppled over into 'ick' territory, and that made ME feel like the creep for seeing things that weren't there. i shake my fist at you, ms. grant, but appreciate that you made their relationship so exceptional without making it exceptionally gross. also great is the world building. it is dense with details and mostly reasonable; on the one hand the virus' transmission or "activation" is really cool. and not something i have seen before. so - nicely done there. on the other hand - does anyone remember the dandy warhols today, in 2011?? i don't think anyone in 2040 will be remembering them. there is nostalgia, and then there is just foolishness. but other than that, i enjoyed the details that were original and specific to this particular zombie world. that is always my favorite part of these kinds of books: what the author is contributing to the mythology that is unique to their story. the only reason i didn't like this as much as the two books that i really loved is because it is more of a traditional zombie story - an action story with political cover-ups and a central mystery and numerous action sequences. the books i found particularly great were more tricksy in the way they used the zombies. but that doesn't mean i am not going to read the second one. or the e-book short stories. i am curious to see where she takes the story, now that THE THINGS THAT HAPPENED IN THIS BOOK HAVE HAPPENED. is my version of dancing around spoilers. all i know is that i liked this book, and even though i had to write some damn paper in the middle of it, which made my house look like this for a week or so:  (which looks totally cluttered, but is actually very carefully arranged.), i still was very interested in getting back to this book, and it was easy to fall back into its world when i needed a break from academia. i am going to read the second part later in the week, and then i guess wait patiently for the third part. as a bonus, here is a picture of my cat in a drawer.  man, i have lost the knack for writing book reports. i all dizzy from learning. who wants to read a paper about readers' advisory? (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Oct 19, 2011
| Oct 24, 2011
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Oct 19, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0805092439
| 9780805092431
| 3.92
| 3,803
| Aug 03, 2010
| Aug 03, 2010
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book two of "october is zombie month" was so much better than book one. sooo much better. i was intrigued by this book, until i read mike reynolds' de...more book two of "october is zombie month" was so much better than book one. sooo much better. i was intrigued by this book, until i read mike reynolds' devastatingly negative review of it, and it got shunted to the mental back burner. but eventually i remembered that i am not as smart as mike reynolds, and i am content with playing with little glass paperweights refracting in the sunlight while giggling, so i read it. and i loved it. (see, pretty!) but it's good - i lovingly thumb my nose at the negative reviews. and then duck. this isn't a YA novel, although many people on this site have decided it is. and that's fair - the protagonist is fifteen, and the pacing matches that of a YA novel. but my barnes and noble overlord classifies it as adult, and we all know they would never make a classification error. so let's call it an adult novel so as not to scare off the old stuffy types, and the rest of you, i will just "shh, yeah, i know." and i have to admit, i have only read one flannery o'connor book (for shame!!) although i have seen wise blood because, well, duh:  but so as far as the "derivative" accusations go, i am as clean-wooled as a baby lamb. but i plan on reading more of her soon, i swear. this is basically the kind of book i love - the gothic-western justice-novel, but with some supernatural spice. it is more or less true grit with zombies. temple speechifies in roughly the same biblical manner - with a mixture of retributive old testament and a soft sticky center of love thy (deserving) neighbor, jesus-style; a mixture of poor grammar and poetic resonance. i love her character. she is eminently capable, running from her past and her mistakes which haunt her way more than any slow-shambling zombies, which act more as set-pieces than as any real threat.it is fairly episodic, and the basic theme is about the path to forgiveness and redemption, and the progression of that kind of grieving, healing process, but let's not forget, there are also zombies, so it isn't all whiny mitch albom stuff. what is great about this book is that temple was born into this world. she has never known a world without desolation, without monsters, without danger or the necessity of moving on. she is unattached and detached, but retains some inherent glimmer of humanity that constitutes her own moral compass. and it is gorgeous to watch a girl operate under the weight of her guilt and the necessity of her survival instincts. she does not take any shit, but she is not without empathy. nor without understanding of other people's personal moral code, even as it works against her. also great is that, starting the way this one does, in the waning years of an infestation, we do not have to read any boring scenes where people have a slow dawning realization of the situation. we are thrust into a world that is, not that is becoming. i love it i love it i love it. it is exactly what i needed to be reading - a "horror" novel that has more depth than just "braaaaains," one one whose themes are smack in my area of interest. plus, tom franklin (my new love in life) blurbed this puppy. and it turns out, this guy is married to megan abbott, who i have been meaning to read for forever. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Oct 13, 2011
| Oct 14, 2011
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Oct 13, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0441020690
| 9780441020690
| 3.19
| 621
| Sep 02, 2010
| Oct 04, 2011
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it is october.i am going to read a bunch of zombie books. this is the first. and it was very okay. by now, she has written a sequel, and i am hoping th...more it is october.i am going to read a bunch of zombie books. this is the first. and it was very okay. by now, she has written a sequel, and i am hoping that she has gotten her mythology tightened enough to allow her plot a narrow strait through which to flow, because the major problem with this one was trying to understand the rules; they seem awfully fluid and she frequently neglects to address the big picture. quickly: so in this book, zombies can communicate with each other in a way that does not require tongues and lips and etc, but is more like a telepathic communication, and a resting state that sounds like music. okay, fine. and they dance, collectively, ritualistically, when some inner switch is thrown and they feel a compulsion. ooookay, that's fine, i am very much of the "take what you are feeling and dance it" state of mind. sure. next. even though humans ("hoos") are aware of the possibility/probability of the undead, people are still buried when they die, just "away" from civilization, even though these zombies are fast enough to catch deer and other woodland creatures. huh? were i in charge of this land, everyone would be cremated to avoid the possibility of them coming back to eat me, but i'm not - joan frances turner is, and i will go along with her rules. all of them, even if they seem silly and inconsistent. and many are. i don't even want to go into all of them here. but there is enough that is new and intriguing in the zombieverse to make me want to keep reading. what if there was a disease that struck, and affected both humans and zombies alike? and it made humans sick and made them resemble zombies, but it made zombies (oh, and i am apparently falling prey to a huge taboo here, as "zombie" is considered a racist term. but i am using it as a reclamation, i am writing a zombie rap song) but it made the undead stronger. regenerate. not need to eat living flesh. and that is a great twist on the living dead mythos. where do we go from here? oh, many places, each a little odder than the last. beaches, stones, death, second death, third death...no time to explain, just keep up and keep reading. but what about..?? oh, i guess it doesn't matter. hmmm. if this review is scattered and unclear, i think a bit of it can be blamed on the book. it meanders, and there are about three different ending points, each more confusing than the last. i need to read the sequel, because i need to know the further-reaching ramifications of what is happening here, if she even bothers to address them. i am not positive she will, because she seems to have left many obvious questions unanswered, but... this sounds like a negative review, but the book is fun to read, i am just trying to understand why the story is so loose and shambly and lacking in perspective.i like the idea of this mythology, i like the surface of it with the itching bugs and the pro-undead solidarity,i like knowing what happens when a vegan becomes a zombie, but it really needs to have more depth, overall. i move on to another zombie book. rarrr... (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Oct 11, 2011
| Oct 12, 2011
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Oct 11, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1606841750
| 9781606841754
| 3.94
| 8,571
| Sep 06, 2011
| Sep 06, 2011
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yeah, i loved it. i mean, wilderness survival and zombie survival? it's like this author knows all about me. i was so eager to get this, i even read h...more
yeah, i loved it. i mean, wilderness survival and zombie survival? it's like this author knows all about me. i was so eager to get this, i even read her other book, draw the dark, while i waited.but this one was so much better. i have been excited for this book for a while now, even though i read so many reviews on here about how the second half of the book is such a letdown. fortunately, by the time i actually got my hands on a copy of the book, i had forgotten specific complaints, and only remembered that people were not crazy about it. but i reread the reviews after i finished the book, and while i agree that there is a definite shift in the action between the first and second halves,i think she addresses this shift in a way that totally satisfied me. on page 399: (view spoiler)[ ....maybe Rule was killing her with the promise of safety. she was cowering in the corner just like a bunny rabbit, hoping that no one would notice. or maybe she was letting Rule infect her: squash her will, who she was and had been, what she could look forward to. she'd never have let the monster get away with that, and there were so many ways to fight. so why wasn't she? because something was changing. again. inside her. she felt it in this slow, general slide into a kind of numb acceptance. just like when i was diagnosed. it was that stages-of-anger thing. i was shocked and then i got pissed and then i fought like hell...and then i went numb. they called it acceptance, but it wasn't. it's what happens when you have only two choices: love with the monster, or kill yourself. (hide spoiler)] so for me, the shift made sense; it was a deepening maturity,in a way,a realization of her situation and her limited options, but also a very understandable inward retreat. so no worries there, for me. and as for the the complaints about the shift that weren't character-based, but pacing/setting based, that didn't bother me at all. i like the rebuilding, the mobilizing. i really liked world made by hand for this, and this was similar, only way darker. so i totally understand what people's complaints with the book are, but i was thrilled throughout, and while i noticed the split, it barely slowed me down. i saw the second half as an extension of the first.it is simply a different kind of survival. survival alone vs. survival in society, even if that society is a cult. it is a different skill set, is all. the transition from simple wilderness survival to zombie survival to cult survival; i saw it as a progression rather than a jarring shift.i think there is definite character development - she tests out different defense mechanisms as she adapts to her ever-changing surroundings, and i like her adaptability, which she has been honing ever since that moment with ellie on the mountain. **oh, and lemme interject - there has never been a fictional 8-year-old i have wanted to murder more than ellie.** i don't read romance novels, because i don't care about people overcoming obstacles in love. i do care about people overcoming more high-stakes obstacles. like zombies. and organized dog-attacks.i love watching the solutions to unexpected problems. other complaints involve the conveeeenience of tom having the specialized skills he has. and that's true, but - hey - someone's gotta be one of those, right?? in the world?? and their story is more interesting than the people who have no idea what they are doing and die in a day or two from bad decisions. so i was glad to have him as a character. and for every convenient coincidence like this, there are a thousand unresolved plotlines that give a really nice truthiness to the story.certain details give it a shiver of reality, things that disappear or whose reappearance is hauntingly unexplained; her mother's letter, the whistle, mina. the inventory of the lost. i like that these remain questions, instead of being given tidy, contrived answers for everything. i also love that her response to her failing cancer treatment is to go off into the wilderness alone. this makes perfect sense to me. when i was younger, i read all of those melodramatic lurlene mcdaniel cancer books, and i loved them. but the big triumph in one of those books, the way you knew this character was ready to fight to live - to beat her cancer was, she ordered a watermelon milkshake to be brought to her. that was her turning point, her giant triumph. "i am going to gain back this chemo weight and fight my cancer. with a drink!" and that's fine. i just thought this was a more meaningful response. and she had a plan, she was prepared, i have cancer, nothing is working. my parents are dead. i am seventeen. this is what makes sense to me. it made sense to me, too. the reason i enjoy survival lit so much is i like to watch characters adapt to the situation. and this book had so much of that. she starts out relatively solid, supply-wise, and from that point on, it was a constant shift between having and losing and the way she handled the difference. to me, this is about accepting loss and moving on. this is a character who has lost so much. both parents, her health, her future. she is accustomed to taking stock and working with what she is left with. also, zombies. zoooombbieesss. and i'm sorry, that was a fantastic ending. loved it. i probably could have done without the supershort chapters, but that is something that comes with the territory of YA lit, and that's my only real complaint. i am amped to read the next book. (if i am still allowed in the YA pool after my lack of discrimination.) now i will go to school to hide out from potential name-calling backlash.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Sep 10, 2011
| Sep 11, 2011
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Sep 10, 2011
| Hardcover
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| B004UH8DRG
| unknown
| 3.84
| 82
| Mar 27, 2011
| unknown
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there comes a time in every young girl's life when she has to make that big life decision: vampire or werewolf? this book should make that decision pr...more
there comes a time in every young girl's life when she has to make that big life decision: vampire or werewolf? this book should make that decision pretty simple. these vampires are not cuddly or sparkly or beautiful. they suck the cattle dry and then go after the humans. teenfangirls be warned. most vampires aren't the nurturing type. in other pop culture news, cowboys and aliens is a good premise because it is a humorous juxtaposition, a ballsy "why not?" "imagine if" situation where technology pits itself against the "do what's gotta be done" attitude of the cowboy. it's like a game that stoners play, or like that show greg likes that i don't know the name of. but there is nothing funny about vampires and cowboys, and this combination seems to work really well, and does not just read like a cormac mccarthy/vampire mash-up. you have your plainspoken cowboy who is not looking to make any friends, who sees a predator and takes action.it is a sensible solution to an unexpected problem, but his reactions are so practical - there is no running around looking for explanations or backstory, no time-wasting hesitations. something killing the cattle? let's take care of that. a-yup. the writing is good, pared-down cowboy writing, with its dispassionate outlook and its casual violence. the protagonist is not some sweetheart you are going to want to fall in love with and take home, but that's exactly as it should be. this book is nasty, brutish, and short. it is a perfect vampire western. and i thank elizabeth for snagging it for me. not that she has ever or will ever read it, but she knew i wanted it, and she obtained it for me, and it was everything i had hoped it would be. a-yup.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Sep 2011
| Sep 2011
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Sep 01, 2011
| Kindle Edition
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| 0981453600
| 9780981453606
| 2.92
| 13
| Sep 28, 2008
| Sep 28, 2008
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sawney beane: scotland's favorite cannibal-patriarch. the man who brought a lady to a cave, and emerged twenty-five years later with eight sons, six d...more
sawney beane: scotland's favorite cannibal-patriarch. the man who brought a lady to a cave, and emerged twenty-five years later with eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters, having robbed, killed, and digested hundreds of people during his incest and bloodbath extravaganza. bring your own dropcloths!! the legend inspired many artists, from painters and sculptors:   to musicians: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNne2Q... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSNwHw... to filmmakers:  GRIECO!!!  so why not literature? how can you take this story and end up with something dull?? ta-daaaa! for the most part, this is indeed pretty dull. i gave it three stars because i never hated reading it, but if you are familiar with the story, you don't need to read this. it's basically what you know with some sort of subplot thrown in that is mostly just expository "slice of life in scotland's sixteenth century." ms. gates is not a historian, but this book somehow reads like the work of a historian trying their hand at fiction: living in a cave was not unusual. prehistoric man and many primitive tribes were known to be troglodytes. but in sixteenth century scotland, all most people knew about caves was based on local folklore; and because these tales involved frightening superstitions, it was not common for people to want to live in them, or even enter them. and: a settlement in scotland was called a farm town, or if it contained a parish church or gristmill, it was a kirk town or mill town, respectively. the size of these settlements, which centered on a grouping of individually-owned fields,was determined by the total area of land that one or sometimes two or three plough teams of horses or oxen could keep under cultivation. homes, which were mainly small huts, all focused on a central street or green where the market was set up once a week. this gave the residents, as well as nearby farmsteaders and peasants from nearby estates, an opportunity to buy and sell their produce and crafts. sawney's father sold his excess produce in such a town zzzzzzzz - you are boring the cannibals, ms gates. less textbook and more  , please. before reading this, i always thought that sawney beane was a for-true story like the donner party. but it turns out, while some places claim that the story has in fact been authenticated, others pooh-pooh him as the stuff of legends. too bad, because i really love the idea of him, and i like to think he was a real man, waylaying travelers and lining his walls with their cloaks and eating them off of their very own dishes. sawney beane gets 5 stars, this book gets a low 3 - we have rounded those scores into a medium-three because we are not very good at math. do you know what happened to the sawney bean clan, once they were captured?? you can find out from wikipedia, so i don't think this counts as a spoiler, but they were all rounded up and the men had their genitals removed and tossed into a bonfire, and then they were dismembered for as long as they were alive and tossed piece by piece into the same bonfire while the womenfolk were forced to watch. the women were just burned alive without ceremony. this includes all the babies and young'uns who were born into the clan and had no idea that what they were doing was taboo. scotland!!! i would like to read a better novel about this. come to think of it, i was underwhelmed with the novel i read about the donner party, too. i need better cannibal fiction, please. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Aug 14, 2011
| Aug 16, 2011
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Aug 15, 2011
| Paperback
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| 3.64
| 194
| Feb 04, 2010
| Feb 04, 2010
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short and sweet, with a classic horror feel to it. this reads like an episode of the twilight zone - one of the old classic ones, not one where kiefer...more short and sweet, with a classic horror feel to it. this reads like an episode of the twilight zone - one of the old classic ones, not one where kiefer sutherland flies a plane which i am realizing as i am typing this was actually an episode of amazing stories but i'm not even going to go back and fix it - it will be like you and i are having a conversation together over wine instead of this remove - this barrier of a review between us. cuz we are BFFAE. so this book is about killer plants. so it made me think about Ordinary Horror and the happening (oh, god, did i just spoil that movie?? i don't even care - that movie was spoiled by the people who made it. it should be illegal to make good trailers for shitty movies) but back to the book. it is a slow-building psychological horror novel with a potentially unreliable narrator who is convinced of his own important role in this 300-year-old contractual dealie where he, and all the eldest male members of his family before him, have been responsible for weeding this field for the princely sum of 8,000 per annum. but the weeds - they aren't weeds - they are aukowies. monster plants that, left to their own devices, unweeded, will turn into human-eating plant monsters. sho nuff. he has been so good at weeding and adhering to even the tiniest points of his beloved contract that he has managed to keep them at bay for his entire tenure. but he is older now, it is becoming more difficult, and the town is changing. all the old timers are dying off, and the young bucks and even his wife do not believe in this quaint legend, and do not offer durkin the same respect and perks that he and his family have come to expect. and 8,000 dollars is no longer the fortune it once was, even if you keep in mind the free house. and his eldest son is in no way interested in carrying on the family tradition. times are changing. people are turning their backs on him. but he will not allow one shred of doubt to enter his mind. no matter what. you are the reader. whaddya think?  (less)
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1
| Jul 23, 2011
| Jul 23, 2011
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Jul 23, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 1550229168
| 9781550229165
| 3.92
| 545
| Mar 01, 2010
| Mar 22, 2010
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this is one of those books... wait, is it?? i'm not entirely sure what kind of book this is... it opens with some bloody vomit at the breakfast table an...more this is one of those books... wait, is it?? i'm not entirely sure what kind of book this is... it opens with some bloody vomit at the breakfast table and ends on an awkward comic relief rimshot of a line. and in between. well, there's ghosts and zombie-ish types and a really endearingly stupid dog and good old fashioned teenaged helpless desperation and rage. and if that sounds like a jumbly mess to you, remember that this is the same author who brought you bible camp bloodbath, and if anyone's going to know how to make those disparate elements combine into good fun times, it's him. this book is almost perfect. it has such a great sense of pacing and wackiness, but it is a wackiness that does not lack taste or a sense of control. this is someone who knows how to edit their imagination before it strays too far into the surreal, wandering just far enough before it becomes a hazard. me, i cannot tolerate weird for weird's sake, and i think this little nightmare of a book captures a tone that is moody and tense, while retaining a purpose to the storytelling that is not all gloss and shock. the most reductive synopsis is: a girl falls in love with her best friend while both of their lives are falling into chaos and the obstacles to their love turn out to be supernatural in nature. but it's more than that. it is also about putting all your trust in something that seems permanent and immutable only to have it ripped away, piece by piece, leaving only bewilderment and fury. and that feeling - panting in the wake of the places and people you thought you could count on as they recede... i mean, who wouldn't throw a rock through a car window?? let's just say i can relate to this impulse. there is a weird wonky hiccup about 2/3 of the way through that threw me a little and made this somewhat-less-than-perfect in my eyes. but otherwise, some really gorgeous writing here, and a truly fun book that has a sharp-toothed undercarriage. do it. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| May 23, 2011
| May 23, 2011
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May 23, 2011
| Paperback
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| 1607740362
| 9781607740360
| 3.82
| 107
| Mar 01, 2011
| Apr 26, 2011
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we got this in the same day as we received The Meowmorphosis. it is like the universe is fond of me and wants to send me many sick distractions. i love...more we got this in the same day as we received The Meowmorphosis. it is like the universe is fond of me and wants to send me many sick distractions. i love this book. they did the design exactly right - it is as interactive as the original (the scratch-and-sniff is dreadful, though - be warned), the cover makes me so sad, and i love that it is marketed as "a touch-and-recoil book." it is a wonderful achievement of gross and funny. do not underestimate zombie bunnies!! if you have brains, they will eat them!! this is going to be amongst my treasured books, books that will be passed on to my young. by which i mean whatever cat i own when i croak... and return from the grave...(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| May 11, 2011
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May 11, 2011
| Paperback
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| 1416986898
| 9781416986898
| 3.51
| 429
| Aug 31, 2010
| Aug 31, 2010
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this is the best book that i have ever read in the elevator at my job. and i happened to be wedged into it at the time with a couple of nanny-powered s...more this is the best book that i have ever read in the elevator at my job. and i happened to be wedged into it at the time with a couple of nanny-powered strollers in which children were indeed being whiny. part of me wanted to turn this into an impromptu storytime/cautionary tale session, but those nannies have surprisingly well-muscled arms and i am not even getting involved in an elevator brawl. not on the clock, anyway. the tomato recommended this to me ages ago, and i put it on my "send greg or connor down to the second floor to fetch" list, but fate put it in my path eventually, and i really loved it. it is strangely low-rated here on the goodreads.com. what's not to like?? monsters eat whiny children. or try to. but they cannot agree on the right recipe. and then there is some monster-whining. it's totally charming. and i like the illustrations. i might even read it again. these are some short sentences. i have become a bad book-reviewer. but you can still trust my recommendations. stop whining.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| Apr 29, 2011
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Apr 29, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 0446564664
| 9780446564663
| 3.17
| 633
| Mar 25, 2011
| Mar 25, 2011
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i love the idea behind this book, it just wasn't much fun (for me) to read. but then, i am a zombie nerd, not a neuro-nerd. (neurd??) it is not because...more i love the idea behind this book, it just wasn't much fun (for me) to read. but then, i am a zombie nerd, not a neuro-nerd. (neurd??) it is not because of the lack of whizz-bang zombie attacks. world war z did not have any "zombie action" as such, and i still really enjoyed it. in that book, there were so many unexpected facets of zombie aftermath touched upon,it showed that a great deal of thought about All Things Zombies (the best of all NPR shows) had been taken into consideration. this one was more single minded, and its focus was just beyond my ken. wwz was a dissection of a society in the wake of an event, this was a more literal dissection of braaaaaains. if you are into brain structure and brain function and your whole life is brains brains brains, you are either a neurosurgeon or a zombie. or the guy who wrote this, who is a psychiatrist and professor. and i can just picture this guy writing this, hanging out with colleagues and students, and them all having a ball with the possibilities. and i am sure that they love this book and see it as the first professional zombie novel. and if you have any pals who are both brainiacs and zombie lovers, this is probably the best present ever. but for me, it doesn't add anything to the canon of zombie entertainment. it is a curiosity piece, like "oh, and then someone wrote this, and it was a great idea, but kind of boring to read." because what is more boring than medical talk?? bureaucrat talk. and the end of this is pages and pages of UN/WHO (insert clue joke here) assembly packets about how the disease is to be dealt with and what the status of its victims. so you get your "what it means to be human" philosophy dose for the day, but in the most boring (but probably accurate) writing of all. plus flow charts. here is an example of missed opportunities. at the end, after appendix II (ataxic neurodegenerative satiety deficiency syndrome/natural history and early therapeutic maneuvers), there is a list of 31 "references" taking up four and a half pages. and i read them, hoping there would be something funny in the details, or something revealing, plotwise; a gift to the close-readers. but no. just reference after reference showing what? that there is a lot of scholarship on the zombie situation in this version of the world? i think a page and a half would have been adequate for that, right?? i was totally slogging by this point. there is a lot of medical speculation, but not much in terms of a story. i enjoyed the zombie illustrations, because i am apparently a moron who only likes pictures and isn't ready for reading yet. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Apr 16, 2011
| Apr 16, 2011
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Apr 16, 2011
| Hardcover
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| 0007345046
| 9780007345045
| 3.47
| 319
| Feb 04, 2010
| Feb 04, 2010
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i am perfectly comfortable being the only one who liked this book in the online book club full of haters, and i declare it to be better than any other...more
i am perfectly comfortable being the only one who liked this book in the online book club full of haters, and i declare it to be better than any other book we have read since i have been a member of the group. suck on that, iron duke!! but i think i was predisposed to liking this based on a lifetime of choices. quick - some personal backstory. the first movie i ever saw in a theater was flash gordon. i used to go to the rocky horror picture show weekly when i was in high school, and was briefly in the live cast in front of the screen. (magenta, obviously) i love queen. and unicorns. let's just say i am a fan of camp and call it a day. but most importantly, most importantly of all - i love clue. and clue is camp. and i'm not just talking about colleen camp: (view spoiler)[ 
(hide spoiler)]but big deal, right? who doesn't like clue? it is pretty much a cult classic, there are midnight screenings of it and it has a great cast and it is a guilty-pleasure romp for many people. yeah, but "you people", can you quote the whole thing?? can you watch it four or five times in a row and keep laughing?? do you own the novelization of the film?? or let's try an easier one to thin the herd - do you own the soundtrack?? i do. i own the recent-issue limited edition soundtrack, of which only 3000 copies were made available to order on the internet.and it ain't no fan-job - there is a pullout booklet with interviews and stills from the movie, and includes music that never even made it into the film! and connor gave it to me. and it is awesome. and i had it on in the background while i read this book.  jealous?? probably not, but it was fantastic. it is one of the best and most appropriate scores to any movie ever, and i have no idea why it was never made available before this. and of course, i was occasionally quoting along with the movie, as i read - filling in the dialogue in between the flourishes of horns and harpsichord. and it was the perfect background music to this fast-paced, manic book, but honestly, i also just wanted a chance to brag about how i have this and you don't and connor is the greatest for surprising me with it. but so the book. aw, joel is a big ole meanie. and greg is a sad and disappointed reader. too many characters?? i love too many characters. and joel needs to go back and count his autistic-capitals before he starts hucking stones around - there are eleven in her first appearance. i agree that it is more pronounced in her later chapters, but they are there. in her second sentence, even. go see! she was actually my favorite character, and i continue to insist that mark haddon = bad, francis x stork = good. but i don't want to defend this book too much - this is a book that occasionally oversteps itself, but it is like an adorable beagle puppy with those full-grown beagle feet that trips over everything in its enthusiasm, but you know it loves you and wants you to have fun.  that beagle is sad because it knows greg and joel did not have fun. this book has the scope and number of characters of infinite jest compressed into a much smaller frame with some jonathan carroll-y concepts and it is just the first part of something!! who knows when or where it will end? but at the end of the day, it is, like clue a book about a bunch of strangers trapped in a house, trying to solve a mystery. elise is the miss scarlet - a tough stripper trying to make ends meet,carruthers is the col. mustard - the bluff culturally sexist man who knows his way around a gun, penelope is the mrs white - the manipulator of men, who gets plenty of shitty dialogue in the film, but the delivery of madeline kahn will rescue shitty dialogue: -how many husbands have you had, mrs white? -mine or other women's? -yours. -five. -five? -yes, just the five. men should be like kleenex, soft strong and disposable. i mean - that is terrible dialogue, and some of the writing in this book reads like that, but if you are clue in spirit and heart, this will delight you rather than annoying you.i found it playful, tongue-in-cheek. it is supposed to be pulp, after all - this was never intended to oust tolkien from his throne of "king of fantasy." yes, there are a lot of characters, yes some of them have rather affected and inconsistent ways of talking. but i am also the only person in america who watched the full run of the miniseries persons unknown on nbc. this show was truly terrible, but i like alan ruck, so i had to watch it. and it had - believe me when i tell you - the worrrrst dialogue ever, and it was just a terrible terrible show about a group of people flung into a town from which they could not escape - sort of like the prisoner, but with many prisoners and i watched the whole season and it was just dreadful but i needed to know how it would all end but then in the last episode even though they never intended it to be more than a one season show, they introduced this whole new element which was the starting point for what could have been a kick-ass premise for a second season and they just... ended. so my point is i have patience and a high threshold for something if i wanna see how it ends. and i totally enjoyed this, and am interested in the sequel, even though if it ended here, i would be perfectly content. lack of resolution does not faze me, i like david lynch and infinite jest after all. but if you want to talk about how to get thirteen people in a box, i know someone... this is my first angry robot book, even though i have bought several, and encouraged their sales to friends and strangers. despite any literary-merit arguments from the naysayers, you gotta admit they make a good-looking book, and almost every one of their books sounds like it would be fun to read: zombie private eyes, knife-fighting game shows, an urban king arthur - these people know how to catch my eye. and i love their cross-promotion. on the back of this one, it says "if you like this try: daniel r. galouye - simulacron-3, tad williams, otherland, clive barker - weaveworld,which is totally generous to promote books from other publishers, but it also recommends sixty one nails and bookman from their own house. i think this is charming. i like this tactic. the readers' adviser in me also likes the other little inset box that gives a sense of what themes the book contains."worlds within worlds, a sinister prisoner,dimensional mayhem, break out!" nice. there was this record label out of england in the early nineties called sarah. and they were just an indie jangle pop label and many of their bands sounded similar and sounded like they should all be on the same label: heavenly and the field mice and blueboy and the sea urchins and they were great - you could make a mix of their bands and ensure that the tone would not be jarring from song to song. and this is how i feel angry robot operates - they just publish stuff that they want to read - stuff that is pulpy and fun and a little silly that has no pretentions to high-lit, but is just fun and giggly to read. and i had fun.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Mar 07, 2011
| Mar 08, 2011
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Mar 06, 2011
| Paperback
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| 0767904141
| 9780767904148
| 3.76
| 1,413
| Jan 01, 2001
| May 21, 2002
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in 1916, fish eat you!! every july, i get totally amped for shark week. and yet, i have not seen jaws since i was seven. (although i have seen open wat...more in 1916, fish eat you!! every july, i get totally amped for shark week. and yet, i have not seen jaws since i was seven. (although i have seen open water both one and two. skip the second one - it is a complete waste of time). but the events in this book are the ones that inspired the movie jaws, so it is particularly awesome. shaaaaaark! sharks are the coolest of all apex predators. they will just bump you with their nose to see what you are and if you are delicious, then they will scraaaape you with their crazy rough skin, and then the ensuing blood will make them go buckwild and they will eat your leg. it is the most delicious frottage. this book is great, but there are too many teases throughout. in a shark movie, when you see a swimmer separated from the herd - that swimmer is totally going to get noshed. in this book (yes - in the real world) several people do not, in fact, get noshed, which is frustrating because you get all tensed up and ready for noshing to happen, and then there is the letdown of no nosh, as the person simply swims toward shore to safety. who cares about people who in 1916 could have but didn't get eaten by a shark? this should be a drinking game; will this person who we are following for 8 pages get eaten or not?? there should be more reading-related drinking games. but the book is really good at placing the events in a particular historical context. everything you ever wanted to know about the time period: what was stirring in europe, what music the kids were listening to, what was happening in the world of women's bathing costumes, what medical practices were like at the time - it is very comprehensive in a way that is fascinating instead of feeling like school. plus, this particular shark is breaking all the rules - leaving the ocean to swim through some freshwater tributary to mangle some kids swimming in their local crick - WHAT THE FUCK!!?? worst shark ever! there is this line, which is a giggle at the movie of jaws: "had they intended to hunt the rogue shark, they would have taken out a larger boat" but then there is this line, which worried me: "that same morning in spring lake, the soul of (no spoilers here!) was committed to eternal life at a funeral service..."i mean, not to quibble, but isn't the expression "committed to eternal rest??" because otherwise it makes it sound like that shark was a zombie shark and everyone knows those are the worst type of sharks. they will come for you anywhere:  by the end, i was beginning to feel almost sorry for the damn shark. it was just trying to survive in a world where there wasn't enough food, and it went through all sorts of unexpected trials only to end up captured, killed, and stuffed. i had less sympathy for the people who got bitten - that's what you get for swimming in the toilet of a billion sea creatures,full of pointy shells and jellyfish. gross.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Dec 02, 2010
| Dec 08, 2010
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Dec 02, 2010
| Paperback
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| 0804756414
| 9780804756419
| 3.50
| 22
| unknown
| Mar 15, 2007
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i really wanted my last pre-proust book to be a home run - i figured if i was going to be immersed in one author's work for the entire summer, then i...more
i really wanted my last pre-proust book to be a home run - i figured if i was going to be immersed in one author's work for the entire summer, then i should read something memorable just before it as a springboard to prousting. didn't happen. and this review is doubly precious because the Creator may be watching- this is my first review that otis (my new goodreads.com friend - yay!) will be seeing. i imagine this is how the deeply religious feel about their particular deity - the constant scrutiny, the judgment, the pressure to please and impress... here i am, living in your world... but - book: when i flipped through and saw that it was written as a series of dated entries, i naturally assumed they were diary entries, fictitiously but historically-plausibly attributed to a member of the party. but they're not. it is broken down like that simply to give a chronology, so you get things like this: May 16 - prairie travel. May 17 - Sunday. Traveled nonetheless. May 18 - Prairie travel. May 23 - prairie travel. May 23 - prairie travel. i was so bored, that if richard rhodes were here, i would have made a stew out of him. the whole first part is like that - it reads like a dull nonfiction timeline with no characters to hold on to, and then in the second part, it changes to having some characters given thoughts and dialogues, but by then, i was already pissed at the book, and each dated passage contains three different perspectives of people in three different locations without giving any real transitions, and i kept forgetting who was where, probably because i wasn't given a chance to "know" them in that introductory part - i had to keep stopping and trying to remember how many kids each person had, etc. this book should have pleased me more: it has survivalist elements, man against nature, and cannibalism. so why was it so freaking dull? the thing is, if i want to read nonfiction, i will bloody well read nonfiction, sir. don't trick me into reading it. in fact, richard rhodes, i am going to go out and buy the new nonfiction book about the donner party because it looks like good narrative nonfiction, and not some hodgepodge of the two. but this is not a complete waste of a book, it just wasn't what i was expecting, so i was disappointed. despite most of the writing being perfunctory, there are a couple of gorgeous passages that just make me angrier because of what could have been: He watched his wife and the 3 Murphy women and the children eat the stew. The had eaten hurriedly and hungrily before but now they dawdled over their food. Played with it with their spoons as if it was too hot. Toyed with it but not because it was a toy. They toyed with it because it had become precious to them. He felt the urge to do the same. To study each chunk of meat as it floated in his bowl. Look at the way the fibers were arranged. The patterns of the melted fat on the snowwater. The veins that ran like tunnels back into the meat. The smell that made his stomach ache. People shouldn't have to feel that way about food. Food shouldn't be that important. (that was when they still had some meat - he isn't talking about people-meat there) two donner-facts i did not know before starting this book: 1) that both of the donner brothers were over 60 when they started their journey. that is some serious balls. i mean, neither of them made it,true, but it is still impressive - their gumption. and 2) at one point there was a real need to eat the dead bodies because there was literally nothing else. but as the snow thawed and released some stockpiles of beef that had been inaccessible before, and the bodies of ponies etc, the survivors chose to continue to eat the human corpses, claiming that beef was "too dry". makes me wonder what i am missing out on, with my boring old beef meats. so i am not taking it off of table - people can decide for themselves; the "banished from table" shelf is only for books i truly hated - this one just kind of bored me. now i dive into marcel...(less) | Notes are private!
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| May 27, 2010
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May 27, 2010
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