Ned Hayes's Blog, page 41
August 5, 2015
Reblog if you think public libraries are important and should be maintained.
Review -- Bird Box
Review: 4.5/5
Bird Box - Josh Malerman
book
Bird Box by Josh Malerman, is a powerful, elegantly written story that
absolutely enthralled me.
The genius of this book is the fact that it focuses with sharp laser light on one singular story of survival, perseverance and terror.
I loved the singular focus, because it was impossible to take my eyes off the page (this sentence is a reference to something you’ll find interesting in a heartbeat here).
Imagine that there’s something in the world that causes utter insanity and homicidal mania in anyone who sees it. Where this thing came from, or why it exists does not matter. The facts of this story
are that it DOES EXIST, and that if you open your eyes around it, you’re lost forever.
Given that intriguing scenario, there are a really interesting set of writing choices. First of all, the greatest temptation is to EXPLAIN and to explain what the heck is happening and why it is
happening and allow the characters to make sense of it all.
Wisely, Malerman entirely avoids that deceptively saccharine and simplistic choice. He doesn’t explain. In fact, he doesn’t explain anything at all.
He just allows his story to unfold, and what a shocking powerful, provocative and mind-rending story it is indeed.
The story opens with Malorie and her two young children deciding to escape from the place she has been living for the past five years. Her very young children (who are almost never called
anything else than Boy and Girl) have been raised with every precaution of seeing anything that is outside, and with all the rules in place, she decides to leave. It is a very perilous journey,
because she won’t be able to see anything, and she has no idea what the world outside even looks like anymore!
This terrifying journey is intercut with the past story of how the world got to this horrific pass and how she once had friends and that all fell apart.
The way Malerman intercuts between the two storylines is masterfully done
Books, books, books…
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bibliolectors:
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August 3, 2015
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August 2, 2015
BOOK QUOTE:“Spring grew into summer, and the rhythm of my life...

BOOK QUOTE:
“Spring grew into summer, and the rhythm of my life now included Nell. I learned that her secret thyme and mint beds were deep in the woods, out by the chuckling stream that disappeared underground. She gathered plants she needed every day, and she was as a child who gathers flowers in May.”
August 1, 2015
Essential Blogs for Writers Part Two: Book Blogs
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There are many roads to becoming a writer. But whether
you’re an autodidact or an MFA candidate, one thing you surely are if you aim
to become a writer is a passionate reader.
Regardless of what structures we employ to sharpen our craft, consuming as many
books as…
July 30, 2015
Review - Ready Player One

Ready Player One
I can see why Ernest Cline got all the attention for READY PLAYER ONE.
The story is a remarkably original take on the idea of a story set in virtual reality.
For those who haven’t read it, here’s the basics:
Boy is trapped in a dystopian reality in which the infrastructure has decayed and most of humanity is hanging on by their fingernails.
The chief entertainment and the constant amusement of most of the population is the 3D immersive world they live in thru headsets and taptic interfaces.
The creator of this incredible immersive 3D world died, and decreed that if someone could solve his puzzle and follow a virtual reality quest — based on nerd trivia from the 1980s — then they would own his empire.
Our hero succeeds in the quest.
The contrast between the “real” world and the fake 1980s world in the 3D environment is what intrigued me the most about the story, and I think that Cline does a nice job of ratcheting up the tension regularly by cutting between the two worlds. The story really matters: we really care about our hero. And the longer he has to navigate his way between dangers in the real world, the more I care about him. He’s intriguing and he’s in danger… that’s always interesting.
But fundamentally, I find any SF that leans too heavily on activities and events happening in a 3D simulacrum universe to be hollow at the core. And I think that unfortunately, Cline falls into this trap — and ends up letting nerd trivia tell the story for him, instead of allowing for some interesting and thought-provoking character development.
* (p.s. I consider myself a HUGE nerd… so the “nerd trivia” references are not put-downs… I love them, and live them. But they are definitive handshakes to an “in-crowd” and may not be recognizable to all readers.)
Review – Ready Player One was originally published on NedNote
"I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travellers, adventurers, and..."
- Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret
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