Steven E. Wedel's Blog, page 21
August 30, 2014
Review: Gabriel’s Story
Gabriel’s Story by David Anthony Durham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Despite a rather slow start and Gabriel being a pretty unlikable character in the beginning, this ended up being a coming-of-age Western novel that I really liked.
It begins with Gabriel, his brother Ben, and their mother traveling to the Kansas plains to meet up with the boys’ new step-father. Gabriel resents his mother remarrying and the move west. When his father was alive, Gabriel believed he was on track to become a rare thi...
August 5, 2014
Review: Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss
Makeup to Breakup: My Life In and Out of Kiss by Peter Criss
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Maybe sometimes it’s better to not learn too much about your heroes. Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been a KISS fan since 1976, when I was 10 years old. Granted, I didn’t know what most of the songs were actually about, but I liked the way they sounded. Of course, I’ve known for decades that Peter and Ace were kicked out of the band because of drug abuse. But I had no idea about so much of what Peter reveals in h...
July 13, 2014
Review: Siddhartha
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
After reading The Life of Pi I wanted another book with a spiritual theme but a non-traditional philosophy. Well, non-traditional by Western standards. Siddhartha had been needling me for a while, but I thought I’d already read it back in my college days. I was wrong. Not sure what I read back then, but it wasn’t this.
For most of this book I didn’t find the moving story or inspirational prose I was looking for. There was too much narrator t...
July 3, 2014
Review: Black Sun Rising
Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I give up. It’s taken me three months to get 53 percent through the e-book. I’d kinda like to know how it ends, but I just don’t care enough to keep slogging through. The setting was pretty interesting at first, but now it seems clunky. I liked the warrior priest when he was introduced, but now I’m sick of his whining. The quest … meh. It’s time to move on to something I actually want to pick up and read.
June 12, 2014
Review: Life of Pi
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
It’s billed as a book to make you believe in God. That sounded intriguing, and I enjoyed the film adaptation, so I decided to give it a try. I think this is one that is going to have to sit on my mind for a while before I really make a final determination about it, though.
I liked it, although it started off very slow and seemed to lack any kind of direction. Pi was always interesting, though. His quest for knowledge of God kept me going there...
May 25, 2014
What a week!
On Tuesday my first grandchild was born. On Thursday I held a departing senior while we cried on each other. On Friday I printed a contract for a three-book deal with a top small press publisher. Today I watched a man I’d just met cry as he read a speech at his daughter’s wedding, where I officiated.
How was your week?
I’m still processing some of what happened this week. Some of it, I think, may be transformative and will need to be digested and maybe posted on its own later. For now I’ll just...
May 8, 2014
The Smiling Mexican Girl
I started a long blog post about one of my students and her father who came to Oklahoma from Mexico and the only English word he knew was “wetback.” He heard that word a lot at first, but overcame the odds and now owns his own business in Oklahoma City. But the more I wrote, the more it felt like I’d already written that story here. Just to finish a summary I already started there, the girl explained that the reason she always smiles is because of an early memory of a Christmas when she knew...
May 5, 2014
Review: Watership Down
Watership Down by Richard Adams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Watership Down is one of those books that helped shape my entire worldview. It came to me, like so many of my favorites, during the horrible years we call junior high, when I would escape into books and was lucky enough to be in an advanced reading class taught by Virginia Atchinson, the librarian at Longfellow Junior High in Enid, Okla. Watership Down, Johnathan Livingston Seagull, and The Book of Three proved to be some of the most im...
April 25, 2014
Review: The Giver
The Giver by Lois Lowry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Giver is one of those rare books that my students, both AP and regular, were always shocked to learn I hadn’t read. Well, it wasn’t published when I was in the targeted age range, so I missed it. Until now.
The story is in the vein of many dystopian futuristic novels, where mankind has traded freedom for safety and lives under the yoke of oppressive and cruel rules regarding behavior. So, if you like 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, or...
April 5, 2014
Review: The Exorcist
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Simply put, this is still the best horror novel ever written. Blatty’s use of language — particularly simile — is beautiful and touching or sickening and depraved, but always right there, pushing the reader to see what he wants you to see.
The Exorcist is the story of Father Damien Karras’s journey from doubt to faith. Yes, there is a young girl who is possessed and the demon within makes her do some pretty gross things, but the sto...
