Mike > Recent Status Updates

This is just unfocused. There's no particular reason that Thunderclan is so desperate, we're just kind of told that they are. So with no real problem facing them, the book is just stumbling around looking for a plot. Also, Firepaw is really boring.

Boy, Summers really is milking Nixon's life for every drop of controversy he can find. I guess I should've expected it from a book whose jacket openly admits that its purpose is to destroy Nixon's legacy.

I really don't have much to say about this book, except that Gabe is a wonderful protagonist.

I don't understand why this book uses the cliche of having a normal person being taken away from their home to go on an adventure - this is about cats, so the escapist fantasy is 100% inapplicable. Well, I guess it was an absolute requirement for kids books published in the decade after Harry Potter.

I can tell this is going to be a flawed book - the exposition is kind of clunky. But I already love Gabe as a narrator, and I already cannot imagine not enjoying this book.

Was there nobody to tell MacHale that it's a huge anti-climax to reveal that Bobby survives before we read his final journal? Kind of gives away the ending before it happens.

That said, even though the worldbuilding is cliched, I'm surprised by how on-point the allegory is. Good work there.

This scene's tone doesn't work - MacHale uses a tense, suspenseful moment to introduce a comedy villain. That said, most of the exposition is done well. He does a good job of spreading it out and avoiding infodumps. I'm enjoying reading about most of the characters, other than Alder, who's kind of boring. However, Mark and Courtney feel tacked on to me, and they will until around book 5.

I completely forgot that the first character who dies in this novel is black. Later in the series, we find out about plot reasons that this character had to die at some point, but there was honestly no reason she had to be the first to die. I am not enjoying this book as much as I hoped to. The characterization works, but the worldbuilding is kinda cliched, and the foreshadowing is clunky.

I wanted to give MacHale the benefit of the doubt about the writing, since this was written for kids almost twenty years ago. But... yeah, nobody in the history of the human race has ever talked like this. The book's not that bad apart from that. The plot is a little cliched, but it's functional, and the characterization works.

If you thought adults trying to imitate how kids talk today was cheesy, you should see adults trying to imitate how kids talked twenty years ago. This is PAINFULLY dated and cheesy. I don't want to be too hard on it, because as a kid I didn't notice it at all, so it clearly doesn't matter to MacHale's target audience. But it's still making the book difficult to get through.

I've heard this described as 'muck-rakey', and it's not exactly wrong. This is clearly well-researched, but the entire point of the book seems to be to paint Nixon as an embodiment of corruption and greed. This could've been interesting if this was about political corruption, and it was just using Nixon's life as an example, but in a biography, it feels a little dishonest.

Underdog and Me by Martin Kihn: 3/5 Well-written, unmemorable.

Superman: One Rad Dude by Jim di Bartolo: 4/5 The story isn't that great, but it's still pretty funny, and I like the illustrations.

Some Interstitial Thoughts on the In-Betweener by Charles Yu: 3/5 Just doesn't interest me much.

Becoming Bethany by Althea Kontis: 5/5 Very well-written and poignant.

Alright, look: there's a big difference between being open about sex (mentioning taboo things like genitals and sex when relevant) and shoving sex into everything in an attempt to be edgy. The fact that this problem is especially prevalent among the women is reflective of Moore's trademark misogyny. What I'm saying is, I'm not a big fan of this book.

Weapon X by Ron Currie Jr: 2/5 I don't care how well-intentioned it is, there is no way to convincingly put a positive spin on an essay about how manly it is to fight.

Wonder Woman by Jodi Picoult: 4/5 A little dull, but well-written and thoughtful.

God of Thunder by Kevin Seccia: 3/5 A nice take on what makes Thor interesting, but I wish it felt more personal.

You Never Forget Your First Time by Neil Gaiman: 3/5 Unobjectionable, forgettable.

We Are Not Amazons by Leigh Bardugo: 5/5 Another very good parable on misogyny and self-confidence.

This book is so boring you guys. It's not even that the plot is uninteresting - it's all in the writing style. Moore is clearly meant to be a comic book author, because his prose is overdescriptive and incredibly dull.

How Batman Saved My Life by Joe R. Lansdale: 2/5 Totally forgettable, completely failed to give me a sense of Lansdale's life.

All the World is Waiting for You by Carrie Vaughn: 4/5 Maybe a bit forgettable, but very well-written, and gets across Vaughn's passion well.

The Devil Inside by Brendan Deneen: 4/5 Well-written, interesting story.

Daredevil, Elektra by Jamie Ford: 2/5 The story was kind of interesting, but the writing was inexcusably awful.

Everything I Know About Love by Karina Cooper: 4/5 Very well-written story, I only wish we weren't kept at such an arm's length.

Spider-Manhattan by Scott Westerfeld: 2/5 Dry and uninteresting.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Brad Meltzer: 2/5 Meh writing, barely even a story.

Dented Hearts by Anthony Breznican: 3/5 Decent story, but I wasn't big on the writing style.

The Weight of Four-Color Justice by Christopher Golden: 3/5 Opposite problem; the writing style is fine, but I didn't find the story all that interesting.

Me and Batman and You by Austin Grossman: 4/5 The structure is a little unfocused, but the writing and story are very good.

On the Hulk: You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry by Delilah S. Dawson: 5/5 Very well-written, and the story is excellent.

I didn't expect to like this, but this is actually really good so far. I'm actually excited to continue.

This is a strong candidate for the worst manga I've ever read. Okamoto writes like a third grader - there's absolutely no subtlety, and he has no sense for scene progression. This makes the characters feel robotic, communicating simple emotions without any ambiguity. The themes are also laughably juvenile - even a middle schooler would be insulted by this. This is abysmal.

I just read a really good magically realistic book about middle school, so I'm hoping that success will carry over to this manga. I say that mainly because I have no other indication that it'll be good, other than that I kind of like the premise.

Yeah, this prose is pretty bad. It's too heavy on descriptions, the paragraph breaks are in weird places, the flashbacks are still in present tense for some reason, and this woman mentions her breasts way more than necessary. Moore really is better-suited to comic books.

This is naturally not as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, yes, the wish-fulfillment is rather obvious, but at least the prose is okay. At this point, with all the shit I've been reading lately, I'll take it.

I can tell that Moore is accustomed to working in a visual medium. The prose is weighed down by clunky, overwritten descriptions that don't really add much to the story. And even though he's (finally) writing in plain English now, I still find this hard to follow, because he's not very good at transitioning from one idea to another. There are a lot of separate elements, and it's hard to see the picture they make.

SPOILERS:

Seriously, it's ridiculously obvious that Abby is M. There's foreshadowing, and then there's blatantly giving away the twist. Combined with the fact that I also figured out beforehand that Jess had been hired by Master Mischief, I'm thinking maybe this book won't have many surprises.

(Okay, after I wrote this, I looked at the summary, and turns out, it gives away both. So maybe I shouldn't complain.)

This seems like it has a lot of re-read value. And I'm not only saying that because I'm just barely following the story, although I won't deny that it's a large part of why I say it.

There's a lot of tonal dissonance that comes from putting silly superheroes into a story with a mostly serious and realistic tone. The worldbuilding seems to be partially a Dr. Horrible pastiche, but there, Whedon made the tone work by embracing the campness - any emotion came as an extension from the silliness. Here, Lee seems to be downplaying the camp and hoping we don't notice it, which doesn't work as well.

In the introduction to this book, Neil Gaiman laments that this book didn't get very much attention when it came out. And uh... I may have a theory for him as to why that happened. I guess this is roughly what I would expect an Alan Moore novel to be like, but still, it's been a while since I've read something that takes this much active effort to read.

If I were to be nit-picky, I would point out that I really hate the device MG books seem to use a lot where people withhold information for no reason other than driving the plot. But if I were to try to be nice, I would point out that Rebecca is a really well-written protagonist, and the prose is pretty good, if a little bland.