28
Oct
2010
Angel: After the Fall Vol. 2 (First Night) by Joss Whedon and Brian Lynch
Usually, I’m all for prequels. But not when they come in the second installment of a series. So, the proper order to read the After the Fall books in might actually be the following:
21
Oct
2010
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
The first half of this book is slow-paced and unlike the first book. The second half involves the Games and is fast-paced and much like the first book. Both of these are good things.
5
Oct
2010
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG! I am amazed not just by this book, but the fact that finally–finally!–a book–a YA book–has lived up to its hype.
1
Aug
2010
The Army of the Republic by Stuart Archer Cohen
I picked up this book a few months ago, read a couple chapters, got bored, put it back down. A few days ago I picked it back up and wondered how I could have possibly been bored the first time around.
7
Feb
2010
Spike: After the Fall by Brian Lynch and Franco Urru
Poor, poor Spike. He gets a made a vampire, gets dumped by his sire after more than 100 years of love and mayhem, falls in love with a slayer, gets a chip put in his brain by the government, gets a soul, gets the chip out, dies in the Hellmouth, gets brought back to Wolfram & Hart but is incorporeal, gets all corporealized, saves the world (again), and lands, with the rest of L.A., in Hell.
24
Sep
2009
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Listen, O my brothers, as I relate to you a skorry tale of Alex and his droogs, who are real horrorshow malchicks, what with their bitvas, using everything from nozhes to fisties to booties, and tolchocking litsos, viddying the krovvy running red. That is, when they aren’t busy drinking the old moloko at some mesto or giving a devotchka the ultra-violent in-out in-out while they boohoohoo. The whole while Alex slooshies his droog Ludwig van in his gulliver, which might make him unusual because most nadsats slooshie real gloopy pop warbles that about makes him bezoomny.
23
Sep
2009
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Imagine this: you are a well-educated, upper-middle class. rising professional, who has never broken the law, and you have been put on trial for…something. You don’t know what it is, because nobody will tell you. Your education is no help because while the courts in which you are tried are legal, they operate outside of the realm of normal jurisprudence.
27
May
2009
1984 by George Orwell
You know how “Pick Your Five” is popular on Facebook right now, and one of them is called something like “5 Things I hate that everyone else seems to like”? Mine include things like running/jogging, dogs, yellow cars, etc. The book 1984 might not be in my top five of such a category, but it’s definitely up there.
14
May
2009
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The title, “brave new world” comes from a quote in Shakespeare, from Miranda in The Tempest, “Oh…What brave new world that has such people in’t”. But keep in mind that “brave” in Shakespeare’s usage, and indeed, in the title, meant something more like “handsome” rather than courageous. And indeed, the citizens of Huxley’s futuristic dystopia are anything but courageous. They aren’t conditioned to be.
23
Apr
2009
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
This is a fantastic dystopian novel. Set some time in the not-so-distant future, America has taken fundamentalism to the extreme. Women are for cleaning, cooking, and making babies. Literally. This is not one of those societies where men believe that women should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. It is a society that utilizes women either as status wives, handmaids (whose sole purpose is to bare children), or Marthas (cooks and cleaners, usually nonwhite). If a man can’t afford to clothe and feed all of them, he might get an econowife, who has to be all three.
