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.
8
Oct
2009
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams
The fourth installment of Douglas Adam’s Increasingly Inaccurately Named Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy, So Long and Thanks for all the fish, gets its name from the long debate of who is smarter, humans or dolphins. Humans believe they are smarter because they came out of the sea and onto land and don’t spend all of their time swimming and mucking about. Dolphins believe they are superior for just the opposite.
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.
11
Sep
2009
Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams
Readers of books one and two of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series know the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. What they don’t know, is the question.
31
Aug
2009
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
Literally. The eponymous restaurant is at the end of the Universe. But not in the way you might think. It doesn’t back up against some sort of brick wall or worm hole out in space. It is at the end, as in when the Universe ceases to be. Kablooey. Nada. No more. The End.
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.
