Under the Dome, Stephen King

3.5 out of 5

Under the Dome is a harsh book, to say the least. It wasn't the imagery that was startling so much as the increasingly downtrodden theme of the story itself. It shouldn't have surprised me like it did, it is, after all, an apocalyptic tale. There was just such little peace to be found.

My interest lies in the recreating of society after massive catastrophe. Under the Dome described a thousand pages of societal collapse without any justification at the end. It felt like a downward slide into devastation.

I'm not usually a big Stephen King fan; I grow impatient with his slow, deliberate, descriptive pacing at times, but how could I resist such a stylized story in my particular genre of interest?

It wasn't all gloom and doom. If you avoid the rape scenes completely (yuck), the characters had wonderful depth and many aspects of a modern-day community ostensibly cut off from society caught me off guard. Shocking to see how a small town could decay is such a short period of time: political manipulation, mass hysteria, environmental impacts all piled up on the expected questions of fuel, food and water resources.

~~~

I'm sure I say this after ever book, but certain portions spoke to me. You find what you look for.

There was a character struggling with chronic back pain, dependent on medication. In one paragraph she mused over the mind-body connection of addiction: 'I think that when it comes to drugs, the body and the mind are co-conspirators. If the brain wants drugs, the body helps out. It says, "Don't worry, don't feel guilty, it's okay, I really hurt."'

In the months since I've read Under the Dome, that idea has really resonated with me.

SIERRA CLUB Guide to Close Up Photography in Nature, Tim Fitzharris

3 out of 5


This book is hard to review because it is way over my head in terms of photography knowledge.

The pictures are beautiful. The information on nature was harsh, being from the point of view of The Sierra Club, after all.

I am concerned with the environment, but sometimes it's nice to just enjoy nature without considering all the travesty that goes with it.

I will have to pick this book up again after educating myself on my camera. :)

20th Century Ghosts, Joe Hill.

3.5 out of 5

Contrary to the title of this book, it's very light on ghost stories. Out of the 16 stories, including the hidden one in the Acknowledgments, only three were about ghosts.

The book was interesting and although I struggle to find contentment with short stories, as I've mentioned before, I enjoyed them and wanted to know more. Joe Hill is particularly good at adding insult to injury for me by ending some of the tales rather abruptly and in an odd manner.

Also, his writing style reminded me a lot of Neil Gamon; main characters of young boys, frightening father figures, sexual honesty that I can't relate to, and an air of creepiness that leaves me grateful that I am only reading about such situations.

I really enjoyed the story Pop Art even though it had such a strong vein of sadness. As with many of the titles, Pop Art is a sneaky, misleading title. At least three of the stories involved baseball. which I always enjoy. There were tales of supposition of Bram Stoker's sons, the manager of a major league baseball team, and even the filming of a George Romero movie. The mention of Lovecraft caught my attention early on in the book and easy comparisons could be made.

My favorites where Pop Art, 20th Century Ghost, The Cape, Voluntary Committal, and Scheherazade's Typewriter. All in all, the book had interesting characters with intelligent writing squeezed into brief packets of ghastliness.

I'm not sure I can give this book the rating it deserves since I find myself so irritated with short stories. :(

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

3.5 out of 5

This is a cute young adult fantasy story. I was familiar with the tale, but hadn't ever read it, so I was surprised to find that A Wrinkle in Time is just the first book in L'Engle's time quintet.

The book introduced the idea of time travel via the fifth dimension of tesseract. Familiar with the string theory and the concept of time and space as a big sheet that can you simply bring two points together (a straight line between two points not being the quickest route), this was the first I had heard of a geometric explanation for it.

Beyond the theme of light versus dark, there was also the subject of global (and in this case galaxial) responsibility. In addition to the scientific concepts and ominous tasks, the story had a lot of levity. Silly and flamboyant characters who spoke only in quotes, mythical creatures, and two dimensional worlds.

The only reason I have scored this book so low is that the review is based on how I felt, not necessarily the merits of the work. I found myself getting impatient, like I do with young adult works and fantasy.

~~~

Isn't it funny how you find just what you're looking for, no matter where you look? I'm highly interested in quantum mechanics as an explanation of faith. This book reminded me of conversations I have had in my own life with topics like existence and limited human understanding; accepting that things exist without understanding them.

'...there's very little difference in the size of the tiniest microbe and the greatest galaxy.'
- Mrs. Whatsit, the comforter.

Shade's Children by Garth Nix

5 out of 5

Garth Nix, a young adult fantasy writer, is easily my favorite author over the last few years. I just reread Shade's Children in an effort to sate my interest in his short list of novels. Although Nix's other books are all classically characterized as fantasy, I found this one more intriguing since it fell a bit over the line of science fiction in my opinion. I enjoy science fiction more than fantasy because it begins with a tangible basis in subjects and places I am familiar with. Fantasy can be disorienting.

I'm not sure why I'm so drawn to dystopian chronicles, but this story was exactly what I favor; featuring the the abandoned earth, after the 'Change', as a playground for otherworldly creatures. There is no human left alive over the age of 14 except for the refugees who find shelter with a resonance of human personality left in a computer by the name of Shade.

Children are the easy resource of the invading creatures and thanks to the 'Change Talents' they now possess, some escape, survive and resist. Shade is an eerie benefactor though and you get the distinct feeling throughout the story that there is no safe place.

I fell easily in love with the characters (although the underdeveloped grammar of the character Gold Eye can become tiring) and found myself physically rigid in anticipation of their safety. I was drawn in by the survivalist theme and the unraveling reasoning behind the occupation of the creatures.

All in all, I would call this book a page turner, as with everything I've read of Garth Nix. I'm not sure I can be deterred by any theme or genre Nix chooses, I just enjoy the writing too much.

The Time Traveler's Wife

5 out of 5

I absolutely loved this book. I found myself reading at times I had set aside as 'rest' times. A love story I found every bit as exciting as the Twilight saga without the teen aged ache, heroine addiction feel.

Since this book is about a man that time travels, his existence overlaps with both the woman that he loves and his own existence, in a severely random pattern. The flow of the book is chronological; each chapter begins with the date, and Henry and Clare's age or ages. In addition, there are paragraph headings to let you know which voice is currently telling the story. I've never read a novel written through the eyes of two different people in first person. The majority of the story is told by Henry, since the time traveling happens to him.

I felt a real sense of vulnerability in the descriptions of Henry's lack of control. The character equates the experience of time traveling to '...listening to a car radio that's having trouble holding on to a station.' Although he may not be able to control when and where he goes, there is a pattern to why. He finds himself visiting people and places that were, are, will be significant; including painful events.

Throughout the story, these two characters take turns being the one who knows the other intimately as their ages crisscross; old to young in most cases. Clare grows up knowing Henry as an adult, then when she reaches adulthood, she meets him in the present - before Henry is even aware of her existence. I cannot conjure the mental flowchart it must have taken to birth the concept for this story.

This love story compasses that long-forgotten brand of longing in young-hearted love, love that encompasses the realities of life, and how people persist through the craziness that comes their way. The characters contemplate quantum mechanics, Zen koans, and religious and existential beliefs in trying to decipher what causes episodes of time travel. Their chronicle was a tangent relation of danger and excitement. Heartbreak and relief. Brutality and honesty. Wanting. Energy.

My only negative comment is that in the brief moments they spoke French or German, I was left wondering things that not even Google could answer. I was, however, highly inspired to look up a lot of the musical references. If I have ever heard music while reading a book, I did while reading The Time Traveler's Wife. Two words: Violent Femmes.

Monster Island

5 out of 5

Okay, I may be a sucker for anything zombie, but this book only got better the more I read it. It sometimes takes me awhile to get the feel of a new author and though I would say Monster Island started out a solid B, it rapidly developed, leading me to read with increasing fury. It is written in first person by one character and in the third person of another character. (The protagonist telling his story and another person's story is a skill I have yet to master.)

Monster Island simultaneously follows the personal account of a living survivor and the experiences of what may be the smartest dead man alive(?) as they both find out what an invasion of the living dead means. The story goes from simple survival to the living versus the undead.

The story of the living is the redundant theme of endurance, but that's exactly what I seek these tales out for. I always wonder about the learning curve of these characters. I mean, haven't they ever seen a zombie movie? I don't think it took them too terribly long to figure out the old 'shoot 'em in the head' theory in this book. And this group of survivors had the added detriment of fighting an undead horde of varying and evolving consciousness.

The tangible concept of what it means to be the walking dead was primal and intriguing. An endless hunger, the restorative properties of eating living meat, needing to consume the life of something. Tasty, shiny life.

Without giving too much away, the author's reasoning for a zombie uprising and apocalypse was fueled by the zen koan that there is no real distinction between every thing; living or dead. That we are all the same singular being, divided into different bodies, or to be more specific - different nouns, really. The story took multiple unusual routes that I didn't expect and I really enjoyed this explanation of a collective consciousness. I mean, what does one cognizant zombie do when he discovers the ethereal thread linking him to the rest of the zombies?

The disgusting imagery of what it would be like to be one of the shambling, decaying horde did tug at my heartstrings. I'm sure I would rather be dead than one of the restless undead with such an insatiable need. And as I've said before, it's much harder to read through horror pictures. Unlike a movie, the unsavory details don't pass gratefully by with each blink. No. They linger on the page at the pace you read, making you squirm word by word.

The tempo wasn't the only thing that picked up through this book. I became invested in the welfare of multiple characters; both living and living-ish. Dark humor became more prevalent toward the end, making me chuckle a bit as I read. The style of writing even seemed to mature the further I went, keeping my attention invested in both the concept and the 'good guy's' memoir. Right down to the last line, "Please. Give me just one more minute."

I sincerely look forward to Monster Nation and Monster Planet.

Finger Lickin' Fifteen

4 out of 5

This post is more for my record keeping than review. I used to have a list of the books I've read, with little notes to help with my shoddy memory. Then I killed my hard drive and with it, a good portion of electronic memory. Now, I'm dropping my memory off in the anonymous, public, blogosphere to float in infinity until I need it again. Hopefully the only thing that steals it from me again is the apocalyptic zombie uprising. :)

Back to the book. I can't speak for all of Janet Evanovich's writing, because I tried another series of hers and was a bit underwhelmed, but the Stephanie Plum novels are a lot of fun. Reading them back to back to back can get a little boring, especially when they begin to blend into one and other.

Sure, I may not be able to remember the books in this series independently, but they are a nice, light departure from your average adult novel. It's like watching a sitcom. The stories are silly and the problems are over the top ridiculous. They literally make me laugh out loud while reading. It's nice to pick up one of these books when life is stressful.

Finger Lickin' Fifteen specifically involved a bbq cook off, much more Ranger than Morelli, and the Chipotle killer. Like the others, it was a giggly, fast read and one of my favorite sections involves Stephanie wearing a hot dog costume and her arch nemesis, Joyce:

"Who's the hot dog?" Joyce wanted to know.
"It's Stephanie," Grandma said.
"Figures. I suppose you wanted her to be the hot dog so it would have a nice straight line. Nothing worse than a hot dog with boobs, right?"
I gave Joyce the finger. "Boobs this, Joyce."

/giggle