Bookish Thoughts

Mira Grant's Countdown is a novella rather than a proper novel. It's really short. Short enough that I had no problem reading it on my phone. Grant wrote it as a prequel to Feed , and released it in the month leading up to Feed 's sequel, Deadline . Countdown is a prequel, detailing the events that led to the zombie apocalypse and setting the stage for Feed. Countdown relies pretty heavily on dramatic irony. If you've read Feed , you know exactly how and when the zombie rising happens. You're passingly familiar with many of these characters and already know their fates. I think Grant does a good job of using that to ramp up the tension in this book. If you enjoyed Feed (which you should definitely read), give Countdown a try. My only complaint is that it's only available as an e-book (hence my reading it on my phone). I can't put it on my shelf with the rest of the series.

This is my first attempt at Shakespeare in a non-classroom setting. I've read several plays before now ( Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, King Leer, and King John ), but they were all for assignments. And they were all really hard to get through. I have a tendency to get lost in the rhythm of Shakespeare's language. It flows so well that, without even realizing it, I'll have read two pages and retained nothing. I'll be so eager to finish a line that I won't even realize it's switched characters. I have difficulty keeping track of who's talking because that interrupts the flow of the language. To get around this, I used to go through and highlight each character in a different color before reading so I'd have a visual cue to keep me on track. But since I didn't want to do that to my fancy Complete Works (or carry that beast of a book around), I never got around to any plays that hadn't been assigned. Then Joss Whedon decided to make a fil

I enjoyed this, the third book in Tamora Pierce's Alanna quartet, a lot more than the previous two. As a whole, it's more cohesive. Whereas the previous two books seemed largely like a series of vignettes, this book actually had a plot that carried through all the chapters and connected them into a single story. Alanna is now a knight and off looking for adventure. While riding through the desert, she's taken hostage by a tribe. Eventually the tribe accepts her as one of their members and even makes her their shaman so she can train their gifted children. Even though she's technically an adult now, it turns out that Alanna still has a lot to learn. She becomes more comfortable with her talents and has a couple of romances. The final two chapters seemed more like setup for the final book, and it all wrapped up a little hastily. But Pierce continues to improve with each subsequent book. I'm definitely hanging on to this series for my future daughter.

This was my second time through Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game , and the first since I've learned how bigoted and awful that man is. I actually didn't expect the book to hold up as well as I remembered it, and I probably wouldn't have ever read it again if not for a book club I'm actually enjoying. But I ended up liking it just as much, if not more, this time through. I guess it just goes to show that you don't have to be a good person to make good art. The first time I read it, I remember being struck be an overwhelming sense of despair. Ender is so thoroughly manipulated by the military higher ups (and, ultimately, the buggers) that he seems to have no free will at all. He does exactly what everyone else wants him to do. Even when he looks in the mirror and sees a monster, he can't get off the path he doesn't want to be on. When I expressed this to a friend, she said that she'd had the opposite reaction. Ender's Game was

I enjoyed Feed so much, that I decided to pick up another of Seanan McGuire's books: Rosemary and Rue . This book is the first installment in a series of urban fantasy mystery novels. The protagonist, October Daye, is half-human, half-faerie, and serves as a P.I. in San Francisco, taking on cases from both worlds. The title is a reference to Ophelia's final monologue in Hamlet , one of the Shakespeare plays I'm actually familiar with. I even played Ophelia when I was in middle school. According to the play, rosemary is for remembrance and rue is for repentance. October struggles with both of these over the course of the book. There's a brief prologue that takes place roughly 14 years before the story starts. While on a case, October is magically imprisoned. By the time she's freed, her fiance and daughter have given her up for dead and the rest of her life is in similar shambles. Not knowing what to do, but knowing that she doesn't want to repea

Brenna Yovanoff's The Replacement  was my All Hallow's Read gift this year. It's about a changeling who doesn't really fit in with the humans who raised him, but also isn't so sure that he fits in with the people who live under the ground of his town and swapped him for a human child 14 years prior. As he's trying t navigate both worlds and figure out where he belongs, another child is taken, and there's a chance that he can save her. This book is full of teen angst. The premise makes it pretty easy. A teenager who doesn't fit in anywhere and is considered a freak by basically everyone? Yeah, it's ripe for lots of woe-is-me and my life sucks and no one understands. But beyond that depressing layer is a pretty cool world. My favorite part of the book is how much thought Yovanoff put in to this world. I'm not sure I understand why a bunch of people who are deathly allergic to iron would set up underneath a steel town, but it does

Feed is the first book of the Newsflesh trilogy written by Seanan McGuire under the pen name Mira Grant. The title is a clever double-play on the word. It refers to both the desire of zombies to feast on human flesh and the RSS feeds that many people get their news from, both today and in the near-future of the novel. This book takes place 26 years after the zombie apocalypse. Both sides have survived the initial uprising of the zombies and have managed to find a sort of equilibrium in which they can both continue to live. The main character, George, and her brother, Shaun, are bloggers who report on the zombie situation near their northern California home. But then they get their big break, following the presidential campaign of Senator Ryman, and take off on the road with their friend Buffy. Grant creates a world that is staggering in it's detail. She's thought through security protocol (zombie tests at every door), diet changes (many people have chos

Thud  is another Discworld  book. I know I'm getting close to the end of the series, because this one was actually recommended to me by a coworker a few years ago. At the time we were studying a game that isn't all that dissimilar from the eponymous game in this novel, so he had picked it up without really knowing anything about the series. The game actually figures very little into the plot of the book. It appears on the fringes of the story, acting sometimes as a metaphor and sometimes as a possible resolution for the main plot. It's played between dwarves and trolls and requires quite a bit of strategy. The book mostly concerns itself with the not-so-great relations between dwarves and trolls in the main city of Ankh-Morpork. As more members of both species have immigrated to the city, tensions between them have been running higher. And with the murder of a high-ranking dwarf on eve of a bloody battle between them, things are about to boil over. It'

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish  is the fourth book in Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's trilogy (which I think I will always get a kick out of). It's a bit of a departure from the other books. Although it is bookended by hitchhiking adventures and includes a strange sub plot with Ford Prefect, the bulk of the book is a love story on Earth. Arthur Dent meets Fenchurch who, like him, is not quite normal. They hit it off pretty quickly and, after some initial trouble, fall in love. It's about time Arthur Dent caught a break, and it's nice to see him actually enjoying life. They fly around and have a bunch of sex and are generally perfect for each other. They also spend some time trying to figure out what happened to the dolphins, though Fenchurch is more invested in this than Arthur. All in all, this is a very cute story. I had a lot of fun reading it. I'm glad Marvin finally found some peace. And I'm looking forward to the final book in the tr

The second time through Game of Thrones  was a lot more straight-forward than the first time I read it. While I didn't feel particularly lost the first time through, I definitely wasn't paying attention to a lot of the details. I didn't understand a lot of the characters. But with the knowledge of where this story goes, and who becomes important, I was able to get a lot more out of the book than the last time I read it. Martin throws a whole lot of characters at you, which makes it almost necessary to ignore most of them just so you can follow the plot. This time I was able to pick up on subtle characterizations of Roose Bolton. I kept all the families, and who they owe fealty to, straight. I even picked up on a lot more of the history. The history of Robert's war really informs the everything going on now. I'm more convinced than ever that Jon is Lyanna's son, not Ned's. Ned has too much honor to have ever cheated on Cat. Once they were ma

The second book in Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet is a big improvement over the first, though I'm not sure I'd call it great. Part of this may be that it's the first series Pierce ever wrote (I've heard her later work is much better than her earlier work). Part of it is probably that the four books were originally meant to be a single book aimed at adults. But the publisher thought the story was better suited for children and had Pierce divide the book up. In the Hand of the Goddess is still choppy in places, but it's far more coherent than the first book was. Duke Roger is plotting to kill the king and the prince so he can ascend to the throne and the threat of him hangs over the entire book, providing a solid reason for the various problems Alanna faces. Although it gets frustrating that she never suspects him of being behind the numerous attempts on her life, a reason for this is given in the final chapter. The main problem I h

I really thought I knew what to expect when I picked up Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray . Dorian Gray has a painting down, and that painting grows older while he stays young. And, yeah, that's the basic plot. But the book ended up being a lot more than that. It gave me a lot to think about. Dorian Gray is introduced as a seventeen year old, much younger than I expected. His beauty makes him the favorite model of an artist named Basil Hallword. While sitting for the titular painting, Dorian metes Basil's friend, Lord Henry. Basil and Henry function as the angel and devil on Dorian's shoulders in some respects. But Basil is quickly corrupted by Lord Henry and decides that pleasure, beauty, and selfishness and the best traits one can hope to possess. After Dorian promises to marry a girl, then quickly changes his mind resulting in her suicide, the painting begins to change, to become ugly. It's revealed that it's not just that the painting

I love a good fairy tale. One of my favorites is Stardust , which I've read and seen several times. My favorite version is the illustrated novel, which includes 175 paintings done by Charles Vess. The illustrations are absolutely gorgeous are really add to the fairy tale quality of the book. It's like being a little kid and reading a picture book again, except for the occasionally adult content. Stardust  follows young Tristran Thorn as he goes searching for his heart's desire. Unlike Dorothy, he discovers that it's a lot farther away than his own back yard. Tristran goes off in search of a fallen star, in the hopes that he can present it to young Victoria and secure her hand in marriage. Tristran isn't the only one searching for the star though. A witch is seeking her heart which will grant her additional youth. A trio of brothers are racing to find her; the first one who does will secure the Lordship of Stormwal. And poor Ditchwater Sal would be l

After Ray Bradbury died earlier this year, there was an outpouring of tributes from a number of writers and artists. Reading all of it made me realize how much I'd missed out by not reading any of Bradbury's work over the years. Well, that isn't quite true. I read Farenheit 451 in high school, but I missed almost all of his other books. I decided it was time to fix that. I bought Something Wicked This Way Comes and was immediately met with another surprise. The receipt for the book listed recommendations for related books, among them The Halloween Tree . When I was little there was a movie called The Halloween Tree that was one of my favorites. My brother and I rented it from the video store over and over and finally just bought it. The tape was bright orange - fitting for the subject - and it was on constantly in our playroom during October. Imagine my surprise to find that Bradbury had penned one of my favorite stories (he even narrates the movie). All of t

One of the things that's become easier for me in recent years is putting down a book before finishing it. When I was younger, I truly believed that you had to finish every book you started, that you owed it to the universe or the author or yourself or something. Occasionally I'd put a book down and simply get distracted by other things, always with the intention to return later. This happened with both Lolita and Treasure Island . Then I would feel guilty about never getting back to the book. But with the expansion of my to-read list, I've become more willing to simply put down books I don't enjoy. The easiest of all to put down was John le Carre's Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy . And while part of that was due to my evolving attitude, it was mostly due to my utter confusion at this book. After the movie came out last year, I started hearing good things about the book. I haven't read much in the spy genre, so I kept this book in mind as a possibl

Alanna : The First Adventure is the first book in the Song of the Lioness quartet, written by Tamora Pierce in the 1980s. Somehow I missed these books growing up, which is a shame because I would have loved them. The first book follows ten year old Alanna, who switches places with her twin brother in order to go train as a knight (he wants to be a sorcerer, not a knight). The book follows her first three years as a page in the castle of Duke Gareth, where she makes friends, studies hard, and learns what being a knight really means. All the while she takes pains to hide her true identity, which results in some great scenes when she hits puberty. Overall the book is entertaining, if a little rushed. Children's books tend to have a shorter length requirement, especially in the days before Harry Potter , so the plot lurches forward a few times without much warning. But the characters are warm and intriguing. Overall I'm excited to see what happens in the next bo

Discworld was actually on my radar when Going Postal came out. I hadn't started reading the series yet, but I do remember being vaguely aware that this book had been released. It may have even been what prompted me to head to the library and look for the earlier Discworld book. I ended up picking up Good Omens instead, but the thought was there. This really means that I am quickly approaching the end of the series. There are only size more books after this (until Pratchett decides to release another one, anyway). But even this late in the series, Pratchett is able to keep things fresh (in fact a lot of people enjoy his later books much more than his earlier books). Going Postal kicks off the Moist von Lipwig arc, which continues in Making Money and the rumored Raising Taxes . Moist is a conman who finally got caught. But instead of killing him, Ventinari decides to put him in charge of Ankh-Morpork's failing post office. It doesn't take Moist long to re

As you can see by the time between my two posts about Ready Player One , I had a hard time putting this book down. The plot was incredibly exciting, full of twists and turns. But my initial complaint about the clunky exposition still stands. Cline occasionally has trouble with the "show don't tell" axiom of writing. But when he starts showing the story gets really good. I think the book this one reminded me of the most is The Hunger Games . Great plot, exciting action, fully realized apocalyptic future, hard to put down. But when you step away from it you start to notice some pacing issues. Having read this book, I'm a little surprised it's not being marketed as YA. But maybe it's just that the target audience (people who have some familiarity with the 1980s) is in their 20s and 30s. I really did enjoy this book. I think it will be really interesting to see how it ages, whether someone younger than me could appreciate it as much as I did. I

If you look back over my blog, you'll notice that in late June and early July I read 12 books. This is a lot, even by my standards (and even considering that half of them were graphic novels). But within the first few pages of Frank Herbert's Dune , I knew I wanted to take my time with this book. It was clear that this book was dense and I'd need to slow down to really understand what was going on. This was driven home by the fact that I needed to reread the first 30 pages a few times before I felt like I had a good grasp of the characters and which ones were important. I'm really glad I took my time with this book. It was excellent, and I enjoyed spreading the experience of reading it out over several weeks. I'm not sure I'll read any of the sequels, but I do expect to come back to this one again. I loved that each conversation included the thoughts of the various participants. It painted a complete picture of who knew what and what they plann

I first discovered Jenny Lawson when Neil Gaiman linked to a blog entry of hers detailing their meeting at W00tstock. You can go read it here , but the takeaway message is that after asking Gaiman whether unicorns or zombies would win in the battle for world domination, she proceeded to explain why he was completely wrong. I started clicking through her blog which never failed to make me laugh. Jenny is insane, and she has debilitating rheumatoid arthritis. Somehow she manages to find the humor in all of this and pass along her intense joy in life. I'd definitely recommend checking out her blog. Just click through to a few random posts. But make sure you look up the James Garfield Christmas Miracle , which still brings tears to my eyes. Not in a laugh so hard I'm crying way, but in a my faith is restored in humanity way. The book is a lot like her blog. It's somewhat more structured, since she actually had an editor for it, but the style and content are ver

The eighth volume in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, Worlds' End , is easily my favorite. It's another collection of short stories, but these are connected with a Chaucer-like framework. Several beings, finding themselves caught in various storms, make their way to the Worlds' End Inn. While the storm rages outside, the pass the time telling stories to each other. The stories are a lot of fun. One concerns the dreams of a city. Another is a fairly standard tale of a girl dressing as a boy so she can live as a sailor. My favorite takes place in an idealized America where a young president is able to unlock the potential of what our country can be. Between stories we return to the Inn, to see the conversations the characters are having there. And to finally discover the reason for the storm that has driven all of them there. In some ways, this volume represents the end of the series, with the next two volumes delving in to what happened and why and what w

"They deserve their fate, they deserve worse. To leave a child out in the snow-" "Well if they hadn't, he couldn't have grown up to be a prince. Haven't you ever been in a fairy tale before?" The Last Unicorn is a very fun, very self-aware fairy tale. I believe someone recommended it to me after I said I liked The Name of the Wind , a similarly self-aware story. Although I like The Name of the Wind much better, The Last Unicorn was a great way to spend some time. It follows the quest of a unicorn who, upon discovering that she may be the last of her kind, sets out to find out where all the other unicorns went. Along the way she meets the world's worst magician and a very practical woman. Together they travel to Haggard's cursed castle to find out what he has to do with the disappearance of all the unicorns. The fun comes from the characters' awareness (particularly the magician's) that this is a story. There are certain

Stranger in a Strange Land  by Robert Heinlein is one of those books I always felt like I ought to have read. It's an important piece of classic sci-fi that almost any fan of the genre knows about. Even before opening the book I was aware of the word "grok" and everything it means. Thankfully, I was also prepared for the incredible amount of sexism in this book. It's implicit, as in the opening chapters when all the doctors are men and all the women are nurses. Or in the fact that pretty much every man has a wife or female assisstant who does all those little domestic things for him. Or in the fact that, although there are plenty of strong, kick-ass women in this book, every single one of them is defined by her relationship to one of the men. The sexism is also explicit in some areas. Women aren't allowed at the press conference or in the serious men's meeting to discuss the finances and future of the Man from Mars. They're allowed to bri

The seventh volume of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is most people's favorite. But it's my least favorite. It's not that I dislike Brief Lives . There are some cool themes and some really interesting characters. It's the first time we really get a story focused on the Endless as a family which is cool. But it does this by putting the youngest Endless, Delirium, front and center. This story is her's as much as it is Dream's. The problem is that I'm not overly fond of Delirium. She's annoying. She has trouble moving linearly, which means that the story also has trouble moving linearly. It wanders around and some plot threads are simply left hanging. The story, like Delirium, has a lot of trouble focusing. And I find that really frustrating. But that's okay, because the next volume is one of my favorites in the entire series.

This third volume of Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets features the Eisner award winning story arc Hang up on the Hang Low. And that award is well deserved. This volume of 100 Bullets was just astounding. I'm really having a ton of fun with this series. And the final issue in the third volume takes the mystery even deeper. The shadowy Agent Graves is a much more accomplished puppet master than I could have guessed before now. And it's starting to be revealed that everything is connected. In fact, the story has gotten complicated (and awesome) enough that I need to go back over what I've already read before I move on to the next volume. This story is proving to be so dense that I'm positive I've missed something. Since I love a good, layered story, I'm sure my appreciation of this one will only grow with time.

I was really excited to dive in to the second installment of Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets series. As much as I enjoyed the first volume, I was told that the second one is the one that hooks most people. And I can definitely see why. The first volume followed three disparate stories. The only thing they had in common was the mysterious Agent Graves. The second volume seems like it will follow this pattern - the first two issues definitely do. But then it pulls back and offers an initial glimpse behind the curtain. This arc gives more information about Graves, his history, his associates, and this "game" he plays with the 100 bullets. Two secret agencies are introduced: the Trust and the Minutemen. There is some hinting that the Minutemen date back to the Revolutionary War, and I'm really excited to learn more about them. The other big surprise was the return of Dizzy. After her initial story ended and the narrative moved on to a different characte

Animal Farm is the second installment in Bill Willingham's Fables series. Although I didn't like it quite as much as the first story, it was still pretty enjoyable. I think a lot of the references simply went over my head, since I never read George Orwell's Animal Farm . It becomes obvious pretty quickly that this tale of politics is referencing its namesake quite a bit. But the parts I did understand were cool. The fables, as the refer to themselves are mostly confined to two separate communities. The ones that either are or can pass as human mostly live in NYC in a kind of underground society. The non-human creatures live on a massive farm in upstate New York. Although they have plenty of room, the farm is something of a prison. After all, if a "mundy" were to stumble across a talking pig or s giant, the cover of the fables would be blown. During a routine check on conditions at the farm, Snow White and her sister, Rose Red, discover a conspir

F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is another book I initially read for school but wanted to revisit. Unlike The Sun Also Rises , I liked this book just as much, if not more the second time through. And since it's less than 200 pages long, I flew through it. The Great Gatsby  is very much about the Roaring 20s. Gatsby is larger than life. He's rather mysterious (though seems to be involved in crime in a big way). He's incredibly eccentric and throws huge parties. And he does it all in the hopes of getting the lovely Daisy back into his life. This book contains a lot of adultery. Everyone seems to be cheating on everyone. Even the side character, Jordan, reveals at the end that she was engaged all the time she was carrying on with Nick. Of course none of this ends well. But there's a lot of fun to be had before everything comes crashing down (kind of like the 20s themselves). I wanted to re-read this book because I saw the trailer for Baz Luhrma

The sixth volume in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is another collection of short stories. This volume actually collects the issues slightly out of order, as some of them were originally released before the Game of You arc began. But the ordering in this volume works quite well. Actually, since this is the order I was introduced to the comics in, I can hardly imagine a different order. I'm just going to go through this story by story. Fear of Falling: The first issue is incredibly short. It functions as a prologue to the volume, appearing even before the table of contents. But it remains one of the more powerful messages in the whole series. This is one of the stories that sticks with me. Three Septembers and a January : This issue tells the story of the first and only emperor of the United States of America: Emperor Norton I. Remarkably, this is a mostly true story. There was a man living in San Francisco in the late 1800s who styled himself Emperor. The st

A Hat Full of Sky  is the second book in the Tiffany Aching arc, and the 32nd book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld  series. It picks up two years after the events of The Wee Free Men  and follows Tiffany as she leaves home to become apprentice to a witch named Miss Level. In her impatience to learn "real' magic, Tiffany starts casting spells beyond her ability and leaves herself open to possession. It's up to the Nac Mac Feegle to rescue her (though she actually ends up rescuing herself quite handily with a bit of help from them). I really like this book, and Tiffany is really growing on me as a character. She's definitely being set up as a young Granny Weatherwax. Since Granny may be one of my favorite literary characters, seeing her at 11 years old is a real treat. All that power with very little experience is definitely going to result in some wisdom in a few decades. For now, it just means exciting adventures. Watching Tiffany get into messes and

Having re-read The Handmaid's Tale somewhat recently, I really wanted to branch out into more of Margaret Atwood's work. Cat's Eye seemed like the obvious starting point. Mostly because it was the only other novel of hers that I'd actually heard of. Parts of this book were incredibly painful. It's about bullies, but the more insidious "mean girl" bullying that doesn't involve any physical violence. Just a prolonged attack on someone's self-esteem. Atwood's slightly detached voice adds a lot to this experience, I think. You can feel Elaine fading away at one point as her best friend Cordelia makes her feel like nothing. There's one scene that's particularly hard to read in which Elaine peels the skin off the soles of her feet. As soon as I read it, I remembered one of my friends from high school describing the scene to me. It was disturbing then without context, and it's even more disturbing in the book. Elaine herself

I first read Ernest Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises my freshman year of college. It was part of a class on modernism and modernity, which also included novels like Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier , Virginia Wolf's Mrs. Dalloway , and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot . I remember The Sun Also Rises being my favorite of the books I read for that class, but looking back I'm wondering if that's just because it was more straightforward than the others. Between taking 18 credits and adjusting to college, I didn't really have a lot of time for digesting books. And The Sun Also Rises can be enjoyed entirely for what's on the surface. This book doesn't make you work too hard. While you certainly can find lots of depth and symbolism, you can also just enjoy a story about a group of friends going on vacation. They fish, they watch the running of the bulls, they stay drunk for a week. And sure, there's some profound stuff about the Lost

I'm really surprised that I didn't read Carl Sagan's Contact before now. I mean, it's my life and I know that there was always something else I wanted to read. But looking back, I really wish I had read this book in high school. I think a lot of what Ellie experiences in the first few chapters would have prepared me better for the massive amount of sexism I suddenly encountered in college. I'm impressed with how well Sagan captured the experience of being a woman in science. Mostly I really liked this book. The science that went in to sending and then decoding the message was really interesting. And there were some great characters, including Palmer Joss and the man who funded the building of the machine. It got a bit slow at times, especially towards the end. But it mostly held my attention. Now I just need to track down and watch the movie again. I haven't seen it since high school, but I remember liking it. I'd like to see how it compare

A Game of You is the fifth volume in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. It's unique in that it doesn't really showcase Dream at all. Although half the story takes place in dreams, Morpheus himself only appears in the first and last issue. Instead, the story follows several women who live in the same apartment building and are all struggling with identity in their own way. Identity is the main them of this book. The identities we choose for ourselves and the ones society forces on us. It looks at how our perception of ourselves can change depending on where or when we are. This story explores how fragile identity can be and how important it is to have your own identity acknowledged by the people around you. Barbie is the main character in this story. She appeared briefly in the second volume, A Doll's House . When last we saw her, Barbie was married to a man named Ken and living the perfect suburban fantasy with him. But now she's divorced, broke and wi

I picked up Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets because of a recommendation on the internet. And because I found the first three volumes incredibly cheaply at a used comic book store. I'm not sure what I was expecting beyond "sort of similar to Sin City " (based on my own inference, not the actual recommendation), but I was pleasantly surprised by what I read. The first issue is titled First Shot, Last Call , and that actually refers to two different stories contained in the volume. The first arc lasts for three issues and follows Isabelle "Dizzy" Cordova who has just been released from prison. While she was there her husband and son were shot in a drive-by. She'd assumed this was just a random shooting, one more shitty event in her shitty life. But the Agent Graves sits next to her on the bus home from prison. He presents her with proof that her family was targeted by a pair of crooked cops, a gun, and 100 bullets that he promises will get her

Somehow I managed to escape childhood without every reading Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time . I'm not sure exactly how this happened except that I was absolutely obsessed with The Baby-Sitter's Club around the time I ought to have read this book. I guess I just missed it in my desire to read more about the residents of Stoneybrooke. Regardless, I have now read A Wrinkle in Time . And while I'm sad that it took me this long, I'm glad I finally got my hands on this book. It follows Meg Murry, her younger brother Charles, and their new friend Calvin on a quest across the universe to save their father from an evil shadow that prizes conformity. There's some fun science fiction in the form of alien planets and beings and a tesseract. Clearly Meg should have been on hand to help the Avengers understand that artifact. Meg herself reminded me a lot of Xander, from Buffy . She's not the smartest person and tends to lash out when she has troub

For a long time Season of Mists was my favorite volume in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. It's the volume that really made me fall in love with this series, and it stayed my favorite for a few years until I got around to reading the eighth volume, Worlds' End . (It took me a long time to collect the entire series). The premise of Season of Mists is pretty straight forward. Fed up with his duties and just plain bored, Lucifer quits. He kicks everyone out of hell, locks the door, and gives the key to Dream. This concept completely hooked me. I loved the way this played with Christian mythology. Maybe the Devil is sick and tired of the endless war with heaven. Maybe he'd rather just chill on a beach somewhere. For his part, Dream has to deal with a host of mythological being who all want Hell for their own. Odin, Thor, and Loki want to move in so they can avoid Ragnarok and the end of their world. Egyptian and Japanese gods want to expand their current la

"Bein' born is craps...How we live is poker " At this point it should probably come as no surprise that Mary Doria Russell has quickly become one of my favorite authors. The only sad thing about Doc  is that now that I've read it, I actually have to wait for Russell's next book to be released. But the happy part is that her next book is a sequel to Doc , so I'll get to spend even more time in the Wild West with these characters. Doc  follows Doc Holliday for the summer he spent in Dodge City when he met the Earp brothers. But like most of Russell's books, it's about a lot more than that. Ostensibly, Doc  is a murder mystery. Except that the kid who died wasn't white, so no one really cares how he died. Then it comes to light that he was robbed of $2000 and suddenly people want to know where that money went. But it's also about Doc's struggle with tuberculosis, his new friendship with Wyatt and Morgan Earo, his contentious

I grew up watching A Little Princess . So when I found the novel at a used book store for $0.50, I really had no choice but to pick it up. I just had to know how the book went, what changes they had made for the movie. A lot of the changes were superficial. The book takes place in London while the movie is set in New York. In the book Sara lives at the school for several years before her father dies in the book, as opposed to what seems like a few months in the movie. Lavinia has a much larger role in the movie while Ermengarde is more prominent in the book. The biggest change is that Sara's father actually dies in the book. It's his friend that comes to find Sara and holds her fortune for her (actually multiplying it by ten in the meantime. Which made me realize that I don't know what comes after quintuple. Would this be dectuple?) The book also makes a big deal in Sara being unique in her princess status. Where the movie makes it clear that any girl an

The third installment in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is a collection of short stories, rather than a cohesive arc. However, a line from Death in the final issue helps tie all of the stories together thematically [M]ythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country that affects all of you. Each of the stories concerns an old mythology. Beliefs and figures that have passed into the realm of stories. Calliope : In the first tale, an author kidnaps the youngest muse and holds her hostage. He rapes her in an effort to get ideas and grows prosperous on his projects. She appeals to Morpheus to free her. He does this by flooding the author's mind with ideas, so many that he can't sort through them in any meaningful way. After Calliope is released, she elects to retire to the dream realm, to continue only in the minds of men. This may be my favorite story of the four collected in this volume. It's certainly the most

It's another Discworld novel. Monstrous Regiment is the 31st book that Terry Pratchett wrote in this series. There are only 39 at the moment. I'm nearing the end of the printed books. And I think I'm beginning to leave behind some of my favorite characters. I know that I'm about to dive into Tiffany Aching's arc and meet Moist von Lipwig. There aren't any more Rincewind novels, and I don't think there are any more that prominently feature the Witches, the Wizards, or Death (though I expect all of them to show up somehow in the remaining books). In more ways than one, this felt like a transitional book. The cover art is of a different style than hat of the preceding books. Like the last book, this was less laugh-out-loud funny and more wryly amusing. Parts of it were downright sad. There were also a shocking number of typos. I'm not sure whether that's an effect of Pratchett's advancing Alzheimers (I think this fits the timeline f

The Doll's House is the second mini-arc in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. At first glance it seems very detached from the Preludes and Nocturnes , but when you have the whole story, you can start to see how the pieces are being set up for Morpheus' ultimate choice at the end of The Kindly Ones . The story mostly follows Rose Walker. She is the granddaughter of Unity Kinkaid, one of the children who suffered from the mysterious sleepy sickness when Morpheus was captured at the beginning of the story. Unity was a dream vortex, a being that can destroy the fabric between dreams and ultimately allow the dream world and reality to mix and become indistinguishable. Because of her sickness (and rape) this characteristic was passed on to Rose. Rose is in Florida, searching for her brother, Jed. When their parents divorced, each got custody of one of the kids. But now that there father is dead and Unity is giving them money, they're looking to reunite the family

Bitterblue is the third book by Kristin Cashore, set in the fantasy world she created (which could really use a name). It's a standalone novel. You don't really need to have read the other two books first. But it's a lot better if you have read them. Bitterblue takes place eight years after the events of Graceling (and forty or so years after Fire ). Bitterblue has just turned eighteen and is trying to get a handle on the kingdom she's trying to run. But everywhere she turns, there are lies upon lies. She sets out to sort through the lies and get to the truth of her father's destructive reign. All of her research reveals truths that are almost too painful for her to bear and occasionally results in more lies as she attempts to keep her friends safe and determine which of her trusted advisers are lying to her. This book had a lot of fun twists and turns. It was a bit slow in the beginning, but once it got going it was really exciting. There were p

I tried to read Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe . I really did. But I just could not get in to it. Defoe's style didn't really help matters. He's a big fan of run-on sentences. Here's a sample of a single sentence from this book. And now, in the managing of my household affairs, I found myself wanting in many things, which I thought at first it was impossible for me to make, as indeed as to some of them it was; for instance, I could never made a cask to be hooped; I had a small runlet or two, as I observed before, but I could never arrive to the capacity of making one by them, though I spend many weeks at it; I could neither put in the heads, or joint the staves so true to one another, as to make them hold water, so I gave that over also. There are, like, four sentences in there trying to get out. And the entire book is like this. As soon as I started to get into a flow, I'd start stumbling across commas again. The sentences are so unwieldy that

Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian was an incredibly slow, dry book. There was a good amount of suspense and spookiness surrounding the search for Dracula that spans three generations. But there was a whole lot of history mixed in. I found myself unable to read large chunks at once, because my mind would start to wander. That's not to say it was a bad book, though. The horror was good and some passages were genuinely frightening. It's just that it was mixed in with an incredibly thorough history lesson about the conquest of Transylvania, Hungary, and Bulgaria by the Ottoman Empire. There's a lot of allusion to the historical and present-day conflict between Islam and Christianity in the region. And the legend of Vlad the Impaler is interwoven so seamlessly that I has trouble telling what was fact and what was fiction at times. There was a lot of cool speculation about the legend of Vlad Dracula. And I really liked seeing how that intersected with hist

Preludes and Nocturnes is the first book of ten in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. This series was actually my introduction to Gaiman. I bought the first one towards the end of high school and spent the majority of college collecting the rest of the volumes. I've since collected all of the additional volumes* as well and have read the series many times. The first installment introduces the protagonist, Morpheus. He is the anthropomorphic representation of Dreams and King of the Dream Realm. The novel opens with him being captured by some arrogant warlocks during the Great War. They had planned to put a stop to death by capturing the anthropomorphic representation of Death so she couldn't go out and collect souls any more. Lucky for them, they ended up with her younger brother instead. The warlocks keep Dream imprisoned for seventy years before he is finally able to escape, thanks to one of his guards growing lax and nodding off on his shift. Once free, Drea

Back in the fall two new TV series debuted that I was really excited for. Once Upon a Time premiered on ABC and Grimm started up later that week on NBC. Both of these series were focused on fairy tale characters, albeit with different premises. And each of them featured one of my favorite writers (Jane Espenson and David Greenwalt, respectively). Sadly, neither show managed to hold my attention for more than a handful of episodes. One week I forgot to set my DVR to record them, and then I just never bothered to catch up on Hulu. Despite focusing on fairy tales, both fell short of what I wanted. Then I discovered that both shows were both inspired by the same source material: a series of comic books by Bill Willingham called Fables . Twice the series had been pitched as a TV show. And twice the show ended up going in a completely different direction than the comics had. Strangely, the two shows were pitched three years apart, but ended up premiering in the same week b

Night Watch is the 29th novel in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. It centers around a really fun time paradox that involves the commander of the city watch traveling back in time thirty years where he acts as his own mentor. I think the time paradox is handled really well. The book follows the idea that even if you change a bunch of little things, most of the bigger things are going to happen anyway. Once some things have been set in motion, there's nothing that can stop it. Even though Vimes changes some details -e.g., anticipating where an attack will come from - the larger events happen as he remembers them. This book wasn't as laugh out loud funny as a lot of other Discworld novels. It was certainly amusing. But it had a different feel. This book seemed deeper and more serious than the ones that came before it. It was still really gripping throughout, though. Almost moreso, since the stakes seemed a bit higher. Night Watch also gave me a much de

I'd been hearing extraordinary things about John Green's latest novel, The Fault in Our Stars , for a while. They were good enough and numerous enough that I finally decided I simply couldn't wait for the paperback edition. And holy crap you guys, this book. This book . Emotional whiplash in the best possible way. It only took me 14 pages to fall so in love with the main character that I was weeping. A few pages after that the tears turn to laughter. And then Hazel Grace Lancaster went and punched me in the gut with this line: I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn't tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You're a woman. Now die.) The rest of the book was a similar roller coaster ride of emotions as Hazel deals with the cancer that is going to kill her (probably sooner than later) and with the fact that she migh

Dreamers of the Day is the fourth novel by Mary Doria Russell, who has already cemented herself as one of my favorite authors. I'd heard this book wasn't as good as her previous three and almost avoided it for this reason. I'm really glad I didn't. While it's true that it's not as good as The Sparrow, Children of God , or A Thread of Grace , it's still an incredibly good book. Dreamers of the Day is part romance, part historical fiction. The narrator,  a forty-year-old school teacher named Agnes Shanklin, inherits a large amount of money that allows her to take her dream vacation to Cairo. By a twist of narration, Agnes happens to meet T. E. Lawrence and Winston Churchill who are in the process of redrawing national boundaries in the Middle East following the Great War. Agnes finds herself on the outskirts of these talks as she spends some time with Lawrence, Churchill, and various other players. Although she doesn't participate them,