Bookish Thoughts

Alien invasion stories are often about humanity overcoming their differences and coming together in the face of an unknown threat. One of the things I like most about The Expanse is that it's about humanity's utter failure to do that. Which makes it feel a lot more realistic in today's political (and meteorological) climate. It probably helps that the alien threat in The Expanse isn't exactly imminent. The alien's are there. They've taken over Eros and Venus. But when the humans don't meddle, they're content to just stay out of the way. And in the third book, they've built a giant ring, which turns out to be a wormhole, out near the orbit of Uranus. It's not directly threatening, but it is weird. And more than anything, it symbolizes a political advantage. Which means a lot of political posturing as everyone tries to stave off conflict until they're sure that they're in the best position to win, at which point all hell will surely bre...

When my husband and I first got together, he convinced me to watch a movie called The Cube . The Cube is a pointless exercise in hypothetical psychological experimentation. It's a puzzle with no answer, a scenario with no context. The ending left me feeling both betrayed and angry. I could have spent that time sleeping. I still haven't forgiven my husband for making me watch that movie. It's 90 minutes of my life that I'm never getting back. The Maze Runner is like The Cube , but with bad writing and barely sketched in characters. (Part of the betrayal of The Cube was in how much I came to care about the poor, doomed characters. All except the one that managed to survive). It is just as pointless. Just as infuriating. The only reason I don't hate it as much is because I can't bring myself to care that much about a bunch of posturing, teen-aged boys. I could go on a whole rant about the lazy, stilted writing. The main character whose entire memory has been...

After slogging my way through a few denser books, it was nice to take a break with a collection of Sanderson's shorter fiction. I'd forgotten how readable he is, and I was surprised by how quickly these stories went by. So surprised that I ended up dragging the book out over a few more weeks just so I could keep reading it. Luckily that's easier to do with short fiction. There were a couple of stories in here ( The Emperor's Soul  and Mistborn: Secret History ) that I'd been wanting to read for a while, but never quite enough to pay $15 for a novella. So I was glad that Sanderson decided to release all his Cosmere short fiction (of which there is a surprising amount) in a single collection. In addition to the stories, there's some background information about the Cosmere that stitches everything together. As Sanderson promises, there are answers about the background story in this collection - just enough to start raising some really interesting questions. Th...

This was a fun, weird little story about found families and being brave. It was a bit clunky and a bit gimmicky. But on the whole it was pretty enjoyable. The book follows Jacob, a rather boring, woe-is-me, rich boy who is closest with his eccentric grandfather. When said grandfather dies, Jacob sets off on a quest to discover his family history. He discovers himself along the way, becoming a little less boring and bland. But not too much. Much like Bella Swan before him, he's an excellent reader-insert character because there isn't all that much to him and he always tries to do the right thing. At one point, the author tries to tempt him with a crisis of conscience, but Jacob is so stand-up that the moment is basically over before it begins (which leaves the climax feeling a bit deflated, but oh well). Jacob travels to an island and steps through a time loop where he discovers a house full of peculair children who have been frozen in time for seventy years, living the same...

This collection of short stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie went by really quickly. Her prose is so incredibly readable, which helps the stories she writes focus on their bittersweet emotions rather than got bogged down in them. The stories in this collection are all a bit melancholy, focusing on characters who have found themselves in less than ideal circumstances for various reasons. Some of them take action to change their lives, others quietly accept their circumstances, but they all come to that crossroads where they have to examine their choices and decide what they can live with and how they want to move forward. Adichie is, as ever, interested in the history of Nigeria and the relationship Nigerians have with America. America is billed is a land of opportunity, where dreams comes true, and character after character discovers that it's not as easy as that. That it is, occasionally, a downright lie. There are also a couple of stories that touch on Biafra and the coloniza...

This isn't usually my kind of book. I've read a handful of thrillers over the years, and I've never particularly enjoyed them. But I thought it would be fun to read the source material for a movie I love. To see what they changed and why. It turns out they changed quite a bit. Though all of it made sense to me. Then again, that could be because I know the movie so well, love it so much, that I was primed to see all the changes they made as improvements on the story. Which isn't to say that I didn't enjoy the book. But part of that enjoyment came from replaying the movie in my head while I was reading it and reveling in all the little differences. The biggest thing I liked about the movie is that it switched the ages of the grandkids and gave Lex more to do. In the book, Tim is interested in computers and dinosaurs and Lex likes baseball and mostly exists to be an annoying kid. She has a couple of good moments, but the movie did well to give her the interest in c...