K.H. Leigh's Blogstravaganza

I gave this 3 stars today with the full knowledge that I very well might come back and add another one later - because it isn't the book itself that held me back. This was my very first foray into the world of graphic novels and comic books, and while this book was beautiful, it left me feeling like I should have taken a crash course in DC characters before reading it. It left me feeling a bit lost on more than one occasion. "Wait, who is that? Have I heard of them before? Is this the same guy from a few pages ago? I think it's the same guy. Who is he, again?"

If/when I get around to reading more in the series, I might retroactively like this one more. But for now, it is what it is.

I've read many different books about the early days of the American space program, and what struck me about Of a Fire on the Moon is how personal it is.

While Mailer spends a great deal of time analyzing the people and the science and the machines that made man's first steps on the moon possible, what really makes this book work is the context he expertly weaves throughout. Because Apollo 11 wasn't just about putting a man on the moon - it was intricately bound to the cultural revolution of the Age of Aquarius. It was about capitalism, corporatism, American WASP identity. America wasn't just trying to beat the Russians - it was trying to win over its own people and the rest of the world.

Mailer talks about a global event in terms of his own experience with it, not just as a journalist covering the event but as a person who was forced to confront his own ideas about the new world that was emerging in that tumultuous decade. Written in 1969-1970, Of a Fire on the Moon offers a unique perspective of the far-reaching effects of the American space program without the benefit of hindsight. Highly recommended.

While I found the story compelling and the characters intriguing, this book suffered from way too much self-analysis and introspection. For every paragraph of story there was another paragraph of internal monologue, wherein the characters would basically say, "The reason I reacted like this is because of this thing which happened in my past." Pretty quickly it felt like I was being hit over the head with it. Yes, the past had left them scarred, but I didn't need it explained to me on every page.

Gaiman never disappoints. The Graveyard Book in particular lends itself to his ability to embrace the dark and the creepy without glorifying them. In his signature fashion, Gaiman manages to bring out a rich palette of color in Bod Owens' world of grey and mist.

I knew better than to think of this book as a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird before I started reading it, but in practice it's difficult to separate the two. Both are about events and circumstances that have a profound impact on the way Jean Louise Finch sees the world around her. Both are about the same little girl discovering she's growing up, though nearly two decades apart.

But although the Jean Louise of Watchman is much older than her Mockingbird counterpart, the younger Scout seems much more grown up, somehow. Maybe that's the point. Maybe as adults we come to a point where we have decided we know everything we'll ever need to know, and that rigidity of thinking is what makes us so much less wise than children. That's certainly part of the lesson Atticus tries to bestow on his beloved daughter - that lasting, meaningful change is led by understanding rather than immovability.

Try as I might to treat it as a separate entity, throughout Watchman I longed for the same depth of introspection that makes Mockingbird a perennial favorite of mine. While adult Jean Louise's angst was understandable, the child Scout's was captivating.

On its own, Go Set a Watchman is a thoughtful and compelling story supported by a cast of deeply real characters. The book is moving, as timely now as when it was written, and a must-read. But unfortunately it will forever be compared to its sister, and held up against her light Watchman will always reveal its flaws.

I postulate that one cannot dislike Stephen Fry while at the same time be a complete and happy human being.

This memoir drips with his signature humor, wit, and charm.

It's the quiet that gets you. The stillness. The calm. Without fuss or exclamation or judgement, Capote lays out the circumstances around the gruesome 1959 murders of the Clutter family - and his lack of emotion makes it all the more terrifying. It's a straightforward, almost logical approach to an event that can never make sense, no matter how carefully it is analyzed or how well it is researched.

It is this carefully crafted writing style that puts you in the minds of the killers, more so than any appeal for sympathy or understanding ever could. Throughout the book you maintain a certain degree of detachment from the victims, from the community left reeling by their brutal deaths, from those that worked tirelessly to deliver justice for the crime.

Unsettling, painstakingly detailed, and beautifully composed, In Cold Blood has absolutely earned its reputation as one of the greatest American novels ever written.

Reading this book is like being trapped in an elevator with the neighbors from down the hall, that up until now, you've only seen in passing. At first you make pleasant small talk, crack a few jokes to ease the tension. They seem like nice enough people. You begin to wonder, whatever happened to being neighborly? Why didn't you make their acquaintance earlier? Why did it take being trapped in an elevator to get to know these people?

But as the time wears on, and the doors stay shut, they start to annoy you. Her laugh is no longer light and tinkling - it's girlish and squealing. His smile is no longer awkward and charming - it's downright creepy.

You start to feel badly for judging them so harshly. It's just your nerves, you tell yourself. It's just the anxiety from being trapped. It's just claustrophobia that's making you so easily annoyed. You shouldn't let it get to you. You should give them the benefit of the doubt.

Then they start bickering with each other. At first it's just the tone of her voice, the stiffening of his shoulders. Then they start hurling insults at each other, volleying blame and anger and years of pent-up aggression back and forth. You sit in the corner under the flickering fluorescents and watch as they become more and more animal. Her eyes narrow to slits. He foams at the mouth.

This can't be how they really are, you think. Nobody is this horrible. It's the circumstances. It's the elevator. It's not real.

But another hour goes by. Two. Three. And you actually, actively hate these people. The longer you're trapped with them the more you come to realize that they are the worst people on the planet. You fantasize about them tearing each other limb from limb, spraying each others' blood and viscera against the polished chrome doors. You want them to suffer. Their hatred for each other has spilled out until you feel like you're drowning in it.

Then the rescue crew arrives. The doors finally open, and the three of you rush out with relief. You stop and put your head between your knees, grateful that your ordeal is finally over. You glance up and see the couple. They're talking to a rescuer.

They're holding hands.

She cackles in her girlish squeal, and he leers with his creepy grin, and you puke all over the freshly-vacuumed carpet.

As a thought experiment in mechanical engineering, orbital mechanics and survival tactics, "The Martian" is captivating. As a novel, it comes up short.

None of the secondary characters - from the Ares 3 crew members to the support staff on the ground at NASA - had any depth or surprises. They filled the exact formulaic roles necessary to push the story forward. The tough by fair female commander. The beautiful and brilliant nerdy girl (not woman - girl) who falls in love with an older man. The hesitant leader and the subordinate who defies him by putting others' lives at risk.

Perhaps, in an attempt to show how extensive the task of bringing Watney home was, there were simply too many of these characters to give any of them due treatment. As a result they were all familiar, and therefore boring. Not to mention, their interactions were often painful to read, with dialogue so flat and unnatural it was more alien than anything Watney experienced on Mars. The line "but I'm the administrator of NASA" actually makes an appearance in the very first section of dialogue in the entire book. I rolled my eyes so hard they're still spinning.

The lack of substance in the secondary characters and their dialogue is made all the more apparent in its stark contrast to Watney. He is, at the very least, interesting. His understanding of and ability to manipulate his surroundings to fit his needs are fascinating, and obviously thoroughly researched by Weir. The attention to detail is simply stunning.

But while this adds a foundation of believability to the science the book explores, again the writing itself suffers. As I read I kept asking myself, "Can I really accept that this is a log Watney is keeping?" It doesn't read like a journal. Some sections are labeled as transcriptions of audio recordings - there's just no way anyone would structure a verbal description of the events of their day the way Watney does. It's too carefully planned. Too much foreshadowing, too many hints at dramatic irony. I can accept that Watney is an unconventional scientist, and that his humor and personality would overshadow the tedious record-keeping that others in his position might create. And at least these sections are far more entertaining than anything happening back on Earth or on Hermes, but I found myself being far more engrossed by what was happening than by who it was happening to.

It's a shame, really, that Watney never experienced despair. Unnatural, too. We never had a moment in the book where he lost all hope. Even when things went horribly wrong - like when he was trapped in the broken airlock - his determination to be optimistic won out. This made it increasingly difficult to relate to Watney as the book went on. Abandoning your main character, entirely alone on another world, should open the story up to a deep character study. Instead, everything that Watney went through happened to him, not within him. All of his lowest moments were determined by circumstance, and external forces, such as broken equipment or a lack of food. We never get to see him descend emotionally, so we lose the opportunity to cheer for him when he chooses to rise again.

In the end, then, what we cheer for is not Watney, but for the accomplishment of rescuing him itself. The triumph is for an impossible task which was done, not for the person whom it was done for.

Dull and in desperate need of a good editor.

I first learned about Genie's story while doing research for a college thesis. I had personal experience working with children who had been victims of severe neglect, and was writing a paper about their difficulties with language acquisition.

This book struck me to the core. Not only is the subject explored so poignant, so heart-wrenching, but it's written with an expert hand. It gives humanity and dignity to a character who was robbed of her own. It keeps you deeply engaged. The book says with you - it would be impossible to read it and not spend a long time afterward thinking about it.

This is probably my favorite book. That's a difficult decision for me to make - I'm plagued by commitment issues. But "Good Omens" proves itself, time and time again, to be excessively fantastic.

I first read this book in junior high school, and it was my first exposure to either author. I immediately went around trying to convince everyone I knew that they had to read it, too. The dry humor sang to me. The way the different plot lines wove together delighted me. The footnotes - o! the footnotes! - titillated me.

I've since read enough of both Gaiman and Pratchett to recognize their individual strengths in "Good Omens". They do complement each other. Gaiman's myseterious otherworldliness, Pratchett's sharp goofiness - it's like wandering in an eerie spectral fog and happening upon a purple wallaby taking a bath in a flowered teapot.*

This book will make you reconsider everything you've ever thought about the end of the world.



*The wallaby's name is Bruce, by the way, and he does wish people would knock before barging in.

Between the ages of about 9 to 14, this was my go-to book. I read it over and over. It was the underlying sadness that drew me in. The father-daughter relationship was real - it made sense to me in a way that few other books could match.

I picked it up again as an adult and was elated to discover I could still get swept up in it. Admittedly, the 5-star rating comes from the 10-year-old me. If I had read this book for the first time as an adult I would have enjoyed it, but not nearly as much. However, as a book I loved when I was learning to love books, it's aces.