Jurassic Park by Michael Chrichton
I may be in the minority on this, but I prefer reading books after seeing the movie or show they are adapted from. I didn’t read the Song of Ice and Fire books until I was watching the second season of Game of Thrones. I didn’t read Fight Club, No Country for Old Men, or The Shining until years after I had seen the movies multiple times. I think I prefer to go into a movie fresh, not knowing what is going to happen, and […]
Babel by R.F. Kuang
After reading and enjoying the Poppy War trilogy, I was excited to see a new book by R.F. Kuang. I found the world of Babel intriguing right away. It is mostly set in Victorian era England, but where much of the technological progress of the industrial revolution has been replaced by a form of magic imbued into silver bars. The people working the magic into the silver are the translators of Oxford University. They work on finding translations of words from various languages into English, […]
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
I remember having a choice on my summer reading list going into Freshman year of High School. We had to pick one book from a few different categories. From one category, we already had two of the books sitting on the bookshelf in my dad’s study. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. For some reason that eludes me now, my 13-year-old past self chose The Old Man and the Sea. I can appreciate Hemingway’s […]
The Adventure Zone, Vol. 6: The Suffering Game by The McElroy Family
The Adventure Zone was one of my favorite podcasts for quite some time. I was always tangentially interested in Dungeons & Dragons, though I never went further than making a character on a sheet. But after one night of playing board games with friends, one of them recommended I give The Adventure Zone a try. I was not familiar with the McElroys back then, and had only heard of their more popular podcast My Brother, My Brother, and Me. I did not expect listening to […]
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
I have been recommended books by Haruki Murakami for a while now. Norwegian Wood and IQ84 are on my to read list, but I admit I had no particular interest in getting a copy of “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”, despite being an avid runner for over a decade now. Running started as a chore for me. Every day after work I would go down to the gym and jog on the treadmill for an hour. I worked up my speed […]
The Dragon Reborn by Robert Jordan
I am still slowly progressing through The Wheel of Time series. I started collecting the books a few years back every time that I found one for cheap in a used bookstore. I read the first two books, and enjoyed them. The first felt very derivative of Lord of the Rings, among other things, particularly in the naming of characters. Perrin, the loyal friend of the main protagonist, always makes me think of Peregrin Took from LoTR. The main antagonist, Ba’alzamon (Ba’al Zebub) and his […]
