I read The Circle back in August while on a family vacation in San Francisco/Silicon Valley. Needless to say this made Dave Egger’s exploration of life and culture in a dystopian, data-centric near-future all the more depressing. Mae Holland is thrilled when a good friend from college recruits her to come to work at The Circle. Mae starts at the bottom, as a call center customer service rep who fields calls from world-wide clients to help make sure their experience of Circle products and services […]
“Three syllables and three thousand memories.”
Whenever a writer takes on a retelling of a classic, I get nervous. I probably shouldn’t, since so much of the media we enjoy these days’ takes it roots in just this type of storytelling. Regardless, when I originally heard the description of For Darkness Shows the Stars as a post-apocalyptic retelling of Austen’s Persuasion I was not immediately sold. Nevertheless, this book made a believer out of me. So much so that I’ve already downloaded the accompanying short story to my Nook and I’ll […]
“Sometimes it was harder to change the past than it was the future.”
Life After Life has been on my radar for over a year. It sounded intriguing – what would happen if you lived your life over and over again, and how would minute changes in your choices and actions affect that life? I was intrigued, but not drawn in. My mom read it with her book club late last year and her reaction to the work was “it was different. Not bad, but definitely different.” With that less than stellar review I pushed it further down […]
“A dark time comes. My Time. If it offends you, stop me.”
Back when I reviewed Prince of Thorns I had two complaints that kept my rating at a 3 instead of a 4. Those were: 1. World-Building. If my roommate hadn’t told me about the fact that this was supposed to be in our distant future and that we’re the builders I wouldn’t have had a clue. I love Mark Lawrence’s style, but much of this novel may well have been taking place in a setting bubble for as much as I grasped from the page. […]
Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak
I blame the internet. Earlier this year I was telling my roommate about a run of books I was in that were great, but sad. She’s dubbed my year as “The Depression Readings”. I mean, to a certain extent this is fair. I have read Burial Rites, The Black Country, Tell the Wolves I’m Home and The Age of Miracles in a 6 week period. That’s a lot of heavy reading, emotionally. So, at some point she decided that it was her mission to bring […]
I prefer bookstores
“There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care.” (288). It’s hard to know what to make of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. It’s a quest, it’s a mystery, it’s one man finding himself, and it’s the coalescing of a group of friends. It’s all this and more. Clocking in at fewer than 300 pages, Robin Sloan manages to craft an epic adventure for his protagonist and his merry band of players. And it’s simply delightful. The story is based […]