Meet Mark Watney. He is, in his own words, pretty much fucked. Mark is an astronaut on a mission to Mars. On the sixth day of the mission, a sand storm wreaks havoc and Mark is left for dead by the rest of his team, who escape back to earth. Mark, however, wakes up a little later, very hungover, very alive and very, very alone. It’s a nightmare scenario for a professional couch potato like me. There is a reason, however, that Mark is […]
We took you out from your mother’s womb; Our temple, your tomb
This book is a sequel, and this review may contain spoilers for the first book in the series, Cinder. I was initially surprised to see the direction Meyer chose to go when continuing her series, The Lunar Chronicles, in that she introduced a new protagonist and switched between character POVs, rather than just sticking with Cinder’s. A lot of time, this is a YA contrivance that bothers me somewhat, because it’s frequently a shortcut into another character’s emotions without having to write them descriptively (e.g. […]
Once you gone tech you ain’t never going back
Reading Cinder was a great way to get back on the YA train after my last misadventure. It’s actually well-written in addition to being well paced and having a heroine who doesn’t completely suck (the opposite, in fact — Cinder is a total badass.) The long and short of it is this: set in the future in “New Beijing”, the story is a retelling of Cinderella, except our title character is a cyborg. If that sounds awesome, it’s because it is, but the citizens of […]
Even Mary Roach can make floating turds and liquid food enticing
Did you ever wonder how an astronaut goes to the bathroom in space? Mary Roach will make you question why you’ve never pondered this before. With lines from her book like, “give me a napkin quick, there’s a turd floating in the air,” she’ll also give you the greatest appreciation of gravity you never anticipated… Roach is a master of taking a topic (like cadavers, sex, and in this case, space travel) and deconstructing it, showing its many facets…whether interesting, surprising, or even a bit […]
Sharp, meta, and entertaining
I have to apologize in advance to Redshirts because I have major review fatigue. I was really hoping to do a double cannonball this year, and I can based on my pace, but lawd almighty am I ever running out of different ways to talk about books. And as such, this is going to be such a crappy review. Anyway, Redshirts was great. It hooked me immediately and kept me laughing throughout; I sympathized with the characters and was utterly delighted at each of Scalzi’s uber-winky PLOT […]
Still time to read it before the movie comes out
I can’t believe it has taken me a month to get to writing this review. I was telling everyone about it when I finished it, but just didn’t get it written down. I had managed not to hear much about this book beforehand. I can’t even remember where it was recommended so that I put it on my library hold list…and then waited months for it to come up since it was so popular. I will start with what a lot of other people say […]