GEEKED OUT – Obert Skye

Posted by Daniel on May 18, 2018
Posted in: CHILDREN'S, HUMOR, Uncategorized, YA. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

The world is crumbling apart after bombs have nearly destroyed humanity, but that doesn’t mean kids get a pass from going to school!  Uh uh, not way! It’s just that school isn’t quite the way it used to be.  Sure, there’s still a hierarchy of cliques, with the jocks at the top of the heap and the geeks at the bottom, but in order for the students to get supplies they must compete in athletic games for the honor of opening the air-dropped pack of supplies.

The doors and windows to the school are all boarded up, so students must enter through a bombed-out hole in the side of the building. The school’s principal is constantly in hiding and the school is run by the evil Darth Susan – the school secretary – who encourages anarchy and hopes that the students are stupid enough to NOT pass the state mandated tests (for reasons that come out much later).

But while the geeks can’t compete in games of athletic prowess, they use their brains to combat the jocks and Darth Susan.  But while in hiding after being chased by most of the school, the geeks find an old can of food, but when they stick their hands in to have a taste, they are covered in spiders – those spiders appear to give the four geeks super powers and they form a gang: League of Average and Mediocre Entities (or LAME).

There certainly will be an audience for this sort of book.  Those same students who loved Captain Underpants or Diary of a Wimp or any of those middle school books in which the underdog (the geeks) gets to win will likely enjoy this.  But this world is a very dark, ominous world no matter how light author Obert Skye tries to make it with the requisite humor.  After all, we have a principal who isn’t just a coward … he’s scared (for his life, presumably).  We have nightly curfew where it isn’t safe to be outside after hours. A world where food is hard to come by and schools treat supplies as trophy commodities in order to pit students against one another.

The humor (such as the acronym LAME) is quite forced and very few things are delightfully funny.

I like a lot of dystopian fiction but there’s something just a little too dark underneath this goofy story which would keep me from recommending it.  If a youngster were to pull it off a shelf and read it, great. For those who like it? Great.  It’s just not something that will appeal to the average reader.

Looking for a good book?  Geeked Out by Obert Skye is a middle school humor book with a very dark undertone that will prevent it from having mass appeal.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

Geeked Out

author: Obert Skye

series: L.A.M.E. #1

publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

ISBN: 1627799397

hardcover, 224 pages

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LIFE IS LIKE A MUSICAL – Tim Federle

Posted by Daniel on May 17, 2018
Posted in: CHILDREN'S, ENTERTAINMENT, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized, YA. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Tim Federle’s Life is Like a Musical appears to be targeted toward the audience for his Young Adult books, but the advice he offers up is pertinent to everyone.

Although many who read this book will know Federle as the author of popular books such as Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist and the Nate the Great series of books for young readers, Federle also happens to be a theatre professional – dancer, singer, actor, and much more.

In this witty, easy-to-digest book, Federle takes his observations on how to succeed (and how to be successful) in the Broadway theatre world and translates those observations to apply to everyday life. And he does it well.

Let’s be honest for a minute, though.  Most of know how we’re supposed to behave and how the people around us are supposed to behave in return. But all it takes is one person’s snarky comment within ear shot to have us leave the path of how to behave and become a diva (and, yes, Federle addresses this).

Federle’s observations are spot on and he describes them simply and clearly, referencing a theatrical example (often using himself and his mistakes in a “I speak from experience here, kids” tone. It is charming, and his very NON-aggressive bearing is very relaxing and makes this a calm pleasure to read.

The chapters and examples are short – typically only two or three pages long each – making this the sort of book that you can either devour all at one time, or read a chapter or two then put it away for a bit and read another some time later.  It also makes (sorry, Mr. Federle) great bathroom reading.

As I mentioned earlier, most of this is advice that really we already know (or should know) but don’t follow as much as we should and so I took a piece of advice to heart.  Chapter 35 is titled “Write Fan Letters” and in it he offers the advice, “Never get so big that you stop admiring the efforts of others.” Damn, that’s good! And so I did it.  I wrote an email to someone who’s lifetime of work I’ve admired and appreciated (that person being 85 years old).  That person wrote back and I think we both felt very good about it. Thanks, Mr. Federle, it worked!

Looking for a good book? Life is Like a Musical by Tim Federle is a wonderful reminder/guide to how to get the most out of life and how to be the best you can be.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

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Life Is Like a Musical: How Broadway Can Help You Live Your Best Life

author: Tim Federle

publisher: Running Press

ISBN: 0762462647

hardcover, 224 pages

ZERO-G: GREEN SPACE – William Shatner and Jeff Rovin

Posted by Daniel on May 16, 2018
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

FBI Director Samuel Lord is back, this time working with NASA to uncover the mole sabotaging some top-secret NASA projects aboard the Empyrean.  But there’s an additional problem – some self-replicating nanites are proving volatile on-board and attempts to eradicate them are ineffective.

Octogenarian Sam Lord is given these outer reaches assignments by the FBI home office, and he and his team are thorough, dedicated, and completely committed to doing what’s ‘right.’ Lord has the full support of the FBI on this case with NASA.

The nanites are set in motion by the spy and while the nanites are confined, there’s great danger that they will burst from their container and destroy everyone in the ship as they reproduce on a massive scale.  All the different Earth governments connected with the station have a plan they want to see implemented to contain or destroy the nanites, but Lord and his crew plan to go a different route, given their first-hand observation of the nanite behavior.

Just as with the first book, I went in with moderate to low expectations and came away slightly surprised.

Sam Lord is a well-crafted character and clearly a character for Shatner himself to play if this were to ever get picked up for film or television. In this volume, I felt that most of the other characters really fell into the background and were nothing more than extras in this story.

And the story itself…? It was moderately interesting.  The character of the nanites was not particularly new or innovative, but Shatner/Rovin built up their traits slowly and kept the reader engaged.  However, I was about 3/4 of the way through the book and I made a note in my edition that reads “We’re still dealing with these nanites?!” While they danger was not insignificant, I did feel that we’d spent way too much time in one, confined space looking for a solution to one problem, given the number of characters and settings in which this book takes place.

There is a small surprise regarding the nanites, but it isn’t really set up particularly well and it’s resolved a little too easily, once the discovery is made.

For this book, I enjoyed the characters, but felt that the story these characters were working in was not really worth the effort.  This was a real middle-of-the-road read for me.

Looking for a good book? William Shatner and Jeff Rovin’s Zero-G: Green Space is the sequel to Zero-G, with the same cast of delightful characters, but in a story that didn’t really capture my interest.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

Zero-G: Green Space

authors: William Shatner and Jeff Rovin

series: Samuel Lord #2

publisher: Simon & Schuster

ISBN: 1501111582

hardcover, 368 pages

 

SCENARIOS – Werner Herzog

Posted by Daniel on May 14, 2018
Posted in: ENTERTAINMENT, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

If you don’t know Werner Herzog’s films you should correct that right away. You’ll be in for a treat, but don’t expect to see your average blockbuster type movie. Herzog is an artist and his films tend to be powerful stories of ordinary people attempting something extraordinary.

This book contains the texts for four of Herzog’s films: Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Every Man for Himself and God Against All; Land of Silence and Darkness; Fitzcarraldo. In his introduction, written in 1977, Herzog writes, “The texts in this volume have remained completely unchanged, in the same shape they were before shooting started.” But the student of film studies will note that these screenplays don’t read anything like what you might expect when you’re reading a screenplay by William Goldman or any modern screenplay.

These screenplays read like stories, and in a very confounded sort of way, they are quite visual and it’s easy to see the film as you read through this.  It’s an interesting way to write a film script, but it clearly works for Herzog and it gives us two opportunities to enjoy his work – as films and as stories (or ‘scenarios’).

I faintly remember seeing Fitzcarraldo in the mid-to-late 1980’s, but now, having enjoyed these works as stories, I really want to see all four films and see how they compare to these narratives.  In his introduction Herzog notes that the films “followed a very different evolution.”

It is a real treat that the University of Minnesota Press has published this collection.  Herzog shows here that he is a creative dreamer and that his dreams take shape in various art forms.  The films are most obvious, but these scenarios show that I wouldn’t mind sitting down and reading Herzog’s writing as he tells a story with words better than most.

Looking for a good book? Scenarios by Werner Herzog is a unique collection of four film stories by Herzog, written in a narrative, novella format, but every bit as wonderful as the films.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

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Scenarios: Aguirre, the Wrath of God; Every Man for Himself and God Against All; Land of Silence and Darkness; Fitzcarraldo

author: Werner Herzog

publisher: University of Minnesota Press

ISBN: 1517903904

paperback, 368 pages

PIERCE BROWN’S RED RISING: SONS OF ARES – graphic novel

Posted by Daniel on May 11, 2018
Posted in: GRAPHIC NOVEL, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

I’m a little bit behind on my Red Rising series reading (though I’m currently working on correcting that) and I’d hoped that this might help me out and round out a few things for me.  And it does.  In many ways this is a prequel to the series as it lays out the story of a ‘gold’ who has fallen in love and had a child with a ‘red’.  For those not familiar with the series (and you might want to be before going in to this) there is a caste system in place with the different castes being identified by their color.  Red is about as low as you can get, while Gold, of course, reigns supreme.

The story is pretty dark and violent and that’s certainly an aspect of the one book that I read, but it’s not the only trait in the book, whereas it dominates the mood and tone in this graphic novel. Still this is a story of uprising in a caste system, so violent action is to be expected. Writer Rik Hoskin does a decent job, considering he’s playing in someone else’s world with someone else’s characters and laying out a prequel.

But this is a graphic novel and the art is just as important to telling the story as the writing and here the story absolutely falls apart.

I am giving artist Eli Powell the benefit of the doubt as to his skills and assume that he’s going for a tone, similar to Hoskin’s dark story-telling, trying to convey the seriousness of the action with plenty of dark shadows and harshly drawn figures.  But it doesn’t work. (It rarely works, in my opinion.)

Instead we get a drawn story in which it is nearly impossible to tell the different characters apart and everything looks like a quickly made sketch rather than a carefully inked finished project.  The dark, slashing shadows at or under a character’s mouth was driving me crazy by the end of the book.

I’m not sure the purpose of this style, but it’s definitely one that I don’t care for and it really took me away from the story itself.

Looking for a good book? Go out and read Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series, but don’t bother with the graphic novel Pierce Brown’s Red Rising: Sons of Ares by Rik Hoskin and Eli Powell unless you’re the sort of fan who must read everything connected to the original books.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

Pierce Brown’s Red Rising: Sons of Ares

author: Rik Hoskin

artist: Eli Powell

publisher: Dynamite Entertainment

ISBN: 1524104922

hardcover, 152 pages

SHORT NIGHTS OF THE SHADOW CATCHER – Timothy Egan

Posted by Daniel on May 9, 2018
Posted in: ENTERTAINMENT, MEMOIR, NON-FICTION, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

My only regret with this book is that it took me so long to read it.

Edward Curtis was a photographer in the very early days of photography.  Apprenticed as a photographer in St. Paul, Minnesota, he later moved to Seattle and became interested in photographing Native Americans.  He was often and long supported by Theodore Roosevelt and trusted by many Native Americans who gave him access to their daily lives and rituals, which he documented with his cameras. His book, The North American Indian (backed financially by J.P. Morgan) was to become almost the definitive work on America’s Natives and would span twenty volumes and remains one of the only records of the early Native Americans.  Curtis also is credited with making the first “narrative documentary” film (In the Land of the Headhunters aka In the Land of the War Canoes).

Author Timothy Egan has clearly done his research in preparation for this book as he follows Curtis’ travels quite closely and draws from multiple sources to suggest attitudes and motivations.

I was touched by the way so many Native American tribes welcomed Curtis and allowed him to document some of their most private ceremonies in addition to their daily lives.  And I was caught up with Curtis’s drive and motivation.  He definitely moved swiftly and his motivation was high when he had the full support of Roosevelt and/or Morgan, but when times were tough and lean (and they were, especially near the end of his life) his interest was strong enough that he looked for ways to continue with his work.  He was almost as much a salesman as a photographer (which, unfortunately, is often the case).

In so many ways, it seems that Curtis was so passionate about creating his masterpiece – the twenty-volume The North American Indian – that it was his down-fall.  He spent so much time , energy, and money on it, to get as complete and perfect as possible, that he ignored too many other things in his life.

Egan does point out that Curtis did sometimes stage his photos.  We seem to think of this as somewhat of a cardinal sin today (despite the fact that so many photographers now ‘photoshop’ their pictures), but we don’t take in to account the quality of the equipment or the speed in which photos were taken around the turn of the century.  Those weren’t ‘point and shoot’ days.

My Kindle ARC copy of the book did include some photographs, though I wished there more – what was there was impressive, but it only scratched the surface of what exists as Curtis’s collection.

I very much liked Egan’s research and narrative here.  I found the subject of Edward Curtis quite fascinating, and his subject – the ‘Indians’ of North America are still an under-represented people in our history books.

This deserves reading.

Looking for a good book? Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher by Timothy Egan is a remarkable history/biography of Edward Curtis – a photographer who documented Native Americans at the turn of the twentieth century.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis

author: Timothy Egan

publisher: Mifflin Harcourt

ISBN: 0618969020

hardcover, 370 pages

CITY OF BLADES – Robert Jackson Bennett

Posted by Daniel on May 7, 2018
Posted in: SF/FANTASY, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

This, my friends, is how you write an epic, original, engaging fantasy!

Author Robert Jackson Bennett is a wizard, I’m sure of it.  He can take a complex, unusual idea and make it simple and ordinary for the reader and likewise take a simple, seemingly ordinary idea and provide a complex world around it, and he blends it all together for a very engaging, totally believable adventure.

General Turyin Mulaghesh is trying to enjoy retirement on a remote section of an island when a messenger manages to find her.  Due to a technicality, she hasn’t earned her retirement benefits and she’s being pressed into service again for just a few months.  But her official, casual mission of ‘observation’ has a secondary, non-public mission to find out what’s happened to Special Investigator Choudry, who was also sent to this ass-end-of-the-country, unsecured Fort Thinadeshi (“just outside of Voortyashtan proper”) with a secret mission and investigating a rare and unusual mineral called ‘thinadeskite.’

But we wouldn’t be following General Mulagesh’s story if something big wasn’t going to happen.

It is difficult to review this book without giving too much away, and more difficult to synopsize given the intricacies of the relationships of the characters and the history of the world in which this takes place.  Trust Bennett, however, to give the reader everything s/he needs to make sense of this world, but also expect to be surprised just when you think you know where this story is going.

For most of the first half of the book, Bennett sets us up by establishing the characters and giving us a bit of a mystery (what is this thinadeskite and what happened to Choudry) mixed with some deadly action (attacks on the fort and brutal murders of some of the locals) with only small hints of anything supernatural or fantasy about this.  But this is where Bennett the wizard shows his skills, because when the story takes a strong left turn, it feels perfectly natural and you realize later that all the hints where there for you all along.

This is one of those books that becomes a page-turner the deeper you get in to it.  I have a reading routine, but I was constantly breaking my routine in order to read a little more – a little further – in this book each day, and I was exhausted by the time this was done.

This is unquestionably Turyin Mulaghesh’s story, but like the truly great works of fiction, her story impacts the human race and she interacts with mankind and gods alike. And the fact that she is a General, a warrior, has great meaning to everyone around her.

I am immediately jumping in to the next book in the series, but I think that this works fine as a stand-alone novel.  You’ll simply want to read more in this story.

Looking for a good book? The City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett is a powerful, destined-to-be-a-classic epic fantasy that will have you staying up late in order to keep reading.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

* * * * * *

The City of Blades

author: Robert Jackson Bennett

series: The Divine Cities #2

publisher: Broadway Books

ISBN: 0553419714

paperback, 484 pages