Category Archives: Books
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Book Review – One Second After
One Second After by William R. Forstchen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I had originally given this book 4 stars, but I downgraded my rating after thinking about it for a while. The book itself is fairly well written, though I had problems with the fact that it telegraphs a lot of what will happen pretty early on. The bigger problem I had with it is that it presents itself as a realistic depiction of the aftermath of an EMP attack on the United States. While I do not fault the author on logistical details (breakdown of communication, short supplies of food and medicine), the author is very cynical in his writing, which often moves the story past a “worse case scenario” to something a bit too over dramatic to accept.
Book Review – The Trench
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I am not going to say that this book is high literature, because it really isn’t. But it is a thrilling adventure with lots of twists and turns. Alten masterfully builds the suspense with each chapter, pulling you in and keeping you turning page after page until you reach the exciting climax of the story.
Book Review – Monsters and Demons
Monsters and Demons: From Goblins and Ghouls to Fiends and Fairies A Complete Compendium of Mythological Beasts by Charlotte Montague
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The title itself if a big misnomer. Considering the volumes that have been written on some of the creatures they discuss in the book, this one is by no means “complete.” That might have been something I could have gotten past if the book itself was not so chaoticly written. Some creatures, like the Golem are double covered, with paragraphs written about their cinematic appearances, only to be written again in the pop culture section. Plus the inclusion of pop culture “monsters,” like the X-Men’s Cyclops, the Hulk, and Matt Wagner’s Grendel (which is connected to the Grendel monster in name only) is out of place and unwarranted.
Book Review – Zone One
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
In recent years, there has been only one book that I can hated so much that I threw it into a corner, never to finish.
At least, only one until I started to read this book.
Colson Whitehead may be a great writer, but this book does not show it. Nothing happens in the 111 pages I struggled through. I failed to make any connection to the main character, or garner any sympathy for him either. It’s possible that Whitehead meant to make the character as much a zombie as the ones he is charged to clean up, but in doing so, he fails to make a character that I could connect with. With no emotional connection to the character, I have little interest in what happens to him, which is why it is so easy to toss the book aside with no desire to finish it.
To be honest, the only reason why I have this book one star is that there really isn’t an option for something worse than “I don’t like it.”
Book Review – Zombies: Complete Guide to the World of the Living Dead
Zombies: Complete Guide to the World of the Living Dead by Zachary Graves
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It’s an decent read, covering zombies in a cultural sense as well as in popular media. I felt that the book for have gone into greater detail with some of the media references (there are a number of zombie movies that the books mentions in passing, but never revisits them to explain why they were included). There is a section of zombie movies that feels redundant since at least five of the movies (White Zombie, I Walked With A Zombie, and the first three Romero “Dead” movies) are covered extensively in previous chapters. A better use for the chapter would be to give a brief description of some of the other “zombie movies” that are mentioned in the book once, then never mentioned again.
Book Review – The United States of Strange
The United States of Strange: 1,001 Frightening, Bizarre, Outrageous Facts about the Land of the Free and the Home of the Frog People, the Cockroach by Eric Grzymkowski
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This would have been a much better book if it simply just gave us the facts, many of which are quite interesting.
Sadly, the author feels the need to comment on each entry with what he claims is humor. At best, the comments are unfunny, at worst, they are incredibly insensitive, dismissive and demeaning. Given the nature (and style) of the comments, I actually thought that the author had written another book I had read with the same sort of comments. Surprisingly, he had not, which means there are two authors who have the same writing style.
Book Review – The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest
Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Let me start off by saying that the title of this book is the most appropriate title Larsson could have come up with.
Book Review – Apocalypse How
Apocalypse How: Making the End Times the Best of Times by Rob Kutner
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
There are so many more books out there on this subject that are so much better, both serious and tongue in cheek. You would be better off reading one of them than this one.
Book Review – Alexander Outland: Space Pirate
Alexander Outland: Space Pirate by G.J. Koch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A decent adventure, similar to something I might have seen on Firefly if it had survived past the first season. The biggest drawback is the title character, who happens to be the narrator as well. The first introduction to Alexander Outland does not make a good impression. In fact, it created a very bad impression for me. It did not help that he seems to relish being an arrogant, womanizing criminal jackass. With this clouded first impression, it becomes harder to accept him as a hero, or even an anti-hero. I felt like Outland needed to be toned down a bit, at least at the start of the book, for him to work as the narrator. Either that, or the book needed to be a third person narration, where we focus more on how the crew reacts to such a unlikable, albeit very skilled character.
100 Books in 366 Days – Post Goal
Books (Photo credit: henry…)
Now that I’ve reached my goal of reading one hundred books in 366 days, I figured it was time to relax a bit. I’m not going to stop reading, but now the count will be a bit different.
