Reading List

Are you ready for a really frightening book? I mean, really, really frightening, the kind you don't want to be reading when you're home alone at night? Not just weird or creepy, like some of the Stephen King stuff, but honest -to -God -I've -got -goosebumps -and -I -think -I -just -heard -something -in -the -basement kind of scary. If so, then Relic (Preston-Childs) is for you.

Say hello to Detective Pendergast from the FBI, in New York investigating several gruesome murders in the New York Museum of Natural History that are similar to some he investigated in New Orleans years earlier. Helped along by incompetent blundering from the type of people you would expect if from, the monster is lose and ripping folks to shreds inside the museum. With never a dull moment, this fast-paced story steadily grows in intensity up until the final moments. There are even a few twists at the end, which will set you up for the next book in the series.

Well, my wife E told me I should read this book. She's a reasonably intelligent woman, and I'm scared to not do what she says, so I read it.

The book takes 3 seemingly disparate individuals, each with their own story, and (eventually) weaves them into a single tale. The primary theme is the illegal organ trade, and how power, money and ego ultimately corrupts people and organizations that probably started with good intentions.

What better time of year to dive into a classic like Bram Stoker's Dracula than in October? What better Halloween treat
could be there be?

Actually, there's probably not many out there over the age of 15 that haven't seen and heard this story so many times, in so many different variations that there is little in the original story that will surprise, much less scare.

Second of three books in the series A Space Trilogy:

1. Out of Silent Planet
2. Perelandra
3. That Hideous Strength - review coming soon...

Hmm...

What do you think would have happened had Eve not eaten the fruit from the forbidden tree of knowledge? What if an advocate had dropped from the sky to help her resist temptation, an unlikely champion willing (however reluctantly) to do battle with the serpent?

One of three books in the series A Space Trilogy:

1. Out of Silent Planet
2. Perelandra
3. That Hideous Strength - review coming soon...

In Out of Silent Planet, the first book in the Space Trilogy series, the stage is set with an unassuming (albiet perhaps slightly pretentious) intellectual on a vacation 'walk' through the countryside in 1930's England. A kidnapping and a scientifically unlikely journey to another planet later, the story manages to show you the worst (and maybe not the best, but at least the forgivable) about ourselves.

... omg, ru srs? zzz, kwim? ...
One adolescent girl text messaging another about something boring.

Something similar to the line above is all I could think of while reading this book. I don't like to be overly harsh, but the book is something you would expect out of a 14 year old. Even that's not fair, my 14 year old daughter has done better than this.

At first I thought it was just one of those sadly misguided books, born from a pre-conceived concept that was desperately in search of a story as a vehicle through which it could be shoved down our throats. In this case it was a love story in search of a science fiction adventure, two phrases any serious author should think long and hard about before attempting to wrap a book around them.