I’ve never really thought about what I put in my mouth. I heard murmurings of all the “bad” stuff that may or may not be in my food; but, frankly, the news coverage on how eggs are bad for you one day, then good for you the next turned me off to any ramblings about food. I figured I survived this long eating crap, I can survive another thirty years eating crap. But there was a little voice in the back of my mind trying to get me to listen and to think about what I was eating. Maybe...
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In Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer an asteroid hits the moon sending it closer to the Earth and sparking a series of extreme weather changes that makes survival an uncertainty. The story revolves around Miranda, a sixteen year old, who chronicles the changes in a diary as life goes from “normal” to devastating. The one aspect of Life As We Knew It that I liked is that unlike other dystopia novels, the author chronicles what happens during the devastation and not just after it. In so many other books, we read about the survivors of...
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Neil Gaiman is a master storyteller. The ideas that pour our of his “pen” are like no other. In a time where many stories are being retold over and over again, Gaiman manages to create unique stories, especially so in The Graveyard Book. Bod’s family is murdered when he is a baby. He manages to escape through some clever crib jumping, crawling out of his house and into the local graveyard. The inhabitants (mostly ghosts) decide to take care of him and protect him against the murderer who is still wandering the streets intent on killing the boy. While...
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Outlander by Diane Gabaldon is a very long book. The book was so long that I almost put it back at Barnes & Noble. Then I thought what a chicken I was for letting a really long book intimidate me when I’m suppose to be an avid reader. No book was going to get the best of me. So I bought it and I loved it. While the book was long and there were way too many descriptions of the environment (really, I can only deal with so descriptive words for a forest or a rock), I loved the...
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Today I finished Stephen King’s book about writing. On Writing is part memoir and part writing advice. Stephen King goes through the first part of the book reviewing his life and what brought him to writing. The other part of the book is about the actual craft: how King spends his days, how he writes, and also some writing techniques for a better final draft. The part of the book that struck me from the beginning and continued throughout the book is that King has always loved to write. Writing was a part of him since childhood and he...
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Precious Jones is the exact opposite of your typical literary heroine. She is overweight. She is black. She is poor. She is illiterate. She is sixteen and pregnant with her father’s second child. Push by Sapphire is the exact opposite of escapism. Push is the deepest, darkest of realities that no one wants to think about or look at. Yet, Precious Jones is the kind of heroine that every person aspires to be; the kind that fights to overcome all odds. At sixteen, Precious is kicked out of high school for being pregnant. The school sends her to an...
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