Plot Summary
The population has been destroyed by vampires. Robert Neville is seemingly the last man on Earth, immune to vampirism. During the day he seeks out and kills sleeping vampires. At night he holds up in his home while they wait eagerly outside for him.
Review
The author writes in a very redundant manner. A great deal of pages of the story are dedicated to Neville's love of whisky. Apparently he's an alcoholic. If you remove all the references to him drinking whisky and throwing, breaking or slamming down his glass the book would be much shorter. Apparently, that's pretty much all he does in the evenings. Drink whisky and battle his anger management problems. I didn't really enjoy the story much. I get that being isolated and lonely for so long has warped Neville's mind a little but he's a really miserable character. I wasn't a fan of the writing style either. Too much time was spent on the boring details of inaction. There were a few places where something exciting happened but it didn't really make the story much more enjoyable. I think the hype behind this book over exaggerates. Maybe it played a decent role in the zombie/vampire genre but the redundancy bored me.
Spoiler Review
The book goes into detail on how stakes, crosses, garlic and mirrors work to harm the vampires but in a very explain the plot way. Like he's literally explaining it to another person verbally. The book mentions his experiments to find out this information briefly but doesn't go into detail of his thoughts. The explanation is very straightforward. It's basically all mental. The vampires mentally think they're supposed to be afraid of those things, so they are but Jewish vampires wouldn't fear a cross. The stakes work by keeping wounds open so that the air kills them, I guess. So he doesn't have to stake the heart. Any stab wound left open would do the trick. I guess they heal really fast so bullets don't work. They describe it as throwing something in wet cement. It doesn't really explain why during the day they are in a sleeping coma so deep he can literally drag them out of their houses and throw them into the sun to die. But I guess it makes killing them during the day super easy since they can't be woken up while the sun is out.
Eventually Neville meets a woman out in daylight. After chasing her down, kidnapping her and forcing her to his home, he spends the whole time questioning and mistrusting her back story and her motives. Even when he shoves garlic at her and she reacts the way a vampire would he still doesn't know that she's infected which to me was a dead giveaway. Then when he finds out she is infected, she knocks him out and runs off. Also, the short time they have together suddenly makes her care about his safety for some reason so she warns him to leave. Apparently, there are a different group of infected that have vaccines to help them function in sunlight and not be full mindless blood thirsty vampires. They plan to rebuild society and exterminate all the feral vampires. Neville is the only man left of a dead race and they intend to kill him too for murdering their brethren. All of this is told in a literal explain the plot letter that she leaves him. I didn't really like being spoon fed the plot. And I honestly don't see why she would suddenly care about his safety at all. She was sent to spy on him and find out what he knew. Somehow their short conversation got her to empathize with him. I'd rather experience it through events and observations but the book was very straightforward with explanations.
I did like when the book went into Neville's back story about how his wife and daughter started becoming ill when it all first started happening. That made him more human and likeable. It kind of rounded out his character some but they didn't go into enough detail on that. Overall, I'd say the book was a let down.
Besides I Am Legend, the book also contained several short stories. They range from just a few pages to twenty or thirty. I may as well review them. The one thing they all have in common with I Am Legend is the redundancy. The same sentences and phrases are listed over and over again in all the stories. It makes for a pretty boring read. Almost all of them are open to interpretation so there's no real conclusive ending. I normally wouldn't mind it but the reads are so dull and uninteresting it kind of makes the stories pointless and unsatisfying. It was honestly kind of painful to get through the whole book.
Buried Talents
A man (death I think) goes to a carnival and plays a game where he has to toss ping pong balls into a gold fish bowl. He wins so many times the guy in charge of the game kicks him out. Then the man leaves and the man in charge of the game has a pain in his chest. I'm guessing he either had a heart attack or was stabbed by the man or something. The whole story was annoying. The man in charge of the game kept saying the same phrase over and over, like 50 times. "Toss a ball into the fishbowl. Win a prize. There's nothing to it." It was one of the shorter stories and if you took all the redundancy out it would probably only be like 2 pages. Pointless and stupid.
The Near Departed
A man goes to a funeral home to make arrangements for his wife. He says, "She has to have the best." a whole bunch of times in Matheson's trademark style of writing. Then he reveals he plans to kill her after he leaves the funeral home. This story was less than 2 pages long. It read kind of like a Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark story.
Prey
A woman buys her boyfriend a hunting doll for his birthday. The doll comes alive and tries to murder her. She destroys the doll but the spirit inside the doll takes over her instead. This one was a straight up scary story. But it wasn't very scary. She just kept running all over the house. It was like the author was trying to fill pages by just having her run from one room to the next and close the door until the doll could get in at her. Not scary and pretty boring.
Witch War
A group of girl witches help defeat an invading army with their powers. That's it. This story is 3 pages long and the sentences are very fragmented. Next.
Dance of the Dead
Honestly, I have no idea what this story is about. A bunch of kids go driving to a concert I think and do a bunch of drugs. Then I guess there's like a reanimated corpse dancing on stage or someone being tortured on stage or something. I don't really know. It could also all be a hallucination since they're all on drugs. This was by far the dumbest story of the lot. It was written very poorly as well, to the point where I found it almost unreadable. He put a bunch of made up slang words in the story that I don't know what they mean. Plus a ton of references to Popeye for some reason. This story was terrible. The worst one in the book. An agonizing waste of time.
Dress of White Silk
This one is told from the first person narrative of a little girl who can't speak proper English or in complete sentences, so you can imagine what a mind sore reading it was. The whole story is fragmented sentences. Thankfully it was only 3 pages. She wants to play with her mom's dress but her grandmother doesn't want her to. She invites a friend over and they go to play with the dress. The friend doesn't like the dress and makes fun of a picture of her mom so she... eats her? I think she's a vampire or something.
Mad House
I actually liked this story. It was one of the better ones in the book. I man with anger management problems is separating from his wife. He takes his anger out on the house and the house in a way sends his angry energy back at him causing him to slip on the rug and bump his head, stab himself with a pencil, cut his finger on a chipped mug, fall out of his chair and hit his head, etc. Basically his anger and negative energy gets absorbed into his house and comes back at him. Either that or he's just crazy and hurting himself. It's open to interpretation. There's another message in the story. The man becomes resentful for not being able to live his dream as a writer and blames it on settling down with his wife. "A man had a choice, after all. He devoted his life to his work or to his wife and children and home. It could not be combined; not in this day and age. In this insane world where God was second to income and goodness to wealth." I think a lot of people can relate to that. This story was written in 1952 and still rings true today.
The Funeral
A vampire wants to hold a proper funeral for himself. He invites all his vampire friends to the service. The mortician is forced to attend and fears for his life the entire time. He passes out as a vampire looms over him. The next day more vampires come to book him for the same services. It's unclear if he was bitten the night before. It was pretty to the point but it was so short it was kind of strange that time was spent trying to characterize all the vampires that came to the funeral.
From Shadowed Places
A woman whose fiance is under a voodoo curse calls her witch doctor friend to come and lift it. This was completely awful and nonsensical. It just throws in some stereotypes about voodoo. The man is in pain and throwing a fit because of the curse. The woman calls her father over first for some reason and then calls her witch doctor friend. Lifting the curse involves dancing around naked and sex. It was one of the longer short stories and incredibly drawn out and stupid.
Person to Person
A man hears a phone ringing in his head every night until he finally decides to answer it and then begins having conversations with his subconscious or maybe it's supernatural. I actually liked this story at first. It was in interesting concept and kind of creepy. But then it just goes all over the place. First you think it's the guy's subconscious and he's just crazy and I guess I still think that. But it tries to offer various explanations and scenarios. First, it might be a government experiment, then it might be an inventor, then it might be a ghost, then it goes back to being the guy's subconscious again. The end is kind of open to interpretation but I guess the evil part of him takes over. All of these short stories are completely forgettable.
Friday, January 27, 2017
Monday, January 9, 2017
The Children of Men by P. D. James
Plot Summary
In a dystopian future all males have become infertile and the extinction of mankind is forthcoming. No children have been born for 25 years. The United Kingdom is ruled by the Warden of England through totalitarian means disguised as egalitarianism. Theo, the Warden's cousin, is approached by a group of revolutionaries seeking change.
Review
The book is divided into two parts and within those parts are plain narrative chapters and Theo's journal entry chapters that are told through his first person perspective. In the first part of the book most of his journal entries reminisce about the past, mainly for character development. I found the first half of the book very long and drawn out. It's over half the book and not much really happens at all. In all honestly you could skip all the journal entry chapters of the first half of the book and just read the narrative. I found myself patiently waiting for something to happen or for Theo to get to the point of his journal entries but it seemed to take forever. The opening entry sets up the backstory of how the society is run. Other than that he just goes on about his childhood relationship with this cousin (the Warden) and his failed marriage. I could sum up the actual events happening in the first half of the book in a few sentences. Also, I found the main character to be a pompous ass. He thinks very highly of his own intelligence and is very condescending to everyone he speaks to. He thinks he's better and smarter than everyone else which I found annoying. It doesn't really make for a very likable protagonist. The second half of the book is much more interesting as things are actually starting to happen but it lacks character development for all the members of the resistance group. Overall I'd say it's drawn out but still a good read. Though parts of it are kind of annoying and there's one part I found absurdly ridiculous.
Spoiler Review
The first part of the book can be summed up very quickly. Theo is approached by a group of rebels that want him to meet with his cousin, The Warden of England, and try to convince him to forgo some of the extreme totalitarian measures that are oppressing people. He hears a story from one of the rebels about how her brother escaped the island penal colony only to be tracked down and murdered. He witnesses a government mandated euthanization of the elderly that more closely resembles murder. He meets with his cousin and asks that he reconsider these practices. His cousin says no. Then he randomly decides to skip town for several months.
Him leaving town seems just random and bizarre. He's obsessing over Julian, the main female revolutionary even though he only met her three times. He's so worried about her dying the last time he sees her he promises that if she sends for him, he'll be there. And then randomly decides to leave the country and travel over Europe. Which is the complete opposite of what he promised her. Conveniently she decides to send for him months later right when he gets back from his trip. It's so odd. I feel like the trip part should have been left out of the book entirely. The author doesn't go into the detail of it. The book just skips ahead to him being back but it's too convenient and random a break in the story. I know they needed a passage a time because Julian gets pregnant and she needs to be visually showing a baby bump when he sees her again but why leave town? Why not just have him report on what he reads in the paper that their group is up to (bombings, publishing materials about their revolution, etc.) and sit around thinking of Julian and worrying about her safety. I think that's a little more believable. Plus, they basically say the rebels did next to nothing the whole time he was gone besides blow up a few docks so the elderly can't be euthanized at sea. If they're so wanted by the state, shouldn't they be more of a threat than that?
There are a few things that happen that I just don't buy at all. He claims that most people have abandoned religion but I think if something like this happened it would have the complete opposite effect. I think everyone would flock to religion. How else would anyone explain mass infertility? It would have to have been from some divine intervention. Maybe the coming of the rapture? I'm not exactly sure what the author was trying to say about religion but it clearly plays a significant role in the book considering that the only woman to get pregnant in 25 years is religious, claiming that she joined the group because it's God's will she do so and that the father of her child is a priest. However, both she and the father of her child sinned in order to conceive since she was married to someone else and having an affair but loved neither man. Theo finds religion absurd and ridiculous and spends a great deal of time reminding everyone of his opinion on it in a very condescending way, including her even though he's supposedly in love with her.
Theo starts obsessing over Julian for no apparent reason. He convinces himself that he's in love with her, maybe because she's the only other woman besides his ex-wife that he's interacted with in years. It doesn't make much sense considering she has no real character development at all. Besides the fact that she's religious, there's nothing really to her character besides being the female that drives the story because she gets pregnant. She's doesn't seem very intelligent at all, nor very compassionate.
The second half of the book has them on the run with Theo trying to protect Julian and find some place secluded and safe for her to have her baby while getting supplies. It's definitely more exciting than the first half of the book. Julian sends for Theo. He finds out she's pregnant and they go on the run looking for a safe place for her to give birth. On the drive they get attacked by the most absurd sounding gang I've ever read about. It's so ridiculous it's almost comical. They lose their car and supplies and the father of Julian's baby is murdered. Her husband finds out and betrays them to the Warden. Theo gets another car and meager supplies. On the run again they find a small shed in the woods for Julian to give birth. Theo faces off against the Warden to keep Julian's baby out of his hands. Victorious, he claims himself the new Warden and the book ends.
I like the second half of the book. It's pretty exciting but the whole gang robbing them just pulls me out of it. Apparently a gang of nearly naked youths with painted faces terrorize them while they're in their car. Then for some reason they dance around once they're out of the car and decided to murder one person in the group with their bats to prove dominance. Once they murder him, they take the car away to set it on fire and never return to finish the rest of them off or see what happened to them ever again. This just sounds so weird. My suspension of disbelief doesn't go far enough for me to even envision this scene in my head. How and why are they dancing around practically naked? Why would they steal a car of useful supplies just to burn it? Why terrorize people driving on the road for no real reason? Why leave them there to fend for themselves and not finish the rest of them off? The group escape the gang by running a few feet and jumping over a wall but that's pretty much it. They don't run very far from the ambush site in the dark and without a car they wouldn't get very far anyway. I'd be worried and on edge the entire time thinking they'd come back and finish them all off but the gang is never mentioned again. They even go back for the body so they can bury it and the gang just leaves conveniently so they can get it. It probably would have been better if there was just a normal robber on the road that needed a car and stole it at gunpoint. I mean, they needed to lose the car with supplies but doing it in this ridiculous manner makes no sense.
I can also see where The Walking Dead took inspiration for Negan and his stupid bat from. The painted faces gang is basically the same thing. Setting up a trap in the road. Threatening the group with bats that have their previous victims hair wrapped around it (instead of barb wire) and then killing one person in the group to establish dominance.
The only other thing I found odd was that cloning was never touched upon. The subject never even came up. It was established that the males are the ones that are infertile but cloning doesn't require sperm. If something like this ever happened it'd be a guarantee that cloning would be done en masse. I'm sure human cloning is being done secretly by various governments now. Even when I was in middle school the news reported on how a sheep was successfully cloned so that would definitely be a possibility. Maybe the book should have claimed that everyone was infertile, not just the males.
I liked how the book touched upon how crazy people would become if they couldn't have children. Where women were pushing dolls around in strollers pretending they were children and people were christening pets instead of babies. It was very eerie and I liked how it set the tone for what society had become.
I also liked but was equally horrified by the idea of what the Warden planned to use the baby for. To repopulate the Earth if it was a boy by breeding it like an animal. The way he described using his sperm once he came of age (13 years old) was disturbing. He mentioned that the youngest females would be 38 by then which added all kinds of child molestation and rape implications that disturbed me to think about. But the book addresses several times what they would plan to do if viable sperm was found. Pretty gross actually but believable in a desperate society. When Julian's husband thinks his seed is fertile he practically regards himself as a God and enjoys the power that would come with it. The Warden obviously wants to claim the power for himself by claiming ownership of the baby and presenting it to the world. Theo only cares for Julian and keeping her baby safe which redeems his self-important pompous attitude and made me kind of like him toward the end.
In a dystopian future all males have become infertile and the extinction of mankind is forthcoming. No children have been born for 25 years. The United Kingdom is ruled by the Warden of England through totalitarian means disguised as egalitarianism. Theo, the Warden's cousin, is approached by a group of revolutionaries seeking change.
Review
The book is divided into two parts and within those parts are plain narrative chapters and Theo's journal entry chapters that are told through his first person perspective. In the first part of the book most of his journal entries reminisce about the past, mainly for character development. I found the first half of the book very long and drawn out. It's over half the book and not much really happens at all. In all honestly you could skip all the journal entry chapters of the first half of the book and just read the narrative. I found myself patiently waiting for something to happen or for Theo to get to the point of his journal entries but it seemed to take forever. The opening entry sets up the backstory of how the society is run. Other than that he just goes on about his childhood relationship with this cousin (the Warden) and his failed marriage. I could sum up the actual events happening in the first half of the book in a few sentences. Also, I found the main character to be a pompous ass. He thinks very highly of his own intelligence and is very condescending to everyone he speaks to. He thinks he's better and smarter than everyone else which I found annoying. It doesn't really make for a very likable protagonist. The second half of the book is much more interesting as things are actually starting to happen but it lacks character development for all the members of the resistance group. Overall I'd say it's drawn out but still a good read. Though parts of it are kind of annoying and there's one part I found absurdly ridiculous.
Spoiler Review
The first part of the book can be summed up very quickly. Theo is approached by a group of rebels that want him to meet with his cousin, The Warden of England, and try to convince him to forgo some of the extreme totalitarian measures that are oppressing people. He hears a story from one of the rebels about how her brother escaped the island penal colony only to be tracked down and murdered. He witnesses a government mandated euthanization of the elderly that more closely resembles murder. He meets with his cousin and asks that he reconsider these practices. His cousin says no. Then he randomly decides to skip town for several months.
Him leaving town seems just random and bizarre. He's obsessing over Julian, the main female revolutionary even though he only met her three times. He's so worried about her dying the last time he sees her he promises that if she sends for him, he'll be there. And then randomly decides to leave the country and travel over Europe. Which is the complete opposite of what he promised her. Conveniently she decides to send for him months later right when he gets back from his trip. It's so odd. I feel like the trip part should have been left out of the book entirely. The author doesn't go into the detail of it. The book just skips ahead to him being back but it's too convenient and random a break in the story. I know they needed a passage a time because Julian gets pregnant and she needs to be visually showing a baby bump when he sees her again but why leave town? Why not just have him report on what he reads in the paper that their group is up to (bombings, publishing materials about their revolution, etc.) and sit around thinking of Julian and worrying about her safety. I think that's a little more believable. Plus, they basically say the rebels did next to nothing the whole time he was gone besides blow up a few docks so the elderly can't be euthanized at sea. If they're so wanted by the state, shouldn't they be more of a threat than that?
There are a few things that happen that I just don't buy at all. He claims that most people have abandoned religion but I think if something like this happened it would have the complete opposite effect. I think everyone would flock to religion. How else would anyone explain mass infertility? It would have to have been from some divine intervention. Maybe the coming of the rapture? I'm not exactly sure what the author was trying to say about religion but it clearly plays a significant role in the book considering that the only woman to get pregnant in 25 years is religious, claiming that she joined the group because it's God's will she do so and that the father of her child is a priest. However, both she and the father of her child sinned in order to conceive since she was married to someone else and having an affair but loved neither man. Theo finds religion absurd and ridiculous and spends a great deal of time reminding everyone of his opinion on it in a very condescending way, including her even though he's supposedly in love with her.
Theo starts obsessing over Julian for no apparent reason. He convinces himself that he's in love with her, maybe because she's the only other woman besides his ex-wife that he's interacted with in years. It doesn't make much sense considering she has no real character development at all. Besides the fact that she's religious, there's nothing really to her character besides being the female that drives the story because she gets pregnant. She's doesn't seem very intelligent at all, nor very compassionate.
The second half of the book has them on the run with Theo trying to protect Julian and find some place secluded and safe for her to have her baby while getting supplies. It's definitely more exciting than the first half of the book. Julian sends for Theo. He finds out she's pregnant and they go on the run looking for a safe place for her to give birth. On the drive they get attacked by the most absurd sounding gang I've ever read about. It's so ridiculous it's almost comical. They lose their car and supplies and the father of Julian's baby is murdered. Her husband finds out and betrays them to the Warden. Theo gets another car and meager supplies. On the run again they find a small shed in the woods for Julian to give birth. Theo faces off against the Warden to keep Julian's baby out of his hands. Victorious, he claims himself the new Warden and the book ends.
I like the second half of the book. It's pretty exciting but the whole gang robbing them just pulls me out of it. Apparently a gang of nearly naked youths with painted faces terrorize them while they're in their car. Then for some reason they dance around once they're out of the car and decided to murder one person in the group with their bats to prove dominance. Once they murder him, they take the car away to set it on fire and never return to finish the rest of them off or see what happened to them ever again. This just sounds so weird. My suspension of disbelief doesn't go far enough for me to even envision this scene in my head. How and why are they dancing around practically naked? Why would they steal a car of useful supplies just to burn it? Why terrorize people driving on the road for no real reason? Why leave them there to fend for themselves and not finish the rest of them off? The group escape the gang by running a few feet and jumping over a wall but that's pretty much it. They don't run very far from the ambush site in the dark and without a car they wouldn't get very far anyway. I'd be worried and on edge the entire time thinking they'd come back and finish them all off but the gang is never mentioned again. They even go back for the body so they can bury it and the gang just leaves conveniently so they can get it. It probably would have been better if there was just a normal robber on the road that needed a car and stole it at gunpoint. I mean, they needed to lose the car with supplies but doing it in this ridiculous manner makes no sense.
I can also see where The Walking Dead took inspiration for Negan and his stupid bat from. The painted faces gang is basically the same thing. Setting up a trap in the road. Threatening the group with bats that have their previous victims hair wrapped around it (instead of barb wire) and then killing one person in the group to establish dominance.
The only other thing I found odd was that cloning was never touched upon. The subject never even came up. It was established that the males are the ones that are infertile but cloning doesn't require sperm. If something like this ever happened it'd be a guarantee that cloning would be done en masse. I'm sure human cloning is being done secretly by various governments now. Even when I was in middle school the news reported on how a sheep was successfully cloned so that would definitely be a possibility. Maybe the book should have claimed that everyone was infertile, not just the males.
I liked how the book touched upon how crazy people would become if they couldn't have children. Where women were pushing dolls around in strollers pretending they were children and people were christening pets instead of babies. It was very eerie and I liked how it set the tone for what society had become.
I also liked but was equally horrified by the idea of what the Warden planned to use the baby for. To repopulate the Earth if it was a boy by breeding it like an animal. The way he described using his sperm once he came of age (13 years old) was disturbing. He mentioned that the youngest females would be 38 by then which added all kinds of child molestation and rape implications that disturbed me to think about. But the book addresses several times what they would plan to do if viable sperm was found. Pretty gross actually but believable in a desperate society. When Julian's husband thinks his seed is fertile he practically regards himself as a God and enjoys the power that would come with it. The Warden obviously wants to claim the power for himself by claiming ownership of the baby and presenting it to the world. Theo only cares for Julian and keeping her baby safe which redeems his self-important pompous attitude and made me kind of like him toward the end.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Library
Today I went to my local library and got a library card. I also picked up my book club reading material The Children of Men. I actually can't remember the last time I went to a library. It must have been when I was in college because I didn't have a library card since moving to Los Angeles. I really like libraries. In fact, I used to volunteer at one when I was in middle school. I was such a good library assistant I got a plaque for it. I always thought working in a library would be a great job for me. I love organization and reading. It's actually a pity I hadn't been to the library until now.
I figured why bother buying a book I'm only going to read once and then donate when I can go to the library and borrow it for free. Plus there's so many books there it'll be nice to browse the shelves and see what I'd be interested in reading next. My husband and son came with me. I thought it was pretty exciting taking my son on his first trip to the library. I plan to take him at least every month when he starts reading. When I was little I used to go pretty often and get different books to read. At one point I even started reading a teen romance novel series called Sweet Dreams. Anyone who knows me would probably think that's funny since I mainly read horror and classic literature. I read a lot as a kid. When I was eleven I used to read one book a day. Usually R.L. Stine books from the Fear Street series. Actually back then I had a pretty large collection of Fear Street books, I don't even know how many. Probably between 50 and 100. I do regret as a kid not branching out more to other authors. Over time each Fear Street book read exactly the same just with a different character and scenario. It would have been better if I'd read a bunch of different authors. I did read a few other young adult horror authors but didn't really get into them as much, except for Richie Tankersley Cusick. I remember really liking her books when I was younger.
We took our son to the children's section of the library and I found Frog and Toad are Friends. I remembered having that book as a kid. I sat down and read it to him which was really nice. Libraries are just great!
I figured why bother buying a book I'm only going to read once and then donate when I can go to the library and borrow it for free. Plus there's so many books there it'll be nice to browse the shelves and see what I'd be interested in reading next. My husband and son came with me. I thought it was pretty exciting taking my son on his first trip to the library. I plan to take him at least every month when he starts reading. When I was little I used to go pretty often and get different books to read. At one point I even started reading a teen romance novel series called Sweet Dreams. Anyone who knows me would probably think that's funny since I mainly read horror and classic literature. I read a lot as a kid. When I was eleven I used to read one book a day. Usually R.L. Stine books from the Fear Street series. Actually back then I had a pretty large collection of Fear Street books, I don't even know how many. Probably between 50 and 100. I do regret as a kid not branching out more to other authors. Over time each Fear Street book read exactly the same just with a different character and scenario. It would have been better if I'd read a bunch of different authors. I did read a few other young adult horror authors but didn't really get into them as much, except for Richie Tankersley Cusick. I remember really liking her books when I was younger.
We took our son to the children's section of the library and I found Frog and Toad are Friends. I remembered having that book as a kid. I sat down and read it to him which was really nice. Libraries are just great!
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Book Club
So this year I decided that I wanted to read more books. I honestly don't think I read enough. I mostly read online news articles but I want to read actual books. So I figured what better way to motivate myself than to drag my friends into it and start a book club. So far, three of my friends have joined but they said they'll ask to see if any of their friends are interested as well. I decided to do the book club meeting every other month (so 6 books total) because people have very busy schedules (myself included) and trying to get everyone together every month is probably going to be impossible. We'll take turns choosing the reading material in the order in which we joined the club. The person choosing will give 3-4 choices that everyone can vote on in case they've already read it, or hate the author or whatnot. I think that's the fairest way to do it. At the end of the second month the person who choose the book will host a brunch to discuss the book and socialize.
I decided that I'm going to start a blog to review the books I read. I'm not going to limit myself to just the book club choices. I'll review any other books I read as well. There are books I have in mind that I want to read but I think having a book club where someone else chooses something I wouldn't normally consider reading myself will be a good way to expose myself to different types of literature and expand my mind. 5
Obviously since it was my idea I went first with this month's pics. My choices were:
World War Z by Max Brooks
The Children of Men by P. D. James
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
1984 by George Orwell
The vote ended up being for The Children of Men. My top pick was actually World War Z but I'm happy to read any of the choices. I'll probably end up reading them all either way. I actually read over half of 1984 a while ago but I never finished it. I almost didn't put it on the list since I figured everyone's probably already read it but I think there should always be a classic on the choice list.
I decided that I'm going to start a blog to review the books I read. I'm not going to limit myself to just the book club choices. I'll review any other books I read as well. There are books I have in mind that I want to read but I think having a book club where someone else chooses something I wouldn't normally consider reading myself will be a good way to expose myself to different types of literature and expand my mind. 5
Obviously since it was my idea I went first with this month's pics. My choices were:
World War Z by Max Brooks
The Children of Men by P. D. James
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
1984 by George Orwell
The vote ended up being for The Children of Men. My top pick was actually World War Z but I'm happy to read any of the choices. I'll probably end up reading them all either way. I actually read over half of 1984 a while ago but I never finished it. I almost didn't put it on the list since I figured everyone's probably already read it but I think there should always be a classic on the choice list.
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