Shawn Towner

Starts off as a supernatural novel of a girl who can collapse space on her bike and a librarian who can see the future in Scrabble tiles, but it eventually becomes the story of a mother trying to rescue her kidnapped son. There's still the underpinnings of supernatural events, but it's not nearly as much of a vampire novel as the title would seem to indicate. There are a couple of “Hollywood” moments, where oversized and unrealistic explosions save the hero and advance the plot in a tidy fashion, but those are just brief distractions from an otherwise riveting novel. (And yes, ‘riveting' is something of a lazy reviewer's word, but Janet Maslin, in her review in the NY Times, described the novel as ‘throat-grabbing,” which is perfect and there's no way I can come up with something better.)

I can't say that I enjoyed this book as much as The Confusion, but it's certainly Stephenson's most accessible book. It's essentially a 1000-page action movie, complete with a globe-trotting cast of Chinese hackers, Islamic terrorists, secret agents, laconic Russians, and portly Hungarians. The ending gets a little random at times (I honestly wonder if Stephenson has played Red Dead Redemption; the role of random cougar attacks certainly reminded me of the game) but it doesn't detract from the quality of the novel as a whole.

I've found that anything that McSweeneys adds to their McSweeneys recommends list is worth reading, and Kapitoil is no exception. The novel starts off slowly, in fact I was about to give it up as I was getting sick of the repetitive Borat/EiL jokes about immigrants having a comically poor command of the English language. Fortunately, the book picks up when it goes from making fun of people who speak in business textbook language to being a Faustian tale of American capitalism.

The book tells the story of Karim, a Middle Eastern programmer who comes to America to help an investment company deal with the Y2K problem, but who ends up writing a program that uses reports of violence in the Middle East to predict oil futures. The program is a success and Karim is tempted by money, parties, romance, and all the other excitements of 1999 NYC. He is eventually faced with the decision of whether he will should sell his program (and his soul) to American corporate interests, or instead pursue a more lofty goal.

The best thing about this book is how deftly Banks changes the focus of the novel. It goes from being about the Professor trying to investigate the Kid (a sex offender who lives under a causeway) to being about the Kid trying to learn more about the Professor. The shift is so subtle that it's barely noticeable. It's a testament to Banks' skill as a writer that he can so easily change the direction of a novel when he's already 200-300 pages into the story.

Better than the The Fall, but not as good as The Strain. The story gets consistently more unbelievable as the book progresses, and by the end I had a hard time accepting the fact that a group of tired, malnourished, wounded humans could fend off the hordes of vampires that attack them, even with the repeated assistance of an indestructible supernatural ally.

Pretty conventional modern vampire fiction (vampirism is a disease that threatens to destroy humanity, usw.) but very well-paced and enjoyable. The authors do a good job of managing a number of characters and making them all fit into the plot. I thought at first that the story was being stretched too thin, that too many ancillary characters were getting too much screen time, but everything comes together in satisfactory fashion by the end of the book. One thing I didn't like was the way the book tried to explain the biomedical aspects of the vampirism virus. In a book about a Holocaust survivor devoting his life to hunting a centuries old giant vampire with the help of a CDC doctor and a rat exterminator, scientifically realistic descriptions of the biological workings of vampirism aren't really necessary.

In my brief review of the first book of the Strain Trilogy, [b:The Strain 6065215 The Strain (The Strain, #1) Guillermo Del Toro http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255573295s/6065215.jpg 6241525], I wrote “I thought at first that the story was being stretched too thin, that too many ancillary characters were getting too much screen time, but everything comes together in satisfactory fashion by the end of the book.” The second book of the trilogy, [b:The Fall 6723348 The Fall (The Strain, #2) Guillermo Del Toro http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1277534846s/6723348.jpg 6919505], suffers from the same problem of stretching the story too thin over a number of characters, but unlike The Strain, The Fall isn't able to pull everything together by the end. And as the story expands to include less interesting and more stereotypical characters, the three main characters of the story become less believable and more like cliched action heros. For most of hte novel, they essentially become a trio of Bruce Willis in Die Hard or Jack Bauer type characters–characters who accomplish ridiculous tasks with incredible ease and who can be set upon by packs of ravenous vampires, set off an underground explosion, and then walk away without serious consequences.The Strain certainly wasn't an innovative vampire novel, at least not in comparison to a vampire apocalypse novel like [b:The Passage 6690798 The Passage (The Passage, #1) Justin Cronin http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1289283007s/6690798.jpg 2802546] or a vampire conspiracy novel like [b:Carrion Comfort 11286 Carrion Comfort Dan Simmons http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223649654s/11286.jpg 909623], but The Fall feels like a Tony Scott version of the first book in the trilogy.

A beautifully written book–some of the best prose I've read in 2012–but there's so much crammed into the book that it doesn't work as well as it should. It's got a great character–Archy Stallings–who's struggling with relationship issues, family issues, neighborhood issues, and issues of loyalty to his friends and community, and whenever the book concentrates on Archy, it's really, really good. But there are whole mess of other characters that muddle things up.

A book that, on the surface, really isn't my cup of tea. It's the type of story that is often found in indie/foreign movies: the plot-less, conflict-less character “study” of an empty shell of a character. The last third of the book shakes things up with the main character developing an odd relationship with a local Turkish boy, but it's the ending of the novel that's the most interesting. I honestly have no idea what to make of it. It could be real, it could be a hallucination, or it could be that the main character has died. It's weird.

This has been on my to-read pile for some time now, and I decided to pick it up after reading all sorts of good stuff about Bringing Up The Bodies in the commentary of the Tournament of Books. For the first few chapters, I was really into it, but after that it felt like it was just dragging on. I didn't find Mantel's prose to be all that engaging, and I really didn't like the way she handled dialogue and moving in and out of Cromwell's perspective. I did learn a little about British history, but I could have learned it faster from Wikipedia.

There are parts of this book that are absolutely amazing, usually the more actiony sequences. Although I admire VanderMeer's melding of character-driven literary fiction and dystopian sci-fi, I'd really love to see him write a more traditional genre novel. I think it would be fantastic.

My struggle in reading and fully enjoying this novel came from the main character, Rachel. Rachel is a scavenger, scouring a dangerous wasteland for anything that will help her and her boyfriend Wick survive a little while longer. My problem with Rachel is that she is the most boring character in the book. Wick is a brooding and secretive bio-engineer/drug dealer. Rachel has a sentient shape-shifting plant thing named Borne. A giant flying murderous bear is battling a magician for control of the wasteland. The bear has even more murderous little bears and the magician has equally murderous modified children fighting for her. There's also a mysterious Company, the presumptive source of the apocalypse that led to this post-apocalyptic wasteland. But most of the novel focuses on Rachel and her attempts to act as a sort of parent to Borne.

I hate to say it, but I think I would have enjoyed this novel more if it had featured the alternating point of view structure (the Gone Girl, if you will) that I am otherwise growing tired of because ever other book is using it. I wanted to see more of the world of the novel, more of the giant murderous bear, more of the magician. But Rachel spends a great deal of the novel hiding in her apartment. This is perfectly understandable and believable (THERE'S A GIANT BEAR FLYING AROUND!), but it left me wanting more (HOW CAN THE GIANT BEAR FLY!?!)

Starts off strong, but then it just meanders. It felt like reading the same scene over and over, with just the characters' pretentious references to art and literature changing.

Good, but not as good as I hoped it would be. (I'd give it 3.5 stars if that were an option.) King does a remarkable job of handling so many characters spread out all over the US, but I was bothered by the fact that sometimes the narration is very much focused on the thoughts of one characters only to be interrupted by an outside narrative voice (which I would call King's voice, even though that wouldn't be entirely correct.) And some of the dialogue–I'm not sure if it's dated or just plain bad–but I had trouble believing it, which is disappointing considering the effort King put into realizing his characters. The parts that dealt with the spread of the superflu were great: scary with a nix mix of the major characters and smaller vignettes showing the effects elsewhere.

The replacement for They Say, I Say is finally here. Not that TSIS is particularly bad or anything. It's useful for academic writing, but it's not fun. It doesn't spark joy for writing. Warner's book goes beyond templates and structures to focus on the experiences of writing. It's a book that is practical in the sense that you could use it for self-study or type up the writing tasks and use them in assignments for a course. All the writing experiences in the book emphasize audience awareness and a real purpose for writing. Many of the writing tasks in the book are common assignments (summary, rhetorical analysis, descriptive essay) but Warner frames them and presents them as writing experiences to be explored rather than essays to be typed. This framing, along with the fact that these assignments are open-ended and value student choice (instead of being writing prompts), creates a writing and teaching environment that values the writer just as much as the assignment.

This book reminds me of Georgia Heard's Writing Towards Home in that it's a book that you can pick up, turn to any chapter, and find a writing experience worth engaging in. It could easily become the basis for an engaging first-year comp curriculum. I wish it included readings (or links/QR codes to suggested reading), like some editions of TSIS or more traditional writing textbooks like Everyone's an Author do. Warner emphasizes the connection between reading and writing and the importance of learning from mentor texts, but the burden of finding those texts is up to the reader. That's fine, as a don't believe this book is meant to be a standalone textbook, but for teachers looking for a course text, keep in mind that you'll probably have to find some readings to accompany the writing experiences you use from this book.

Zombies seem to be very popular these days. There are zombie is video games, zombies on TV shows, and even zombies in books. But one of the things I've noticed about this zombie comeback is that many of the things supposedly about zombies aren't really about zombies. Like The Walking Dead TV show, which is more about people trying to survive, rather than people trying to avoid being turned into zombies. Without the fear of zombiefication, and the loss of life and humanity that comes with it, zombies are really nothing more than attention-grabbing set pieces. Would The Walking Dead really be that much different if, instead of zombies roaming the landscape, the danger was gangs of cannibals or other post-apocalyptic human threats? In my opinion, a zombie story needs real zombies, and the focus of the horror should be zombie-related, not survival-related. In other words, the central conflict of a zombie story should be the struggle to avoid becoming a zombie. Alden Bell's novel, The Reapers are the Angels, follows the same pattern as some other recent zombie works, in that the central focus is general survival in a post-apocalyptic hellscape; zombies are just one of the problems the wannabe survivors face. That's not to say it's a bad novel, but it's disengenous to try and pass it off as a zombie novel.

The Reapers are the Angels tells the story of Temple, a fifteen-year-old girl trying to survive in a zombie-infested hellscape. The thing is, zombies are really a threat to Temple. She has a Buffy-like aplomb for killing, which means that she has little trouble dismembering and beheading the shuffling meatskins, as zombies are called in the novel. Her skill in killing makes the beginning of the novel somewhat hard to fathom. Temple is living in a lighthouse, catching fresh fish for food, and safely removed from society. She sees one zombie wash up on shore and she's all like, “Oh no! I have to run away!” Why not just stay in the lighthouse, which would probably be easy to defend, rather than go roaming around in the wastelands of Florida? It doesn't make any sense.

As Temple continues her travels, she meets people, easily kills zombies, and wanders around. It's not very interesting. It's actually a lot like a not very interesting imitation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. About halfway through the novel, things start to pick up when Temple kills a man and that man's brother, Moses Todd, vows revenge. Of course, this doesn't make it any more of a zombie novel, because the antagonist is human and zombies are just ancillary background characters.

Things really start to pick up when Temple, still on the run from Moses, finds a mentally retarded man carrying his dead grandmother and a note reading:

Hello! My name is Maury and I wouldn't hurt a fly. My grandmother loves me and wishes she could take care of me forever, but she's most likely gone now. I have family out west. If you find me, will you take me to them? God bless you.

Temple, unable to turn her back on a helpless innocent, makes escorting Maury to Texas her primary goal. Moses is still following them, occasionally making an appearance, but the focus of the novel becomes Temple's efforts at defining herself. Is she a caring young girl capable of protecting and saving for Maury, or is she nothing more than a violent killing machine? In the final third of the novel, zombies become almost non-existent (although there are some mutants that pop in for some odd reason) and the novel becomes much more philosophical. Even the conversations between Temple and Moses concentrate on the nature of evil and Temple's morality. The also fight some mutants, and again, I don't quite understand why the mutants are there.

Although the novel wanders into strange territory for a brief spell, Bell redeems himself with the final showdown between Temple and Moses. It's during this showdown that Temple first seems vulnerable. Fighting zombies and mutants, there's never any question that she's going to win, but the showdown with Moses is brilliantly suspenseful. Bell's talents as a writer are on full display as Temple, facing down the barrel of a gun, evaluates her options and plans her last-ditch effort for survival. I won't reveal the Shakespearean-in-magnitude conclusion, but I will say that it surprised me to the extent that I actually went back and reread a page or two, just to make sure I hadn't misread something. The resolution is shocking, surprising, but not absurd or unbelievable.

It's a shame that the first half of The Reapers are the Angels isn't nearly as good as the second half. In all honesty, you could start reading this novel about ten before the start of Part 2 of the book and it would make perfect sense. It might even be a better novel. Although the novel drags at the beginning, The Reapers are the Angels picks up enough at the end to still be a worthwhile read.

This book is scary. Scary intimidating in terms of its size. Scary detailed in the depth and breadth of information in the book. And scary in how it shows you just how little you actually know about the history of the novel. But its scariness, this is a wonderfully readable and fascinating book.

For years I have been randomly shouting to anyone who comes near me that genre fiction is the new literary fiction. One of the books I often mention to defend that assertion is Patrick deWitt's Western novel, The Sisters Brothers. That book is a perfect example of the brilliance that occurs when literary talent combines the with plot-driven adventure of a genre story. So when I got that monthly Goodreads email about new books by author's I've read and saw deWitt's latest, Undermajordomo Minor, on the September release list, I new I would get and read the book as soon as it came out. Undermajordomo Minor is not a genre novel like The Sisters Brothers, but it's not the plotless “character-driven” literary fiction that I have grown to find so tiresome either. It's a book that reminds me of the works of P.G. Wodehouse, but where every character is Bertie Wooster. The clever dialogue drives the novel, and when things shift to a strange Bertie Wooster meets 50 Shades of Grey meets Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover vibe, deWitt's prose makes even the most disturbing scene as delectable as a summer sausage. There's also a Very Big Hole. It is well named and essential to the development of the novel's hero.

I realize that this isn't the most detailed review, but Undermajordomo Minor is a novel to be enjoyed, not explained. Lucien ‘Lucy' Minor accepts a post underneath the majordomo at the estate of a nearby Baron, and it turns out that everyone is super wacky. There, now you know what the books is about. Now go read it. Savor it. It's a perfect last couple weeks of summer read.

This is not a zombie novel, despite the publicity stuff that declares it filled with sex and violence. There is some sex and a little violence, but this is really the story of a struggling writer trying to cope with his life falling apart. It's literary fiction wearing a genre fiction t-shirt. But it's Aleksander Hemon, so it's pretty damn good.

I initially wanted a criticize the book for having a bland writing style, but the same could also be said of the previous Salander books. There's the same unnecessarily detailed focus on brand names and food and drink, but Stieg Larsson's writing had an energy to it, even when he was spending to much time describing coffee or sandwiches. The writing here lacks that energy. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a fascinating and engaging read, even when it's just Blomkvist examining old photos. The Girl in the Spider's Web is never that entertaining. Salander is barely present in the first half of the book, and even though our faithful hero Blomkvist is still present t throughout the novel, it takes a while before he actually starts doing something. This book is a disappointment. It doesn't deserve to be called the fourth book of the Millennium series.

I know that bitter and lonely 35-year-old men aren't really the target audience for Young Adult paranormal vampire fiction, but I thought I was really going to like this book. The concept seemed interesting, as it keeps a lot of traditional vampire story stuff, while adding some new stuff to create a pretty interesting version of a world where vampirism is a disease quarantined in cities called Coldtowns. I did really enjoy a lot of the vampire parts of the book. Unfortunately, I couldn't get into the parts about teenage girls making out with ancient vampire boys.

I'm in the murder mystery. I'm in the ghost story. I'm in the combination murder mystery ghost story.

A novel with a brilliantly pithy first chapter (“Fuck you.”) that quickly goes downhill. The plot, an ex-mercenary pot dealer must deal with the kidnapping of his friend by a Mexican drug cartel, is timely and intriguing, but the author's prose is ridiculously awful. It's the writing of a unhip man trying desperately to sound hip. A person isn't missing, he's 404. A guy doesn't have a bad attitude, he has a ‘baditude.' Unfortunately, the entire novel is written in this kind of pseduo-slang tripe.

The part where Pop tells the end of Richie's story is some of the best writing I've ever read. Amazing novel.

If you're looking to start a class devoted entirely to the Simpsons, this book would probably be useful to you. If you're like me (a high school teacher that doesn't get to create courses covering whatever subject matter I want), it's not nearly as useful, at least not for anyone interested in using the Simpsons in a serious and curricularly defensible fashion.

My first year of teaching, I would have found the resources in this book useful. The authors provide an episode guide that tags each episode with thematic and intertextual descriptors. For a teacher looking to cram the Simpsons into their curriculum because they need to fill up a lesson plan for a sub (which a remarkable number of teachers at my school want to do), this episode guide is a great way for looking down a list and picking an episode that has a tag that corresponds to something that might be relevant to Romeo and Juliet. It's also useful for teachers who are looking for that episode that's like Lord of the Flies but are too lazy to Google (also a remarkable number of teachers at my school). However, using the Simpsons in this fashion treats the Simpsons like Family Guy. The Simpsons is more than just a collection of references. The authors organize this book into larger themes (linguistics, literature, post-moderism/zeitgeist) but most of the chapters are collections of references and then a couple of assignment suggestions, rather than a focused means of bringing the Simpsons into a class as a serious text.

For example, I teach Lord of the Flies. My first year of teaching, I showed “Das Bus” and “Kamp Krusty”, two episode that feature references to Lord of the Flies. That was lazy teaching. That was me saying, “I've got a half-day and I need something to show that relates to Lord of the Flies.” Teaching Lord of the Flies now, I wouldn't use “Das Bus” or Kamp Krusty. I would use “Much Apu About Nothing” and discuss the ways the people of Springfield use scapegoating and scaremongering and then compare that to what Jack does in LotF. To me, that makes for a much more interesting and meaningful discussion than watching “Das Bus” (which is an awesome episode) and then having students talk about the references the show makes to the novel.

Teachers who pick up this book to try and bring the Simpsons into their classrooms are not going to find meaningful ways to use the Simpsons to broaden the learning already going on in the classroom. They will find resources to help cherry pick episodes to supplement lessons in a very generic and uninspired fashion. For those of us wanting to actually teach the Simpsons in the same way we teach Great Expectations or Antigone (I use “Trilogy of Errors” and “Homer the Heretic”, respectively) will find this book lacking. The best way to embiggen the learning experience with the Simpsons is to watch the Simpsons. If you know what you teach and you watch the Simpsons, the lessons will come to you, rendering even the most painstakingly made charts and bibliographies completely unnecessary.

Description of a computer screen. Math. Description of the computer screen again. Quip. Repeat for a couple hundred pages.