This was obviously a quick read, but in the spirit of my goal to watch all the Academy Award Best Picture winners, this illustrated history was interesting. I’m also an amateur movie poster collector so this appealed to me on that level as well. About half way through the history, they switched to showing more foreign posters for the films because all the US posters had become very cookie-cutter and similar, mostly featuring the disembodied heads of the stars with the title of the movie.
And as the book was short, so are my comments.

I had Natural Selection written down in the back of my Moleskin on my list of “might be good, look for it sometime” books that I collect from people and around the web. It was checked out for a long time at my library but I eventually snagged it and enjoyed the read.

It reminded me a bit of a Michael Crichton book in that it read in away that I imagined it as a movie a lot of the time. Also, it was spewing out enough science speak to make the basis of the plot seem not completely ridiculous.

I’d best describe it as Jaws meets Jurassic Park meets Deep Blue Sea in book form. The characters were pretty transparent, the plot was relatively obvious on the grand scheme, and the end was wrapped up way too fast, but on the whole I enjoyed the book.

I didn’t like All the King’s Men but I don’t think I can properly judge it given the long span of time since it was made. The best picture winner for 1949 means that it has had more than 50 years to be referenced and paid homage to in dozens of other movies and tv shows I’ve seen in my life. Watching movies that are famous for one reason or another (either because they are an award winner or they are a cult classic) long after their initial popularity, has made me realize just how much in cinema is not original. Not that I didn’t know it before, but just how much popular cinema borrows from what came before makes it tough to watch the original source material.

I felt I’d seen this story before… small town man tries to better himself to right some injustice and becomes corrupted by power and becomes what he was fighting against in the first place, all the while tormenting his family and being bolstered by the support of the “people” who are just ignorant masses.

It is an ageless story, but this was probably one of the first big screen takes on it. The movie just felt small. The stagings felt a lot more like a play at times, which is more classic Hollywood. In the end… been there done that.

But despite me not really loving this interpretation of the story, I still don’t think it should have been remade last year with an “all-star” cast. I know Hollywood loves to revisit the well, but shouldn’t there be an unspoken rule that once a movie wins a Best Picture Oscar its retired, like a jersey number, never to be used again?

This non-fiction work by John Grisham tells the story of Ron Williamson, who was wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death. It is the story of this man’s life long struggle with serious mental illness and how the justice system failed him in every way imaginable.

Its the type of story that you couldn’t dream up if it weren’t true.

I must admit, that about a third of the way into the book itself, I got bogged down and bored with the details of everything and set the book aside while I read other things, but after I picked it back up, I couldn’t put it down. Even though I knew he was eventually released, I had no idea it would take so long or take the toll on so many people that it did. The idea of ever being in the court system is a very frightening one to me indeed.

I’m a bit behind my reading pace from last year, but this year has been my first foray into Stephen King and some of his books are a bit longer than my other fave authors. (As I type this, I can picture my copy of The Stand sitting on my bookshelf taunting me.) I ended up reading the first 250 pages of this book and then consuming the rest of it in the unabridged audiobook format during and after Thanksgiving travels. What I most enjoy about King’s novels, the way he paints the characters and their surroundings with words in a way that reads/sounds simple, yet is so detailed, is probably the reason that his tales translate to audiobook so well.

This story was a fascinating look at a person suffering through the grief of the death of her husband, while coming to terms with the sad, yet fantastic world that her husband had lived with and taken her to. The story has a few creepy moments, but it isn’t really a scary tale… haunting is probably more appropriate because the main character, Lisey, is haunted by her husband’s past.

I don’t know if I can properly put into words how the book is structured, but for me at least, the first 1/3 or so seemed confusing and a bit scattered. Upon finishing the story, I am led to believe that this was intentional as Lisey spends the book trying to remember things from the past that are so part of her in the present, such as words and phrases that her husband used, but she can’t remember the reason behind them. They are all remembered and acknowledged by the end of the story and everything makes sense.

I recommend this book.

I’m going to write about this but right now I’m just testing to see if I can get this to post to my blog.

I’m not sure how I ended up checking The Last Cato out from the library. I had a note in the back of the little notebook I carry around with a book-reading possibilities list about it from somewhere. It was listed as similar to The Da Vinci Code which is only true on a very high level. There was a search to find a religious relic and a lot about the Catholic church, but that is where the similarities end.

The main character is a nun who works in the Vatican archives as a researcher/restorer of artifacts and relics. From that background she gets swept up with a captain of the Swiss Guard and another researcher from Egypt in pursuit of a relic of the cross that Christ was crucified on (supposedly… who can say where these relics really came from?). In order to find what they need they find themselves playing the role of Dante from The Divine Comedy and facing the seven trials of purgatory. (Side note: this is the second book in the last year that I’ve read that used Dante as the basis for the plot, maybe its time I read the original.)

The book is by Matilde Asensi, a Spanish author, and this is her first book translated into English. The one aspect of the book that I found might have been lost in translation is the fact that Spain is a Catholic country and I am not Catholic. I’m fairly familiar with the Catholic church since many of my friends and family are, but while many things were explained in the book, there seemed to be an assumption on the part of the reader that they would understand certain things. Such as the titles of people in the church hierarchy, different festivals, or things about saints and relics. It didn’t really detract from my reading, but it just felt like I might be missing out on some additional level of understanding.

Not that this was a terribly deep book. The obligatory there-are-two-guys-and-one-girl-there-will-be-some-romantic-entanglement plot line was pretty obvious even when the author tried to throw you off for a bit. The very end of the book was a bit predictable, however the end of the search was not what I was expecting at all. It was very fantastic in the “fantastic voyages” sense.

I found it to be an entertaining read.

and I don’t feel real good about using my cell phone anymore.

I’ve only begun to get into the Stephen King catalog, but I had heard many good things about this new book, Cell so I originally picked it up as an unabridged audiobook when I was doing a lot of driving last weekend. I was hooked instantly. I only got halfway through the audiobook by the time I got home, so I didn’t hesitate to go directly to B&N and pick it up in hardback to finish that night and add it to my bookshelf to keep. I love the way King describes his characters and the world he creates for them. There is nothing about it that seems remarkable from an English lit point of view, yet some how it seeps into the reader’s brain and its as if you’re there (even though its not usually a good place to be). I’ve also realized in the few King books that I’ve read that I shouldn’t get too attached to any one character, because their untimely death is possibly just around the next page turn.

Obviously from the title, one can tell that cell phones are going to be a key point in the plot. I really don’t want to give any of the story away because its just so compelling and engrossing, but I’ll just say that it definitely made me paranoid about my cell phone and cell phones around me for a few days, not to mention it made me making mental lists of how I should get some disaster/survival gear together, because you just never know what could happen.

In the end, I found Cell to be a perfect mix of the frighteningly fantastic with the realities of our modern world.

I had not heard of Kathy Reichs until the show ‘Bones’ came out this past year. I enjoy the show, especially the character of Temperance. I eagerly picked up this book for summer reading. I took it back to the library after only 4 chapters. I understand that the tv and movie industries change books for on-screen adaptations, but the character in the book was so completely different than the Temperance on the tv show that I couldn’t deal with it. My ‘Bones’ isn’t a recovering alcoholic (that i can recall), who has a daughter and actually references popular culture!

I just couldn’t see myself investing in the series in book form along with the series on TV… and since I follow enough mystery book series as it is, I gave up on this one.

This was one of the best Stephanie Plum books yet! I always chuckle at the stories, but this one left me full on laughing out loud until my stomach hurt. It had great comedic highs and some truly shocking moments that made me nervous to turn the page. A great, fast summer read that I highly recommend. A delight!