Tag Archives: Books

Quote of the Day

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Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do.  But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances.  Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there.  But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it might be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it.

A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Wide Window – Lemony Snicket

Book Review/Analysis: Allegiant

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Warning, this review contains spoilers for the previous books of the series, Divergent and Insurgent.

Allegiant, the third and final book in the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth, picks up right where its predecessor left off.  At the end of Insurgent the factionless had taken over, doing away with the faction system and killing the leader of the Erudite.  A video had been found which revealed that the city was sealed and the faction system put in place in order to fix the problems of the outside world, and that when enough Divergent had appeared they were to emerge into the larger world to fulfill that purpose.  Tris and Tobias/Four had reconciled and decided to no longer keep secrets from each other.  What we were left with at the end of book two was a long list of questions and an uncertainty as to what could possibly happen next.

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Book Review: The Maze Runner

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Thomas wakes up in a dark room and can’t remember anything from his past except his name.  The room is an elevator, slowly rising until doors above him open to the sky and he finds himself in a glade surrounded by teenaged boys, just like him.  The glade is surrounded by towering walls and beyond those walls lies the maze, a deadly mystery whose walls change position every night and which is filled with murderous, biomechanical creatures.  Each day, some of the boys run out into the maze, mapping its movements and searching for a way out, but they have to be back by sunset so that they’re not trapped in the maze with the creatures when the doors close automatically.

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Quote of the Day

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Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Chapter 3 – “The Invitation”

[From Ron’s note] If they say yes, send Pig back with your answer pronto, and we’ll come and get you at five o’clock on Sunday.  If they say no, send Pig back pronto and we’ll come and get you at five o’clock on Sunday anyway.

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The Casual Vacancy – J.K. Rowling

There was nothing, as far as Howard could see, to stop the Fielders growing fresh vegetables; nothing to stop them cleaning them disciplining their sinister, hooded, spray-painting offspring; nothing to stop them pulling themselves together as a community and tackling the dirt and the shabbiness; nothing to stop them cleaning themselves up and taking jobs; nothing at all.  So Howard was forced to draw the conclusion that they were choosing, of their own free will, to live the way they lived, and that the estate’s air of slightly threatening degradation was nothing more than a physical manifestation of ignorance and indolence.

[Love Pirate’s note: Howard is the head of the town council and main “villain” of the book.]

Book Review: The Cuckoo’s Calling

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There was a bit of a stir when the warmly received The Cuckoo’s Calling was discovered not to be Robert Galbraith’s debut novel, but that he was in fact a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling.  The reasons behind the pseudonym seem pretty obvious considering the critical and public reaction to Rowling’s previous novel, The Casual Vacancy.  Using a different name allowed Rowling anonymity, where her book could be taken on the value of its content alone, without the hype, expectations and preconceptions that would have come from releasing “J.K. Rowling’s new novel”.  And, tellingly, Galbraith got some very good reviews before the secret slipped, with several reviewers finding it hard to believe that The Cuckoo’s Calling could be a debut novel.

The Cuckoo’s Calling is a pretty straight-forward detective story, but is relentlessly entertaining and filled with memorable characters.  It tells the story of the death of Lula Landry, a supermodel whose fall from her penthouse apartment was ruled a suicide by the police.  Continue reading →

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The Casual Vacancy – J.K. Rowling

“Stone dead,” said Howard, as though there were degrees of deadness and the kind that Barry Fairbrother had contracted was particularly sordid.

Book Review: The Casual Vacancy

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The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling’s follow up to the Harry Potter series is a bit difficult to review, or even to classify.  It’s one part political drama, one part small town comedy, while also being largely an ethical fable about our attitudes toward others, the interconnectedness of our lives and the consequences of our actions.  It’s a seedy, foul-mouthed take on a host of issues that can feel both exaggerated and painfully realistic and believable at the same moment.  And while on the surface The Casual Vacancy has little in common with Harry Potter, both stories begin in the same fashion, with death.

The opening of The Casual Vacancy is a far cry from the double murder that began Rowling’s other series, starting instead with the rather pedestrian death of Barry Fairbrother as he collapses in the parking lot of the local golf club on his anniversary due to an aneurism.   Continue reading →

Quote of the Day

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H.M.S. Surprise – Patrick O’Brian

“Jack, you have debauched my sloth.”

How do you write about something you love?

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Harry Potter is an obsession of mine, but it’s something I have a hard time writing about.  The depth of feeling I have about the books keeps me from being able to explain myself in a coherent way, because the emotional experience is so raw and personal that it overwhelms me, and I can’t find the words to express it.  I listen to the audiobooks constantly (because I have more time to listen to audiobooks than to read, lately), getting to the end of Deathly Hallows and starting over again with Sorcerer’s Stone.  It’s pretty much constantly on my mind, and even if I’m not actively thinking about it, it’s always nearby.  (The only piece of jewelry I wear other than my wedding ring is a ring I designed which has 7 symbols on it, one of which is the sign of the Deathly Hallows.)  I may proselytize about the church of Joss Whedon, but Harry Potter means more to me than anything Joss has created, though I rarely talk about it due to its personal nature.  I find myself disappointed and heartbroken whenever I try and fail, so I often just keep my mouth shut.

This puts me in an odd position with regards to the Harry Potter movies.   Continue reading →