Oryx and Crake

This was a lot different than what I originally thought it would be like. Usually when I think about a post apocalyptic setting I'm thinking about destroyed cities, people living in bunkers, and a hero coming to reestablish their civilization. In oryx and crake however the hero is a man named snowman by the local people. Children of this new world are oblivious to the old world and it's technologies and Snowman knows everything about the old world which fascinates them. The book begins with a story about Snowman's past and the world he came from, our world but a bit farther in the future. It goes though his last and then tells about how it was all lost. The book is about him and how he has lost everything. It made me incredibly sad and wonder what it would be like if I were in his position. What would I do? Where would I go? How would I keep going? It's definitely an interesting read and I'd suggest it to anyone. 

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Simply put I love british humor. This book/radio show is no exception. I always enjoy how bizarre they always turnout to be. In Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy the main characters home planet, Earth, is destroyed by aliens in order to make an intergalactic freeway. Like in most british comedy the main character show a bit of mild surprise that his home planet is being destroyed but very quickly gets used to it. He is then beamed up to a space ship with his friend, who is also an alien but looks like a human, and begin their joinery though the galaxy meeting strange aliens and intergalactic super stars. Its a strange book thats for sure. Not my favorite but it did get a few laughs from me. After reading all of these types of scifi I came to like space opera the most but that is probably mostly due to the fact that it is the sub genre we are most familiar with. However if there was any book filled with witty, slapstick, british comedy that I'd definitely suggest this one.

Babel 17

I always like when there is a new direction taken by a genre. Most of the time when people think scifi they think laser guns, space ships, and super soldier. They'd be right in guessing that this book has that sort of thing because it does have the intergalactic space sips that have these epic wars in space BUT the most important aspect of the book is about cunning and an interesting language that holds the key to victory. It gets very dull after a while with the kick in the door style games and books out there but I always love when there is a big of a mix up. In this book the main character stumbles across a frequency that was actually a special language that, if understood, could lend the speaker the knowledge/power to understand and wind the war that was before her. I also loved how the main character was a girl. Though in Shards of Honor the main character was a woman I realized the gender difference in this book a lot more, its hard to place a finger on why.

Snow Crash

This book was, for me, very strange and I just could not get into it whatsoever. I am generally very uninterested in this genre and am more of a high fantasy or space opera/ high scifi person. It didn't help that I found it hard to understand the world. The way this book began with its odd prelude did nothing but confuse me.  It made sense in that it helped to fill the characters back story but it was just so strange and bizarre. The strong personality the serious demeanor, Hiro, was a bit of an odd individual. Not exactly the kind of person i would choose to be the protagonist of a novel. The event at the beginning of the book was a little weird for me. If Hiro did not deliver the pizza within the exact amount of time he would be in serious trouble with the mafia? The fact that in this story that the government has given up some of its power to large companies or powerful individuals is actually a pretty cool idea for the books universe but the way it was implemented in the story with a pizza guy and the mafia pizza service was so strange to me that it kept me from getting into the book at all and made the read very hard.

Space Opera: Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold

This week I had read Shard of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujord.  I actually really enjoyed this novel quite a bit! When i started reading the story seemed a little bland with the the science team setting up camp and having been attacked by some unknown space race but after the main character is knocked unconscious, meets her love interest, and begins a journey with this supposedly brutal space commander I begin to get more and more interested. As the story develops this dangerous soldier turns out to be less of a danger and more of a kind hearted man trapped by his culture and history. 

To me I felt it was pretty predictable but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I liked the way the story flowed and how it sort of felt familiar. To me it seemed like much of the science fiction that I have read or have played games of have hint of this type of sub-genre in them. Who wouldn't want to go galavanting through space with the person you are romantic with. But seriously the feeling i got from this novel and how there was so much to the books universe reminded me of Star Wars and the game Mass Effect. 

Dawn

Now this was a truly good book and I am wanting to go on to read the rest of the novels in this trilogy, Ive actually gone ahead and bought the first two. I have always been interested in the idea of aliens watching over us and guarding us, I even think the ancient alien theories are fun. I loved how the books start with and alien abduction. Most of the stories we hear about abductions are these horrifying and traumatic experiences of alien experimentation. I really enjoyed how the alien was so different yet strangely similar to human kind and I loved how they survived by taking the most advantageous genetic traits from other species and combining that strand of DNA with their own. It was a really interesting twist. Also I loved how the ship itself was a kind of creature that acted as a vehicle, a food source, and living quarters.

Spiritual Education: The Golden Compass & Harry Potter

I was one of the kids that grew up reading the Harry Potter books. I learned a lot from those books including vocabulary, morals, about friendship, etc. So for this assignment I wanted to read a different book so I read the Golden Compass. I had seen the movie before and wanted to read the actual book to know more about it since they only produced the first movie and stopped.
I can definitely see the difference in the Golden Compass and a book like Lord of the Rings though it might be hard to put into words. The books take place in an alternate reality where peoples spirits or souls manifest themselves as animal companions. This I thought was a great concept in and of itself. Often when I am talking to someone or see a person on the street I make a comparison between them and an animal. Not just because of their appearance but mostly for their personality. So it was interesting to read about the different characters with different animals and seeing how their personality fit with their animal.
The book follows the story of this little girl that goes on an adventure to discover more about this 'dust' or 'space dust' against the wishes of the Gobblers. The Gobblers have attempted to silence and erase the knowledge of the existence of this dust, for unknown reasons at the beginning of the book but I believe is a way for them to keep control.  She goes on the adventure with a golden compass which was told to tell her the truth and was given to her by the head of the college.
It is fun to make a comparison between The Golden Compass and the Harry Potter novels. Both tell stories of children, the age of the reading audience, and of a great evil they have to overcome but are told to stay away from. Both are told to stay away from this danger but are encouraged by a wise elder to take on the challenge but to be weary. They both go through a series of trials and make many close friends along the way. I could go on about the similarities but I now see how these  types of 'spiritual education' books teach kids to take on challenges with a brave face and to value friendship above all else.

The Hobbit

The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings are by far my favorite fantasy novels. It is easy to see why JRR Tolkien is called the granddad of high fantasy. Though I am more a fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy for its more mature story line full of epic and emotional moments I do have to say I still like The Hobbit. Originally not written to be published and more just meant to be a hobby, it can not really say that it was written for a younger audience but it certainly captivated a younger age group when it was published. It's fun to read the book and hear names and descriptions of places that are so reminiscent of Northern european mythological places and people. These books were a way for Tolkien to bring to life a lost age of Europe, one of beauty, mystery, and magic. 

Though I have read The Hobbit multiple times in the past when I was rereading it this time I compares it to the new movie that was released. I realized that even though it was a great book not all books would make great films if they were made exactly like the book. In a book there is  time for descriptions of minute details and of peoples thoughts and emotions but in a movie there has to be some level of action, some driving force that makes the characters move onward. In the book the only thing that kept them motivated to move foreword was the prospect of reaching and reclaiming the mountain but in the movie there was that and the White Orc and his pack of worgs hunting the companions. Te me it seemed like a much needed addition to the story line for the sake of making the movie not seem dull. It also fills in a gap for the missing prologue in The Hobbit. 

Equal Rites

In the book Equal Rites I found it really interesting how it approached gender roles in the world of high fantasy. In the book there are wizards which have always been males that derive their magic from the sky through research and practice and then there are witches which pull their powers from the earth, their magic is something that comes from within. I think it's interesting the authors choice of how the different genders get their magic because it is a reflection of the genders characteristics. Men generally are very much about hard facts and research while women are very much about innate knowledge and emotions. This is just a generalization made for the sake of understanding the book.  The book then progresses and tells a story of a girl wizard that struggles through this world of men and her attempts to fit int, gain control over her powers, and become a powerful female wizard which has always been a mans field. Much like in the world of today, women attempt to succeed in the mans world, to testosterone fueled. Men have never had to think in the way of women but women are always forced to try to think like a man in order to survive.

The New Weird: King Rat and Monster Island

I have to say that personally I am not much a fan of the new weird. The entire time of reading these I found it very hard to get into. Though I think that the reason I found it difficult to get into is the exact reason others find it so appealing. The thing that distracted me so much was the oddness of the world and it's laws. An example of one of the rules that were abandoned in the book King Rat was the fact that a human was the child of an actual rat and that the human could understand animals. Even weirder still was the fact that he character never made much of a deal about that fact, he just took it as a matter of fact. Now if this story were set in a magical land like Narnia this could possibly have made more sense but it wasn't, it took place in London. Because of this I continued to be drawn out of the story and sitting there trying to figure out what exactly was happening. I couldn't assume or expect anything. The world was so bizarre that I couldn't really place myself in the main characters shoes and immerse myself, it kept shoving me back to reality. The same goes for. Monster Island though it wasn't as violet of a jolt to reality as King Rat. In this book one of the characters is turned into a zombie and another is being tended to by mummies. Both characters found their situations average enough to not pause in awe or shock, even for a moment. Otherwise the idea of zombies and people fighting to not become one of the undead was a world with laws that made sense enough to not have me drawn out of the story.

J-Horror: A Wild Sheep Chace

It is very evident in J-Horror that the fine line of good and evil, which is found in western horror, is practically non existent. What would have been deemed as evil seems more like a situation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In western culture horror is almost always seemingly oriented around some form of sin. If the victim has committed some sort of crime, usually religious, some evil is brought upon them as punishment. However, in j-horror the horrible chain of events is due to a hungry ghost or spirit, otherwise minding its own business and the victim stumbles into the ghost's presence. 

I actually found the book to be quite dull mostly because a majority of it was focused on the every day happenings of some mans life, of which the events were nothing too exciting. I would rather of read something from that genre even though I am not a fan of western horror and it's often gory scenes. I enjoy far more the older horror stories which I feel we're more suspense than horror. 

Reflection on Interview with the Vampire

In my opinion two main ideas that the author pits against one another is the subconscious pull of natural instinct and the drive to hold onto ones self and their beliefs of morality. I believe that these ideas, throughout the vampires story of his life, are continually resurfacing and creating an internal struggle for him. At the beginning of his story he has a hard time coming to terms with the fact that he was a vampire. He originally did not want to kill anyone because of moral reasons but as the story went on he became more and more ok with it yet only did it on occasion when he was in dire need of human blood, like a person having a hard time keeping to a healthy diet. To me it seemed that the way the story tells about the vampire's life and his going about the moral decisions he is posed with are constructed to make the reader think about the situation themselves and what they would do his position. The story is interesting because it comes about morality, particularly the value of human life, from the different perspective of a detached immortal being. It seemed like they began by seeing humans as equal sentient creatures but after the story went on they turned more into cattle. The main character fights his changing circumstances and the fact that he is no longer human. Part of him still believes he is human but he knows that there is no going back and that he must become accustomed to this new immortal life yet he just cannot let go. It is interesting how as the story progresses the idea of right and wrong changes. It is no longer black and white and the fine line begins to mottle, blur, and grey. 

Gothic Culture

Usually when someone mentions the word gothic my mind shoots straight to Gothic architecture. However when they are talking about the subculture I instantly think of a person dressed in dark or black clothing with far too many piercings and wearing a downcast or pissed look. I am not a Goth myself so I am certainly no expert on the subculture and only have the view point of an outsider looking in. Generally I associate Goths with dark, depressing, or morbid subject matter, this covers all medias and mediums. In terms of films, I have watched maybe a handful that could be considered to fit the culture, I'd have to say films like those of Tim Burton. Also I think of music like death metal or any form of heavy metal to fit in very well with this subculture. Honestly, in my opinion, it seems that this type of music represents very much how Goths seems to view themselves next to the rest of society. Jarring, visually jarring at least. Their dress, their personas, their taste in art, seem to attempt to hold much of the real world at bay and keep them fixed in a mind set. Again the music can almost do this on its own. Again I have to say that what I write is based on assumptions with little to no exposure to the subculture itself.