Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker is best described as biographical fiction. It is the story of a young Utahraptor as she tries to find her place in a world without her mate, struggles to survive the dangers of a prehistoric North America, and find a new mate to start a family with.
My sticky note review for this is simply: Biographical fiction… of a RAPTOR! ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤
The last two weeks have been pretty rough for me and I’d been looking for something to get my mind off of things for just a little while. I had heard that the Mad Max movie was really good and not nearly as gory as the R rating would imply and decided that the action flick sounded like just the thing I needed.
My initial response to Mad Max: Fury Road is this: Do not mess with women because we will remember and we will fight back. Action movies are for girls too! And my absolute favorite line, the mantra “We are not things.”
Please note that this post will contain spoilers.
If you have not yet seen the film, you may want to skip this post.
I do have two titles for Two Book Tuesday this week. My favorite thing about this week is how odd the two books are, lol.
First, we have a book that I desperately wanted to find and read. Sadly, I couldn’t remember the title or author, and I barely remembered the cover art and general premise of the story. Emily B., a co-worker of mine, was kind enough to help me dig through the depths of the internet until we found it!
So, the first book for Two Book Tuesday is The Cure by Sonia Levitin.
A strange mixture of science-fiction, dystopian fiction, and historical fiction, I first read The Cure when we lived in Baltimore, MD. If you are a fan of the recently-popular Divergent series, then The Cure is right up your alley with “factions” and forced conformity into these factions. Deviants are criminals with only two options: to die and be recycled or to accept a mysterious cure that is supposed to bring them back into the fold.
Gemm, a deviant and the main character of the story, chooses to take the cure and suddenly finds himself living the live of a 16-year-old Jewish musician in 1348 at the beginning of the Black Death. As a young reader, this book was such a great experience that is has stayed with me over a decade later and is a title that I re-read every few years.
The absolute terrible part of this whole search process is that the library no longer owns this title and I need to look elsewhere if I decide that I want to read it, which I do. I cannot put into words the sense of betrayal I felt that this book was no longer available at my library. I have to wonder if this is how most patrons feel when we go through a period of healthy weeding of our collections.
And the second book I have for you this week is Beauty written by Hubert, with art by Kerascoët.
Apparently, I placed an Inter-Library Loan request for this title a few weeks ago and it finally arrived… The strange thing is that I don’t remember anything about the request or the book itself! So, I find myself with the opportunity to read a pretty great looking graphic novel that I may not have otherwise picked up.
I’ll let you know how it is. 🙂
Just a short post this week since spare time has been quite sparse. 🙂
I’ve been spending most of my free time studying for Midterms and haven’t had much time to spare for “fun” reading, so this post will be about two books that I was really excited to add to my want-to-read list.
Spork by Kyo Maclear is a children’s picture book about, you guessed it, a spork! Poor little Spork doesn’t fit in with the rest of the cutlery in the drawer; the spoons think him too point and the forks too round. Will he every be picked for mealtime?
The art style for this picture book is right up my alley and is something that immediately drew my eye to the title. In addition to teaching young children about tolerance of others and learning that individuality is a-ok, “Spork” looks like it could very easily be one of the cutest little books I’ve read this year.
And the second book that I’m excited to read (I’ve just checked it out from the library) is Mort(e) by Robert Repino.
Mort(e) is a very unique take on human extinction… The Colony, a race of intelligent ants that have been working for thousands of years to eradicate humans are taking the next step in their war effort. They turn the surface animals into high-functioning beings who will rise up to kill their human masters.
The main character of this novel is Mort(e). A former housecat turned war hero, Mort(e) is looking for his pre-transformation friend – a dog named Sheba. In order to find his long lost friend, Mort(e) will travel to one of the last human strongholds and there he will discover the source of EMSAH (a human bio-weapon) and perhaps will find the answers to his questions.
Really, it sounds like the coolest animal point-of-view story that I’ve read since Raptor Red by Robert T. Bakker.
Once the craziness of Midterms has passed, I plan to crack open “Mort(e)” and read it in the evening, while keeping “Spork” for my next 15-minute break at work.
Are you reading anything interesting?
A book that I am currently reading is The Wisdom of the Shire: A Short Guide To A Long and Happy Life by Noble Smith.
I’ve just finished chapter one, “How Snug Is Your Hobbit-hole?” and the main idea that came out of this chapter is the sense of home that a person can have, not necessarily in a place, but in an idea or memory of that perfect, safe environment that they consider home.
A book that I want to read in the future… The Captain’s Table: Fire Ship by Diane Carey.
This is one of my all-time favorite science-fiction novels. Interestingly, it is published fan-fiction (more on this at a later date) about the television show Star Trek: Voyager. It is my favorite out of all the different Star Trek series and movies.
Originally, I read this book as a young teenager of perhaps twelve or thirteen years of age and it remains to this day the only title that I have ever had to skip to the end just so that I could be reassured of a happy ending.
Fire Ship follows Captain Kathryn Janeway as she recovers from severe injuries and learns to cope with the knowledge that her ship, and friends, have been destroyed. That she failed to bring the home, as she’d so-often promised to do. Alone in the Delta Quadrant, aboard an alien ship, and with no other options available to her, Janeway does what she does best… She survives, takes life by the horns and comes out the other side of things the victor.
I remember crying, smiling, and feeling absolutely heartsick while reading this book and I cannot wait to start it again. It’s not often that a book has such an impact on me that I remember it even years later.
So, two books that I’m thinking about this Tuesday. What are you reading?
I was cleaning out my inbox and found an email from Dictionary.com from way back in 2014! Yeah, I know I should clean my inbox out more often, lol. Anyways the word of the day for November 30 was specter, of which the British spelling is spectre…
Now, some of you may be aware of this but I’ve been playing a lot of Mass Effect recently and the first thing I thought of when I saw the word of the day was the video game that I’d (by November 2014) devoted more than 100 hours of my life to.
In the Mass Effect trilogy you play a Commander in the human Alliance Navy. Commander Shepard is a Spectre, one of the elite agents that answer only to the Citadel Council and basically have free-rein to get their assignments done in whatever way they feel is the best way.
This means that you can either play as a Paragon Shepard and unite the galaxy by building alliances or you can choose to be Renegade Shepard and, basically, rule through fear and bullying. Either method will bring you to the climactic end of the Mass Effect trilogy and no matter which you choose, you may have lost some friends along the way.
I’m on my third play-through of this trilogy and I’ve played mostly as Paragon because many of the Renegade choices are actually quite distasteful to me.
Have you played the Mass Effect trilogy? What did you think about it?
The other Spectre that came to mind is the recently announced addition to the Bond movie franchise. Starring Daniel Craig as Bond, Naomie Harris as Moneypenny, Ben Whishaw as the Quartermaster, and Ralph Fiennes as M (you will be missed, Judi Dench).
Based on the highly popular book series by Ian Fleming, this latest movie has me excited before I’ve even seen the first trailer or stills! I’ve enjoyed the Craig-Bond movies and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next one…
I may have to go back and watch all the movies that came before, just to be prepared. Also because I haven’t seen the Sean Connery movies in quite a while and… well, Sean Connery!
In all honesty, I enjoyed everything about the Pacific Rim novelization except for the ending.
Having read the book before seeing the movie in theaters, I was pleased with the details included in the novelization. While it doesn’t deviate drastically from the main script of the movie, this book does give you a little bit of the history and a look into each character’s minds.
Many authors who write movie novelizations are working with an early version of the script, which often leads to discrepancies between film and novel. In the case of Pacific Rim, the big difference is the ending and while the movie ends with Mako and Raleigh embracing atop his life pod the book ends with them kissing.
I’ve heard many, many arguments about the perceived romance between Mako and Raleigh and I have to admit that I just don’t see it. Yes, there is a possibility for a romantic relationship between them but it is also just as likely that they will be bros/best buds for life… Something I would kill to see in the sequel, quite frankly.
The story told in Pacific Rim does not need to use a romantic relationship as a crutch, a theme which is so often found in movies these days. If there is one thing that I want people to realize about Pacific Rim, it would be that it is so much more than romance! You have people who are dealing with a world that no longer supports them and their struggle to protect it; men and women who are fighting to protect the family they created; and the innocent masses of people who don’t know anything but a world ruled by the fear of a Kaiju attack.
If you’re interested in more of my thoughts on Pacific Rim, take a look at my post about “Drifting In Pacific Rim.”
Meandering Michelle 