Wow, Patrick Ness, color me super impressed. Way to create a distinctive, consistent, memorable voice for your protagonist. That isn’t easy. I have not read a book where I enjoyed the narrator’s voice so much since, mm, The Book Thief, and before that The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Which are two of my all-time favorite books. The Knife of Never Letting Go is based on a fantastic premise, that the aliens in this settled world have given the settlers the disease of Noise, which killed all the women and left the men able to hear each other’s thoughts; and then…
22 CommentsReading the End Posts
Again with the piles of information! I had to read this one chapter at a time and then take a long break to think about all the things contained in each chapter. In Making Comics, Scott McCloud gets down to discussing the specifics about creating a comic book – everything from the placement and spacing in word bubbles, to the construction of panels in a way that’s intuitive to the reader, to the interaction of words and pictures. There can never be too much discussion about the interaction of words and pictures. Seriously. This book made me sad I can’t…
6 CommentsI don’t know what I can really say about Persepolis that hasn’t been said already. What I love about the first volume of Persepolis is that it’s always about how Marjane interprets the events around her, much more than it is about the events themselves. As she and her family live through the Islamic Revolution, watching its agenda shift and their country change around them, little Marjane acts on what she thinks she understands. There’s a lovely bit where she insists on spending all her time with an uncle who’s a political dissident. Although she is initially interested in him…
3 CommentsSome smart kids take a test to see how they smart they are, and it turns out they’re smart enough and nice enough to win the prize of infiltrating an Ominous Institute and finding out what the super evil scary man is plotting! That’ll teach you to be smart and nice, kids! Anyway, they meet a nice, nice man with narcolepsy, and he tells them how there is an evil, evil man (who also has narcolepsy, as it turns out) trying to control everyone’s minds, and they have to go infiltrate his school and foil his plans. They all agree…
6 CommentsI got this at the library because I am always on the hunt for good graphic novels, and it said THE BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL OF ALL TIME EVER or something like that on the front. I believed this because I’m easily taken in by the printed word. Fortunately for me, this may actually be one of the best graphic novels of all time ever. I loved it. I really, really loved it. It’s translated – I didn’t even care! Hooray for Joe Johnson, the stalwart translator! Mr. Johnson, you have done an excellent job in translating, and thanks for that,…
9 Comments*wipes away tears* *throws tissue into trash can* *puts sad book back inside purse* So I won Starseeker in a giveaway from Bart’s Bookshelf (thank you, I really liked it!), and I got it in the mail the other day and I read it today in between being scared shitless by “Hush” (why are the Gentlemen so scary? why do they do that with their hands and their faces?) and trying to figure out what the hell happens in “Doomed” (hell happens. They have to go back to high school to fix the stupid Hellmouth; such a subpar episode, plus…
6 CommentsSo my thoughts on the film version of Children of Men sort of went like this: Mmmm, Clive Owen. And then, Ah yes, apocalypse, issues being dealt with – I feel like this is a perfect time for Clive Owen to strangle someone with his bare hands. This is shallow, I know, but I just have this reaction to Clive Owen every time I see him. Even in Gosford Park when there was absolutely no chance of his strangling someone with his bare hands, because it was all proper and British up in that movie. My thoughts on the book…
6 CommentsSo I have been reading Iran Awakening on and off ever since the Iranian election took over the news. This has been quite a while. I wanted to read it because I felt like I didn’t know enough about Iran and the United States, and the revolution and everything. I thought it was fascinating, how she told about the changes in political power throughout her life. She talks about helping in the revolution, and how afterwards she was asked to wear a headscarf, how people told her Just wait! We want to deal with women’s rights but there are so…
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