Hey

Hello to anyone who actually reads this blog. (Of which there are none.) But anywho, due to some rules put in place at my work we are no longer allowed to have books on post. They came out of the blue. We cant have books, magazines, newspapers, cell phones, any kind of game or craft, etc. We never let them get in the way of our job before and the boss knew it. He said it was all okay. Until monday. So, this will be getting very slow from now on.
Whats sad is, that I have to sneak my journal into the post so I can write at lunch. Thank God he never comes at lunch! (Hey, we aren't even supposed to take lunch, but we do anyway.)
So, no books of any kind, no games, no making things, no cell phones, etc. Fun fun stuff. Not even on holidays when the doors are locked and the whole place is shut down. Not even then.
So, like I said, this will be slowing down quite a bit as I try to find time to read. Sorry to the ghosts that read this.

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

This book is a book about two boys and a carnival where things are not as they seem.
The house of mirrors shows you who you really are, the carousel plays the calliope backwards while in reverse, and the freaks are not who they seem to be.
Written so it takes place over just two or three days, it's not a slow read. It's well written in the classic Bradbury style.
I like how the story seems to be that eventually you become your sins and your doings. It's not a big part, but it is a part.
Now, I would like to see this in movie form. I hear that there is a movie out there, but I have yet to see it.
Anywho, sorry for this short and sparse review, but all I can say is I loved it! Who doesn't like Bradbury? I mean really?

Horse Stone House by Harold K. Moon

Okay, I picked up this book from the library because, honestly, I wanted something new to read and thought this would be a good try. (I strayed away from my genre...)
I hated the book. I'll tell you what it's about, then I'll tell you why I hated it.

The story takes place in the early years of the LDS church, over in England. Its the story of Lydia and her friend Emmeline, who confides in Lydia that she is reading a book from a new religious sect: The Book of Mormon.
When she tells Lydia she believes it, Lydia dismisses her outright and asks her to come to her senses and forget the book. Emmeline cant do that and continues to read the book, all the while hiding it from her other friends, family and especially her husband.
When Lydia takes up the challenge to read the book and once and for all prove to Emmeline that it's not real, but it doesnt go according to her plan.

Without spoiling the ending for those of you who probably wont read it anyway, here's what I didn't like about it:
-Not enough character/plot development.
-Told me what was happening instead of "showing" me.
-The ending is weak and the conversations didn't flow naturally.
-And, although this could be my fault, it was a little hard to read. (Probably due to my speaking american and not english... crazy redneck family...)

It seems to be a trend that in LDS fiction that they make the book as slow as possible, force conversations, weaken plotlines, and break up the flow of the book. Can anyone name a good LDS book of this genre that isnt any of the above?

Three Novels by James Patterson

"When the Wind Blows" and "The Lake House" by James Patterson

When the Wind Blows, and it's sequel, The Lake House, are about six genetically altered human children. They are part of a genetic experiment which combines human DNA with avian DNA, thus creating half breeds: human children with avian characteristics such as wings.
They live at a facility called The School where they are experimented on and continually tested... Until they escape. Now the doctors from the School are after them and will do anything to get them back, dead or alive.
This was a very interesting book and made me think about the repercussions of genetic experimentation and the rights/laws governing living outcomes of said experimentation. Where does one's government draw the line? What can a person do to stop it? Is it legally, morally, or even ethically right? In any sense of the word? Its a good story, but it makes you think.
I know in the title it says three novels by James Patterson, and here's the third:

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

It's pretty much the same storyline as When the Wind Blows, but it's written for Young Adults and you get more of a feeling for the characters then you do with the other two. And this one is the first in a series. I will be reviewing the next several novels, but I have several other books to finish first. (And some reviews to catch up on.)

The Science of Vampires by Kathleen Ramsland Ph. D.

This is a thesis written about how, if vampires like the legends existed, they would survive in today's society. It covers biology of vampires, legends, and discussions of "real-life" vampires such as Elizabeth Bathory and Bela Kiss.
It also discusses how to create a vampire, both in folklore and also in real life, how to kill a vampire, and how a vampire procreates.
Throughout the entire book, she keeps going back to Bram Stoker's Dracula and Ann Rice's vampire series about her famous vampires: Lestat, Louis and Armand. She does well to tie them into the book and what she is covering in that section.
If you are interested in vampire folklore or just science and biology, this book is an awesome read. It gets a little redundant at times, and I would have liked to have more varied descriptions of the famous vampires, but all in all it's pretty good. I've read this book several times and I enjoyed it immensely.

Next reviews are going to be short ones of "Uncle Johns Bathroom Reader: Dog Lovers and Cat Lovers." I am also reading "Ghost Files", a bunch of stories and stuff from www.ghostvillage.com.
I will do these reviews when I get more time.

Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah

This book, written by Colm A. Kelleher, Ph.D., and George Knapp, is the true story of strange, and sometimes terrifying, occurances that happened on a ranch that had just been bought by Tom Gorman (not his real name) and his family.
They had bought the house from a couple who was living in town, but said they didn't want the ranch anymore. They had put some very strange clauses into the business contract including not to dig anywhere under any circumstances. They thought it was odd, but what was even stranger were the dead bolts, two or three to a door, on both sides of the door and two iron rings on either end of the house with a chain to perhaps hold two big dogs. They decided to overlook this.
They first noticed something was wrong when they saw a big "wolf-like creature" who was easily twice as big as a real wolf, walking across their property. The wolf saw them and walked right over to them, letting them touch him. The wolf noticed the new calves and walked to where they were penned. One of the calves, braver than the others, went over to see the wolf. Suddenly the wolf chomps down on the poor calves snout and refuses to let go. Tom Gorman and his son shoot the wolf several times, but it doesn't slow it down and it doesn't start bleeding, but it must have tired of them shooting at it because it let go of the calf and ran away. They never saw it again.
That's only the beginning: cattle mutilations, incinerated dogs, mysterious flying objects, strange creatures and invisible beings.
This book is told from a scientific point of view, (they had called in some paranormal researchers for help) as well as putting the Gormans view into play.
It's a very strange story, and the ending, although predictable, is shocking as well.
Well, that's all I'm going to tell, because Muse, our kitty, is asleep on my lap. She seems to like me and mom the best.
But anyway, I'm not here to write about my kitty, so if your into this kind of stuff, I recommend you read it. It is about an older case, but well worth the read.

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas is no writer of short stories. He writes long stories, filled with detail, and he writes them well.
The Three Musketeers is about d'Artagnan, the intrigues he gets mixed up in and how he meets and becomes a musketeer.
D'Artagnan is determined to become a musketeer and while trying to deliver his letter of recommendation to Monsieur Treville, he is attacked and the letter is stolen. He makes it Treville and explains that he had a letter, but it was stolen. Treville places him in the gaurds instead, under the command of his brother.
Meanwhile, he meets Athos (he was injured and d'Artagnan ran into him), Porthos (he had a gold sash and d'Artagnan ran into him and discovered it was only half gold) and Aramis (d'Artagnan noticed he was standing on a white, embroidered handkerchief and pulled it out from under his foot, forcefully, and thoroughly embarrassed Aramis in front of his guests), and is challenged to a duel by each one of them.
Long story short, (635 pages), d'Artagnan is accepted by Athos, Porthos and Aramis and becomes a very close friend to each of them, meanwhile discovering that the two women he loves are not what they appear.
The last scene with Lady de Winter is a moving one, very emotional.
The book is very unlike the 1993 movie, (which was awesome, dont get me wrong), but the book shows a completely different storyline and characters.
I highly recommend this book if your looking for a good old romantic adventure book.

I will update my reading list when I decide what I'm going to read next.

War of the Worlds by HG Wells

Another classic by HG Wells- What a wonderful writer he was!
What makes this even more interesting is his commentary on the scientific and medical aspects of the martians and their machinery. He was a very learned man and he would not write a book about martians unless he had some kind of solid belief in the fact that they could very well exist. He didn't have solid proof, but he believed that there was life out there, and at the time of this books writing, the focus happened to be Mars. He did a wonderful job writing this book.

If you haven't read the book, it's about martians coming to the earth in the late 19th century (approx. 1898-99). Several cylinders from Mars crash land in several places in and around London and reveal strange creatures who begin building machines so that they can walk around and destroy the land. They begin a rampage that goes for about a month, month and a half.
Now, the book differs from ALL of the movies in several respects:
First of all, in the book the martians DO NOT have sheilds on their machines. In the first hundred pages, three (if I remember correctly) martian machines are destroyed.
Secondly, in the movies, the martians succumb to the germs and diseases of this earth within a few days, in the book it takes a more appropriate 4 or 6 weeks for them to succumb.
Third, the martians are incapable of walking upright on the earth without great effort due to the severe change in the gravity of earth compared to Mars.

The book is a wonderful read. It's a fast read and written with a scientific knowledge of how things work (machines) and biology (the martians, red plant). He writes it very well as if it were a memory of his. I recommend this book for anyone who enjoys the classics. Definately a classic.

Next up on my list:
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (Wonderful!!!)
Faith of Our Fathers by N.C. Allen (put on hold)
Hiroshima by John Hersey (put on hold)
A Fresh Start in Fairhaven by Sharon Downing Jarvis (put on hold- cant get into it)

My book list seems to have dwindled. (on the interest side anyway.) I will look over some of the other books I have and update my list accordingly.

Pompeii by Robert Harris

First off, I give this book a "PG 13" rating. It's a great book, but has some questionable items in it. It was also a very slow read. That is, until the last 100 pages, then it got interesting. But you had to go through 100+ pages to get to the good part.
The story follows Attilius, the new Aquarius, who is in charge of the water supply to all the towns surrounding Vesuvius. Up until the day before the eruption, Vesuvius was thought to have been just a mountain peak, not a dormant volcano. As the water supply becomes "poisoned" and Attilius sets out to find whats causing it all, he discovers that Vesuvius may not be just a mountian peak at all.
The story follows him all the way up to the eruption of Vesuvius, and what happened afterwards.

Now, if you dont know anything about Pompeii or Herculaneum, then let me first remark that they were very much like Sodom and Gommorah. Debauchery galore. But I still have an immense interest in Pompeii, but then it really just a morbid interest of the body casts... (I know, I cant help it though...)

So, just be wary of reading this book if you are sensitive to sensual matters.

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson

This book is awesome! I love ice climbing, so its even cooler because of that. :)
Anyway, Joe Simpson and his friend Simon go climbing in the Andes and climb a 21,000 foot mountain to reach the summit and to climb down the coveted east face, which no one had succeeded in climbing down before.
This takes place in 1985, and Joe and Simon take photos of their journey, until the accident on the east face. Joe was climbing down, with Simon up top, when he fell and broke his leg. Very, very bad. If your up that high, breaking your leg is essentially a death sentence. Simon decided that he would lower him down 300 feet at a time until they got to the bottom. A blizzard starts and gets so bad that niether can hear the other after maybe 20 feet and visibility is very low. When they are almost to the bottom, maybe a thousand or so feet from the base camp, Joe falls into a crevasse and Simon starts getting dragged down with him. Since Simon cannot see Joe, and since neither had seen a crevasse while climbing up, Simon thinks that there must have been something they didn't see, but cant figure out what it would be. Simon keeps slipping and Joe keeps falling when Simon makes the choice to cut the rope. He cuts it and Joe begins the first part of his journey on his own. It's a race to make it to base camp before Simon leaves, otherwise it's all been in vain. He climbs out of the crevasse (read it to find out how!) and crawls and limps his way back to base camp. It's an amazing story of human endurance in extreme conditions.
It's a very good read and, although there is obscenities in it, it's a wonderful read that makes you feel as if you are there with him. You feel his wonder, joy, and pain. I recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of ice climbing, if you ice climb yourself, or you just like reading adventure books. This one certainly qualifies.

Next up:
Pompeii by Robert Harris
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
Faith of Our Fathers by N.C. Allen
Hiroshima by John Hersey
A Fresh Start in Fairhaven by Sharon Downing Jarvis
And more to come! I have a due date for most of these...

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells

I love H.G. Wells' books. They are wonderful! The one I read recently was The Invisible Man.

It starts out with the Invisible Man (known now as the stranger), showing up at an inn called the Coach and Horses demanding a room and privacy. He is dressed from head to foot, with not an inch of skin showing, save for his pink nose.
The story follows him as he is driven out of the inn, pursued by the townspeople and the police, and eventually he finds himself with an old friend from college, wounded and telling him the entire story of how he came to be invisible.
He talks about the advantages he originally saw, "for I could see no disadvantages", and quickly comes to realize that there are many more cons to his invisibility than pros. He is consumed by the madness that follows his transformation into invisibility, his desire for riches and fame, and his desire to find a cure.
It's a very well written book and I would suggest it to anyone who hasnt read it.

Next up on the reading list:

Touching the Void: The True Story of One Mans Miraculous Survival by Joe Simpson
Pompeii by Robert Harris (fiction)
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (fiction)

I have some LDS books I'm reading as well, but they will go onto my other blog, Everything LDS! instead of this one.

Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperment

This book by Kay Redfield Jamison (the same author who wrote "An Unquiet Mind"), has done a wonderful job writing this book. Not only is it written from a researchers point of view, it also has writings on manic-depressive illness by those who have the illness. Writers like Virginia Woolf and painters like Van Gogh, and the people that loved and cared for them.
It talks quite deeply about what every artist/writer who is diagnosed with manic-depressive illness asks: Will this affect my art? If I take this medication will I lose my inspiration?
These are very valid questions because if an artist is unable to paint, draw or a writer write, then what are they supposed to do? If that is your only way a truly expressing yourself, why do anything to jeopardize that?
Many artists refuse treatment because they feel that the highs and lows of the illness give their art "an edge". They see things they wouldn't otherwise have seen when they are high or low.
One thing it talks about is how the "highs" of manic-depressive illness can get an artist/writer started on a new project, but then the "lows" can give them the vision to "refine" what they had started in their manic phase.
This book also touches on how fatal this disease can be. Artists/writers have been known to commit suicide because of this illness. Virginia Woolf walked into a river and drowned herself. Lord Byron was kept in an asylum and he died from self-starvation. The list goes on.
Not many people are going to read a book like this unless they really have an interest in mental health, have a friend who has this illness, or has this illness themselves. It is my hope that friends/family/patients themselves will learn about this illness and that they have a broad support system. Tell only those you trust. And dont worry, it can be treated, but it may take a while.
Meanwhile, read some books about the disorder and get educated!

Libba Bray - The Sweet Far Thing

This is the final book in the Gemma Trilogy, and it's a somewhat surprising book. There's some things that you know are going to happen, but there are many surprises as well: Felicity, Kartik, Mrs. Nightwing, the Order, and the Rakshana to name a few. No one is spared in this book. People do get killed and others do sacrifice themselves.
I rather enjoyed this book, although the final battle at the end made me cry a bit. All in all, a good read. I recommend the entire series. (Which only covers a year in Gemma's life, but it is the most important one of her life.)

Libba Bray - A Great and Terrible Beauty and Rebel Angels

"A Great and Terrible Beauty" and "Rebel Angels" by Libba Bray

Gemma lives in India with her family when her mother is mysteriously killed. After that Gemma is sent to a finishing school for girls called Spence Academy for Young Ladies. There she meets Ann, a shy scholarship student sent there to learn to be her cousins' governess, Felicity and Pippa, both sent to learn how to be proper ladies and graduate so they can have their "season".
Gemma soon discovers that she can enter a place called the Realms, where all is magical, but it has a few restrictions: dont eat the berries, dont cross into the Winterlands, and dont leave anyone behind.
Gemma also discovers that not everything is how it seems, and after some unfortunate events in the first book, "A Great and Terrible Beauty", Gemma starts to realize that with the magic loose she can no longer trust anything or anyone in the Realms until she finds the Temple and binds the magic.
They are very fast reads, and I'm currently working on the third of the series now.
There are many surprises in them as well as Gemmas inside humor and sarcasm.