ARC, Books

Book 546: All Systems Down (The Cyber War #1) – Sam Boush

When the publicist reached out to me with this way back in December I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to read it.* At the same time, I knew I wanted to try to read a little broader this year so I said yes anyway. What I didn’t expect was to start this at 9pm one night and finish it by noon the next day on my lunch break at work!

This book starts with a bang and then continues with a series of gripping chapters that keep you engaged. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t perfect, you could tell this was a debut novel, but there’s definitely more to come from Boush.

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Book 533: Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

This is one of those books that has been on my metal list to look into since it came out. For some reason though, I had lumped it into the same sort of release period as Ender’s Game and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and boy was I surprised when I realized it was written and released in 2011. I knew I would get to the book some day, but the movie release in the next few months, preview embedded at the end of the post, my desire to read the book increased dramatically.

I didn’t read it quite as fast as I read some of the recent Jane Austen fan-fiction, but I did get through this one pretty quickly. I found the writing simple enough to breeze through and my vague familiarity with a lot of the 1980s pop culture helped (even if I did have to google quite a few). The strengths, for me at least, were the realistic vision of where we could easily end up as a society within the next few decades if something similar to OASIS actually becomes reality. The OASIS or, “The Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation was a big place.” (48), is in essence an internet/game type situation that could include full or partial body immersion. Cline isn’t the first, nor will he be the last to write something like this. It’s a dystopian vs. utopian, good vs. evil, privacy vs. corporate consumerism story for the ages.

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Books

Book 529: My Own Mr. Darcy – Karey White

What I liked about this is that it wasn’t just a spin-off from the original Jane Austen novels, it was a novel based off of the 2005 film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. The main character, Lizzie/Elizabeth (yes named after Elizabeth Bennet),  becomes obsessed with Matthew McFadyen and finding her own version of Mr. Darcy who mirrors him exactly. So is it fan-fiction of the novel or the movie? It’s hard to say, but what really did it for me was the character’s appreciation of the score of the film.

The appreciation of Marianelli’s composition and Thibaudet’s performance made me appreciate this book more than I probably would have. When I need something to play in the background that doesn’t have lyrics 99% of the time I go to this score. If I just need to de-stress I go to this score. I’m sure a lot of it is how much I enjoyed this version of the film, but it’s also just an incredibly beautiful score. I’ve pasted it in after the recommendation. I should’ve been listening to it the whole time I read this book.

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Books

Book 418: Angel Fire East (Word & Void #3) – Terry Brooks

And just like that I’m done with my first foray into Terry Brooks’ World of Shannara. I’m not totally finished as I recently stumbled across a short story, Imaginary Friends, which is technically Word & Void #0.5 so there’s one small story left! I’ll read it in less than an hour and that’ll be the next post later this week.

As far as conclusions go, this was a pretty good end to the story that spanned three books, fifteen years and roughly 9-12 actual days of action in the books. I didn’t pay attention to it in the first two books, but each of these books takes place in less than five days from start to finish. There are plenty of flashbacks and quite a few jumps ahead, but overwhelmingly the entire action of the story takes place in less than a week. Each of these books really are examples of the minuscule moments which can change the world for good (the Word) or for evil (the Void).

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Books

Book 215: Winger – Andrew Smith

Over the past few weeks this book started appearing on a lot of the book blogs I follow. As I noticed the ‘score’ of the book pretty much unanimously being high and the general excitement and fervor surrounding the reviews and responses I knew I had to read this book sooner rather than later and I am very glad I did.

If you haven’t read this book yet, you should. Everyone should read this book; and I do mean everyone. I honestly believe that any reader can find something to identify within this book. And as an added bonus not only is it hilariously laugh out loud funny, but it also wrenches many of your other emotions whether you want it to or not. Smith has created such a tongue-in-cheek character you can’t help but identify with him and love him and want him to do well.

Click here to continue reading.