Toast.x2

Hell yeah, the book was good! No details needed. Just a declaration that it is in fact a very enjoyable (while unchallenging) read. Every chapter was the title of a pop hit that matched the theme of the chapter. Well put together and as enjoyable as you allow it to be! There are multiple covers to this book, and judging a book by it’s cover it absolutely relevant. One cover is bland, showing a year book photo with some strange blurring, indicating what? A demonic possession? A camera flaw? Meh. Not even worth linking to show you. The other is a glorious 1980’s throwback. It espouses a time when VHS ruled, putting together a mishmash of bad themes into a cartoony cover image. Off kilter rainbow colors are put together with a series of stickers reminding you to rewind. Check the back photo with synopsis and camp photos.

Neal Stephenson has a way of dragging folks through broken glass and making them thank him afterwards for the opportunity. Thanks back,Neal! The cuts and bruises are critical components of the tale. In the first page of the novel ‘seveneves’, the moon inexplicably fractures into Seven enormous parts. There was just a quick puff of dust, a cloud of debris, then the permanent reordering of the night sky. By page fifteen, humans realize that these Moon fractures will culminate in a death knell that will ring for five thousand years. After reading this, I would say that I truely enjoyed about eighty percent of it. There is a plot tone shift that happens at eigthy percent that while enjoyable, felt askance. The book could have just as easily ended and told the tale just as well. For the majority of the book, every page of plot includes a page of technical fact. Without these pages the book would fall flat, unable to truely explain why every single breath matters and why a pebble or misplace...

  Cait Flanders didn’t write a book about how she got herself in thirty thousand dollars of debt quickly and blindly. She didn’t write a book about the crippling effects her things/stuff/fomo had on her feelings of value and self respect. Cait Flanders wrote about the reset button in her brain that kept her from making the same mistakes across an entire lifetime. She dictates simple steps she took to break a cycle she admitted to being stuck in. Thrilling bestseller? Maybe not. Insightful and mindful? Yes, absolutely. .

  Permanence is a matter of perspective. As a squishy human that is merely a bag of meat and liquid, I view anything that is harder than my own body as permanent. I subconciously evaluate things around me and identify whether I could be killed or damaged by it landing on me, if it is impossible to move by hand, or is arguably a large dense rocklike element. These perspectives influence the scale and breadth with which I interract with others, my mental stability, and how I move about the world with confidence. I never gave much thought to the confidence and sense of reliability manifested by the percieved longevity of these objects. By proxy, I never gave much thought to Sand as an element or a composite requirement of construction of the same. It was just sand, something for childrens playgrounds, for cats to pee in, and someplace to visit on the coast that comes home in your shoes. Sand is little and light weight. It is the antithesis of permanence. It is the big sister of dust. ...

  It is a fine novella you created here, Brooke Bolander. I golf clap in honor of your book and simultaneously accept your apologies for making my soul cry bloody snot tears of angry sad mad. Not for the weak of heart! Serious. In this alt-history novella, the horrifically sad history of Topsy the Elephant (electrocuted for entertainment and ticket sales) is merged with the history of the Radium Girls. In this reweaving, the women poisoned by radium in watch factories of the early 20th century have begun replacing their cancer ridden work force with trained elephants. These enslaved Elephants can taste the poison they are ingesting and do what is possible to avoid the whip. Mixed throughout the novella are vignettes of Elephant history, passed down pack stories, and lore. Along side those are a loose plotline of Humans negotiating with modern Elephants to be pushed to poisoned reservation lands. These lands are offered as penance for past Human crimes, but are a different kind of p...

  Never have I wanted to read a book inside a book so badly. I ask IDW or Dark Horse comics to actively consider a two part graphic novel series. One for core Station Eleven plot, and ine for the story in the story… ready, set… FIGHT! Some back story on this novel by Emily St. John Mandel- Kirsten survived the swine flu variant ‘Georgia Flu’. This illness rocked humanity from a global peak population right back to barebones single digit percentages. She lives in a world where she watched her loved ones die painfully, airplanes tumble from the sky, and technology fail it’s creators in all manner. Mankind is back to hand milling grain and early feudal social structures. Kirsten is part of the Travelling Symphony, bringing entertainment to small communities in exchange for trade. Their motto, stolen from Startrek Voyager ‘Survival is insufficient’. This motto begins to be more relevant/difficult as the author continues to insert baddies and plot twists. The novel is full of deep but p...

  I think that this book may need to be recategorized from Psychological Horror to another more relevant genre like 20th Century Gender History et al. Explanation below: First- total props out to the creators of ground breaking media. There is so much of it that whether through innundation or generational constraints, we can never get to everything we want at the time of optimal relevance. In the last couple years, I finally got around to watching Twin Peaks. While I could see how it was innovative at the time of release, being late to the boat by 25 years I had experienced a great deal of the cinema that was influenced by it and which had taken it steps further. It was interesting to see, but it was a bit like watching a familiar old dog sleep on the couch. Reading the Haunting of Hill House 60 years after it’s release was similar in that I have experienced a great deal of referencial work. I can understand the build up and time appropriate horror this would have provided. Did I m...

  Roach is a lesser demon. He was a soldier in the Angelic War and inevitably fell from Heaven. He is pissed. The pissed off attitude is due to a long term grudge against Lucifer, who under appreciates loyalty and is an utter bastard of a Boss. The grudge is centric mainly to when Satan blocked Roach’s access to be a primary character in Dantes Inferno. Roach decides to depart and spend time with mankind for some rollicking good mayhem. Influencing, murdering, and demonic posession on a mass scale just to rub the devils nose in his revelry. Mary M. Schmidt’s Our Frail Disordered Lives was well written, well researched, and damned well amusing. OFDL never out grows it’s britches or loses the humor it started off with. Bigger than a novella, but shorted than a novel, it is like a short story run amok. The title doesnt really match the feel or cadence of the book. Love the title though for another novel. Great pick for fans of Christopher Moore’s Lamb, or Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and...

This was a seriously cool comic. Just trust me. Check retailers or your library. There is a Feb 2019 Image Comics current release by Christopher Sebeka and Ibrahim Moustafa. 200+ pages. Suzanne is a drug addicted Olympic medalist. She took the hit to her pride and ran from the paparazzi and Olympic comittee in order to stop the stripping of her medals, they are the last thing she is proud of after allowing her life to turn to shit. Suzanne now lives in the Himalayas, teamed up to earn a paycheck as an Everest guide. It takes a month to get to the top and back. It is dangerous to hit the summit. It takes gear, patience, and a bit of luck to make it, while the last couple days is effectively a race to suffocation and brain damage. Suzanne and her partner come across bodies of failed climbers. Bringing bodies down is not something you do out of kindness. It costs money, time, and risk to bring a body back. Instead they collect a hand for finger printing and any identification available. R...

  Quote heavy review because it was a very quotable book. We think we know why we like something. Hit Makers explores the various sciences dedicated to tricking the brain and setting preference before you even experience something. According to Author Derek Thompson, nearly blind German scientist Gustav Fechner (Psychology grand parent) is a reasonable place to start in this story. Fechner ran tests on locals in an attempt to draw conclusions about the laws of attraction and beauty. Asking people about similar basic objects (rectangles) he requested they select the ‘most beautiful’ and then drew conclusions which could never be repeated again. Sounds silly. But critical.. The basis lives here in the simplicity of showing the objects and eliciting feedback, along with the golden ratio (of course). Hit Makers follows the thread, recognizing work over the years which identify that beauty, preference, popularity, can almost be scripted. Percentage based popularity can be biased easily ...

  Oh Macon Blair.. Oh Joe Flood.. Oni Press and the lord in heaven.. Thank you for making this glorious comic. Two hobos a story does not make. To get a really amazing story, insert any of the following and shake vigorously: hijinx, a vengeful lawman, a hot dog tree, a one handed dead woman, sexual tension, goat theives, apple pie, crucifiction, treasure maps, river rafting, snake venom sucked from body parts, religious fireballs, walking skeletons, bearded ladies, backfiring guns, spit in a guys ear, carnies, badass ladies fighting the law, dudes kissing dudes, bonfires, false kings, comraderie, the open road.. And of course, the promise of Liquor City at the end of it all.. If only these here hobos could decipher the map, all would be hunky dory. Get ready for some hobo surgery, someone go boil a pickle. Amazing artwork! Leans to the rougher sketch soft pencil comic days, and avoids the hypersaturated post anime influence. 5 pages from the end confirmed my suspicions and blew my ...

  I am not sure how I feel about this graphic novel. It was absolutely amazing, but it also borders on a white ‘we were not all bad!’/ ‘not me’ denial. Also- while Mandela is a character in this, but the book is actually more of a transformative view. Follows a man being influenced toward change and the complexity of a white perspective struggling with the upheaval of social structure they were taught was proper. Nelson Mandela and General Constand Viljoen, the former chief of apartheid South Africa’s military. These men are the core of this graphic novel. With distrust and mistreatment sedimented into strata over the years, there is no reason why the outcome of the South African apartheid revolution should have avoided more violence. Yet somehow.. Beginning with the release of Mandela after 27 years of incarceration and ending with the presidential election of the same man, this is a difficult work to read. The South African political and social structures were backward, needing s...

  While it is true it was emotionally difficult to get through some passages of this Jay Asher novel, I hoped for an emergent differentiation in the decade old morality tale. What I got was the same old story I have read before with a thin veneer of gimmicky innovation and some straight talk on personal responsibility. I have read a number of teen scare books over the years teaching lessons each time about drugs, cutting, the occult, etc. All of them follow the same formula. Whether Suicide, overdose, murder, demonic influence (and more), they all end the same, with untimely death. Normally, these books/journals/etc also pat the reader on the back as a person who ‘will know better now’ and avoid the traps of the core topic. 13 Rrasons went so far as to include a person who did nothing wrong and would take the pat in the back for me. Instead of interacting with the object of evidence directly, we had a proxy to absorb some of the shock and repetitiously give commentary that undermin...

  Hauling Checks was a pretty funny book, focused on watching the death spiral of a company run by a lunatic and propped up by desperation. Pilots who stayed too long to retain credibility, in an industry that is sinking, are forced to extreme measures to earn a payday. What will bounce first, their airplanes broken on the tarmac or the company paycheck for their illegally under-reported flight hours? I state 'pretty funny' because I had to pick my jaw up a couple times and replace chuckles with straight 'wtf' statements a non-pilot could never understand. This by no means changes the audience, this book is highly approachable by any reader who is okay with some mixed black/construction site humor. Alex Stone's satirical novel Hauling Checks opens with an Authors Note. "This is a work of fiction. The pilots and other employees of the air cargo industry are actually nothing like the characters in this novel". Stone however, is listed as being a 'Freight...

  Nigel Travis’s book is a primer on corp civil discourse. I am a major believer in the law of two feet; that people with a desire to have impact will step forward. Unfortunately, these same people are often myopic in their vision, looking to achieve one goal only and have learned that the squeeky wheel gets the grease. Having worked with a number of companies over the years who have applied a blow torch to open conversation regarding policy, team feedback is always about lack of visibility toward results. The closed door/black box following of process, leaves anyone who was impacted by policy (all of us) left wondering who was actually listening and if anything would change. I have also worked at an org that had a fearless leader who tried hard to apply an open policy of communication, but did so inconsistently and controlled conflict with a heavy fist. This heavy fist was also present whenever people came to the table with less passion than he had. Instead of creating openness, i...

  Having read Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party, I have little to say. 9 longtime friends go to a remote hunting lodge for new years. While snowed in and blocked from communication with local police, one of them is murdered. Good but predictable. Glad I read it. Glad I didn’t pay money for it (review copy). Solid characters, but a tedious ‘gotta draw out the secret ending’ delivery. But don’t let my opinion sway you. This may be right up your alley.

When Dan Kerr was hired to find missing missing heiress Grace, it seemed like this was going to be a pretty straight forward and predictable graphic novel. Was still worth reading, but maybe not a full price purchase. Within a very short few pages I was caught up very nicely in a strange paranormal ghost story. This was great! All of the paranormal scenes were solid and felt strong and creepy, but not trying too hard. The air around a returned spirit is ice cold and can freeze a living human to solid ice. The girl, Grace, is the catalyst for this entire affair. She has some sort of undisclosed power, attracting spirits and somehow allowing a limited control over them. I hate to be a downer on this graphic novel- but unfortunately I cannot avoid it. The entire plot was driven by a very awkward and heavyhanded main character. Kerr was (unsurprisingly) known to be the father of the missing girl. He was largely useless and most every scene he was in was purebluster and testosterone. T...