The Readin Roos

Wow! This is the first time I've read anything by Octavia Butler and I found it absolutely captivating. The title story, which Butler calls her "pregnant man story," was excellent, but I find myself still mulling over the implications of "Speech Sounds." In it, a disease causes people to lose their ability to speak and/or read and write. It is absolutely devastating. The collection also includes afterwords for each story. I'm usually not a fan of reading what writers have to say about their work, but Butler's insights were pretty compelling.

This is a book for the layperson or beginners. The author devotes a chapter each on structural topics or well-known structures, such as the Eiffel tower, the pyramids of Egypt, or the Hagia Sophia. Written 30 years ago, you will find certain modern architectural concepts not discussed. CADD software is something new to the author. But, the basics of physical concepts used in architectural engineering are well-covered. New materials make modern building design possible. Aesthetics and structural integrity are never independent.

The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson is a popularized history of the English Language and it's evolution to the modern day. Bryson traces the origins of the English language, it's climb to a global language, the etymology of words, various dialects and swearing.

Reviewed by Ashley Fick

It is an elite cadre of authors whose materials I have loathed so much I couldn't bring myself to complete them. In fact, in 37 years of reading life, I can count their number on one hand. Today Chuck Palahniuk is breathing that rarefied air. I was so thoroughly sickened by the content of Invisible Monsters that I'm putting it down less than halfway read and you could not pay me to pick it back up. If it were my own copy, I'd burn it, that's how much I really hate this book.

"David Attenborough is intelligent and promising and may well be producer material, but he is not to be used again as an interviewer. His teeth are too big." This 1950 assessment of Attenborough's first experience in front of a television camera might have nixed any chance at a stellar career as a television host, but did not keep the BBC from hiring a young man who was to become a well-respected producer and leader. Sir David Attenborough's story is a glimpse at the the development of British television from its beginnings in post-war Britain to the present day.

I am a huge fan of Barbara Kingsolver and am always amazed by how different most of her works are from each other. Lacuna combines the personal journals of Harrison Shepherd (known as Soli) from the age of 12 until he vanishes later in life and the writings of his secretary. It mixes history with a fictional view of the lives of the famous and the ordinary citizen. Soli was born to a Mexican mother and an American father in the US. He returns to Mexico with his mother after his parents’ divorce.

Did I ever mention that vampire books give me the willies? I mean uncomfortable, squirm-in-my-seat and put-the-book-down agitation? So why am I reading Fledgling? The answer is the author Octavia E. Butler.

Octavia Butler writes a post-modern tale of vampires. What I thought I knew about the species referred to as the Ina in this book is only partially accurate, the result of long-term contact and misunderstanding between Ina and human beings.

I watch a lot of murder shows: CSI, Criminal Minds, and the like, but I mostly watch them incidentally, whenever I happen upon them while flipping through the channels (which doesn't take all that long since I don't have cable). There's only one that I tune in to at the same time every week: Castle. I started watching it because I am a big fan of Nathan Fillion (Go Browncoats!), but I keep watching it because the show works beautifully as a whole.

I'm still waiting for the zombies that were in book 2 to show back up. I'm also still enjoying this series, but not quite as much as the Dresden Files. It's still a stop gap. I could definitely do a lot worse, though. There's a lot of plot that goes on in this book and the main character continues to come into his own. Despite all that goes on in the novel, it still feels like I'm waiting for something else to happen. Oh, right, I'm still waiting for those zombies to show up again. It's great to have this looming threat that you know is going to come back into the series, but a writer can only maintain that kind of tension for so long and I'm at that point where I don't want to wait any more. I'm starting to read other books in between the books in the Alera series and that's not a good sign.

I saw the movie version first and really enjoyed it, so I thought I'd take a look at the original. As a video game lover, I appreciate the way that aesthetic is brought to both the movie and the graphic novel. I can't say that one is more successfully rendered than the other because I thought that both were so well done. There's a lot of attention to detail and the graphic novel does make you work (at least a little bit) to notice things and figure out what is going on.