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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Book Reviews: One day we will all eat shit from an IT guy




You know how you put off doing things that you know you should do and then you go to do it and then you are all "Nah" and then you put it off some more, knowing the longer you wait the harder it's going to be and then the harder you think it'll be, the more you put it off. It's a vicious procrastination cycle that only the truly slothful would ever understand.

That is this blog right here. I know I should do it. I have things started. I have ideas to write about and yet here we are. I even have book reviews written down and ready to go. That is how much I try and avoid this.

In no particular order...

32. I Wear the Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman: It’s a book of essays focusing on villains/ heroes and how we perceive them. If you knew your heroes, they may not be your heroes anymore,etc. (Did you know that OJ Simpson had to pay Ron Goldman’s family all the proceeds from his book, If I Did It?) This book also gives a lot of insight into IT guys. I think I now know why my husband is the way he is. He’s an IT guy. He has too much power and knowledge. He would make the perfect villain because he can fix your computer. Think about it. I will just leave this here: “This is what makes an IT guy different from you. He might make less money, he might have less social prestige, and people might look at him in the cafeteria like he’s a morlock – but he can act however he wants. He can be nice, but only if he feels like it. He can ignore the company dress code. He can lie for no reason whatsoever. He can smoke weed at lunch because he’ll still understand your iMac better than you.”

33. To Die For by Joyce Maynard: Kindle Monthly Deal right now for $1.99. Remember that movie some years ago that had Joaquin Phoenix and Nicole Kidman having a lot of sex in it? Yeah so this is the book that that was based on. Great read. I love a story about a sociopathic woman who manipulates everyone to do her bidding.  

34. Feed by Mira Grant: Not too Shabby. A aombie book but a different take.  Zombies have been around for a while and people are just kind of living with them. When the infection first started, the government and the liberal media fucked everything so it was really left to bloggers and interneting people to tell the real story (In this zombie world, there are enough people alive that electricity and things like that are still on in most places). Basically it’s saying, in the modern world if there was an internet, a zombie apocalypse would never happen. First people would think it was fake, of course, but if you have enough people saying the same exact thing with video proof and what not, eventually people will have to take it seriously (You can only hear that Richard Gere gerbil story so many times until you start to believe it). This is the story of a group of bloggers/ vloggers that follow the 2040 presidential campaign that focuses on zombie issues. Sounds stupid, I will admit. But it’s actually very well done.

35. Divergent by Veronica Roth: Gross. I just did not like it at all. I couldn’t even finish it. My main problem was that I did not care about any of it. The characters have to be one dimensional because it is what their faction needs of them or some shit and that is not fun to read. I love a ridiculous story as much as the next but this was just stupid-ridiculous. Like why would anyone want to be in a faction? I know they explained it in some half-ass Young Adult Fiction way in which it helped crime somehow yet there was still crime within factions and other factions are constantly fighting so… And does having to catch a moving train every time you need to go somewhere prove that you are fearless or is it just inconvenient? And why in the world are they letting 16-year-olds make a decision that will dictate to them the person they have to be for the rest of their lives? Teenagers are notoriously awful at making decisions, let’s let them decide what they want to be forever. GREAT IDEA. It’s just stupid story and when you compare it to Hunger Games, you are insulting Jennifer Lawrence herself (even though JLaw had nothing to do with the HG story).

36. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson: I loved this so much. There is a quality to this book that reminds me of Grey Gardens and I love those ladies so I was already predetermined to like this book. The only exception was Edie and Little Edie were never suspected of murdering their whole family by putting arsenic in the sugar.

37. The Magpies by Mark Edwards: This would have been an excellent book even with a generic story if someone else that wasn't a dick had written it. It's a simple enough story of a couple moving into a new home and the neighbors being crazy psychopaths. The wife sees it first and freaks out in a shrill unreasonable way and the man tells her to calm down with her menses and make him a sandwich. So I was pretty much done with this book from the first incident. Throwing in numerous pop-culture references in a fiction story drives me crazy and this book is riddled. Also you know how much I hate reading dreams and again, countless dreams that meant nothing. The characters were one-sided and insufferable. Whoever Mark Edwards is, it would be great if he would stop writing women characters. Thanks. This dick writes the man of the story to be full of masculine pride but instead of using his repeatedly mentioned masculine pride and confronting the issues, he just hopes they will go away. I am not positive but I don’t think ignoring problems is usually conceived as masculine but I am a woman do what do I know?

38. Inside Graceland; Elvis' Maid Remembers by Nancy Rooks: I love a good Elvis story. I don't even care all that much for his music but he seemed like a nice enough guy and I love a story about a famous person being very nice and generous with their help which was exactly what this was. You could tell Nancy just adored Elvis and I am convinced the feeling was mutual. It's just a good simple story. It is what you expect it to be with a few inside details.

39. The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick: This is the same guy that wrote Silver Linings Playbook, which I loved. I didn't love this one was much but it was still a good enough story but with maybe too much of the unusual characters being so unusual it's kind of hard to follow at times at what is even going on. But it wasn't bad. A lot of talk of aliens, Catholicism and Richard Gere.

40. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh: It’s a book based on just the most terrific blog ever. It’s pretty and colorful and a book I had to have the hard copy of because it was so slick and pretty. Also the stories were good. A few of them have appeared on her blog before but they were worth a read again. I would also like to take Allie Brosh along with me in my pocket and have her be my best friend.

41 - 43. The Strain Trilogy by Guillermo Del Toro: I have had these books forever and I saw that FX was making a show about that that should be out this summer and I was like "Oh yeah, I have those." These were the most informative vampires novels I have ever read, and not about vampires. About so many things. Rats, eclipses and diseases mostly but so much information. Like did you know that rats don't have a gag reflex and that is what makes them so susceptible to poison? Did you know that blood thinner is basically rat poison? Did you know that you can obscure your fingerprints by putting super glue on them? Did you know that the lions in front of the New York Public Library are called Patience and Fortitude? I did not know any of that. – Okay so it’s a vampire story but very, very different than any other vampires story you have ever read. I promise you. It has everything. These aren’t your run of the mill vampire. They aren’t pretty. They lose their genitals, facial features, personalities, everything. They are basically all drones serving the master. Just a really creative story that I enjoyed.  

 

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