Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh

Book: Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, and Other Things that Happened

Author: Allie Brosh

Why I Read It: The Under 30 Author square on my #ReadingBingo. Plus I love her blog. Ordered this book in the mail and couldn't wait for it to get here.

First Line: It seems like there should be some sort of introduction to this.

First Impression: Yay! It's here!

Last Impression: Hmm....a lot of this was already on her blog. And it loses its edge in the printed form. Sad day.

Ratings

Overall – 4 Heart Skipped a Beat Turns out, her work doesn't translate all that well to the printed page. If this was a rating on her blog, 5. A rating on how funny she is, 6. But as a book, it just didn't hit all the right notes. Pacing is so important in humor and seeing the hilariously awesome images before she's fully built up why they are hilariously awesome kills the moment.

Characters – 5 The dogs are the best characters ever, especially the Simple Dog. And the Alot is grammar joke gold.

Story – 3 Repeated content from much of her blog. Great stuff, just not new.

Narration – 5 She builds stories so very, very well. Comedic genius.

Read Again? Yeah. Mostly the dog ones.

Tell Others to Read? The book? No. The blog? Abso-frickin-lutely.

Excerpt: I can't. The images are mandatory in this situation. Thankfully, many excerpts (and really most of the book content) can be found here: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

Book: Let's Pretend This Never Happened

Author: Jenny Lawson

Why I Read It: #ReadingBingo - Filling in the "Funny" square.

First Line: Call me Ishmael.

First Impression: Witty, biting humor. It can come off as overly snarky if read in a bad mood, however.

Last Impression: Quite the crazy life she's had and the sense of humor to survive/retell it.

 

Ratings

Overall – 4 Heart Skipped a Beat It was quite funny. Her sense of humor requires a particular mood from the reader and the novelty of her life wears off, but she still is a delightful narrator and you genuinely care about her and her wacky life.

Characters – 4 The people in the book come alive on the page and it is easy to envision her crazy father actually waking them up with a disembodied squirrel puppet.  

Story – 5 I wavered here because the book wavered. At times it was a 6, others it was a 3. Overall, her life is too strange to be fiction and fun to journey through.

Narration – 5 Her voice reaches the female audience quite well, but may not translate as well to the male audience. Check out the excerpt, which is taken from the first page of the book, to get a sense of what I mean. The rest of the novel continues in much the same direction. But, being a woman, her narration and style resonated with me. Thus the rating.

Read Again? No. I know the punchline/crazy experience already. But I enjoyed it.

Tell Others to Read? Every woman should read this, and open-minded guys as well. It's exceptionally funny, but some of her best moments are geared toward the females. 

Excerpt:...it makes a way more respectable beginning than the sentence I'd originally written, which was about how I'd just run into my gynecologist at Starbucks and she totally looked right past me like she didn't even know me. And so I stood there wondering whether that's something she does on purpose to make her clients feel less uncomfortable, or whether she genuinely didn't recognize me without my vagina. Either way, it's very disconcerting when people who've been inside your vagina don't acknowledge your existence. Also, I just want to clarify that I don't mean "without my vagina" like I didn't have it with me at the time. I just meant that I wasn't, you know...displaying it while I was at Starbucks. That's probably understood, but I thought I should clarify, since it's the first chapter and you don't know that much about me. So just to clarify, I always have my vagina with me. It's like my American Express card. (In that I don't leave home without it. Not that I use it to buy stuff with.)

Room by Emma Donoghue

Book: Room

Author: Emma Donoghue
 

Why I Read It: I loved one of her other books, Slammerkin, and I was enamored with the idea of writing about the experience of abuse and captivity from the view of a child.

First Line: "Today I'm five."

First Impression: Wow. This is so realistic. And depressing.

Last Impression: Wow. This is so realistic. And depressing. And DAMN can she write!

 

Ratings 

Overall – 5 Heart Racing I was surprised by how true to life the situation felt; how they play Scream, how he has to hide every night in case Old Nick visits, how detailed the minutia of each day is because it is all they have.

Characters – 3 Ma and Jack, our main characters, create their own little world in room. Jack narrates, so Ma is only viewed in the mothering role. Her other female experiences are on the periphery, making the abusive situation easier to tolerate, but also leaving her flat and underdeveloped. Old Nick is a disembodied voice but functions in the role of the abuser. Jack is the driving force of the book and much of his personality is shown through his insights.

Story – 5 The story carries itself much further through the action than I anticipated.

Narration – 4 The narration suffers from inconsistency part way through the book, and Jack's voice feels less organic and a bit forced. But the idea of narrating the abusive situation through his naive view is brilliant.

Read Again? Absolutely. It was inspiring to ingest such a well-written, refreshing and engaging story. I was on the edge of my seat.

Tell Others to Read? Yes. But I will warn them. It is a lot and hard to handle. You have to be prepared to read about a woman who has been raped and abused on a very regular basis. You have to be prepared to accept this as her existence and read on anyway. You have to be prepared to watch suffering and hope and despair interact in a very believable way.

Excerpt: "Monday is a laundry day, we get into Bath with socks, underwears, my gray pants that Ketchup squirted on, the sheets and dish towels, and we squish all the dirt out. Ma hots Thermostat way up for the drying, she pulls Clothes Horse out from beside Door and stands him open and I tell him to be strong. I would love to ride him like when I was a baby but I'm so huge now I might break his back. It would be cool to sometimes go smaller again and sometimes bigger like Alice. When we've twisted the water out of everything and hanged them up, Ma and me have to rip off our T-shirts and take turns pushing ourselves into Refrigerator to cool down.

     Lunch is bean salad, my second worst favorite. After nap we do Scream every day but not Saturdays or Sundays. We clear our throats and climb up on Table to be nearer Skylight, holding hands not to fall. We say 'On your mark, get set, go,' then we open wide our teeth and shout and holler howl yowl shriek screech scream the loudest possible. Today I'm the loudest ever because my lungs are stretching from being five.

     Then we shush with fingers on lips. I ask Ma once what we're listening for and she said just in case, you never know."

 

 

Excerpt content property of Little, Brown and Company

The Professor and The Madman by Simon Winchester

Book: The Professor and the Madman

Author: Simon Winchester

 

Why I Read It: I was researching the origin of words for a class and I came across this story of how the Oxford English Dictionary was created.

First Line: In Victorian London, even in a place as louche and notoriously crime-ridden as Lambeth Marsh, the sound of gunshots was a rare event indeed.

 

First Impression: Murder, insanity and the making of the OED? I am definitely on board!

Last Impression: Wow. This was amazing. Much more story than history, which I was not expecting, but loved it from start to finish. Also, the dictionary entries at the beginning of each chapter were fun.

Ratings

Overall – 4 Heart Skipped A Beat

Characters – 4 The characterization of these two men is touching; figures from the past are usually brought alive from the pages of history with broad strokes, here they are detailed in their thoughts and actions, and tinted in a deferential light.

Story – 3 The story is equal parts history lesson and character study of the two men behind the first edition of the OED. The story is interesting, but it is not what drives the reader on.

Narration – 4 While most might find the subject a bit dull, Winchester clearly does not and his curiousity to discover the past is tangible on the pages. His description of dictionary history is tainted with wonder, and the reader can't help but share the awe at such a feat. His word choice, perhaps more noticable in a book about words, is careful and decisive. Each and every word used feels purposeful.

Read Again? I most certainly will read this book again. It was a fun piece of history that I have already had the craving to revisit.

Tell Others to Read? Depends upon the person. This book walks that line between creative nonfiction and historical fiction, so if the reader likes books in either of those genres, then yes.

Excerpt: And sometime in the early 1880s one copy, at least, left inside a book or slipped between the pages of a learned journal, found its way to one of two large cells on the top floor of Block 2 of the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane in Crowthorne, Berkshire. It was read, voraciously, by William Minor, a man for whom books, with which one of his two cells was lined from floor to ceiling, had become a second life.
     Doctor Minor had been an inmate at Broadmoor for the previous eight years. He was deluded, true; but he was a sensitive and intelligent man, a graduate of Yale, and well read and curious. He was, understandably, preternaturally anxious to have something useful to do, something that might occupy the weeks and months and decades that stretched without limit -- "Until Her Majesty's Pleasure Be Known" -- before him.
     This invitation from a Dr. James Murray of Mill Hill, Middlesex, N.W., it seemed, promised an opportunity for intellectual stimulus -- and perhaps even a measure of personal redemption -- that was far better than any he could otherwise imagine. He would write, immediately.

World War Z by Max Brooks

Book: World War Z

Author: Max Brooks

Why I Read It: Because I am a hard core zombie fan. And it looked awesome.

First Line: It goes by many names: "The Crisis," "The Dark Years," "The Walking Plague," as well as newer and more "hip" titles such as "World War Z" or "Z War One."

First Impression: Wow. This is really well written. And a brilliant idea.

Last Impression: Huh. Didn't really think about the impact of zombies on the planet. Or if they could survive drowning or freezing. A little more political than I was anticipating, but great angle to cover in an apocalyptic scenario.

Ratings

Overall – 5 Heart Racing

Characters – 5 Each and every character was unique and entralling; from regional accents to realistic slang, their voices jumped off the page.

Story – 5 The zombie apocalypse has been told many times, in many ways, ranging from horrorific to comedic, but this approach was brand new. Brooks is skilled in crafting a fluid narrative from the piece meal approach of first person accounts

Narration – 5 The journalistic structure of this "oral history" is well-crafted. The reader is drawn further in through each of the eight sections and the question and answer framework

Read Again? Absolutely. Willingly. Excitedly. And certainly around Halloween.

Tell Others to Read? Yes. Just about everyone. You don't have to be a zombie or horror fan to love this book. Also, you should stay ahead of the curve and read it before the movie comes out.

Excerpt: Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? At least this time around we knew what we were combating, but when you added up all the experience, all the data we'd compiled on their origin, their physiology, their strengths, their weaknesses, their motives, and their mentality, it still presented us with a very gloomy prospect for victory.
     The book of war, the one we've been writing since one ape slapped another, was completely useless in this situation. We had to write a new one from scratch.

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson

Book: The Psychopath Test

Author: Jon Ronson

Why I Read It: I have quite the interesting in abnormal psychology and did a bit of research on the Hare Psychopath Checklist while working on my MA, so this title jumped off the shelf at me

First Line: This is a story about madness.

First Impression: Huh. Definitely not the way I thought this story would start.

Last Impression: It was interesting....I guess.

Ratings

Overall – 2 Faint Pulse

Characters – 2 There aren't characters, just real people interviewed who were sometimes given aliases to hid their identity. Ronson doesn't spend much time on descriptions of these people and as a results they feel rather flat.

Story – 2 The story starts in an unexpected and weak place for the expectations the title and cover imagery create, and since the ending is tied to the beginning it is not strong either. The rest of the novel is entertaining in rare moments and I learned a little, but overall I was underwhelmed.

Narration – 3 Ronson has skill with gathering the appropriate research, contacts and tidbits for his work, but they are tied together in a rather haphazard way, giving the novel an disjointed and disconnected feel.

Read Again? No. I read it once and now my curiosity is satisfied.

Tell Others to Read? No, probably not. There are other journalistic novelists that I would recommend first.

Excerpt: It was an awful lot harder, Tony told me, to convince people you're sane rather than it is to convince them you're crazy.
     "I thought the best way to seem normal," he said, "would be to talk to people normally about normal things like football and what's on TV. That's the obvious thing to do, right? I subscribe to New Scientist. I like reading about scientific breakthroughs. One time they had an article about how the U.S. Army was training bumblebees to sniff out explosives. So I said to a nurse, 'Did you know that the U.S. Army is training bumblebees to sniff out explosives?' Later when I read my medical notes, I saw they'd written, Thinks bees can sniff out explosives."

End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov

Book: The End of Eternity

Author: Isaac Asimov

Why I Read It: Because I am hard core addicted to anything Asimov writes.

First Line: Andrew Harlan stepped into the kettle.

First Impression: Huh. Seems a bit slower than most of Asimov's books.

Last Impression: Kinda bummed they gave the book this title. I knew the ending from about the halfway point.

 

Ratings

Overall – 3 Resting Heart Rate

Characters – 3 I love Asimov, but writing female characters has never been his strong suit, and it is certainly the case with the female love interest, Noys, in this novel. The main character Harlan is rather one dimensional and more of a plot device than a person you grow to care about.

Story – 3 Asimov created a unique story about time travel; Harlan exists in Eternity, which is outside of Time and allows people to travel parallel through Time. He falls into a love affair with Noys which makes him question the existence of Eternity and his purpose. The ending was given away by the title, but it was enjoyable to get there.

Narration – 3 The narration doesn't really pull you into the story, but the plot and the characters suffice to accomplish that instead.

Read Again? Perhaps. But I will read his sci-fi short story collections first when the itch for Asimov strikes. I am always glad to read his work but this isn't one of my favorites.

Tell Others to Read? If they are an Asimov fan and they haven't happened across this book, then yes. If they are just being introduced to Asimov, then no. I would steer them towards some of his more impactful works.

Excerpt: It was his hands acting by themselves that brought the kettle to the proper halt at the proper Century.

     Strange that a Technician should feel tense or nervous about anything. What was it that Educator Yarrow had once said:

     "Above all a Technician must be dispassionate. The Reality Change he initiates may affect the lives of as many as fifty billion people. A million or more of these may be so drastically affected as to be considered new individuals. Under these conditions, an emotional make-up is a distinct handicap."

     Harlan put the memory of his teacher's dry voice out of his mind with an almost savage shake of his head. In those days he never imagined that he himself would have the peculiar talent for that very position. But emotion had come upon him after all. Not for fifty billion people. What in Time did he care for fifty billion people? There was just one. One person.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewcka

Book: A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian

Author: Marina Lewycka

Why I Read It: I was in a hostel in London and the common room "library" only had three books in English and this one looked the most intriguing.

First Line: "Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukranian divorcee."

 

First Impression: Wow. This is really good. I'm surprised someone left this here.

Last Impression: Nowhere near the journey I was expecting (and I didn't really learn anything about tractors) butit was engrossing and satisfying.

 

Ratings

Overall – 4 Heart Skipped A Beat

Characters – 4  Each charager was dynamic and virbrant; the female narrator gives just enough space for her aging father determined to tell his history of tractors, the conniving and surgically accented Ukranian divorcee and her well-meaning but overbearing sister to fill up the pages.

Story – 2  Honestly the story became a bit dull and the characters were the reason to keep reading, not the action.

Narration – 4 The pacing was rhythmic and lulling, the word chocie was powerfully decisive and it was surprising how quickly all the intricacies of this Ukranian family felt familiar.

Read Again? Yes. It was unique and fun and a perfect road tripping read. But I might just feel that way because it was acquired in travels and read on the road.

Tell Others to Read? Depends on the person. If I see them in the bookstore with a stack in their arms 10 books tall, or flipping through a book about travel, then absolutely. Or if they are a "reader" and are looking for something different than their usual fare. If they're looking for something to read after finishing 50 Shades of Grey, probably not.

Excerpt: Tart. Bitch. Cheap slut. This woman who as taken the place of my mother. I stretch my hand out and bare my teeth in a smile.

   "Hallo, Valentina. How nice to meet you at last."

   Her hand in mine is cold, limp, no grip. The long fingernails are varnished in peach-pink pearlised nail-polish to match the lips. I see myself through her eyes - small, skinny, dark, no bust. Not a real woman. She smiles at Mike, a slow, wicked smile.

   "You like vodka?"

   "I've made a pot of tea," I say.

   My father's eyes are fixed on her as she moves about the room.

Introducing Monday Minis

To continue bringing you delighful readers something new and exciting to consume, The Dying Book Affair proudly presents Monday Minis! What better is there to start the week off right than to keep our desire to read still bubbling? Enter the #MondayMinis!

The more in-depth and comprehensive book reviews will still remain unrated, but the #MondayMinis are meant to be a quick glimpse and ratings are ideal for that purpose. Here is the rating system for our #MondayMinis.

Each mini review will include ratings for:

• How much I liked it
• Characters
• Story
• Narration
• Overall

Ratings

• 5 - Heart Racing. This was a great book! I am absolutely dying to read this book again. I will recommend it to everyone I know and random people I meet.
• 4 - Heart Skipped a Beat. This book has something special. I will definitely read this book again. I will cheerfully recommend it.
• 3 - Resting Heart Rate. This book was a good read overall but not particularly memorable. I won't read this book again unless a good reason pops up. I will only recommend this book if I think that particular individual might enjoy it.
• 2 - Faint Pulse. This book tried, but didn't quite make it. I will not read this book again. I will not recommend it.
• 1 - Flatlined. This book was terrible. I will never ever read this book again. I will not recommend it.

Now, not every book fits in this neat system. Every once in a while there is a book that invoke an extreme reaction. For those books we have....

Extreme ratings!

• 6 - Heart Exploded with Joy. This book was fucking amazing. I am stunned with wonder. I wanted to read this book again immediately. I couldn't pick up another book for a while because this one had left such a strong impression. I will rave about this book to anyone who will stand still long enough.
• 0 - Cold Dead Corpse. This book was a collossal waste of my time. I was powered only by stubbornness. I only finished this book because I refuse to leave any book unfinished but I did not enjoy it at all. I will actively tell people to avoid this book.

In addition to ratings, each review will have:

• The title
• The author's name
• Why I read it
• First Line
• First Impression
• Last Impression
• If I will read it again
• If I will tell others to read it
• An excerpt

Now there is something delightful to look forward to every Monday morning! Enter your email to get The Dying Book Affair to your inbox or subscribe to get  Monday Minis delivered to you personally.