Gwenda

It’s Not Paranoia: “Life As We Knew It”

7 Comments / Books / By /

LifeWhen the Moon is knocked out of orbit by an asteroid, it becomes a strange menace hanging low in the sky. And the world starts to end — or that’s what it feels like for teenage Miranda. Tidal waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, and epidemics ensue as she chronicles her family’s struggle to stay alive through the collapse of their (and our) way of life in great and sometimes heartbreaking detail. Always believable, always human, Miranda’s story is harrowing, but it brings with it a multitude of rewards for the reader. And — at least on the topics I knew enough to be able to judge (public health, societal collapse) — Susan Beth Pfeffer gets it pretty much right.

I don’t have time at the moment to give Life As We Knew It the fuller take it deserves, but please, do read it. Especially if you’re secretly (or openly) obsessed with post-apocalyptic scenarios, societal collapse, deadly epidemics, etc. etc. Oh, I should caution though that you should also be a fan of fantastic writing and extreme emotional believability, in addition to that other stuff. This book is INTENSE.

And highly recommended. Thanks to Jennifer for pointing it out.

UPDATED: And it’s now up for the Andre Norton Award; yet another reason to check it out.

It’s Not Paranoia: “Life As We Knew It” Read More »

Wednesday Hangovers

Hangovers / By /

Wednesday Hangovers Read More »

VeronicaMarsTalk

11 Comments / TV Goodness / By /

And even bigger yay:

Show Me the Monkey. Attempting to keep her mind off Logan (Jason Dohring), Veronica (Kristen Bell) takes a job helping animal researchers track down a monkey missing from their laboratory. In order to find the missing animal, Veronica and Mac (Tina Majorino) go undercover as members of an on-campus animal rights group, believed to have freed the monkey. Meanwhile, Mindy O’Dell (guest star Jamie Ray Newman, "E Ring") asks Keith (Enrico Colantoni) to investigate Dean O’Dell’s (Ed Begley, Jr., who does not appear in the episode) death because she believes he was murdered. Percy Daggs, Francis Capra, Michael Muhney, Ryan Hansen, Chris Lowell and Julie Gonzalo also star. Nick Marck directed the episode story by John Ebrom and teleplay by John Enbom and Robby Hull.

Let’s hope the animal rights activists are painted with a more subtle brush than the feminists of the last arc. And also that the show’s chances for another season aren’t signaled by what will apparently be an 8-week hiatus following this arc for some reality show called Pussycat Dolls.

VeronicaMarsTalk Read More »

Mad Max World

2 Comments / Books / By /

Henry Farrell has posted a fascinating email exchange with China Mieville about Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I bought ages ago but haven’t gotten to yet. A snippet:

CM – It’ll be interesting to see where he goes next. It’ll be quite hard to step back from this, back to another pre-Apocalypse moment, however conceived. Perhaps a drawing-room comedy…

I mean, didn’t you think the roasted baby was just, y’know, a little bit camp?

Go there for the more serious parts of the discussion. (Via Niall.)

Mad Max World Read More »

Heroes Yammer

9 Comments / TV Goodness / By /

Finally, new television:

Godsend. Matt reveals himself to his wife. HRG confers with Mohinder. Now that she knows the truth, Claire tries to make sense of her life. Hiro seeks the sword that he is destined to own. Niki must face the consequences of her decision to turn herself in to the police. Simone and Nathan are worried about Peter, who has been in a coma for two weeks. A new hero is introduced who meets Peter and offers him a different view of the recent changes in the human evolutionary process. Micah visits his mother.

Looks like an action-packed one.

See also: The Watcher covers The Heroes presser.

Heroes Yammer Read More »

Award Fever (Updated)

Books / By /

Check out the 2007 American Library Association award winners in all the children’s/YA categories at YALSA (or the ALA has now updated their site). The Printz went to Gene Yang’s American Born Chinese (with honorable mentions to S&S favorites M.T. Anderson, John Green, Marcus Zusak and Sonya Hartnett). It’s nice to see a graphic novel win the top honor, so I won’t even carp about how Anderson was robbed.

Oh, and congratulations to Cynthia Lord for her Newbery Honor and Schneider Award!

See also:

Reaction from Kelly at Big A little a
and from winner Cynthia
and J.L. Bell on serious themes in the honored books
and John Green jumping up and down (not at all like a little girl)
and Maureen Johnson cracks hilariously wise

Award Fever (Updated) Read More »

Feeling Better

3 Comments / MFA Rock / By /

… after sixish hours working on revising/rewriting my first 17 pages. Lots more work still to do, but nice to have done some. I also cleaned the desk and filed all the papers I brought back with me (handouts from lectures, my own manuscripts from workshop with comments, admin stuff).

And, joy of joys, my first packet due date was pushed back to Saturday, February 17th, which gives me almost a month to get the first 40 pages of my now-untitled novel in shape, two short critical essays completed, and to read four or five books and do an annotated bibliography. My advisor is Tim Wynne-Jones, who is a fabulous, inspiring, hilarious writer, and who also–coolest of coolness-wrote the music for Fraggle Rock.

Tomorrow, back to work. Still coughing a bit, but that’s slacked off too.

Feeling Better Read More »

Sunday Hangovers

2 Comments / Hangovers / By /

Sunday Hangovers Read More »

In Which She Clicks Her Heels Together & Blinks

6 Comments / Nattering / By /

H-O-M-E. Where life is sweet, and the bathrooms are private, and the laundry’s in the back room.

I came home to find a copy of one of my most-anticipated reads of the year, Liz Hand‘s Generation Loss — sadly, it’s going to have to wait a couple of weeks, until my first packet of work is turned in. In the meantime, here’s the wondrous opening paragraph:

There’s always a moment where everything changes. A great photographer — someone like Diane Arbus, or me during that fraction of a second when I was great — she sees that moment coming, and presses the shutter release an instant before the change hits. If you don’t see it coming, if you blink or you’re drunk or just looking the other way — well, everything changes anyway, it’s not like things would have been different.

In Which She Clicks Her Heels Together & Blinks Read More »

Scroll to Top