Thoughts of LoWriter

January Books

I know, I know. I should be writing the obligatory SuperBowl entry. I watched good ads, ate good food, drank good beer (Sam Adam's Boston Ale is a winner in my book), and watched the Colts win. Hell yeah on all fronts. I will say this: The announcers were terrible. They brought us such wonderful lines as "Turnovers have been a factor...today" after about the fifth one and "Well, it's still raining out there" as we watched sheets of rain spill from the sky. We decided that they had a bottle of Wild Turkey under the desk and they had to take a shot any time someone said Payton Manning. They also had to take a shot if they said Bears or Colts. They could only say Chicago and Indianapolis. There were other rules, too, but I forget what they were. At any rate, the only logical explanation for announcing that bad is a drinking game gone wrong. Period.

At any rate, as I said, it was good times had by all, but alas, alack, the football season is over, and we must move on. And I move on by bringing you the books I read last month. (Books are rated on a five star scale.)

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett: Four and a half stars. This fantastic little book is one of the Tiffany Aching series which ties in with the witches series as well. In it, Tiffany Aching dances with Winter during "the other Morris dance" (the one danced silently in the fall vs. the one with bells in the spring--a concept Pratchett brings up in previous novels), and he becomes smitten with her. She then has to figure out how to save the world from eternal winter. And she's in her teens. This is considered a young adult book, so it's not as elaborate or as subtle as some of Pratchett's other novels, but it is hillarious none the less. It is third in the thread and good all around.

Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi: Three stars. Brought to you by the same author who created Persepolis and Persepolis II, this graphic novel follows the break down and death of a musician over the course of about a week. (I'm not giving anything away; it starts out by saying the guy is going to die.) It's pretty good. It's not as good as Persepolis, but it is better than Persepolis II. My theory on all this is that she has a lot of really great stories, but she got famous before most of them were ready. She needs a little distance before she's going to be able to write something as powerful as Persepolis. That's just my opinion. Still, Chicken with Plums was moving and worth the read.

Grease Monkey by Tim Eldred: Four stars. This graphic novel was interesting to say the least. It's weird and a little campy, so be warned, but I enjoyed it. This book is set in a future where a great portion of the human population has been killed and aliens called the Benefactors have advanced the intellegence of primates in order to help humans prepare for a confrontation with the evil aliens who destroyed a good portion of the population. In the midst of this, a young mechanic, Robin Plotnik, joins the orbiting "Fist of Earth" space station. Here, the military does its training drills, and Robin gets assigned to the best (and most ridiculed) squadron--The Barbarians--who happen to be all girls. It's mostly about growing up weird, so that's kind of fun. And it's set in space because most of us who grew up weird like space. I dug it. You could, too, but only if you're weird in all the right ways.

And that is it for the reads, kids. I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to share your own in the comments.