Willliam Shakespeare's Stars Wars: Verily, A New Hope by Ian Doescher

5 Stars

 

“Friends, rebels, Starfighters, lend me your ears.”

William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope is exactly what the title says - Star Wars rewritten in iambic pentameter. If you aren’t a Star Wars fan, then what the fuck are you doing reading this???? you’re probably not going to understand why this is the best thing I’ve seen lately. (I’m also fairly certain zombie Shakespeare won’t be returning from the grave anytime soon in order to tell me that I “read wrong,” so that’s another bonus.) Oh, and in case there is any doubt about my nerdery (really? there’s still doubt at this point???) and because Mitchell is a camera whore who gets pissed if he isn’t featured in a review on the regular, here is my Funko Pop! proof that I am indeed a dork . . .



I really enjoyed reading this. I mean, look what happened . . .


(Ummmmm, Brigid I’m still waiting for you to supply me with some sexy coffee for my sexy mug)

So many post-its . . . and I probably annoyed a good 78% of the Goodreads population with my non-stop updates. I could post quote upon quote, but is it really even necessary? This story follows the original, only in an olde timey way. The conversations worthy of a quote, however? Those between R2 and C-3PO:

R2-D2: “Squeak, whistle, beep, meep, nee, meep, whistle squeak!”
C-3PO: “Hold thou they cursing and most cursed tongue!”

I giggled every time they bickered.

Bottom line – you just can’t go wrong with a Star Wars parody.

From feature films. . .



To SNL . . .



To video games . . .



To cartoons . . .



To even the original actors mocking themselves . . .



The retelling of Star Wars never gets old. It is indeed a tale for the ages. One that contains action and adventure, good v. evil, and proves that the only love more awkward than insta-love is that of insta-love with your own sister . . .



And if you play your cards right, being a superfan might even get you out of jury duty . . .



At bare minimum, Liz Lemon can teach you some kick-ass lyrics to the Cantina band song : )

“Figrin D’an the kloo horn man . . .”

Highly recommended to all and may the force be with you!

Kissing Ted Callahan (And Other Guys) by Amy Spalding

1 Star

 

Where to begin????? I guess I'll begin with the fact that if a blurb is nervy enough to say the story is a "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist meets Easy A," the book better deliver. This one DID NOT. According to Goodreads the technical definition of a 1 Star rating means "I didn't like it." I didn't like it, so it's getting 1 Star. Have a problem with that?



I'm not out to ruin someone's day with my reviews. I'm here to read books and share my opinions about those books with friends. Sometimes I choose to shelve those books without a rating at all and just call it a good day. But sometimes non-reviews get turned into actual reviews (with star ratings) due to . . . circumstances.



Every once in awhile I'm even lucky enough to score an ARC. And I was really looking forward to this one. I fell in love with the synopsis and title. I adore stories about teenagers (which should be pretty evident in this supergiffy review) . . . but they have to be well written stories. Otherwise? My review might bring on a low rating.



So the premise of Kissing Ted Callahan (And Other Guys) is besties Riley and Reid are both unlucky in love. In order to help each other out, they start swapping a notebook filled with pointers in order to hopefully help the other finally find the road to romance . . . and thus the "anti-burn book" (a/k/a Passenger Manifest) is created.



Said book is filled with sage advice regarding how to score like "don't be ugly" and "have good hair." (Don't you all wish you could get some pointers from that priceless gem?)

While Reid finds himself striking out, Riley finds her cup runneth over in the form of three different suitors. Well, suitors might be kind of a strong term. Riley is pretty much the pursuer who goes from declining dates to aggressive liplocks and falling into insta-puppy-love with each boy who gives her the time of day.



And therein lies the rub. I don't mind girls who asks guys out. I don't even mind casually dating multiple dudes (as long as everyone is aware of the status of their relationships, which is definitely NOT the case here). What I do mind is a story about a 16 year old girl who writes in a journal that one of her goals is "doing it" jumping into bed with a dude she hardly knows when she comes off as someone with the maturity level of an 11 year old.



Good grief was Riley vapid. I mean we're talking like this . . .



and this . . .



without the "growth and redemption arc" at the end of the story.

I can't forget to mention that Reid's story was given a fraction of the pages that Riley received (and he had nearly the exact same voice as Riley when his little snippets did appear).

Oh, and I also need to make note of the totally unpredictable plot twist (hope my sarcasm font is working appropriately) of the infamous "Passenger Manifest" going missing and Reid and Riley being forced to make confessions to the objects of their affection regarding its contents before it ends up potentially being distributed throughout the school . . . Which leads to a break-up with bachelor #3 and a make-up/happily ever after end note to close on.



I have tons of highlights on my Kindle, but at the end of the day? They aren't even worth quoting. Basically it amounts to the fact that Riley and Reid were a couple of judgey turds and I wasn't surprised at all by the fact that they had a hard time scoring dates. They were insufferable!

EDIT: In case anyone doubts that I do indeed mark the heck out of most books I read, here is a blurry pic proving it:



But hey, at least it only took me a couple of hours to read. On that note - Bookboar OUT!



My apologies for any spelling or grammatical errors. I know that really irritates some people. I guess it's a lucky thing that I don't aspire to be a writer.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Silo by Trisha Leaver and Lindsay Currie

4 Stars

 

If you’re looking for a YA selection that has very little of this . . .



but some stuff like this . . .



Silo might be the right selection.

Before I begin this review, here’s my full disclosure about my relationship with one of the authors . . . We went to high school together. However, we haven’t seen each other in twenty I mean FIVE (yeah definitely 5 because we are still super young) years – and I requested her other book Creed without even realizing it was the person I know until the day before the release date. Basically this is the longest way possible to say that I don’t let personal relationships with authors influence my reviewing. EVER.

Because the author and I grew up in a small town where if you drove for 10 minutes in any direction you would find a cornfield (reserve your “Children of the Corn” jokes for someone who hasn’t heard them a time or twelve), I assumed SILO meant this . . .



(But hopefully more stable since young humans were going to be residing inside it.)

Instead, I found out they were talking about an underground silo, kinda like this . . .



Ooops, my bad. So anywho, the MCs (Jake, Evan and Keith) have been holed up in said silo for nearly a year after a solar storm wiped out their school bus (and everything else in the way), leaving them stranded hundreds of miles from home (if there even is a “home” anymore). Now they live in a world where every man fights for himself and the only way to stay alive is to scavenge/steal supplies from others. When they find a beaten girl in one of the silos, the three boys rescue her from her captors . . . who don’t take kindly to having their most valuable possession stolen.

I’m going to start with the problems I had with the story. First, the blurb says “a solar storm plunges the world into total darkness.” I’m not sciencey (like, AT ALL), so I have no clue what a “solar storm” is or what happens during and after it. I pictured it kinda like this . . .



There were also phrases like “without the sun to mark the sky, you couldn’t tell up from down, east from west” to help me figure out what the new world was like . . . But then there was also talk about getting home before sunset. Inconsistencies like that confuse my tiny brain. There also wasn’t much discussion about why the boys never tried to get home ASAP after the storm, which bugged a little.

I also noticed some typographical errors and omitted words which resulted in awkward phrasing a few times. If I had paid for this story or if I found an abundance of errors, I would be a harsher critic, but in a world filled with Badly Behaving Authors, Leaver and Currie opted to offer Silo up on Wattpad (where it still remains for free) chapter by chapter each week in order to build a fanbase in a super cool way. With that kind of time crunch, two authors, and being something offered for zero dollars, I can excuse a few mistakes.

And then we get to the “didn’t see it coming” moment. I don’t get taken by surprise easily, and this one????



Nope. Totally didn’t and that little twist earns Silo 4 Stars. If you have a young person in your life who wants something a little older and a little darker, but isn’t quite ready to jump into the world of King or Koontz, this is a good choice. Bonus is Leaver and Currie have TWO new books coming out in 2015.



I know I’ll be keeping an eye out for them.

Locke & Key Vol. 1 - Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez

5 Stars

 

I’m giving this 4 Stars because it’s the first in the series and I need some rating wiggle room Fuck that, this gets all the stars.

Locke & Key is proof that there is indeed a graphic novel out there for everyone. Being from a small town without a lot of a lot of exposure to the world of comic books and being a *gasp* GIRL on top of that . . .



I never bothered with the genre until I birthed a tiny little nerd and then I started dabbling in the world of illustrated stories in order to prove that “I’m not a regular mom, I’m a cool mom.”



It’s been a little hit or miss when it comes to my enjoyment of comics (same with novels - shocker), but I found a winner this time. Added bonus that FIVE different library locations somehow pulled their individual volumes simultaneously and they were all waiting on the hold shelf last night. The Gods smile upon me!!!!!



What begins as a tragic story of a family who moves across the country to an old family home mansion after a violent act tears apart their lives, quickly morphs into something a little more sinister . . .



I can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed this first volume. It’s gory, it’s dark, it has an angsty MC who has an actual reason to be an angsty teen . . .



It has Bode. Oh how I adore little Bode . . .



It has some creepy bitch who lives in a well . . .



And the artwork? Goodgodamighty, just look at this artwork!!!



What more can you ask for? Oh yeah, that’s right. This is a graphic novel so you can ask for MOREMOREMOREMORE volumes. I can’t wait to unlock some more of the story : )

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

2 Stars

 

 “The thing with the new world is it’s just horrifically short on elegance.”

Everyone loved this book. I’m talking EVERYONE. I have 1 – yep ONE – friend or person I follow on Goodreads who gave it less than 3 Stars. In order to prove how much of an idiot I am and that no one should take my opinion seriously, I will super giffify this review.



Station Eleven begins with the story of Arthur, who passes away on stage while performing King Lear and Jeevan, the man who tried to recucitate Arthur, and of Kirsten, a child actress who was also in the play and witnesses Arthur’s death. We then do the wibbly-wobbly timey wimey thing that takes us to a dystopian future where 99.99999% of the population was eradicated by the “Georgian Flu” and where Kirsten is still an actress, only this time it is with the “Traveling Symphony” – an acting/musical troupe who travels the wastelands of the Canadian side of the Great Lakes performing Shakespeare. Then we flippy floppy back in time to hear Arthur and Jeevan’s respective life stories. The author also throws in a “second coming of the Lord” for good measure.

Everyone else talks about the crisp, beautiful writing and how they couldn’t put this book down and here I sit and have to confess that it took me three days to get through it (and I generally read a book a day).



I can agree that the story and characters were intricately woven, but my reaction to those characters and their stories????



Especially when it comes to the story of the flu and the prophet. No one can ever do the end of the world/second coming better than King did with The Stand. I like my end of the world stories to grab me by the balls and not let go until I’ve become a complete germaphobe who is terrified to leave the house for a few days after reading ; ) Station Eleven left me with a reaction kind of like this . . .



And for the “flowery writing”?????? The notes I made to myself look like this:

“No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films . . . No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take photographs of concert stages. No more concert stages lit by candy-colored halogens, no more electronica, punk, electric guitars. No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one’s hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite. No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows . . . No more airplanes, no more requests to put your tray table in its upright and locked position . . .”

Followed by a brilliant comment by me: “SNOOZE!!!!”.



Then every blue moon I have something like this:

“I stood looking over my damaged home and tried to forget the sweetness of life on Earth.”

With my genius observation: “Oooooh, I like that.”



I also have a bunch of highlights with notes to myself like: “Explain?” . . . “Will she explain??” . . . “Are they EVER going to explain this????”Guess what? The answer is NOPE.

Then there’s more of this:

“Consider the snow globe. Consider the mind that invented those miniature storms, the factory worker who turned sheets of plastic into white flakes of snow . . . consider the white gloves on the hands of the woman who inserted the snow globes into boxes to be packed into larger boxes, crates, shipping containers. Consider the card games played belowdecks in the evenings on the ship carrying the containers across the ocean . . . Consider the signature on the shipping manifest when the ship reached port . . .”

And my reaction of: “SOOOOOOOOO BORING!”



I didn’t like it . . . but everyone else did, so I say give it a shot. And if you end up disagreeing with my opinion????



Ha! Just kidding. If you want an actual review that gives a well-stated counterpoint to this one (and uses words instead of pictures to do so), check out Kaora’s.

Something Real by Heather Demetrios

2.5 Stars

 

Something Real is the story of Bonnie's . . . . "unconventional upbringing." You see, for most of her life (seriously, she was literally born on camera) Bonnie's ginormous family was the subject of a reality t.v. show called "Baker's Dozen." When the show was cancelled and Bonnie's parents got divorced, she thought it would be her chance to be a regular high schooler. Little did Bonnie know the 13 Baker children would be going back on the air during her Senior year in high school for a new show entitled "Baker's Dozen - Fresh Batch."



This might be a time where I was just too old for a particular YA book. There's nothing wrong with the story . . . there just wasn't much story. At over 400 pages, Something Real got to be more than a little repetitive and as someone who chooses reality television shows (don't judge) for my brain candy when I'm not reading this story seemed to be a bit of a rip-off of another show about a large family with a money-grubbing shrieking harpy for a mother . . .



Ugh, if there's one thing I really don't need more of in my life is something that reminds of of Kate Gosselin.



Have no fear, Kate, I will. I like my reality shows to feature illiterate trashy bitches who call each other "prostitution whores" and do things like this . . .



Watching parents (or in this case reading about parents) exploit their children makes me want to HULK SMASH!!!!



And call me a Friends purist, but titling all of the chapters "The One With . . . " seemed like a rip-off of another VERY popular show.



I'm giving this one 2.5 Stars because I found it to be perfectly mediocre. The good thing is, I loved I'll Meet You There by the same author, so I'm more willing to accept the fact that this is a case of "it's not you, it's me."