Thought Train to Pusan

“This is my problem. I want other people to tell me how they feel. But I’m not so sure I want to return the favor.” (Bruh, did I write this? Because this sounds exactly like me. Get out of my head). Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is a book full of lines that dig right into your heart. A book full of kindness and kind characters. Of feelings and phrases that seem almost too profound to be coming from such a young character, and yet it doesn’t feel as inorganic as many young-adult novels with characters who don’t feel organically young, just an image or distorted memory of what being young was like. This book may tread on some familiar ground, and perhaps not all that much “happens” in terms of plot. And yet… so much happens. And every time the young protagonist drives to the middle of the desert to look at the stars I can’t help but think that that is exactly what this book feels like. Staring at the immeasurable sky above, with nothing but space t

I really don’t know when and how I ended up with multiple novels by Pat Barker on my kindle, but here we are. And knowing that a few of them belonged to a series, I opted to read Border Crossing , a book dealing with child offenders of serious crimes, and examining the idea of people changing and finding redemption years later. Or is evil an inherent trait that can be found in children as well as adults? Honestly, the whole thing sounded kind of like that Andrew Garfield movie , Boy A , except in comparison, I found the whole thing rather bland. Or, maybe “bland” is not the right word… I guess it’s just that I felt like I needed more: more of everything. Some interesting topics and themes were brought up, but I never felt like we really got to the depth of them, or even to the depth of the character of Danny and his manipulative personality, which I found to be super intriguing and the strongest force in the story. Yet, I was left with a sense of just gliding through the whole thing

Miranda July is an interesting case, isn’t she? Sometimes I don’t know what to make of her and her work, and I find that she can be pretty divisive. There are some that find her to be gentle, profound, unique, and have a strong voice, while others may find her to be too whimsical, awkward, etc. And I happen to be right in the middle. I absolutely adore some of her work, but other times I just can’t connect with it and think, “Okay… that’s enough of you for a while.” And while the collection of stories in No One Belongs Here More Than You had a few short stories that really struck me, overall there were more misses than hits, and I couldn’t help but feel like everything in it was slowly dragging me down. It is true that July has a distinct voice, and there is a skill to capturing small, single moments in a way that make you see them as so significant. In many instances, however, these moments in July’s stories center around her character’s sensuality or instances of sexual intim

Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places indeed deals with some dark issues, all centered on a character, Libby, who comes across as abrasive and unlikeable, yet she is still understandable and I was able to develop some empathy for her throughout the novel. I also personally enjoyed how the story was told as a series of present-day versus past event chapters, that alternated with one another to reveal different information from the viewpoint of different characters in a more staggered manner. This made the pacing interesting but not too straight-forward, and let me try and come up with my own theories along the way before the ultimate conclusion. Though at some points, I would get so interested in the past events of a chapter that I wouldn’t want to switch back to Libby in the present day just at that moment.  Dark Places focuses on the life of Libby Day, 25 years after her brother, Ben, was charged with the murder of Libby’s mother and two older sisters when they were a

Let’s be real, I had no idea what this book was about before I started reading it. I wasn’t even aware that it was the beginning of a series! I just noticed the title when I was at the used book store, picking up some mysteries for my mum. And then I took a peek at the cover and thought, “why not!?” It looked like a medieval-ish adventure tale, and that is exactly what I got! And it was slightly confusing at times, perhaps due to the main character being just as out-of-the-loop and trying to figure things out as the reader is, but I still enjoyed the pace it clipped along at, with varying degrees of action and more stand-still or explanatory sections regarding this new fantasy world that the Abhorsen series presents. Sabriel is a young woman, in the latter half of her teenage years, attending a private school in what I assume is our normal world, yet still being taught a variety of different courses in Charter magic, as she and a number of other students are Charter Mages. Or,

I have this problem. The problem is that I always want to get into more comic books but never know where to start (bruh, you know people who can probably help you with this). But I saw that this edition of Daredevil said “Volume 1” on it so thought that hey, maybe that would be a good place to start. What I realize is that this was the first run of Frank Miller at the helm for the character (the first half of the volume being predominantly in the drawing, the second half with more of Miller’s writing). From what I understand, many believe that the character of Daredevil really came into his own when Miller began working with him, so at this point of me jumping into the series, Matt Murdock was already established as Daredevil and had some history that required me to fill in some blanks along the way with what I already knew about Daredevil (from the show, other conversations, etc), or to try and come to other conclusions regarding his relationships with certain characters based on t

Another one from the pile my friend handed to me when I asked for book recommendations! And a pretty enjoyable read, too, given how much I like werewolves these days (*cough* Teen Wolf). But I once again fall into this problem that I’ve been having lately in regards to protagonists: they just aren’t connecting with me. That is not to say that I like nothing about Elena, the main character in Bitten . But, she just seems to flip flop a bit to the point where I’m not sure if certain things are in fact out of character or if I just don’t truly understand her in some ways and am therefore seeing them as such. That’s my problem, though, and I don’t think everyone would feel the same as me. Bitten is about a woman named Elena, who is the only female werewolf in the world (special snowflake sirens screech in the distance!! she’s a hot commodity, y’all!). But let’s not get caught up in what initially made me roll my eyes. Elena has been living a pretty decent human life as a wolf witho

A joint review of: - Christian Theology: an Introduction to its Tasks and Traditions by Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King, and the companion book of assorted readings, Readings in Christian Theology I am currently undertaking an introductory course in Christian Theology, as a part of my school program of choice. And I made the mistake of doing it by correspondence after a few course cancellations, scheduling issues, etc. I am way in over my head, and I recognize that. That being said, I thought that these introductory texts would help me get truly immersed in the subject, but as it is, I find them difficult to read, as I don’t have much of a religious background to understand some of the concepts. It is very in-depth as to a number of the major Christian doctrines and what is essential to the faith, but at times I felt like I needed a dictionary on standby to be truly able to digest the type of language used. I will say, however, that many of the readings in the acc

After reading another Cannonballer’s review of Modern Romance , I decided I had to take a look and see what it’s all about! A look at the modern dating scene from a sociological perspective mixed with personal memories, and coming from the hilarious Aziz Ansari? That sounds like it was made for me! This book was in fact quite interesting, very easy to zip through while on a couple of long car-rides, and had a light and funny voice to it overall. But there were a couple of things that has made it fall into the 3-star category for me: for one, while the whole thing has a nice overview of facts, issues, and new things to consider in the modern dating scene (largely, technology and changing social culture, etc), I’m not really sure where the whole thing was trying to go. Is it just a research summary? Intended to help people in their dating life? Not sure how helpful it will be for me, I still feel pretty clueless, so I don’t know. The other issue that I had was that a lot of the

I asked my friend for some recommendations of books, and found these two thrust into my hands. Apparently there is actually another book that comes in between them in the series ( Valiant ), but that it is about other characters whereas Ironside is more like a direct sequel to Tithe . But anyways, that’s a bit of a side note. I will start this off by saying that as a kid growing up, I love love LOVED anything to do with Faeries and other little magical creatures like that. So I was intrigued, seeing as how I haven’t actually read any young adult novels based around those types of creatures (which is kind of surprising to me). And these two books were pretty interesting to hear all about these faery worlds and creatures and customs, despite the fact that the plot followed that sort of typical YA, “you’re different from everyone else” pattern. What do we call it? The special snowflake thing? Anyways. The only problem was with the main character, Kaye… There was something about her.

A couple of things have reminded me of the movie Stardust lately, which ultimately led to me feeling the need to read the book, of course! Because why wouldn’t I delve into the source material of something I like so much? And I wasn’t disappointed! As always, there is so much more to the story and more detail than you’d see in a different kind of medium, and Neil Gaiman is very creative and always seems to be able to produce some sort of vivid and imaginative world that just somehow makes sense even with all it’s whimsy. Do I sometimes want to say, “You’re not as deep as you think you are, Sir”? Yes, I do. But that doesn’t mean I don’t immensely enjoy his writing and the stories and characters he creates. On to the tale itself, Stardust follows the adventures of a young man named Tristan, whose birth came about by some peculiar circumstances, involving a magical land beyond the walls of his town (called Wall, of course). As he comes of age, his sights are set on a beautiful yo

(A review of Gay T-Rex Law Firm: Executive Boner , by Chuck Tingle) What the hell did I just read???  Let’s not get into how I stumbled upon author Chuck Tingle on Amazon, whose stories include those with titles such as: “The Curse of Bigfoot Butt Camp”, “I’m Gay for my Liv ing Billionaire Jet Plane”, “Space Raptor Butt Invasion”, and “Pounded by the Gay Unicorn Football Squad.” All I will say is that curiosity killed this cat… and there was little satisfaction to bring it back. Seriously, this book took me about five minutes to read, and they were some of the strangest five minutes reading I’ve ever spent. At first you think, “this is ridiculous and hilarious!” as the story begins with Donny, getting hired at Jurassic Law, a law firm with mainly dinosaurs working there, with absolutely no explanation regarding this. Like, okay I guess we are just living in a world with sentient dinosaurs that run successful law firms in New York. I can work with that. But then suddenly things

  These are by far two of the shortest books that I have had to read for school in a long time. Hooray! And they were quite straightforward and easy to get through as well. However, this may be due to the fact that I have previously taken a Lifespan Development course before, so a lot of the information I received was nothing new. More like a refresher. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Leonie Sugarman’s book on Counselling and the Life Course presents a number of different theories regarding lifespan and development, though the focus is more on what these implications might mean when counseling a person. An individual’s present placement within their lifespan or their current stage of development can result in a number of different issues that may be more salient for them, or it can influence how certain life events may affect them. For instance, losing a parent during childhood or adolescence will have different implications for a person than if this were to occur during

The concluding volume of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s comic series Locke & Key is full of carnage, and I didn’t expect anything different. There is resolution, and yet so many more mysteries left to be explored in this world and with all the magical keys and the history of key house. The only truly bad thing about this book was that it had to end, after everything came to a head and we were left to see where the resulting pieces would end up.   “Alpha & Omega” takes us to the night of prom for the Locke children, as they plan to have an after-party rave in the caverns by their the Lovecraft house. But Bode, still possessed by the spirit of Luke/”Dodge,” has other ideas for how the night shall end, as he appears to hold all the cards in his little game: with almost all of the magical keys in his possession, and no one aware that he is not in fact Bode anymore, Luke is free to play a game that results in his ultimate quest for a world of select loyal followers and sla

The penultimate collected volume of Joe Hill’s Locke & Key series (illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez) provides some history regarding the Lovecraft residence, the history of the magical keys, and how the patriarch of the Locke family became implicated in the history of the house and what is occurring now, back when he was just a teenager. Unlike the previous volumes of this dark and inventive series, past events are the focus of “Clockworks,” and we get some answers as to what the house and keys are all about, and even where they came from. Yet many things remain up in the air, which I am excited to unravel in the concluding book, “Omega”. “Clockworks” begins with a tale of a young blacksmith named Ben Locke in the Revolutionary War. Most of his family has been killed for harboring fugitives in the caves below Lovecraft, where a door to a demonic world has been found. Ben Locke works to create a lock and key in order to keep this door shut for forever, but also uses some of

I seem to go through this comic book series in little stints. I’ll read a few, then take a break until I acquire some more, and then take another break. And while a few details always get lost here and there, it always manages to draw me back and I start to remember where I left off almost immediately. It’s different and fun, but also dark and dirty at parts, and the drawing style of Rob Guillory really reflects this dichotomy of moods and feelings constantly present within the Chew series: sometime you wonder why people are rendered with such strange proportions or images will be humorously exaggerated, only to then flip the page and find something grotesque on the other side. And yet it works: both the story itself and the drawing is engaging and unique, though I will say that I know a few people who are not particularly fans of the art style of Guillory. In any case, Space Cakes and Bad Apples picks up some plotlines of the previous Chew installments that were almost startin

Goodness, February was a hectic month. I feel like so much happened in such a short span of time: too much happened, really! Because I never even had a chance to finish any reading until now, just as I head into a school course focusing on grief and loss. Beverly Chappell’s book, Children Helping Children with Grief: My Path to Founding the Dougy Center for Grieving Children and their Families does basically exactly what the title implies. It recount’s stories of Chappell and her husband working with various families and children who are experiencing family losses, and how these experiences influenced the ultimate creation of the Dougy Center for grieving children. It also recounts how some other influential people come to become involved with the center as well. These stories are all told from a personal place, and are often touching to hear. However, being that this was a book that I was required to read for a school course, I was surprised and a little disappointed that ther

I come to read a book on with grief through creative arts therapies at a time wherein I face the impending death of a family member. And I am restless. Being a fidgety person to begin with, I can’t keep my hands still when my mind is full of all kinds of thoughts: preparing for courses in school, learning about grief for an upcoming class, dealing with loss and grief myself, and all other kinds of things. And so I draw. My hands take what I am feeling and put a part of me on a page. And I am not entirely okay, but I also don’t feel like I’m drowning like I have felt all too much recently for far too many reasons. But enough about me… The Art of Grief: The Use of Expressive Arts in a Grief Support Group is predominantly set up as a guide to running bereavement support groups that utilize the expressive arts as a process of healing and working through grief. Different practitioners with a variety of creative and therapeutic backgrounds contribute ideas and sessions that are set u

This is a misleading little textbook in terms of how long it actually takes to get through it. I thought, “oh it’s so small compared to my other books, this will be easy!” But no. The writing is compact and while there is a lot of dialogue in the presented case studies to make things interesting, overall it is quite dry and I found it hard to focus on what I was reading. That is not to say that it wasn’t informative! But as compared to the other two textbooks I’ve read so far this year, it’s been the most difficult to get through. In this book, Gerald Corey presents the hypothetical counseling case of “Ruth”, and provides information that might be acquired during an intake interview. Corey then invites counselors from a variety of different theoretical perspectives to describe what their style of counseling might involve when working with someone like Ruth. There is also an inclusion at the end of each chapter with discussion on what Corey’s process would be with Ruth within eac