Book Review – Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Annihilation

Annihilation is a 2014 science fiction horror novel by Jeff VanderMeer and the first novel in the Southern Reach trilogy. Area X, a once lightly populated region, has been under quarantine for decades for unknown reasons, long since reclaimed by nature. There have been 11 expeditions into the region, most of them meeting bizarre and violent ends. The last expedition had all of its members return home under mysterious circumstances, mere husks of their former selves, before all succumbing to aggressive cancer. Now, the 12th expedition is underway, made up of four women including our narrator, the biologist, whose husband was part of the 11th expedition. They struggle to comprehend the phenomena they uncover in this hostile yet strangely captivating environment, the trust between them slowly eroding.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – January 24, 2024

www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?


Currently Reading

Video Game of the YearI’m still slowly making my way through Video Game of the Year by Jordan Minor; ideally, I want to read two entries a day, but I haven’t quite gotten myself there yet. Still, I read at least two when I do pick it up, and it’s making for some great bit-sized reading. I’ve reached the 1990s, so it’s starting to get into games I actually have some experience with, with the exception of PC titles that passed me by. I’m really enjoying the addition of the “Extra Life” section after each entry that highlights another game of that year, as well as other semi-related titles, so that any possibly glaring omissions get some attention. The medium is full of great games after all, but only one can be featured for each year. I’m glad Minor was able to find a way to make room for so much more.


Recently Finished

AnnihilationI’m happy to report that I managed to finish Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer the other day, sticking to my plan to get it finished before the end of January. I’m also really pleased with how different this book was from the film, as it feels like I can appreciate them better as separate entities now. By its very nature, as the story we’re reading was written by “the biologist” in a field journal, it’s painful yet tantalizing how much has been left mysterious. It’s clear that horrors lurk in Area X, and lifeforms there undergo startling changes in form, but why and how this is all happening and what has happened there as reported in past field journals is so hinted at yet uncertain that I can’t wait to read more. It seems the sequel, Authority, may be written more like a conventional novel (I am speculating), or at least from a more knowledgeable perspective, which I love as a shift in format, starting with an account written in the field—full of discovery and speculation—and then shifting to something more authoritative to grow our understanding.


Reading Next

I’m still holding out hope that The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens will be returned to the library soon, so for now I’m just going to focus on Video Game of the Year and hope my patience pays off.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – January 17, 2024

www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?


Currently Reading

Video Game of the YearI hadn’t made much progress last week due to the January lull, which is why I didn’t post, but I have been chipping away at Video Game of the Year by Jordan Minor, which is a year-by-year guide to some of the most influential video games of each year from 1977 to 2022. Some early entries have been unsurprising, such as the likes of Pong and Pac-Man, but within each entry is a great look into the industry climate that helped shape these games and the technical limitations that they had to work with. I’m hoping I don’t plod along with this for too long, but I’m enjoying it regardless.

AnnihilationAlso, on a whim, I started reading Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer on Monday, though I was too tired to fully take advantage of my available reading time; if I wasn’t so fatigued, I probably would’ve finished it. Though it’s been a while since I’ve seen the film adaptation, I’m still taken a little aback at how different the book is from it in terms of presentation, even though the premise is more or less the same. I’m really enjoying it as a cosmic horror story all the same though, and I’m frankly relishing the fact that I’m not sure what to expect. With starting this book, and hopefully finishing it imminently, I’ve decided to commit to reading through the whole trilogy this year; getting the first one finished so early is a good start.


Recently Finished

The Employees (2)On Sunday, I managed to read through the entirety of The Employees by Olga Ravn, a science fiction novella told through report statements from the crew of a ship that has taken on strange objects that are having an effect on the them, both human and humanoid alike. At times, this book was a little too stream of consciousness for me, as the statements being read are transcribed from characters speaking, so oftentimes it felt as though I was reading rambling or jumbled thoughts, leaving me worried some details went over my head; it felt not unlike when I struggle to follow poetry, though not nearly as bad. However, this conveyed the idea of the crew’s states of mind slowly being compromised really well, and a clear story eventually emerged that I really enjoyed. I’m a little behind on the reviews I want to write, but hopefully I’ll get one up for this one.


Reading Next

The GhostThe next book I want to read is The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens. Though I don’t believe in ghosts, I find ghost stories and the mythology around them fascinating. For a long time I had wanted to buy this book, but I decided last month or so to read it from the library instead. I actually had the book in my possession in December, but I realized that I wasn’t going to have time to get to it until the new year and somebody else had a reservation on it, so I just returned it without starting. I’ve got a hold on it now again and I’m hoping to be able to take it out again soon.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

WWW Wednesday – August 2, 2023

www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a weekly book meme run by Sam over at Taking on a World of Words. Check out her post and others over on her blog!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Much to my irritation, for reasons unknown to me WordPress is not allowing me to resize images as needed in a post, so I’m not including any covers today, even though that bothers me to my very core.


Currently Reading

I’ve been able to make yet more substantial progress in Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett since my last post; I’m just under 70 pages away from completing it. I typically enjoy the novels about the witches a lot simply for the love of the characters, even if the plot lines leave a little something to be desired at times (at least as far as I remember, I’ve read so many Discworld novels now), but I am really loving this one. Nanny Ogg, Magrat, and Agnes are all being given a lot of time to shine as characters, in some cases showing how much they’ve grown, and this is the most vulnerable we’ve ever seen Granny Weatherwax, though her gravitas is still maintained. The vampires continue to be an excellent force to be reckoned with, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how they are thwarted.


Recently Finished

Last week didn’t have much to show for it and my family suffered a sudden loss, so I didn’t bother posting anything. As a tiny turn of fortune though, the fourth volume of the manga adaptation of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess by Akira Himekawa turned up at my library after seemingly being MIA, so we’re back in business as far as making progress on that series goes. I’m surprised with how much this volume sped through certain story beats of the game; by the end, two dungeons are cleared and the subplot with Ilia losing her memory have been resolved. I don’t really mind it, and it does have me curious what the rest of the series will entail, as there are 11 before it wraps up. I like how much more the secondary characters are being fleshed out, so perhaps some of it will have to do with that.


Reading Next

Next week I will be away on vacation, so I won’t be able to post. Still, I have a lot of reading plans between now and when I post again. First and foremost, I plan to read volumes five and six of the Twilight Princess manga so that I can return them to the library before I leave. On my trip I intend to bring This is How You Lose the Time War by by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, which I’m hoping I’ll be able to finish while I’m gone. If I do end up reading through it quickly enough, I will then start Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I doubt I will finish both books (there’s a good chance I won’t finish one), but they’re fairly short, so getting through at least one and starting another at least feels doable.

Until next time, thank you for reading! Feel free to share your own post down below.

Movie Review – Annihilation (2018)

IMDb Summary

A biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition where the laws of nature don’t apply.

AnnihilationPoster

Annihilation is a science fiction horror film written and directed by Alex Garland, based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. The film stars Natalie Portman as biologist and former soldier Lena. Her Army Special Forces husband Kane (Oscar Isaac) mysteriously returns home after having gone missing during a mission nearly a year before. Soon afterwards he becomes violently ill and slips into a coma. They are taken by government forces to the secretive Area X, which studies a shimmering electromagnetic field that has engulfed a wide area of land after an object from outer-space struck land. Lena finds out that this is where Kane disappeared and joins an expedition team led by psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), along with paramedic Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), physicist Josie Radeck (Tessa Thompson), and anthropologist Cass Sheppard (Tuba Novotny), into “the Shimmer” to find answers.Read More »