New Books & Novel Discoveries (Jan. 2018)

January 30, 2018January 30, 2018 RyanLeave a comment

As I said in a previous post, I want to start doing some general blogging about books — writing that isn’t formally reviewing books or sharing what I’ve been reading and plan to read next. I’m frequently acquiring and discovering new books (populating a To-Read list on Goodreads that I suspect will never deplete faster than titles are added) and thought it would be fun to give myself a platform to talk a bit about those.

I’ve also been mentally prepping myself more and more for making creative writing a regular exercise. I need to write stories, my state of mind is just weighing me down significantly. Once such writing gets going, I’d like to use posts like these to hold myself a little more accountable to making progress, as well as sharing some of the progress I’ve made. I’m hopeful I will have a better drive to make good on plans I declare more publicly, rather than something I privately think about doing.

Anyway, onto the books!Read More »

Book Review – Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller

January 27, 2018December 3, 2020 Ryan1 Comment

Summary

Ever since the Jedi were marked for death and forced to flee Coruscant, Kanan Jarrus has devoted himself to staying alive rather than serving the Force. Wandering the galaxy alone, from one anonymous job to another, he avoids trouble—especially with the Empire—at all costs. So when he discovers a deadly conflict brewing between ruthless Imperial forces and desperate revolutionaries, he’s not about to get caught in the crossfire. Then the brutal death of a friend at the Empire’s hands forces the ex-Jedi to make a choice: bow down to fear, or stand up and fight.

But Jarrus won’t be fighting alone. Unlikely allies, including a bomb-throwing radical, a former Imperial surveillance agent, a vengeful security officer, and the mysterious Hera Syndulla—an agent provocateur with motives of her own—team up with Jarrus to challenge the Empire. As a crisis of apocalyptic proportions unfolds on the planet Gorse, they must stand together against one of the Empire’s most fearsome enforcers—for the sake of a world and its people.

A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller, released September 2, 2014, was the first Star Wars novel published as a part of Disney’s new canon for the franchise. It is also said to be the first narrative product of Lucasfilm Story Group, a division of Lucasfilm Ltd. founded in 2013 with the responsibility of determining all Star Wars Canon. The novel serves as a prequel for the television series Star Wars Rebels, featuring two of the lead characters Kanan and Hera, telling the story of how they first met six years prior to the series.

To be honest, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to reading this book. On my laundry list of new Star Wars novels to read it ranked pretty low in terms of my enthusiasm. There was nothing inherently wrong with it, only I had no meaningful investment in the Rebels series. So, I was not particularly attracted to the idea of diving into its prequel. What I failed to consider, however, was that a novel like this might be precisely what I’ve been looking for.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – 2018/01/24

January 24, 2018 RyanLeave a comment

WWW Wednesday is a book meme run by Taking on a World of Words.

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

I’m still slowly making my way through 45 Master Characters by Victoria Lynn Schmidt. I haven’t made as much progress as I wanted to, but I really wanted to get some other things finished instead. I’m still in the midst of female archetypes, a continuously useful section. I’m finding I might have to blend elements from different models together. These archetypes are meant to be a foundation from which you build up characters, so I’m hoping mixing and matching elements that could work together won’t complicate things too much. Regardless, there’s still much for me to work out, so we’ll see.

Recently Finished

Mere minutes before starting to write this post I finished reading A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller, the Star Wars novel following Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla from Star Wars Rebels in their first adventure together. Maybe it was because I was pushing myself to get through it a bit too much, but I found it to be much longer than it likely needed to be. At times the drawn out, continual action felt tiresome. Despite this, I think it is one of the best of the new canon novels I have read thus far. My review will probably be up by Friday.

Reading Next

After a lot of thought, I’ve decided my next book will by Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach. It’s a book I was able to secure a copy of a few months ago after having been on my radar for a little while. It’s a nonfiction, humorous look at ghosts and life after death from a scientific perspective. I’m an atheist (secular humanist if you want to get specific), but I’ve never been able to help a fascination with the paranormal. Taking a look at the subject from this perspective was hard to resist once I’d come across it and I look forward to digging into it over the next week.

WWW Wednesday – 2018/01/17

January 17, 2018 Ryan2 Comments

WWW Wednesday is a book meme run by Taking on a World of Words.

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

I’m currently in the middle of a couple books. The first is 45 Master Characters by Victoria Lynn Schmidt, a reference book about writing character archetypes and crafting character journeys throughout a story. One of the protagonists in a story I’ve been formulating for years is a young woman, so I’m especially appreciating Schmidt’s emphasis on the feminine journey and female archetypes. As far as I can tell the masculine journey is given just as much detail, which will definitely be useful as well, but I’m appreciating the former being at the forefront of the book. I feel I have the most to learn in that area.

I’m also reading A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller, a Disney Canon Star Wars novel following Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla, two of the main cast from the animated series Star Wars Rebels. The book serves as a prequel to the series, so I wanted to get reading it out of the way before watching the show. It’s not bad so far — though I’m only a little over 50 pages in — I just don’t care about these characters very much. I might have if I’d watch the show first, but I don’t feel like working backwards with this sphere of Star Wars stories. I enjoy reading about the cyborg villain Count Vidian, who mechanically vocalizes loudly at people to be more efficient. I find him both menacing and comically over-the-top.

Recently Finished

Shortly after my post last week I finished reading Universal Harvester by John Darnielle, which you can read my full review of here. I enjoyed the novel for what it was, there were great things about it, but I couldn’t help coming away from it a little disappointed.

I also read the two volumes of Star Wars: Kanan by Greg Weisman et al — The Last Padawan and First Blood — a limited comic book series following the Star Wars Rebels character during his time as a Jedi Padawan at the end of the Clone Wars. Again, I’ve no attachment to these characters right now, but I could appreciate the unique perspective on the execution of the Jedi; the character being quite young when he had to flee his betrayers and survive on his own. The volumes were pleasant little pockets of story that expanded the universe a little more. I especially liked the brief emphasis on Separatists who truly believed in their cause and their spite toward those who fought for the former Republic.

Reading Next

I’m not quite sure what I’ll get to next in terms of novels; I’m pretty occupied with the two books I’m reading already. I definitely want to get to Shiver by Junji Ito though, a manga collection of horror stories. I was able to get a new copy on sale on Boxing Day over the holidays, a find I was really pleased with. I loved Ito’s work in Uzumaki I’m eager to experience more of his one-shot stories firsthand.

Book Review – Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

January 16, 2018January 16, 2018 Ryan1 Comment

Summary

Life in a small town takes a dark turn when mysterious footage begins appearing on VHS cassettes at the local Video Hut.

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle is a 2017 mystery/fiction novel set in the late 1990s. The story follows Jeremy, a man in his early twenties who works at his local Video Hut, a dead-end job he finds palatable because it gets him out of the house and makes his daily life predictable. He lives with his father; his mother having died six years previously in a car wreck. His daily monotony is interrupted when he starts to notice a trend of people complaining about “something else” being on the tapes they’ve rented. Troubling, homemade footage not a part of the movie. It’s a premise that I found quite tantalizing, as I’m sure many others have. An effectively simple concept that promises to unsettle, yet you feel drawn in. Despite how this sounds, however, this book is not a horror story.Read More »

Renovations!

January 14, 2018January 15, 2018 Ryan4 Comments

Truth be told I’d been wanting to redo the theme of this site for a long time now, the problem was my tendency to procrastinate This was especially the case because my plans had me wanting to do more than just choose a new layout.

As it turns out I was perusing different themes Friday night and accidentally activated one that I didn’t even want to use, which I took as a done deal. My old layout was so stale that even WordPress advised a new one, as it had been “retired,” so with changes happening by accident anyway I decided to get started. I couldn’t just leave it as it was. I guess when you’re hesitant to jump in the pool sometimes it helps to slip and fall in.

The further changes I wanted included reworking the categories going back to day one so that all of my varied non-review posts could be sorted more neatly. Everything now has an organization I’m much happier with. I’ve also used tags to make my reviews accessible from a menu. Lastly, I updated/rewrote some of the pages on the site to freshen things up a bit.

I’m very pleased with the new look, as the old layout was something I settled for when I started and regrettably got too complacent with. I hope you all enjoy the new look too.

One of my new categories is simply “Blog,” and I want to use it to write more off-the-cuff posts like this, maybe once a week or so. While they will occasionally be talking shop like I am here, I imagine, I’d like to use them to talk about books in ways outside of reviews or the WWW Wednesday posts; new books I’ve acquired, series and authors that have caught my attention, or more reflective/introspective ideas I may have about reading and writing.

A review for Universal Harvester by John Darnielle will be up soon, it has just been delayed by all the time I’ve put into reworking the site. I should have it finished and up either tomorrow or Tuesday. Until then, thank you for reading!

WWW Wednesday – 2018/01/10

January 10, 2018January 13, 2018 Ryan2 Comments

WWW Wednesday is a book meme run by Taking on a World of Words.

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

I’m about three quarters of the way through Universal Harvester by John Darnielle. It’s a lot more of a slow burn than I was expecting, the nature of these strange tapes still left nebulous to the reader at this point. It’s a lot more focused on people’s lives, their roots, processing grief, and trying to figure out their place in the world. It’s amusing to me to think that this novel is essentially an internet “creepypasta” turned into literature, where normally a story like this would be entirely fixated on the the creepy premise, this novel is building out its people and their world carefully. Where this falls in my esteem will ultimately have to do with its payoff.

Recently Finished

Nothing yet, but I expect to have Universal Harvester done any day now.

Reading Next

As a supplemental read I think I’m going to finally start reading 45 Master Characters by Victoria Lynn Schmidt soon. It’s a book I picked up for reference a while ago, but with my growing drive to actually get started on a book I’ve been building up in my head for years now, I want to use more of the tools available to me to help me make it as good as it can be. Other than that, I will probably start Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller as my next novel, as I’ve got a lot of those books that I want to get through this year.

Currently Reading Book Tag

January 5, 2018January 13, 2018 RyanLeave a comment

I may be having a week off from reading and reviewing, but I still wanted to get a little something posted. Sam from Taking on a World of Words tagged me in this last week, so I thought I’d give it a go 🙂

This tag is originally created by Charly Reynhorse and you can watch the video here.Read More »

WWW Wednesday – 2018/01/03

January 3, 2018 Ryan3 Comments

www_wednesdays

WWW Wednesday is a book meme run by Taking on a World of Words.

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

I’ve given myself a bit of a break from reading for the first week of January, so I’m not currently in the middle of anything. I just wanted some time to reflect and not worry about getting through anything.

Recently Finished

StarshipTroopersCover Just in nick of time, on New Year’s Eve, I finished reading Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein, making it my final book of 2017. I was surprised with just how much the plot points of this novel were mirrored in the better-known 1997 film, considering how different they are. It takes a significantly different approach to its world and the Bug War. The war itself is rather incidental to the plot, strangely enough. I will have a review of it posted after my brief repose.

HellboyIntoTheSilentSea I also read Hellboy: Into the Silent Sea by Mike Mignola, Gary Gianni, and Dave Stewart. It was an interesting little nautical tale, set during the events of the sixth volume Strange Places. Hellboy finds himself captured on a ship seemingly out of the past, which voyages in search of a serpent that will supposedly grant great knowledge. It was brief story, good but unremarkable compared to other Hellboy tales. I particularly liked the art, which had an especially ghostly quality to it. I’m curious what inspired this book, since it was a full 11 years after Strange Places.

Reading Next

UniversalHarvester I may not be reading anything at the moment, but I’ve already set my sights on my first novel for 2018, which I plan to start this weekend. It shall be Universal Harvester by John Darnielle, which follows a young man working in a video store in the late 1990s who begins to receive complaints from customers that certain tapes they’ve rented included unsettling footage not part of the movie. I first heard about this book from a Night Vale Presents podcast and I’m eager to finally dig into it.