Oryx & Crake

 Bookstravaganza, Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 242011
 

Oryx & Crake - Margaret Atwood

Oryx & Crake
Margaret Atwood
2003, 443 pages

I may have mentioned before how much I love The Day of the Triffids. In fact, I may have to write a second review of the book, so I can talk about how great it is all over again. The first review was a little too… detailed in the plot, and not detailed enough in the gushing about how great it is. Let me reiterate: Day of the Triffids is great. Fantastic. Creepy. Hopeful. I think it’s the best book I’ve read set during the end of civilization as we know it. I never thought that vicious plants would stick in my memory quite like it has. The image of a helpless populate, stumbling through the city streets hasn’t left my brain. The triffids themselves? Horrible caricatures of zombie plants with a description mostly left to the imagination? Great. Lovecraftian. The incompletely described monsters are always the best. It’s not a non-stop horror, and the character moments, and the learning to survive moments are touching and heartwarming. It’s. Just. So. Good. I want to stop writing this and go read it again but I don’t know who has my copy of this book.

…

I’m supposed to be talking about Oryx & Crake. Let me tell you why it reminds me of Day of the Triffids. It’s great. It’s not set during the actual collapse of society, it’s set a few months after, as our protagonist, Snowman, has to survive a new life with the genetically modified super animals. It tells us how society fell into this situation in long and vivid flashbacks. It’s got creepy creatures hiding in the shadows. And mad science!

The future described by Atwood is just horrifying enough to be true, and that’s one of the great things about Oryx & Crake. She does a great job of demonstrating a slippery slope that mad science can lead people down. I’m not actually concerned with genetically modified crops; I think their benefits at this point greatly outnumber the risks. Agriculture has always been a process of genetic modification: cull out the bad, keep the good, figure out how to make it better. However, the pigoon is a creepy almost-reality: a pig bred to grow replacement organs for humans. I’m not a big fan of this. Atwood does a good job with the incompletely described monsters.

I didn’t like Oryx. I couldn’t figure out why she was so monumental in Snowman’s life. It is sort of explained near the end, but to me she didn’t ring true. Crake on the other hand? Loner genius with crazy schemes and the brains to pull off his plans? I know him. She totally got the obsessive genius right. I didn’t really like Snowman that much, but I don’t think we were supposed to.

It has been suggested that at some point in her career, people stopped editing Margaret Atwood and let her ramble on incessantly like a blogger talking about how great Day of the Triffids is. This book does not suffer from this fault. Atwood’s writing is concise, and there isn’t much chaff here; just wheat. It’s didactic in parts — I get it: genetic modification is bad — but it doesn’t go overboard with sermonizing.

My least favourite end of the world as we know it book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It’s terrible. The thing that makes it terrible is nothing good ever happens in the entire book. Oryx & Crake is certainly lighter fare than that. It has a sense of humour and happy bits, even during dreadful situations.

So to summarize:
Oryx & Crake: great. Day of the Triffids: even better. The Road: bad.

 Posted by Shannon Patterson at 9:22 pm

Bookstravaganza List #9: Wyndham or Vonnegut?

 Bookstravaganza, Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 212011
 

Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is awesome. I know this isn’t the review post, but another list, but it’s my blog and I make the rules, and I say that I can talk about how great Oryx and Crake is whenever I want, and I just finished it, so I want to talk about it now.

Crake was a bit a dick, wasn’t he?

Anyways, this list is all about two guys near the end of the alphabet: John Wyndham, author of The Day Of The Triffids which absolutely everyone should read right now, and The Chrysalids, which everyone who was forced to read in high school should read again because it’s actually quite good. The other guy is Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse Five and Timequake and a bunch of other iconic stuff. I have a bunch of unread stuff by these guys on my bookshelves, and want to read something by one of them next. Here are your choices:

The Trouble With Lichen – John Wyndham


The Kraken Wakes – John Wyndham


Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut


Player Piano – Kurt Vonnegut


The Sirens Of Titan – Kurt Vonnegut


As always, vote in the comments. Vote as often as you want. I will give bonus points to the most enthusiastic comment. Bonus points also to anyone who can tell me why they loved The Day of the Triffids. If you didn’t love it, I’ll read about that too.

 Posted by Shannon Patterson at 8:09 pm

Timequake

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Aug 162011
 

Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut

Timequake
Kurt Vonnegut
1997, 250 pages

I finished this book a week ago and don’t remember anything that was in it except it involved a timequake.

Which isn’t to say it was bad. I read it, and enjoyed reading it. It just didn’t stick.

 Posted by Shannon Patterson at 9:07 pm

And Then There Were None

 Bookstravaganza, Reviews  No Responses »
Aug 052011
 

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie

And Then There Were None
Agatha Christie
1939, 204 pages

Agatha Christie is awesome. This book was written 45 years before I was born, and it felt fresh and real. It was one of those page-turners where you neglect your friends and relatives in order to stay in the imaginary world conjured up by the magician with the pen and paper. And so it was, on the August long weekend, that I found myself neglecting my poor husband in order to find out who the killer was. And it was so satisfying. I don’t regret it. He’s a grown up. He can feed himself and usually manages to dress himself.

Though I did take a three hour air conditioning and darkness break (where they were showing Cowboys & Aliens), I wasn’t thinking about the entertainment the air conditioning company was providing. I was trying to figure out who the hell was responsible. I thought it was the religious zealot, and I was so wrong. So very wrong.

Oh, the dialog! So good. The foreshadowy poem! Lovely and creepy! I kept flipping back to it, to try and figure out how the next person was going to be offed! It was wonderful! And it was so satisfying that these people, who didn’t technically kill anyone, were getting what they really deserved!

There’s a reason this is the best selling mystery book ever. I’m so glad I read it, and I’m also very glad I didn’t get a copy of this book with the original title. This one is better.

I’m going to go watch that episode of Doctor Who with Agatha Christie and the killer space bee (seriously, folks… Killer. Space. Bee).

 Posted by Shannon Patterson at 9:15 pm

Runaways Volume 1

 Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 042011
 

Runaways Volume 1 by Brian K. Vaughan

Runaways Volume 1 [Issues 1-18]
Brian K Vaughan
2006, 448 pages

I’m not one of those people who knows anything about comics. Seriously, nearing the end of this arc, Captain America shows up, but he didn’t have his shield. I had to confirm with Alan who he was. I have been trying to find something to get my feet wet with the genre, beyond TV turned graphic novel, or authors I already knew, and I chose these books for this reason. They’re not full of characters you really should already know, and if they’re important, they’re given a little bit of context (A good example of this is that it was explained that the Avengers were from the east cost, not the west coast, where these books were set).

So, the story is essentially six teens trying to stop their evil parents from destroying earth. They run away to a secret hideout, where there’s angst and antics and dinosaurs, and teens trying to grapple with seeing their formerly revered parents in a new light. The story isn’t grim, but the teens are certainly put in peril from time to time, and they have to make some pretty big sacrifices to pull off their plans.

I would say this is probably the first true “comic book” book I’ve read and I liked it. The art was clear enough that I usually knew who was saying what, and who the background characters were (something I’ve had trouble with in other books). The dialog didn’t feel stilted, and the jokes weren’t distracting from the plot. I wouldn’t say the plot was extremely brilliant, but there were enough twists, and a few of them I didn’t see coming. All in all, it was really fun, not too light, and I actually felt sad when all that bad stuff went down at the end. Oh, and there’s a dinosaur.

We like dinosaurs.

This is one of the books I picked up in my new love of the Hamilton Public Library, and let me tell you one thing: It took me less than a day to read this book, and it would have cost me nearly $100 to get off of Amazon, as it’s not in print any more. Unfortunately, the next volume is not in the library. Because I really do want to continue reading, I’m thinking about ordering it, reading it, and then donating it to the library. Does anybody know if that’s allowed?

 Posted by Shannon Patterson at 9:14 pm
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