Book & Movie Review: The Martian

So I mentioned I was going to try this a few weeks ago but a refresher for folks who have forgotten; I'm always at a loss for how to review adaptions based off of books that I have read recently. I don't want to just review one or the other but it's tricky to write something substantial both times without either repeating myself or spending the bulk of the review simply making comparisons. So, since I read The Martian quite recently I'm going to try this, one review to talk about the story as it relates to both version and how the versions differed (with characterization, pacing etc) and yes, saying if one version should be avoided over the other. I know that some people are a little, hesitant, to call a movie etc bad if it's not a faithful adaptation of a book but let's face it, a lot of times those are bad because they take out what made the story work (like, in terms of coherency, basic building parts) and I am anything but hesitant to tell you guys if a story was crap.

The Martian Original story by Andy Weir

Book Review: The Last Dragonslayer

The curse of reviewing mediocre things "man there are so many things I'd rather be doing right now than trying to find the energy to talk about THIS". And I'm afraid this might be happening a lot in the next few weeks, I've been reading my usual book and a half a week but very few of the fiction works have really been grabbing me (I tend to alternate reading fiction and non-fiction but I find non-fiction tricky enough to review that those thoughts tend to get shoved into the weekly round-ups). It's not a burn-out per say, alternating with non-fiction is helping, but it's frustrating week after week I start up an interesting looking book and am completely bored with it by the end.

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde

Book Review: Finnikin of the Rock

So I had actually read part of this book before several years ago and returned it to the library since it just wasn't grabbing me. When I checked it back out I thought the cover and the premise sounded a bit familiar but, since I obviously never finished it, I couldn't remember enough details either way. And by the time I started reading it (while trapped in a three hour line for a last day museum exhibit) it was too late to grab something else and I ended up reading the whole thing anyway.

Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta

Book Review: Tokyo Demons volume 2

"Alright Helen, what's your excuse for not having this review up on time?" Well, it was one I was having some trouble with this review which is never a good sign. Plus, I'm trying to cut back on caffeine but had a soda at work Friday and spent literally nine hours trying not to bounce off of the goddamn walls, made focusing on writing a little hard! And with the fall anime round-up coming up on Monday it's been a little chaotic around here.....

Tokyo Demons: Add A Little Chaos by Lianne Sentar, illustrated by Rem

Book Review: Wildwood Dancing

This is the review that doesn't want to go up  I swear, it's not even a case where "the most average books are the hardest to review". Occasionally I just read a book and even though I have thoughts on it, they're either too spolierly or just too bland on there own and take forever to finesse. 

Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier

Book Review: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making

Since this is really late I'll be brief, I was aware of this book when it was first a serialized novel online but was always too busy to get around to reading it. I've also been hesitant to try it out since I've seen reviews of the later novels (the book was later picked up by a traditional publisher, hence why my library had a copy) that say they've gone downhill. The good news is that this book could be read entirely on it's own so if you're nervous like me worry not, no obligation to keep reading!

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by  Catherynne M. Valente, illustrated by Ana Juan

Book Review: Born Wicked

Sorry for the delay in all of the reviews this week guys, details tomorrow but it's nothing exciting, just too many things going wrong at once. And speaking of things going wrong....

Born Wicked by Jessica Spotswood

Book Review: A Long Long Sleep

I forgot I read this book about a week after I finished it. Normally that's a bad sign except, well, I have no idea why I forgot this book. Thank god I'm doing the summer reading program at the library (yes folks, the DC system has kids, teens, AND adult summer reading programs, I got a free burrito and baseball tickets from doing it!) which has me logging all of my reading and I was able to look it up this way. 

A Long Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan

Radio Drama Review: Tokyo Demons Book 1: You're Never Alone

As I alluded to several weeks back, I like to listen to podcast, audio books, and when I can find them radio dramas when I’m working on big sewing projects, I find it’s a way to actually help keep me focused and look forward to my work. So with nearly everything exhausted pre-Otakon, I turned to Sparkler Monthly, an online “shoujo/josei magazine” of sorts which I knew had a few audio titles. I went for what seems to be their best well-known one, Tokyo Demons, which I remember also received glowing praise from Ash of Experiments in Manga. There is also a prose version of the story but when I first inquired about this story (quite a while ago) I was told that the audio version was the more “complete” one since it also had a few exclusive side stories. I’m not sure you could say that now however since the audio version has only covered one out of the three books in the series. And for a quick plug before I get to the review, Sparkler is holding a Kickstarter to help fund Year Three of the magazine and it’s in it’s final days with a bit more to go. Most of the titles I enjoy on Sparkler are ones I was already familiar with (Knights Errant, Witch’s Quarry) so I’m more than happy to see them return and encourage more people to give the titles a shot.

Tokyo Demons: You're Never Alone written by Lianne Sentar, adapted by Rebecca Scoble, illustrated by Rem

Book Review: The Agency Book One: A Spy in the House

I might have messed up that title slightly since it's written a little oddly wherever I've seen it but oh well, at least this way it's easy enough to understand what book I'm referring to. I had seen a post on the The Book Smugglers blog recommending the latest volumes a few months ago and decided to go ahead and check out the first book so I could see if I wanted to catch up to this later volume.

The Agency 1: A Spy In The House by Y.S. Lee

Book Review: Goose Girl

Shannon Hale is an author who I feel like I hear about more often than I should, which isn't a bad thing but just a curious thing. She started writing mostly middle grade books once I was already in mid-late high school at least so while I've read a little of her work before (The Princess Academy, also one of the graphic novels she's written for, Rapunzel's Revenge) I haven't been actively looking for her work since it's a little young for me. I forget how this one ended up on my kindle from the library recently (my to-read list is the size of a small mountain so it's rare I do remember recommendations these days) but wasn't too worried, I did enjoy The Princess Academy after all.

Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

Audio Book Review: A Love for the Pages

To continue with my full disclosure policy on this blog, a friend of mine was the narrator for this audio book and gave me a review copy on audible in exchange for a review. I plan on making a full page for how to contact me for review requests (especially with all of the webcomic requests I'm getting these days from people who have clearly never looked at this blog before in their lives....) but I am open to stuff like this. On that note, I am going to refrain from really talking about my friend's voice since I'm sure if she wants any personal critique she will ask, I'll just say that I like the sound of her voice and didn't find it grating which is one very important thing when you're about to listen to them for six hours!

A Love for the Pages by Joy Penny

Book Review: Ascendant

Like Rampart, I remember hearing some good buzz about this book in the YA community when it came out and this time I remembered that I had even read a short story set in this world in the anthology Zombies vs Unicorns. I think I even have a review of it here (it's probably terrible) but I remember that despite being unfamiliar with her mythos I rather liked it, out of the whole anthology I seem to recall I only liked a few stories and they were all unicorn stories oddly enough. I believe she has other short stories in this world too, I should look that up since with no publishing date for the third book yet I'll want something to keep these stories fresh in my mind.

Ascendant by Diana Peterfreund

Book Review: Cooperhead

Previously on Narrative Investigations: Helen receives an ARC from Tor only to discover it's the third book in a series, crap! Thankfully her library had the first book in the series but, after writing that review, she discovered that they didn't have the second book! So it was off to the other library system so that a review of Silverblind will still happen before the new year!

Cooperhead by Tina Connolly

Book Review: Dragon Sword and Wind Child

Last February I ordered a microphone from Amazon, got a package direct from Amazon, thinking that I didn't remember that it was an Amazon fulfillment, and opened it up to find a kindle instead. I then remembered that my birthday was in about a week and that this was probably a gift from my mother considering I had mentioned off-handedly that I was thinking of getting on in the next year and confirmed when I started getting email notifications about books from my wishlist being added to my account. Obviously this book was one of them, I forget where in the manga blogosphere I first heard of it but it was an out of print title that had recently popped up in ebook form and it sounded like it had potential so why not?

Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Noriko Ogiwara

Book Review: Rampant

Apologies for the lateness of this review and this time I have no explanation for it, I've just been feeling a bit down lately and that makes it surprisingly hard to pull myself together and care enough to write. Wish I could say that it should get better soon but since I'm about to start NaNoWriMo right after this I'm going to take next week off and see how trying to do two different kinds of writing each night goes. I have plenty to review but just no motivation, even though I've figured out a way to pre-write most of these at work!

Rampant by Diana Peterfreund

Book Reivew: Ironskin

I've been a reader of the tor.com blog for many years now and I really like a lot of the books that Tor Publishing puts out, it's a consistently good mix of fantasy and sci-fi, so I read a lot of the excerpts and summaries of new books and I also have fairly good luck with winning their ARC contests. I was hooked when I read the excerpt for a book coming out this fall, Silverblind, it's another fantasy story about a young woman naturalist similar to A Natural History of Dragons (which, if I remember correctly, was also a Tor book), and eagerly entered their contest to win an ARC. I did, opened up my package as soon as I got it, and then did a little bit of swearing when the back of the book mentioned it was the third in a series and I had completely missed that on the website. But thankfully my library had, well, this book and hopefully I'll be able to find the next one soon enough, I need to have a word with my other system, maybe my plan of actually reviewing a 2014 book in 2014 won't be in vain after all!

Ironskin by Tina Connolly

Book Review: Everlasting

Yet another book from my near-eternal to-read list but this one actually had an interesting sounding premise when I looked it up on my library's website! Well, it actually had a premise which is a bit of a rarity in and of itself, but DC you are very strange in so many ways, but what it sound did seem interesting and after a couple of duds I was ready to read something I really liked.

Everlasting by Angie Frazier

Book Review: Crossing the Tracks

Lately I've been working on some knitting projects, well honestly I started one project in mid-June, finished it in time for Otakon in early August, and then started another project in late August, and the thing is that I do most of my knitting on my commute. I take public transportation and, if I'm lucky enough, can get a seat for both the morning and evening and sitting while knitting is infinitely easier than trying to stand and balance knitting. Unfortunately this is also my biggest chunk of free time in the day to do reading so I'm starting to get dangerously close to the end of my book list for reviewing here and honestly even if I was reading on the metro it might not help, it's surprisingly hard to hold a book and turn the pages one-handed if you're trying to use the other hand to stop yourself from creating a human line of dominos. So bear with me if I have to skip an update or two in the coming months, especially since I'm starting a few new series and these days I'd almost rather review an entire series at once instead of talking about the series two or three times in three months or so, thank goodness not everything I'm reading is a sequel!

Crossing the Tracks by Barbara Stuber

Book Review: Incarnate

Having to change up the schedule this week a little bit since it's been quite a while since I checked out a DVD at the library and forgot that they "lock" their cases so between that and being so happy that this branch finally had a self-checkout machine I haven't had time to actually watch my movie yet! So instead I'll talk about a book I read for an author signing earlier in September, Sarah J Maas of Heir of Fire is doing her book tour and had a stop quite close to me with two other authors joining in, Leah Cypress (I liked Mistwood quiet a bit but not Nightspell) and then this author whom I'd never heard of before! That's as good a reason as any to try out a book, even if I got the impression that at least half of the room had only read Maas's books judging by all the questions directed at her (yes it is her tour but it was still a lot of questions!), plus my library had it on kindle and that really is the best way for me to read when commuting in the mornings, much easier to do one-handed that with a hardcover!

Incarnate by Jodi Meadows