Book Reviews

Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story – Krista lent me some Chuck Klosterman novels which I thoroughly enjoyed.  Chuck is an editor at SPIN magazine and his writings are chock full of pop culture references and gets into the minutae of music.  I love it.  It felt like I was sitting with a friend who is equal to me in my thoughts of music…I have yet to find a person who talks about the little things they love about a song…I have my suspicions that Karilee may fit that bill on the music scene.  Or Sara.  But I have yet to have those conversations with them.  You know the conversations I’m talking about…the ones where you are sitting in a living room listening to some tunes and then comment on a random part of the song and thoroughly dissect it like it’s a frog in Grade Ten biology class.

The book follows Chuck on his drive through North America to look at the spots where rock stars have died…Randy Rhoads, Buddy Holly, Kurt Cobain, etc.  Chock full of discussion on the great rock greats around America intermixed with his own thoughts at the time about his rental car (dubbed the Tauntaun) and the current status of his relationships in life with loved ones.  Krista didn’t care for the last half of the novel (and I think she stopped reading it?) but I found the book enjoyable.

Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs – Another Chuck Klosterman great epic with essays on random subject matter ranging from Star Wars, Breakfast Cereals, the beauty of Saved By The Bell…such obscure subject matter which needs someone to talk about it for an entire generation.  I enjoyed his essays although there were a few I skipped altogether (like when he talked about The Real World which is a TV show I hadn’t seen before).  In the middle of book laid the Top 23 Questions I would Ask a Person to Answer to Determine if I will Love them.  These questions are amazing and I actually have photocopied them and carry them in my backpack for a boring day at the pub.

All in all, I will definitely look into further Chuck Klosterman novels as I enjoy his insights into our society, pop culture and music.  If you were going to start off with a novel, I would start off with this particular novel as you can pick and choose some essays to read and if you enjoy what you read, then you know you’ll like everything else.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Thanks to Trish for lending me this novel.  Even though I heard the ending inadvertently on the bus one night, I still was anxious to read the last great novel in the Harry Potter series.  While I won’t spoil anything here, I will say that it was quite the page turner and I finished it in a few days while in Sudbury with Mom and Dad over the holidays.  All in all, a fitting end to the series.  While a lot of people have spoken to me and indicated they didn’t care for the last chapter, I thought it was great.  My only qualm with the novel is that fell outside of the standard formula of the other novels; in that there is a year at the school, there’s trouble with a new teacher, etc.  So it was a different read and at some points I was feeling that the novel wasn’t moving along fast enough.  There was literally a few chapters dealing with them wondering what they should do next while they camped somewhere.  Meh, that’s a minor point really as we all knew the novel structure had to change.  While I am disappointed that this is the end of the Harry Potter train, I was pleased with the last novel…much like I was pleased with Revenge of The Sith.

Moonraker – I picked up a few James Bond novels while in Sudbury and just finished reading Moonraker.  From what I can remember of the film, it is nothing based on the novel whatsoever.  I believe this had to do with the fact that Moonraker was created for a population who wanted some outer space action ala Star Wars.  Nothing of that sort in the novel.  It follows our great spy James Bond keeping an eye for sabotage on the Moonraker project and it’s fraught full of suspicion at every turn and red herrings.  Can I point out that so far in all the novels of Bond I’ve read, James really gets a number done on him in the final chapters.  That never happens in the films!  Except for Casino Royale which faithfully reproduced the final torture sequence.  But imagine that happening in every novel!  It’s true!  In Live and Let Die, he gets dragged behind a boat and thrown through corral all the time which slices him up badly.  In Moonraker he gets his skin burned by steam.  Gadzooks!  If this is what being a spy is all about, it isn’t all that glamourous.  Either way, I enjoy Ian Fleming’s writings as they keep the pace moving and it’s also interesting to see how the film compares with the original novel (in some cases very faithfully (Casino Royale) but in some cases, not so much (Moonraker).